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 Cornell University Library 
 BL660 .C87 1903 
 
 Mythology of the Aryan nationas. by the 
 
 iiiMiiiiiRl 
 
 3 1924 029 135 445 
 olin 
 
3L 
 1103 
 
ARYAN MYTHOLOGY 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 Tales of Ancient Greece. Small crown 8vo. Cloth, 
 price bs. 
 
 An Introduction to the Science of Comparative 
 Mythology and Folk-Lore. Large crown 8vo. 
 Cloth, price gs. 
 
 Tales of Gods and Heroes. Small crown 8vo. Price 
 
 London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.. Lt?. 
 
THE MYTHOLOGY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ARYAN NATIONS 
 
 BY THE REV. 
 
 SIR GEORGE W. COX, Bart., M.A. 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Lt? 
 
 PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD 
 
 1903 
 
A.2-51-0 b I 
 
 {The rights of iraiislatton and of reproduction are reserved.} 
 
 2>> 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The purpose of this work is to exhibit clearly and with 
 sufficient fulness the general characteristics of Aryan mytho- 
 logy, as a system which has grown up from words and phrases 
 denoting not one or two objects only, as the sun or moon, 
 but all the phenomena of the sensible world, as they impressed 
 themselves on the minds of primitive men. It has not been 
 my object to give an exhaustive account of the myths of every 
 branch of the Aryan race. To ascribe equal value and 
 interest to the traditions of all the tribes included within the 
 great Aryan family would indeed be absurd. But in the 
 present edition I have given to the Slavonic mythology, and 
 to some other subordinate topics, as much space as the con- 
 ditions of my subject enabled me to afford. 
 
 During the twelve years which have passed since the 
 publication of the first edition, a large amount of solid work 
 has been done within the domain of Comparative Mythology. 
 Of the results so gained probably the most important is the 
 clearer light thrown on the influence of Semitic theology on 
 the theology and religion of the Greeks. This momentous 
 question I have striven to treat impartially ; and for my 
 treatment of it I have to acknowledge my obligations to 
 Mr. Robert Brown's valuable researches in the field of the 
 great Dionysiak Myth. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 In other respects the course of mythological inquiry, although 
 it has been greatly widened, has not made any serious modi- 
 fications necessary in the principles by which I have been 
 guided, or in the details of the evidence which have deter- 
 mined the conclusions reached. On the whole, the result has 
 been to strengthen in every way the foundations of the science, 
 and to lay bare more and more clearly the origin and growth 
 of the vast body of Aryan tradition and belief. The exami- 
 nation of the religious systems of Assyria, Phenicia, and Egypt 
 bears out abundantly and precisely just those assertions of 
 Comparative Mythologists which have been most pertinaciously 
 called into question, and has removed beyond the reach of 
 doubt the fact that the mighty mass of popular tradition in 
 every Aryan land has been shaped by words and phrases 
 describing all the varied and complex phenomena of day and 
 night, of summer and winter, of earth and heaven. 
 
 April 14, 1882. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 With a deep consciousness of its shortcomings, but with a 
 confidence not less deep in the security of the foundations 
 laid by the Science of Comparative Mythology, I submit to 
 the judgment of all whose desire it is to ascertain the truth 
 of facts in every field of inquiry a work on a subject as vast 
 as it is important. The history of mythology is, in a sense 
 far beyond that in which we may apply the words to the later 
 developements of religious systems, the history of the human 
 mind ; and the analysis which lays bare the origin and nature 
 of Iranian dualism, and traces the influence of that dualism 
 on the thought and philosophy of other lands, must indefiV 
 nitely affect our conclusions on many subjects which may not 
 appear to be directly connected with it 
 
 For myself I confess candidly, and with a feeling of grati- 
 tude which lapse of time certainly has not weakened, that 
 Professor Max Mtiller's Essay on Comparative Mythology 
 first opened to me thirteen years ago a path through a laby- 
 rinth which, up to that time, had seemed as repulsive as it 
 was intricate. I well remember the feeling of delight awakened 
 by his analysis of the myths examined in that essay, of which 
 it is but bare justice to say that by it the ground which it 
 traversed was for the first time effectually broken for English 
 
viii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 scholars, and the fact established that the myths of a nation 
 are as legitimate a subject for scientific investigation as any- 
 other phenomena. The delight which this investigation has 
 never ceased to impart is strictly the satisfaction which the 
 astronomer or the geologist feels in the ascertainment of new 
 facts : and I have written throughout under a constant sense 
 of the paramount duty of simply and plainly speaking the 
 truth. 
 
 Of one fact, the importance of which if it be well ascer- 
 tained can scarcely be exaggerated, I venture to claim the 
 discovery. I am not aware that the great writers who have 
 traced the wonderful parallelisms . in the myths of the Aryan 
 world have asserted that the epic poems of the Aryan nations 
 are simply different versions of one and the same story, 
 and that this story has its origin in the phenomena of the 
 natural world, and the course of the day and the year. This 
 position is, in my belief, established by an amount of evidence 
 which not long hence will probably be regarded as excessive. 
 At the least I have no fear that it will fail to carry conviction 
 to all who will weigh the facts without prejudice or partiality, 
 who will carefully survey the whole evidence produced before 
 they form a definite judgment, and who will fairly estimate the 
 cumulative proof of the fact that the mythology of the Vedic 
 and Homeric poets contains the germs, and in most instances 
 more than the germs, of almost all the stories of Teutonic, 
 Scandinavian, and Celtic folk-lore. This common stock of 
 materials, which supplements the evidence of language for the 
 ultimate affinity of all the Aryan nations, has been moulded 
 into an infinite variety of shapes by the story-tellers of Greeks 
 and Latins, of Persians and Englishmen, of the ancient and 
 modern Hindus, of Germans and Norwegians, Icelanders, 
 Danes, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. On this common foun- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. IX 
 
 dation the epic poets of these scattered and long-separated 
 children of one primitive family have raised thdSr magnificent 
 fabrics or their cumbrous structures. Nay, from this common 
 source they have derived even the most subtle distinctions of 
 feature and character for their portraits of the actors in the 
 great drama which in some one or more of its many scenes is 
 the theme of all Aryan national poetry. 
 
 Momentous as this conclusion must be, it is one which 
 seems to me to be strictly involved in the facts registered by 
 all comparative mythologists ; and while I wish to claim for 
 myself no more than the honesty which refuses to adopt the 
 statements of others without testing their accuracy, I may feel 
 a legitimate confidence in the assurance that in all important 
 points I am supported by the authority of such writers as 
 Grimm, Max Muller, Breal, Kuhn, Preller, Welcker, H. H. 
 Wilson, Cornewall Lewis, Grote, and Thirlwall. 
 
 If in the task of establishing the physical origin of Aryan 
 myths the same facts have been in some instances adduced 
 more than once, I must plead not merely the necessity of the 
 case, but the reiterated assertions of writers who seem to 
 regard the proclamation of their views as of itself conclusive. 
 The broad statement, for example, that Hermes is primarily 
 and strictly a god of commerce, and of the subtlety and 
 trickery which commerce is on this hypothesis supposed to 
 require, makes it necessary at every step, and at the cost of 
 repetitions which would otherwise be needless, to point out the 
 true character of this divine harper. 
 
 In the wide field of inquiry on which I have entered in 
 these volumes, I need scarcely say that I have very much 
 more to learn, and that I shall receive with gratitude the 
 suggestions of those who may wish to aid me in the task. 
 Many portions of the subject are at present little more than 
 
X PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 sketched out : and of these I hope that I may be enabled to 
 supply the details hereafter. The evidence thus far examined 
 justifies the assurance that these details will not affect the 
 main conclusions already arrived at 
 
 The Greek names in this work are given as nearly as 
 possible in their Greek forms. On this point I need only say 
 that Mr. Gladstone, who, standing even then almost alone, 
 retained in his earlier work on "Homer and the Homeric 
 Age " their Latin equivalents, has in his " Juventus Mundi " 
 adopted the method which may now be regarded as univer- 
 sally accepted. 
 
 I have retained the word Aryan as a name for the tribes 
 or races akin to Greeks and Teutons in Europe and in Asia. 
 Objections have been lately urged against its use, on the 
 ground that only Hindus and Persians spoke of themselves 
 as Aryas : and the tracing of this name to Ireland Mr. Peile 
 regards as very uncertain. To him the word appears also to 
 mean not "ploughmen," but "fitting, worthy, noble." If it 
 be so, the title becomes the more suitable as a designation 
 for the peoples who certainly have never called themselves 
 Indo-Germanic. 
 
 But however sure may be the foundations of the science 
 of Comparative Mythology, and however sound its framework, 
 the measure in which its conclusions are received must depend 
 largely on the acceptance or rejection of its method in the 
 philological works chiefly used in our schools and universities. 
 Hence, in acknowledging thankfully the great improvement 
 of the last over the previous editions of the Greek Lexicon of 
 Dr. Liddell and Dr. Scott in the etymology of mythological 
 names, I express a feeling shared doubtless by all who wish 
 to see a wide and fertile field thoroughly explored. The 
 recognition of the principle that Greek names must be inter- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XI 
 
 preted either by cognate forms in kindred languages, or by 
 reference to the common source from which all these forms 
 spring, is the one condition without which it is useless to look 
 for any real progress in this branch of philology ; and this 
 principle is here fully recognised. 
 
 I have said that the task of analysing and comparing the 
 myths of the Aryan nations has opened to me a source of 
 unqualified delight I feel bound to avow the conviction that 
 it has done more. It has removed not a few perplexities ; 
 it has solved not a few difficulties which press hard on many 
 thinkers. It has raised and strengthened my faith in the 
 goodness of God ; it has justified the wisdom which has chosen 
 to educate mankind through impressions produced by the 
 phenomena of the outward world. 
 
 March 8, 1870. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK L 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 POPULAR THEORIES ON THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH 
 OF MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Method of Inquiry ... ... ... ... ,„ -it t 
 
 The Nature of the Problem to be solved ... ... ... i 
 
 Condition of Society in the Greek Heroic Age ... ... ... 2 
 
 Character of " Homeric " Mythology ... ... ... 3 
 
 Contrast between Mythological and Religious Belief ... ... 3 
 
 The Lyric and Tragic Poets were conscious of this Contrast ... 4 
 
 Conflicting Views as to its Origin ... ... ... ... 4 
 
 Theory of a Corrupted Revelation ... ... ... ... 5 
 
 System of Secondaries ... ... ... ... ... 5 
 
 Nature of the Doctrines perverted in Greek Mythology ... 6 
 
 Relations of Will between Zeus and AthenS ... ... ... 7 
 
 Peculiar Forms of Greek Mythology ... ... ... 8 
 
 Consequences involved in the Perversion of an Original Revelation ... 8 
 
 Comparison of the Homeric with the Vedic Mythology ... 9 
 
 Methods of determining the Extent of Primitive Revelation ... 10 
 
 Evidence of the Book of Genesis ... ... ... ... 10 
 
 Its Character ... ... ... ... ... ... 11 
 
 Limits of that Evidence ... ... ... ... ... 11 
 
 Course of Revelation in the Old Testament ... ... ... 12 
 
 Necessity of accounting for the Character of Greek Mythology ... 12 
 
 Allegorical Interpretation of Myths ... ... ... ... 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RELATION OF MYTHOLOGY TO LANGUAGE. 
 
 Origin of Abstract Words ... ... ... ... ... 14 
 
 Expansive Power of Sensuous Words ... ... ... 14 
 
 Origin of Language ... ... ... ... ... ... 15 
 
 Immobility of Savage Races ... ... ... ... 16 
 
 Historical Results of the Analysis of Language ... ... ., 17 
 
 Earliest Conditions of Thought ... ... ... ... 18 
 
xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE SOURCE OF MYTHICAL SPEECH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Infancy of Mankind ... ... ... ... ... 20 
 
 Earliest Condition of Thought and its Consequences .. . ... 20 
 
 Primary Myths ... ... ... ... ... ... 22 
 
 Secondary Myths ... ... ... ... ... 23 
 
 Polyonymy, as affecting the Growth of Mythology ... ... 23 
 
 Use of Abstract and Concrete Names ... ... ... 25 
 
 Myths arising from the Use of Equivocal Words ... ... 26 
 
 Disintegration of Myths ... ... ... ... ... 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE DEVELOPEMENT OF MYTHS. 
 
 Elasticity of Mythical Speech ... 
 
 Results of Mythical Language 
 
 Evidence of this Developement furnished by the Rig-Veda 
 
 Relative Age of Greek Myths 
 
 Solar Myths ... ... ... „. .» 
 
 Changeful Action of the Sun 
 
 Repulsive Developements of Solar Legends 
 
 Origin of these Developements 
 
 Tendency to localize Mythical Incidents 
 
 Vitality of the My thopceic Faculty ... 
 
 Constant Demand for New Mythical Narratives ... .. 
 
 Transmutation of Names really Historical ... 
 Groundwork of the Mythology of Northern Europe 
 Groundwork of the " Homeric " Mythology ... 
 Comparison of Greek and Norse Mythology 
 Special Characteristics of Greek Mythology 
 Full Developement of Greek Mythology 
 Arrested Growth of Northern Mythology 
 Light thrown on both by the Vedic Hymns 
 
 29 
 30 
 31 
 3' 
 32 
 33 
 34 
 34 
 35 
 35 
 36 
 37 
 37 
 39 
 40 
 
 41 
 
 42 
 
 43 
 44 
 
 Stages in the Growth of Mythical Systems ... ... ... 44 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DIFFUSION OF MYTHS. 
 
 The Common Element in Aryan Mythology ... ... ... .* 
 
 The Greek Mythology of itself explains the Nature of this Common 
 
 Element 
 The Norse Mythology points in precisely the same Direction 
 The Missing Link is supplied in the Older Vedic Poems ... 
 The Key to all Aryan Mythology ... 
 Germs of Mythical Tales 
 Truthfulness of Mythical Description 
 Groundwork of Aryan Mythology 
 Greek Dynastic Legends ... 
 Growth of Popular Traditions ... 
 Aryan Folklore ... ... ... ... ... ... r£ 
 
 Legends seemingly not resolvable into Phrases relating to Physical 
 
 56 
 
 48 
 49 
 50 
 5o 
 52 
 53 
 53 
 54 
 55 
 
 Phenomena 
 
J 
 
 CONTENTS. xv 
 
 I he Brahman and the Goat .... c 7 
 
 The Master Thief ... '" '" ' $7 
 
 The Legend of Rhampsinitos ... ... ... ...* ... rg 
 
 The Story of Karpara and Gata ... ... ... ... 60 
 
 The Story of Trophonios and AgamSdes ... ... 61 
 
 The Shifty Lad ' 0I 
 
 Point and Drift of these Stories ... ... ... ... 62 
 
 The Hellenic Master Thief ... .. ... ... 63 
 
 The Origin of the Story of the Master Thief ... ... ... 64 
 
 Limits' to the Hypothesis of Conscious Borrowing ... ... 65 
 
 Framework of Popular Stories ... ... ... 67 
 
 The Story of the Dog and the Sparrow ... ... ... 67 
 
 The Story of the Nautch-Girl and the Parrot ... ... ... 69 
 
 Origin and Growth of these Stories ... ... ... 71 
 
 The Stories of Vicram and Hermotimos ... ... ... 72 
 
 The Table, the Ass, and the Stick ... ... ... ... 74 
 
 The Brahman, the Jackal, and the Barber ... ... ... 75 
 
 The Lad who went to the North Wind ... ... ... 77 
 
 The Story of Punchkin ... ... ... ... ... 77 
 
 The Giant who had no Heart in his Body ... ... ... 79 
 
 Mythical Repetitions and Combinations ... ... ... 81 
 
 Agency of Beasts in these Stories ... ... ... " ... 81 
 
 Influence of Written Literature on Folk-lore ... ... ... 83 
 
 Faithful John ... ... ... ... ... ... 84 
 
 Rama and Luxman ... ... ... ... ... ... 86 
 
 Mythical Imagery of these Stories ... ... ... ... 88 
 
 The Sleep or Death of Summer ... ... ... ... 89 
 
 Origin of all Myths relating to Charmed Sleep of Beautiful Maidens 90 
 
 Charms or Spells in the Odyssey and in Hindu Stories ... ... 92 
 
 The Snake Leaves ... ... ... ... ... 94 
 
 The Two Brothers ... ... ... ... ... ... 95 
 
 Myths of the Night, the Moon, and the Stars ... ... 97 
 
 The Battle of Light and Darkness ... ... ... ... 98 
 
 Character of Aryan Folk-lore ... ... ... ... 100 
 
 Historical Value of Aryan Popular Traditions ... ... ... 101 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MYTHICAL PHRASES AS FURNISHING MATERIALS FOR 
 THE TEUTONIC EPIC POEMS, AND THE LEGENDS OF 
 ARTHUR AND ROLAND. 
 
 Points of Likeness between the Greek and Teutonic Epics ... 102 
 
 The Volsung Tale ... ... ... ... ... 103 
 
 The Story of Sigurd ... ... ... ... ... 105 
 
 The Rescue of Brynhild ... ... ... ... ... 108 
 
 The Story of Gudrun ... ... ... ... ... hi 
 
 Helgi Sagas ... ... ... •■• ... ... 113 
 
 The First Helgi ... ... ... ... 114 
 
 The Second Helgi ... ... ... ... ... 114 
 
 The Third Helgi ... ... ... ... ... ... 115 
 
 The Nibelungen Lay ... ... ... ... ... 117 
 
 Sigurd, Siegfried, and Baldur ... ... ... ... 118 
 
xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 The Story of Hagen ... ... ... ... ... 121 
 
 The Vengeance of Kriemhild ... ... ... ... ... 124 
 
 Historical Element in the Nibelungen Lied ... ... ... 126 
 
 The Story of Walthar of Aquitaine ... ... ... ... 128 
 
 Dietrich of Bern ... ... ... ... ... 130 
 
 The Great Rose Garden ... ... ... ... 131 
 
 The Romance of Roland ... ... ... ... ... 132 
 
 The Romance of Arthur ... ... ... ... ... 133 
 
 The Birth and Youth of Arthur ... ... ... ... 133 
 
 The Round Table and the San Greal ... ... ... ...' 135 
 
 Arthur's Knights ... ... ... ... ... 136 
 
 Lancelot and Guinevere ... ... ... ... ... 138 
 
 The Death of Arthur ... ... ... ... ... 139 
 
 Guinevere and Diarmaid ... ... ... ... ... 139 
 
 Later Mediaeval Epics and Romances ... ... ... 140 
 
 Saga Literature of Europe ... ... ... ... ... 141 
 
 The Greltir Saga ... ... ... ... 141 
 
 The Character of Grettir ... ... ... ... ... 142 
 
 Materials of the Saga ... ... ... ... ... 143 
 
 Grettir and Boots ... ... ... ... ... ... 144 
 
 Parallelisms between the Grettir Saga and other Myths ... 144 
 
 The Avenging of Grettir ... ... ... ... ... 146 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ETHEREAL HEA VENS. 
 
 Section I.— DYAUS. 
 
 Ideas of the Heaven ... ... ... ... ... 148 
 
 The Glistening Ether ... ... ... ... ... 148 
 
 Dyaus and Prithivi ... ... ... ... ... ... [50 
 
 Ideas denoted by the Name Dyu ... ... ... ... 150 
 
 Section II.— VARUNA AND MITRA. 
 
 The Solid Heaven ... ... ... ... ... ,„ 151 
 
 Moral Aspects of Varuna ... ... ... ... ... 152 
 
 Aryan Monotheism ... ... ... ... ... ... jr? 
 
 Aditi and the Adityas ... ... ... ... ... 154 
 
 The Physical and Spiritual Varuna ... ... ... ... 13b 
 
 Section III.— INDRA. 
 
 The Primary Conception of Indra purely Physical ... ... 157 
 
 Action of the Vedic and Achaian Deities ... ... ... \c% 
 
 The Greek Mythology not borrowed from the Vedic ... 159 
 
 Indra, a God of the Bright Heaven ... ... ... ... 159 
 
 Meaning of the Name ... ... ... ... ... 159 
 
 The Might and Majesty of Indra ... ... ... ... 160 
 
 Indra the Rain-bringer ... ... ... ... ... 161 
 
 Physical Conflict between Light and Darkness ... ... ... 102 
 
 The Wife of Indra ... .. ... ... ... ,63 
 
CONTENTS. xvii 
 
 Section IV.— BRAHMA. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Place of Brahma in the Hindu Theogony ... ... ... 164 
 
 Praj&pati ... ... ... ... ... ... x 66 
 
 Visvakarman ... ... ... ... ... ... 166 
 
 Section V.— ZEUS. 
 
 The Dwelling of Zeus in Ether ... ... .„ ~ t66 
 
 The Unchanging Light ... ... ... ... ,„ 167 
 
 The Idea of Zeus suggested by Physical Phenomena ... ... 167 
 
 The Latin Jupiter ... ... ... ... ... ... 168 
 
 Zeus Ouranion ... ... ... ... ... __ ... 170 
 
 The Mythical and Spiritual Zeus ... ... ... ... 170 
 
 Influence of Mythology on Religion ... ... ... 171 
 
 The Zeus of the Tragic Poets ... ... ... ... ... 172 
 
 The Name Zeus ... ... ... ... ... 173 
 
 Its Transformations ... ... ... ... ... 174 
 
 The Zeus of Local Traditions ... ... ... ... 175 
 
 The Birth of Zeus ... ... ... ... ... ... 175 
 
 The Iniquities of Kronos ... ... ... ... 176 
 
 The War of the Titans ... ... ... ... ... 178 
 
 Other Forms of this Struggle ... ... ... ... 178 
 
 The Loves of Zeus ... ... ... ... ... ... 179 
 
 The Twelve Olympian Deities ... ... ... ... 179 
 
 The Infancy of Zeus ... ... ... ... ... 180 
 
 The Arkadian and Cretan Zeus ... ... ... ... 180 
 
 Lykosoura and LykaSn ... ... ... ... ... 181 
 
 Lykanthropy ... ... ... ... ... ... 182 
 
 The Dodonaian and Olympian Zeus ... ... ... ... 182 
 
 Limits to the Power of Zeus ... ... ... ... 183 
 
 The Messengers of Zeus ... ... ... ... ... 184 
 
 Zeus the Judge ... ... ... ... ... ... 185 
 
 Section VI.— ODIN, WODEN, WUOTAN. 
 
 Characteristics of Teutonic Mythology ... ... ... 187 
 
 Teutonic Theogonies ... ... ... ... ... 188 
 
 Genealogy of Odin ... ... ... ... ... 189 
 
 Odin as the Creator of Man ... ... ... ... ... 190 
 
 The End of the ^Esir ... ... ... ... ... 190 
 
 The Name Wuotan ... ... ... ... ... ... 191 
 
 The One-Eyed Wuotan, or Odin ... ... ... ... 193 
 
 Odin the Raingiver ... ... ... ... ... ... 194 
 
 Odin the Allfather ... ... ... ... ... 194 
 
 Tyr and Odin ... ... ... ... ... ... 194 
 
 Section VII.— THUNDER, DONAR, THOR. 
 
 The Name Donar ... ... ... ... ... 195 
 
 Thor the Allfather 19S 
 
 His Triple Functions ... ... ... ... ... 196 
 
xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 Section VIII.— FRO. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Relations of Fro to Frey j. ... ... ... ... ... 198 
 
 Section IX.— HEIMDALL, BRAGI, AND OEGIR. tma v; - 
 
 The Lord of Himinbiorg ... ... ... ... ... 198 
 
 Bragi, the Lord of Day ... ... ... ... ... 199 
 
 Oegir, the Sea-god ... ... ... ... ... 199 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE LIGHT. 
 
 Section I.— sORYA AND SAVITRI. 
 
 Surya, the Pervading Irresistible Luminary ... ... ... 201 
 
 The One-Handed Savitar... ... ... ... ... 202 
 
 The Power of Savitar ... ... ... ... ... 202 
 
 Section II.— SOMA. 
 
 The Physical and Spiritual Soma ... ... ... ... 203 
 
 Powers of Soma ... ... ... ... ... ... 205 
 
 Section III.— CORRELATIVE DEITIES. 
 
 Complementary Deities ... ... ... ... ... 206 
 
 The Dualism of Nature ... ... ... ... ... 206 
 
 .Functions of the Asvins ... ... ... ... ... 206 
 
 ^Parentage of the Asvins ... ... ... ... ... 207 
 
 'The Twins' ... ... ... ... ... ... 208 
 
 Soma and Surya ... ... ... ... ... ... 209 
 
 Section IV.— THE DAWN. 
 
 The Lonely Wanderer ... ... ... ... ... 209 
 
 Developement of the Myth ... ... ... ... ... 210 
 
 The Story of Urvasi ... ... ... ... ... 212 
 
 Germs of the Story of Penelope ... ... ... ... 213 
 
 The Dawn and the Waters ... ... ... ... 214 
 
 Eros and Psyche ... ... ... ... ... ... 216 
 
 The Search of the Dawn for the Sun ... ... ... 218 
 
 The Search of the Sun for the Dawn ... ... ... ... 218 
 
 Origin of these Myths ... ... ... ... ... 220 
 
 " East of the Sun and West of the Moon " ... ... ... 221 
 
 The Wanderers in the Forest ... ... ... ... 222 
 
 The Spell of Moonlight ... ... ... ... ... 2 2\ 
 
 The Seven Rishis ... ... ... ... ... 226 
 
 The Arkshas or Shiners ... ... ... ... ... 226 
 
 The Rishis and Manu ... ... 
 
 ••• ... ... ... 227 
 
 Section V.— DAWN GODDESSES. 
 
 Ushas and E6s ... ... ... ... ... ... 227 
 
 Ushas the Broad-spreading ... ... „, ... ... 229 
 
 Ahana ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 230 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 PACE 
 
 Sarama ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 231 
 
 The Cows of Indra ... ... ... ... ... 232 
 
 The Fidelity of Sarama ... ... ... ... ... 233 
 
 Saranyu ... ... ... ... ... ... 234 
 
 Erinys ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 234 
 
 The Harpies ... ... ... ... ... ... 235 
 
 Arjunt ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 236 
 
 The Cows and Horses of the Sun-Gods ... ... ... 236 
 
 Arusht ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 237 
 
 Snakes and Dragons ... ... ... ... ... 238 
 
 Sorcery and Witchcraft ... ... ... ... ... 239 
 
 The Story of Medeia ... ... ... ... ... 239 
 
 The Myth of Prokris ... ... ... ... ... 240 
 
 E6s and Tithonos ... ... ... ... ... 241 
 
 HebS and Ganymede's ... ... ... ... ... 242 
 
 The Story of Dido and Anna ... ... ... ... 242 
 
 Hero and Leiandros ... ... ... ... ... 244 
 
 The Brides of the Sun ... ... ... ... ... 244 
 
 The Arkadian Auge ... ... ... ... ... ... 246 
 
 Europe and the Bull ... ... ... ... ... 246 
 
 Althaia and the Burning Brand ... ... ... ... 247 
 
 Section VI.— ATHENE. 
 
 The Original Idea of AthenS purely Physical ... ... 248 
 
 Athene Tritogeneia ... ... ... ... ... ... 248 
 
 Birth of Athen6 ... ... ... ... ... ... 250 
 
 Parentage of Athene ... ... ... ... ... 250 
 
 Athene Mother of Phoibos and Lychnos ... ... ... . 250 
 
 Epithets of AthSne ... ... ... ... ... ... 251 
 
 Athen6 the Guardian of Heroes ... ... ... ... 252 
 
 The Latin Minerva ... ... ... ... ... ... 253 
 
 Section VII.— APHRODITE. 
 
 Birth of Aphrodite ... ... ... ... ... ... 253 
 
 The Ministers of Aphrodite ... ... ... ... 254 
 
 The Arrows of AphroditS ... ... ... ... ... 255 
 
 Her Children ... ... ... ... ... ... 255 
 
 Share of Aphrodite in the Trojan War ... ... ... ... 256 
 
 Aphrodite and Adonis ... ... ... ... ... 258 
 
 The Armed AphroditS ... ... ... ... ... 259 
 
 The Latin Venus ... ... ... ... ... 259 
 
 Meaning of the Name ... ... ... ... ... 259 
 
 Adonis and Dionysos ... ... ... ... ••• 260 
 
 Section VIII.— HERE. 
 
 Myths Telating to the Birth of Here ... ... ... ... 260 
 
 Relations of Zeus and Here ... ... ... ... 261 
 
 HSre and Ixion ... ... ... ... ... ... 262 
 
 H6r£Akraia ... ... ■■■ ••• •■■ ... 262 
 
 Here the Matron ... ... ... ... ... ... 262 
 
 The Latin Juno ... ... ... ... ... ... 263 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 Section IX.— THE ERINYES. 
 
 PAGE: 
 
 Doctrine of Necessity ... ... ... ... „. 263 
 
 The Conflict between Light and Darkness ... ... ... 264. 
 
 Erinyes and Eumenides ... ... ... ... ... 265. 
 
 The Fatal Sisters ... ... ... .. ... 266 
 
 The Teutonic Norns ... ... ... ... ... 267 
 
 Nemesis and Adrasteia ... ... ... ... ... 268 
 
 TycheAkraia ... ... ... ... ... ... 269 
 
 Section X.— HELLENIC SUN-GODS AND HEROES. 
 
 The Ionian Legend of the Birth of Phoibos ... ... ... 270 
 
 The Delphian Story ... ... ... ... ... 27a 
 
 The Infant Phoibos ... ... ... ... 272 
 
 Phoibos Delphinios ... ... ... ... ... 273 
 
 The Fish-Sun ... ... ... ... ... ... 274 
 
 Phoibos and Hermes ... ... ... ... ... 274 
 
 Phoibos and Helios ... ... ... ... ... ... 275. 
 
 Phoibos and Daphne ... ... ... ... ... 276 
 
 Alpheios and Arethousa ... ... ... ... ... 277 
 
 Endymion ... ... ... ... ... ... 277 
 
 The Story of Narkissos ... ... ... ... ... 2791 
 
 Iamos and Asklepios ... ... ... ... ... 2S0 
 
 The Stories of Ixion and Atlas ... ... ... ... 283 
 
 The Gardens of the Hesperides ... ... ... ... 284. 
 
 Atlas and Hyperion ... ... ... ... ... ... 284. 
 
 Helios and Phaethon ... ... ... ... ... 285. 
 
 Patroklos and Telemachos ... ... ... ... ... 286 
 
 The Bondage of Phoibos and Herakles ... ... ... 287 
 
 Character of Herakles ... ... ... ... ... 288) 
 
 HeraklSs and Eurystheus... ... ... ... ... 288' 
 
 The Lions of Kithairon and Nemea ... ... ... ... 290 
 
 Herakle's and Kerberos ... 
 
 The Madness of Herakles 
 
 Orthros and Hydra ... ... ... ... ... 293 
 
 The Marathonian Bull ... ... ... ... „, 294 
 
 The Girdle of Hippolyte' ... ... ... ... ... 295 
 
 Myths interspersed among the Legends of the Twelve Labours of 
 
 Herakles... ... ... ... ... ... 29c 
 
 Herakles and Eurytos ... ... ... ... . 2 g(y 
 
 Herakels and Auge ... ... ... ... ... 207 
 
 Herakles and D6ianeira ... ... ... ... 2 q- 
 
 The Death of Heraklfe ... ... .;. '" „ n <j 
 
 ... ... ... ^yo 
 
 The Latin Hercules ... ... ... ... ... 2 qq 
 
 Egyptian Myths... ... ... ... ... ... 30a 
 
 Osiris and Rhadamanthys ... ... ... ... ^qq 
 
 Repetitions of the Myth of Herakles ... ... ... 302 
 
 The Story of Perseus ... ... ... ... ... g 02 
 
 Birth and Youth of Theseus ... ... ... ... 306 
 
 The Six Exploits of his First Journey ... ... ... ... 306 
 
 Theseus at Athens ... ... ... #l> ,,, 307 
 
 Theseus and the Minotauros ... ... ... ... ... 308 
 
 Theseus and the Amazons ... ... ... ,„ 309 
 
 291 
 292 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XXI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Theseus in the Underworld ... ... ... ... ... 310 
 
 The Theseus of Thucydides ... ... ... ... 311 
 
 Hipponobs Bellerophontes ... ... ... ... ... 311 
 
 The Birth of Oidipous ... ... ... ... ... 312 
 
 The Career of Oidipous ... ... ... ... ... 312 
 
 The Blinded Oidipous ... ... ... ... ... 314 
 
 Oidipous and Antigone 1 ... ... ... ... ... 315 
 
 The Story of Telephos ... ... ... ... ... 317 
 
 Twofold Aspect of the Trojan Paris ... ... ... ... 318 
 
 The Birth and Infancy of Paris ... ... ... ... 319 
 
 The Judgment of Paris ... ... ... ... ... 320 
 
 Paris and Helen ... ... ... ... ... 321 
 
 The Death of Oinone 1 ... ... ... ... ... 322 
 
 Iamos the Violet Child ... ... ... ... ... 322 
 
 Pelias and Neleus ... ... ... ... ... ... 323 
 
 Romulus and Remus ... ... ... ... ... 323 
 
 Cyrus and Astyages ... ... ... ... .... ... 324 
 
 Chandragupta ... ... ... ... ... ... 325 
 
 Kadmos and Europe ... ... ... ... ... 325 
 
 Minos and the Minotaur ... ... ... ... ... 327 
 
 Rhadamanthys and Aiakos ... ... ... ... ... 329 
 
 Nestor and SarpMon ... ... ... ... ... 329 
 
 MemnSn the Ethiopian ... ... ... ... ... 330 
 
 Kephalos and Eos ... ... ... ... ... 331 
 
 Section XI.— TEUTONIC SUN-GODS AND HEROES. 
 
 Baldur and Brond ... ... ... ... ... ... 333 
 
 The Dream of Baldur ... ... ... ... ... 334 
 
 The Death of Baldur ... ... ... ... ... 335 
 
 The Avenging of Baldur ... ... ... ... ... 335 
 
 The Story of Tell and Gesler ... ... ... ... ... 337 
 
 The Myth wholly without Historical Foundation ... ... 337 
 
 Utter Impossibility of the Swiss Story ... ... ... ... 338 
 
 Other Versions of the Myth of Tell ... ... ... 339 
 
 The Far-shooting God ... ... ... ... ... 341 
 
 Section XII.— THE VIVIFYING SUN. 
 
 Flexible Character of Vishnu ... ... ... ... ... 341 
 
 Vishnu the Striding God ... ... ... ... ... 342 
 
 Dwarf Incarnation ... ... ... ... ... ... 343 
 
 Majesty of Vishnu ... ... ... ... ... 344 
 
 The Palace of Vishnu ... ... ... ... ... 344 
 
 Avatars of Vishnu ... ... ... ... ... 345 
 
 Emblems associated with the Worship of Vishnu ... ... 345 
 
 Sensuous Stage of Language ... ... ... ... 346 
 
 Aryan and Semitic Monotheism ... ... ••• ••• 34$ 
 
 Ideas and Symbols of the Vivifying Power in Nature ... ... 349 
 
 Rods and Pillars ... ... ... ... ... ... 35 1 
 
 Tree and Serpent Worship ... ... ... ... 353 
 
 Sacrifices connected with this Worship ... ... ... 354 
 
 Symbols of Wealth 354 
 
 The Lotos ... ... ... ••• ••• ••• ••• 35" 
 
XXli CONTENTS. 
 
 PACE 
 
 Goblets and Horns ... ... ... ... ... 356 
 
 Gradual Refinement of the Myth ... ... ... ... 300 
 
 Aryan and Semitic Mysteries ... ... ... ... 361 
 
 Real Meaning of Tree and Serpent Worship ... ... ... 362 
 
 The Education of Man ... ... ... ... ... 3§4 
 
 Section XIII.— THE SUN-GODS OF LATER HINDU 
 
 MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 Vishnu as Krishna ... ... ... ... ... 365 
 
 Parentage of Krishna ... ... ... ... ... 365 
 
 Krishna and Rudra ... ... ... ... ... 366 
 
 Vishnu and Rama ... ... ... ... ... ... 366 
 
 Hindu Mysticism ... ... ... ... ... 366 
 
 The Story of Krishna ... ... ... ... ... 367 
 
 Section XIV.— THE MOON. 
 
 Selene and Pan ... ... ... ... ... ... 371 
 
 16 the Heifer ... ... ... ... ... ... 372 
 
 Argos Panoptfe . . . ... ... ... ... ... 373 
 
 16 and Prometheus ... ... ... ... ... ... 374 
 
 HekatS 375 
 
 Artemis ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 376 
 
 The Arkadian and Delian Artemis ... ... ... ... 377 
 
 Artemis Orthia and Tauropola ... ... ... ... 377 
 
 Iphigeneia and Britomartis ... ... ... ... 379 
 
 Section XV.— THE HUNTERS AND DANCERS OF THE 
 
 HEAVENS. 
 
 Orion ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 379 
 
 Orion and Kedalion ... ... ... ... ... 380 
 
 Seirios ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 381 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LOST TREASURE. 
 
 Section I.— THE GOLDEN FLEECE. 
 
 The Myth of Stolen Treasure found among the Aryan Nations ... 382 
 
 Repetition of this Myth under Different Forms ... ... 384 
 
 The Golden Fleece ... ... ... ... ... ... 384 
 
 The Argonautic Voyage ... ... ... ... ... 386 
 
 Iason and Medeia ... ... ... ... ... ... 388 
 
 Section II.— HELEN. 
 
 The Wealth of Helen ... ... ... ... ... 389 
 
 The Stealing of Helen and her Treasures ... ... ... 389 
 
 The Story of Conall Gulban ... ... ... ... 391 
 
 The Voyage of the Achaians to Ilion ... ... ... ... 392 
 
 Meleagros and Kleopatra... ... ... ... ... 393 
 
 Thetis and Achilleus... ... ... ... ... ... 394 
 
 The Womanly Achilleus ... ... ,„ ... ... 395 
 
 The Career of Achilleus ... ... ... ... ... 395 
 
CONTENTS. xxiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Iliad ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 397 
 
 The Character of Achilleus ... ... ... ... 397 
 
 Power of Mythical Tradition ... ... ... ... ... 398 
 
 The Mourning of Achilleus ... ... ... ... 399 
 
 The Arming and Vengeance of Achilleus ... ... ... 400 
 
 The Nostoi ... ... ... ... ... ... 401 
 
 Odysseus and Autolykos ... ... ... ... ... 402 
 
 Odysseusand Penelope 1 ... ... ... ... ... 403 
 
 The Womanly Odysseus ... ... ... ... ... 404 
 
 Odysseus the Wanderer ... ^.. ... ... ... 405 
 
 Odysseus and Aiolos ... ... ... ... ... ... 406 
 
 The Laistrygonians ... ... ... ... ... 407 
 
 The Lotos-Eaters, and Kirke ... ... ... ... ... 407 
 
 Odysseus and Kalypso ... ... ... ... ... 40S 
 
 Section III.— THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN. 
 
 The Expulsion of the Herakleids ... ... ... ... 409 
 
 The Return of the Herakleids ... ... ... ... 410 
 
 Section IV.— THE THEBAN WARS. 
 
 Adrastos and Amphiaraos ... ... ... ... ... 412 
 
 The Sons of Oidipous ... ... ... ... ... 413 
 
 Tydeus ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 414 
 
 The War of the Epigonoi ... ... ... ... 415 
 
 AntigonS and Haimon ... ... ... ... ... 415 
 
 Alkmai6n and Eriphyle ... ... ... ... ... 416 
 
 Orestes and Klytaimnes^ra ... ... ... ... ... 416 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FIRE. 
 
 Section L— AGNI. 
 
 Light and Heat ... ... ... ... ... ... 418 
 
 The Majesty of Agni ... ... ... ... ... 418 
 
 Physical Attributes of Agni ... ... ... ... ... 419 
 
 The Infant Agni ... ... ... ... ... ... 420 
 
 Agni the Psychopompos ... ... ... ... ... 420 
 
 The Tongues of Agni ... ... ... ... ... 421 
 
 Agni and Hephaistos ... ... ... ... ... 421 
 
 Section II— PHORONEUS AND HESTIA. 
 
 The Wind and the Fire ... ... ... ... ... 422 
 
 The Argive Phoroneus ... ... ... ... ... 422 
 
 Hestia ... ... ... ... ... ... 423 
 
 The Sacred Fire ... ... ... ... ... ... 424 
 
 Section III.— HEPHAISTOS AND LOKI. 
 
 The Maimed Hephaistos ... ... ... ... ... 425 
 
 The Forge of Hephaistos ... ... ... ... ... 425 
 
 Hephaistos and Athene ... ... ... ... ... 426 
 
 The Latin Vulcan ... ... ... ... ... ••• 426 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Fire-god Loki ... ... ... ... ... 4 2< > 
 
 Loki the Thief 427 
 
 Section IV.— PROMETHEUS. 
 
 The Hesiodic Ages ... ... ... ••• ••■ 4 2 7 
 
 The Heroic Age ... ... ... .» ••• ■•• 429 
 
 The Prometheus of ^Eschylos ... ... ... ■•• 43° 
 
 The Punishment of Prometheus ... ... ... ••• 43* 
 
 The Cheating of Zeus ... ... ••■ ••• ••• 433 
 
 Prometheus and Pandora ... ... •■• ••■ ••• 433 
 
 Prometheus and Deukalion ... ... ••• ••• 43S 
 
 Prometheus and 16 ... ... ••• ••• ••• ••• 43^ 
 
 Section V.— THE LIGHTNING. 
 
 The Titans ' ... ... ••• ... ■•• ••• 437 
 
 TheKykl&pes 439 
 
 Schamir and Sassafras ... ... ... ... ••• 44° 
 
 Ahmed and Tanhaiiser ... ... ... ... ••• 44 1 
 
 The Greedy Alcalde ... ... ... ... •■• 442 
 
 Mediseval Spells ... ... ... ... ••• ••• 443 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WINDS. 
 
 Section I.— VAYU AND THE MARUTS. 
 
 Vayu and Favonius ... ... ... ... ... 444 
 
 Boreas and the Maruts ... ... ... ... ... 444 
 
 The Crushers, or Grinders ... ... ... ... 445 
 
 Rudra ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 445 
 
 Section II.— HERMES. 
 
 Hindu and Greek Myths of the Wind ... ... ... 446 
 
 The Story of Hermes ... ... ... ... ... 446 
 
 The Theft of the Cattle ... ... ... ... ... 447 
 
 The Covenant of Hermes and Phoibos ... ... ... ... 447 
 
 The Meaning of the Covenant ... ... ... ... 449 
 
 The Rivalry between Hermes and Phoibos ... ... ... 451 
 
 Hermes the God of the Moving Air ... ... ... 451 
 
 Transparent Clearness of the Myth ... ... ... ... 454 
 
 Humour of the Myth ... ... ... ... ... 456 
 
 Hermes, the Messenger and the Thief ... ... ... ... 457 
 
 Hermes and the Charites ... ... ... ... ... 458 
 
 Hermes the Herald ... ... ... ... ... ... 458 
 
 Section III.— ORPHEUS. 
 
 Points of Difference between Orpheus and Hermes ... ... 459 
 
 The Seirens ... ... ... ... ... ... 461 
 
 The Piper of Hameln ... ... ... ... ... 462 
 
 The Erlking ... ... ... ... ... ... 462 
 
 The Jew among the Thorns ... ... ... ... 463 
 
 The Story of Arion ... ... ... ... „. ... 463 
 
CONTENTS. XXV 
 
 Inchanted Harps and Horns ... ... „. 463 
 
 The Harp of Wainambinen ... ... ... ... ... 464 
 
 Galdner the Singer ... ... ... ... ... 465 
 
 The Sibyl ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 465 
 
 Section IV.— PAN. 
 
 The Song of the Breeze in the Reeds ... ... ... 466 
 
 Pan, the Purifying Breeze ... ... ... ... ... 466 
 
 Pan and Syrinx ... ... ... ... ... ... 467 
 
 Section V.— AMPHION AND ZETHOS. 
 
 The Theban Orpheus ... ... ... ... ... 467 
 
 Zethos and Prokne ... ... ... ... ... 468 
 
 Linos and Zephyros ... ... ... ... ... ... 469 
 
 Section VI.— AIOLOS AND ARES. 
 
 The Guardian of the Winds ... ... ... ... 469 
 
 The Storms ... ... ... ... ... ... 470 
 
 Ares and Athene ... ... ... ... ... 471 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE WATERS. 
 
 Section I.— THE DWELLERS IN THE SEA. 
 
 Proteus and Nereus ... ... ... ... ... ... 473 
 
 Glaukos ... ... ... ... ... ... 474 
 
 Naiads and Nereids ... ... ... ... ... ... 474 
 
 Swan-Maidens and Apsaras ... ... ... ... 475 
 
 Triton and Amphitrite ... ... ... ... ... 476 
 
 The Seirens ... ... ... ... ... ... 476 
 
 Skylla and Charybdis ... ... ... ... ... 476 
 
 The Megarian Skylla ... ... ... ... ... 477 
 
 Section II.— THE LORD OF THE WATERS. 
 
 Zeus Poseidon ... ... ... ... ... ... 47S 
 
 Poseidon and Athene ... ... ... ... ... 479 
 
 Poseid&n and the Telchines .. ... ... ... ... 480 
 
 Poseidon the Bondman ... ... ... ... ... 481 
 
 Melikertes ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 481 
 
 The Ocean Stream ... ... ... ... ... 482 
 
 Section III.— THE RIVERS AND FOUNTAINS. 
 
 Danaos and Aigyptos ... ... ... ... ... 482 
 
 Their Sons and Daughters ... ... ... ... 483 
 
 Hypermnestra and Lynkeus ... ... ... ... ... 484 
 
 Origin of the Myth ... ... ... ... ... 484 
 
 The Lyrkeios ... ... ... ... ... ... 486 
 
XXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CLOUDS. 
 
 Section I.— THE CHILDREN OF THE MIST. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Phrixos and Hellg ... ... ... ... ... 487 
 
 Athamas and In6 ... ... ... ... ... ... 4S8 
 
 Section II.— THE CLOUD-LAND. 
 
 The Phaiakians ... ... ... ... ... ... 489 
 
 The Palace of Alkinobs ... ... ... ... ... 490 
 
 The Fleets of Alkinobs ... ... ... ... ... 491 
 
 The Phaiakians and Odysseus ... ... ... ... ... 492 
 
 Niobeand Le"t&... ... ... ... • ... ... 492 
 
 The Cattle of Helios... ... ... ... ... ... 493 
 
 Section III.— THE NYMPHS AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 
 
 The Swan-shaped Phorkides ... ... ... ... ... 494 
 
 The Muses and the Valkyrien ... ... ... ... 497 
 
 The Swan-shaped Zeus ... ... ... ... ... 498 
 
 Inchanted Maidens ... ... ... ... ... 498 
 
 The Hyades and Pleiades ... ... ... ... ... 500 
 
 The Graiai ... ... ... ... ... ... 501 
 
 The Gorgons ... ... ... ... ... ... 501 
 
 Aktaidn ... ... ... ... ... ... 502 
 
 Medousa and Chrysaor ... ... ... ... ... 502 
 
 Pegasos ... .... ... ... ... ... 503 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 Section I.— DIONYSOS. 
 
 The Nativity of Diony sos ... ... ... ... e . 
 
 The Transformations of Dionysos ... ... ... ... r c 
 
 Dionysos and Zagreos ... ... ... ... ... c ot - 
 
 Dionysos the Wanderer ... ... ... ... ... cq5 
 
 The Womanly Dionysos ... ... ... ... ... 507 
 
 The Mothers of Dionysos ... ... ... ... ... r g 
 
 Orgiastic Worship of Dionysos ... ... ... ... r g 
 
 Dionysos Om&te's, and Bassereus ... ... ... ... 500 
 
 Dionysos and Poseidon ... ... ... ... ... cqq 
 
 Bacchos ... ... ... ... ... ... ___ c q 
 
 Section II.— DEMETER. 
 
 The Story of Persephone ... ... ... ... ... 510 
 
 Iduna ... ... ... ... ... ... ... j I2 
 
 The Stupifying Narcissus ... ... ... ... ... ji 2 
 
 The Sleep of Winter ... ... ... ... ... r,. 
 
 The Story of Rapunzel ... ... ... ... ... r x . 
 
 The Lengthening Days ... ... ... ... ... ^5 
 
CONTENTS. XXVll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Ill-tempered Princess ... ... ... ... ... 516 
 
 Story of Surya Bai ... ... ... ... .,, 516 
 
 The Nourishing Earth ... ... ... ... ... 517 
 
 Holda ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 518 
 
 The Eleusinian Myth ... ... ... ... ... 519 
 
 Demeter and Iasiun ... ... ... ... ... 519 
 
 Ceres and Saturn ••■ ... ... ... ... ... 520 
 
 Section III.— THE CHILDREN OF THE EARTH. 
 
 Erichthonios ... ..." ... ... ... ... 520 
 
 Erechtheus ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 521 
 
 Kekrops ... ... ... ... ... ... 521 
 
 Pelops ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 522 
 
 Section IV.— THE PRIESTS OF THE GREAT MOTHER. 
 
 Gaia and Ouranos ... ... ... ... ... 522 
 
 Rhea ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 524 
 
 The Kouretes and Idaian Daktyls ... ... ... ... 524 
 
 The Telchlnes and KourStes ... ... ... ... ... 525 
 
 The Kabeiroi and Korybantes ... ... ... ... 526 
 
 Section V.— THE PEOPLE OF THE WOODS AND WATERS. 
 
 The Satyrs ... ... ... ... ... ... 527 
 
 The SeilSnoi ... ... ... ... ... ... 529 
 
 The Latin Silanus ... ... ... ... ... 530 
 
 Priapos ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 530 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE UNDER WORLD. 
 
 _ Section I.— HADES. 
 
 The Buried Treasure ... ... ... ... ... 531 
 
 Hades or Aidoneus ... ... ... ... ... ... S3 1 
 
 The Rivers of the Unseen Land ... ... ... ... 532 
 
 Section II.— ELYSION. 
 
 The Judges of the Dead . ... ... ... ... ... 533 
 
 The Asphodel Meadows ... ... ... ... ... 534 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DARKNESS. 
 
 Section I— VRITRA AND AHI. 
 
 The Story of SaramS and Helen ... ... ... ... 535 
 
 Indra and Achilleus ... ... ... ... ... 536 
 
 The Struggle between Light and Darkness ... ... ... 536 
 
 The Great Enemy ... ... ... ... ... 537 
 
 Pani and Paris ... ... ... ... ... ... 537 
 
 Greek and Hindu Myths ... ... ... ... ... 537 
 
 Snakes and Worms ... ... ... ... ... ... 538 
 
xxviii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Stolen Cattle ... — ••• — 53 8 
 
 The Bloclcing-up of Fountains ... ... ... ... 539 
 
 The Stolen Nymphs ... — ••• ••• ••• ••• 539 
 
 Ravana and Sita ... ■■• •■• ••• •■■ 539 
 
 The Trojan Paris ... ■•• •■• ••• — — 54 
 
 Helen and PenelopS ... •■■ ••• — — 54 
 
 Herakl&s and Echidna ■•■ •■• ••■ — •"" 54 
 
 Orthros ^44 
 
 Typhon ... — ••• ••" "' "' " 544 
 
 Section II.— THE LATIN MYTH. 
 
 Hercules and Cacus ... ••• ••• ••• •" 545 
 
 Cacus another Form of Vritra... ... ••• ••• ... 54 & 
 
 Sancus or Recaranus ... ••• ••• ••• ••• 547 
 
 Section III.— BELLEROPHON. 
 
 The Monster Belleros ... ••• •■• ••• ••• 549 
 
 Leophontes ... ... ••• ••• ••• *•• 55° 
 
 Section IV.— THE THEBAN MYTH. 
 
 The Sphinx ... ... ■•• ••• ••• ••• 55 1 
 
 The Riddle solved ... — ••• ••• ••• 55 2 
 
 The Voice of the Thunder ... ... ... ••• ••• 553 
 
 Section V.— THE DELPHIAN AND CRETAN MYTHS. 
 
 The Pythian Dragon ... ... ... ••• ••• 554 
 
 The Minotauros ... ... ... ■•• ••• — 555 
 
 Section VI.— THE GLOAMING AND THE NIGHT. 
 
 The Phorkides, Graiai, and Gorgons ... ... ... 556 
 
 The Night and the Winter ... ... ... ... ... 557 
 
 Modification of the Myth ... ... ... ... ... 558 
 
 Section VII.— THE PHYSICAL STRUGGLE SPIRITUALISED. 
 
 Contrast between Hindu and Iranian Mythology ... ... ... 559 
 
 Identity of Names in Vedic and Persian Mythology ... ... 559 
 
 Azidahaka and Zohak ... ... ... ... ... 560 
 
 Iranian Dualism ... ... ... ... ... 561 
 
 Its Influence on the Jews ... ... ... • ... ... 562 
 
 The Epic of Firdusi ... ... ... ... ... 563 
 
 Section VIII.— THE SEMITIC AND ARYAN DEVIL. 
 
 The Semitic Satan ... ... ... ... ... ... 563 
 
 Effect of Christian Teaching ... ... ... ... 564 
 
 The Teutonic Devil ... ... ... ... „. ... 566 
 
 Wayland the Smith ... ... ... ... ... 567 
 
 The Death of the Blinded Devil ... ... ... ... 569 
 
 Index 573 
 
THE MYTHOLOGY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 POPULAR THEORIES ON THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF 
 MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 We cannot examine the words by which we express our thoughts and chap. 
 our wants, or compare the stories which English children hear in *■ 
 their nurseries with the folk-talk of Germany and Norway, without Method of 
 
 inquiry. 
 
 speedily becoming aware that the inquiry on which we have entered 
 must carry us back to the very infancy of mankind. We have under- 
 taken the investigation of fact, and we must follow the track into 
 which the search for facts has brought us. If we have been accus- 
 tomed to think that the race of men started in their great career with 
 matured powers and with a speech capable of expressing high 
 spiritual conceptions, we cannot deny the gravity of the issue, when 
 a science, which professes to resolve this language into its ultimate 
 elements, asserts that for a period of indefinite length human speech 
 expressed mere bodily sensations, and that it was confined to such 
 expressions, because no higher thoughts had yet been awakened in 
 the mind. But unless we choose to take refuge in assumptions, we 
 must regard the question as strictly and simply a matter of fact : and 
 all that we have to do is to examine impartially the conditions of the 
 problem, with the determination of evading no conclusion to which 
 the evidence of fact may lead us. 
 
 This problem is sufficiently startling, on whatever portion of the The nature 
 subject we may first fix our minds. The earliest literature, whether probfem to 
 of the Hindu or the Greek, points in the direction to which the be solved, 
 analysis of language seems to guide us. In both alike we find a 
 
2 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK genuine belief in a living Power, to whom men stand in the relation 
 
 • ~ • of children to a father ; but in both, this faith struggles to find 
 
 utterance in names denoting purely sensuous objects, and thus 
 
 furnishing the germ of a sensuous mythology. Hence the develope- 
 
 ment of religious faith and of a true theology would go on side by 
 
 side with the growth of an indiscriminate anthropomorphism, until 
 
 the contrast became so violent as to call forth the indignant protests 
 
 of men like Sokrates and Pindar, Euripides and Plato. Yet this 
 
 contrast, as throwing us back upon the analysis of words, has enabled 
 
 us to unlock the doors before which the most earnest seekers of 
 
 ancient times groped in vain, and to trace almost from their very 
 
 source all the streams of human thought. 
 
 Condition This antagonism reached its highest point among the Hellenic 
 
 of society t r ibes. From this point therefore we may most reasonably work back 
 
 Greek to that indefinitely earlier condition of thought in which " the first 
 
 heroic age. attem p ts on i v were De mg made at expressing the simplest conceptions 
 
 by means of a language most simple, most sensuous, and most 
 
 unwieldy." l The Iliad and Odyssey exhibit a state of society which 
 
 has long since emerged from mere brutishness and barbarism. It 
 
 has its fixed order and its recognised gradations, a system of law 
 
 with judges to administer it, and a public opinion which sets itself 
 
 against some faults and vices not amenable to legal penalties. It 
 
 brings before us men who, if they retain, in their occasional ferocity, 
 
 treachery, and malice, characteristics which belong to the savage, yet 
 
 recognise the majesty of law and submit themselves to its government 
 
 — who are obedient, yet not servile — who care for other than mere 
 
 brute forces, who recognise the value of wise words and prudent 
 
 counsels, and in the right of uttering them give the earnest of a yet 
 
 higher and more developed freedom. It shows to us men who own 
 
 the sanctity of an oath and acknowledge the duty of executing true 
 
 judgment between man and man ; who, if they are fierce in fight, yet 
 
 abhor mutilation, torture, and unseemly insult, and are willing to 
 
 recognise merit in an enemy not less readily than in a friend Above 
 
 all, it tells us of men who in their home life are honest and truthful, 
 
 who make no pretension of despising human sympathy and setting 
 
 lightly by kindness, gentleness, and love. If here and there we get 
 
 glimpses of a charity which seeks a wider range, 2 yet the love of wife 
 
 and children and brethren is the rule and not the exception • and 
 
 everywhere, in striking contrast with Athenian society in the days of 
 
 » Max Miiller, Chips from a German <pt\o, $ v ivepfaoiW 
 
 Workshop vol. i. p. 354. I&TM ykp QiKUaw 6S$ ?», „;„/„ 
 
 2 It is the praise of the wealthy «[„, // Z' °""" 
 
 Axylos (who is slain by Diomgdes) that ' ' 4 ' 
 
SOCIETY OF THE GREEK HEROIC AGE. 3 
 
 Perikles and Aspasia, we see men and women mingling together in CHAP, 
 equal and pure companionship, free alike from the arrogance and ' 
 servility of Oriental empires, and from the horrible vices which, if 
 even then in germ, were not matured till the so-called heroic ages 
 had long passed away. 
 
 But these epic poems tell us also of gods, some of whom at least Character 
 had all the vices and few of the virtues of their worshippers. They mel - ic •■ my _ 
 tell us of a supreme ruler and father of gods and men who had not thol °gy- 
 always sat upon his throne, of other gods deposed and smitten down 
 to dark and desolate regions, of feuds and factions, of lying and 
 perjury, of ferocious cruelty and unmeasured revenge. They tell us 
 of gods who delight in sensual enjoyments and care for little more 
 than the fat of rams and goats, of gods who own no check to their 
 passions and recognise no law against impurity and lust And even 
 those gods who rise to a far higher ideal exhibit characters the most 
 variable and. actions the most inconsistent. The same being is at 
 different times, nay, almost at the. same time, just and iniquitous, 
 truthful and false, temperate and debauched. 
 
 As describing the origin and attributes of the gods, the whole Contrast 
 
 . between 
 
 series of Greek myths may be said to form a theology ; and with the mythoio- 
 character of the people this theology stands out in marked contrast. j^Jj^jf 
 It is impossible for us to determine precisely the extent to which this belief. 
 mythical theology was believed, because it is not in our power to 
 throw ourselves back wholly into their condition of thought ; but if 
 the absence of all doubt or reflexion constitute faith, then their faith 
 was given to the whole cycle of fables which make up the chronicles 
 of their gods. If, however, we look to its influence on their thoughts 
 at times when the human heart is stirred to its depths, we can 
 scarcely say that this huge fabric of mythology challenged any belief 
 .at all : and thus we must draw a sharp line of severance between their 
 theology and their religion, if we use religion in the sense attached 
 to the word by Locke or Newton, Milton or Butler. If the poet 
 recounts the loves of Zeus, the jealousies of Here, the feuds and the 
 factions in Olympos, it is equally certain that Achilleus does not 
 pray to a sensual and lying god who owns no law for himself and 
 cannot be a law for man. The contrast is heightened if we turn to 
 the poems known as the Hesiodic. If the poet narrates a theogony 
 which incurred the detestation or disgust of Pindar and of Plato, he 
 tells us also of a Divine King who is a perfectly upright judge, and 
 loves those who are clean of hand and pure of heart 1 If he tells 
 
 1 The identity of authorship for the Days is very doubtful : but the question 
 Hesiodic Theogony and the Works and is immaterial. Both poems exhibit the 
 
4 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of horrible banquets to which the more fastidious faith of the lyric 
 ■ — \' poet refuses to give credence, 1 he bids all to follow after justice, 
 because the gods spend their time, not in feasting, but in watching 
 the ways and works of men. 2 If ^Eschylos in one drama depicts the 
 arrogant tyranny of Zeus as an upstart and usurper, if the reiterated 
 conviction of the prophetic Titan is that the new god shall fall, yet in 
 others he looks up to the same Zeus (if indeed it be the same), 3 as 
 the avenger of successful wrong, the vindicator of a righteous law 
 whose power and goodness are alike eternal. If for Sophokles the old 
 mythology had not lost its charm, if he too might tell of the lawless 
 loves and the wild licence of Zeus and other gods, yet his heart 
 is fixed on higher realities, on that purity of word and deed which 
 has its birth, not on earth, but in heaven, and of which the im- 
 perishable law is realised and consummated in a God as holy and 
 everlasting. 1 
 The lyric It would be difficult to discover a more marvellous combination 
 
 poetswere °f seemingly inexplicable contradictions, of belief in the history of 
 
 conscious g0( j s utterly distinct from the faith which guided the practice of men, 
 of this 5 . ' , , , , . , b L , . , . , 
 
 contrast, of an immoral and impure theology with a condition of society which 
 
 it would be monstrous to regard as utterly and brutally depraved. 
 
 Yet, in some way or other, this repulsive system, from which heathen 
 
 poets and philosophers learnt gradually to shrink scarcely less than 
 
 ourselves, had come into being, had been systematised into a scheme 
 
 more or less coherent, and imposed upon the people as so much 
 
 genuine history. What this origin and growth was, is (strange as it 
 
 may appear) one of the most momentous questions which we can 
 
 put to ourselves, for on its answer must depend our conclusions 
 
 on the conditions of human life during the infancy of mankind. 
 
 Of the answers which have been given to this question, it can 
 
 be no light matter to determine which furnishes the most adequate 
 
 solution. 
 
 Conflicting Two theories only appear to attempt a philosophical analysis of 
 
 this vast system. While one repudiates the imputation of a deliberate 
 
 views as 
 to its 
 origin, 
 
 sentiment of the same age, or of times but Herodotos proceeded to reject on 
 
 separated by no long interval ; and in physical grounds the legend which told 
 
 the latter poem the action of Zeus in of the founding of the Dodonaian oracle 
 
 the legend of Pandora (which is also (ii. S 7), as well as some of the exploits 
 
 related in the Theogony) is utterly of Herakles (ii. 45). It was, however, 
 
 unlike that of the Zeus who figures in a moral reason which led him practi- 
 
 all the didactic portions of the work. cally to disbelieve the whole story of 
 
 1 IpaX 8" STropa yaaTplixap. Helen's sojourn at Troy (ii. I2 o). 
 
 yw imxdpav -rw' efoctr' kAlarauai. '. Works and Days, 247-253. 
 
 Pindar, Olymp. i. 82. Z(vs SaTls * 0T iaTiv - 
 
 tv .,,... . , Agamemnon, 160. 
 
 Pindar s objection is a moral one ; 4 Oid. Tyr. 863-871. 
 
THEORY OF PRIMITIVE REVELATION. 5 
 
 fabrication of impurities, the other asserts as strongly the wilful moral chap. 
 corruption exhibited in the theogonic narratives of the Greeks. In ■ ., —• —, - 
 the inconsistent and repulsive adventures of Zeus or Heraldes it sees 
 the perversion of high and mysterious doctrines originally imparted 
 to man, and discerns in the gradations of the Olympian hierarchy 
 vestiges of the most mysterious doctrines embraced in the whole 
 compass of Christian teaching. By this theory all that is contra- 
 dictory, immoral, or disgusting in Greek mythology is the ' direct 
 result of human sinfulness and rebellion, and resolves itself into the 
 distortion of a divine revelation imparted to Adam immediately after 
 the Fall. 
 
 The revelation thus imparted brought before men, we are told (i), Theory of 
 
 .... . . ■ , a corrupted 
 
 the Unity and Supremacy of the Godhead ; (n), a combination, with revelation, 
 this Unity, of a Trinity in which the several persons are in some way 
 of coequal honour ; (iii), the future coming of a Redeemer from the 
 curse of death, invested with full humanity, who should finally estab- 
 lish the divine kingdom ; (iv), a Wisdom, personal and divine, which 
 founded and sustains the world ; (v), the connexion of the Redeemer 
 with man by descent from the woman. With this was joined the re- 
 velation of the Evil One, as a tempting power among men, and as the 
 leader of rebellious angels who had for disobedience been hurled 
 from their thrones in heaven. 1 This true theology, in the hands of 
 the Greeks, was perverted, it is said, into a Trinity of the three sons 
 of Kronos, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon, the tradition of the Redeemer 
 being represented by Apollon, and the Divine Wisdom being em- 
 bodied in Athene', while Leto, their mother, stands in the place 
 of the woman from whom the Deliverer was to descend. The 
 traditions of the Evil One were still further obscured. Evil, as acting 
 by violence, was represented most conspicuously in the Titans and 
 giants — as tempting by deceit,, in the Ate of Homer, while lastly, the 
 covenant of the rainbow reappears in Iris. 
 
 This theory Mr. Gladstone has traced with great minuteness ^j™ of 
 through the tangled skein of Greek mythology. The original idea he aries. 
 finds disintegrated, and a system of secondaries is the necessary con- 
 sequence. Far above all are exalted Apollon and Athene, in their 
 personal purity 2 yet more than in their power, in their immediate 
 action, 3 in their harmony with the will of the Supreme King, and in 
 
 1 This theory was put forth more Juventus Mundi, but in some papers 
 
 than twenty years ago by Mr. Gladstone, on the Olympian Hierarchy in the 
 
 in his elaborate work entitled Homer Nineteenth Century, 1879. 
 
 and the Hovieric Age. The seriousness 2 Homer and the Homeric Age, ii. 
 
 of the issue must be pleaded as a reason 87-107. 
 
 for examining it here, as Mr. Gladstone 3 Ibid. 89-93. 
 has propounded it again not only in 
 
O MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book the fact that they alone, among the deities of a second generation, 
 
 • : • are admitted to equal honour with the Kronid brothers, if not even 
 
 to higher. 1 But some of their attributes are transferred to other 
 beings, who are simply embodiments of the attribute so transferred 
 and of no other. Thus Athene" is attended by Hermes, Ares, 
 Themis, and Hephaistos ; Apollon by Paieon and the Muses ; a as, 
 similarly, we have in Gaia a weaker impersonation of Demet£r, and 
 Nereus as representing simply the watery realm of Poseidon. In 
 Leto, their mother, is shadowed forth the woman whose seed was to 
 bruise the head of the serpent; for Leto herself has scarcely any 
 definite office in the Homeric theology, and she remains, from any 
 view except this one, an anomaly in mythological belief. 3 
 
 Nature of ©trthis hypothesis, Greek mythology is no distortion of primary 
 
 trines°per- trutns which first dawn on the mind of a child or are imparted to it, 
 verted in and which, it might have been supposed, would form the substance 
 tholog™ 3 " of divine truth granted to man during the infancy of his race. It is 
 the corruption of recondite and mysterious dogmas which were not 
 to become facts for hundreds or thousands of years. Zeus, the 
 licentious tyrant, the perjured deceiver, the fierce hater, the lover of 
 revelry and banqueting, who boasts of his immunity from all restraint 
 and law, is the representative of the Eternal Father. He with Hades 
 and Poseidon represents the Christian Trinity ; but Hades represents 
 also the power of darkness, and Poseidon shares the attributes of God 
 with those of the devil, 4 while all are children of the dethroned 
 Kronos, in whom again the evil power finds an impersonation. 6 That 
 a theology thus wilfully falsified should be found with a people not 
 utterly demoralised, but exhibiting on the whole a social condition of 
 great promise and a moral standard rising constantly higher, is indeed 
 astonishing. On the supposition that Greek mythology was a cor- 
 rupted religious system, it must, to whatever extent, have supplied 
 a rule of faith and practice, and the actions and character of the gods 
 must have furnished a justification for the excesses of human 
 passion. That no such justification is alleged, and that the whole 
 system seems to exercise no influence either on their standard of 
 morality or their common practice, are signs which might appear to 
 warrant the presumption that this mythology was not the object of a 
 moral belief. The whole question, viewed in this light, is so utterly 
 perplexing, and apparently so much at variance with the conditions 
 of Homeric society, that we are driven to examine more strictly the 
 evidence on which the hypothesis rests ; and it must be admitted 
 
 J Homer and the Homeric Age, \\. 57. * Ibid. 164. 
 
 2 Ibid. 61. 3 Ibid. 152. E Ibid. 207.' 
 
MYTHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOMERIC POETS. 7 
 
 that this hypothesis involves the necessity of interpreting mythology CHAP, 
 so as to square with a preconceived system, and carries .with it a ■ 
 temptation to lessen or to pass over difficulties which appear to 
 militate against it. The Homeric legends are not so consistent as 
 for such a purpose would seem desirable, and there are the gravest 
 reasons for not inferring from the silence of the poet that he was 
 ignorant of other versions than those which he has chosen to adopt. 
 On the supposition that Athene and Apollon represent severally the 
 Divine Redeemer and the Divine Wisdom, their relation of will to 
 the Supreme Father becomes a point of cardinal interest and import- 
 ance. Without going further than the Iliad, 1 we have a conspiracy to 
 bind Zeus, in which Athene is the accomplice of Here and Poseidon. 
 In this plot, the deliverance comes not from Apollon, whose office it 
 is to be " the defender and deliverer of heaven and the other immor- 
 tals," but from Thetis, the silver-footed nymph of the sea ; a and by 
 her wise counsels Zeus wins the victory over one who is with himself 
 a member of the traditive Trinity. The same legend qualifies 
 another statement, that Athene" and Apollon are never foiled, de- 
 feated, or outwitted by any other of the gods ; s for Athene here is 
 foiled by Thetis. Elsewhere we have Apollon, 1 like Poseidon, 
 cheated by Laomedon whom he had served, and finding a more 
 congenial master, but yet a master, in Admetos ; 6 while the parentage 
 of the three Kronid brothers 6 and the double character of Poseidon 7 
 stand forth as the most astounding contradictions of all. 
 
 There are other legends which represent Athene" in a light incon- Relations 
 sistent with the personification of the Divine Wisdom. In the tale of ° w ™ n zt'ns 
 Pandora, at the instigation of Zeus she takes part in the plot which * n j* 
 results in the increased wickedness and misery of man ; 8 in that of 
 Prometheus, she aids in the theft of fire from heaven against the will 
 of Zeus, while one version represents her as acting thus, not from feel- 
 ings of friendship, but from the passion of love. These legends are 
 not found in our Homer, but it is impossible to prove that the poet 
 was unacquainted with them. He makes no reference to some 
 myths, which are at once among the oldest and the most beautiful ; 
 
 1 Gladstone's Homer, &*■., ii. 70. garded as of earlier growth than another, 
 
 2 Ibid. 72. We must not forget merely because it happens to be found 
 that in the myths of Asklepios and in our Iliad and Odyssey. 
 
 AdmStos Apollon draws on himself the 3 Ibid. 74. 
 
 wrath and the vengeance of Zeus for * Ibid. 75. 
 
 slaying the Kykl8pes as a requital for 5 Ibid. 81. 
 
 the death of his son, the Healer ; and ' Ibid. 162. 
 
 we are fully justified in laying stress on ' Ibid. 206. 
 
 this fact, until it can be proved that * Hesiod, Theogon. 573; Woris 
 
 nny one myth must necessarily be re- and Days, 63. 
 
MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 1. 
 
 Peculiar 
 forms of 
 Greek my- 
 thology. 
 
 Conse- 
 quences 
 involved in 
 the per- 
 version of 
 an original 
 revelation. 
 
 and he certainly knew of the dethronement of Kronos, as well as of 
 factions in the new dynasty of the gods. 1 
 
 But if the theory of religious perversion, apart from its moral 
 difficulties, involves some serious contradictions, it altogether fails to 
 explain why the mythology of the Greeks assumed many of its 
 peculiar and perhaps most striking features. It does not show us 
 why some of the gods should be represented pure, others as in part 
 or altogether immoral ; it does not tell us why Zeus and Herakles 
 should be coarse and sensual, rather than Athene and Apoll6n ; it 
 does not explain why Apollon is made to serve Admetos, why 
 Herakles bears the yoke of Eurystheus, and Bellerophon that of the 
 Kilikian king. It fails to show why Herakles should appear as the 
 type of self-restraint and sensuality, of labour and sluggishness, why 
 names so similar in meaning as Lykaon, Helios and Phaethon, should 
 be attached to beings whose mythical history is so different If for 
 these and other anomalies there is a method of interpretation which 
 gives a clear and simple explanation, which shows how such anoma- 
 lies crept into being, and why their growth was inevitable — if this 
 method serves also as a key, not merely to the mythology of Greece, 
 but to that of the whole Aryan race, nay, even to a wider system still, 
 a presumption at least is furnished, that the simpler method may 
 after all be the truest. 
 
 Yet more, the hypothesis of a corrupted revelation involves some 
 further consequences, which have a material bearing on the question. 
 That which is so perverted cannot become clearer and more definite 
 in the very process of corrupt developement Not only must the 
 positive truths, imparted at the first, undergo distortion, but the ideas 
 involved in them must become weaker and weaker. If the Unity of 
 God formed one of those primitive truths, then the personality and 
 the power of Zeus would be more distinct and real in the earliest 
 times than in the later. The ideas of the Trinity, of the Redeemer, 
 and of the Divine Wisdom, would be more prominent in those first 
 stages of belief in the case of a people who confessedly were not sus- 
 tained by new or continued revelations. The personality of a Divine 
 Wisdom is not a dogma which men in a thoroughly rude society 
 could reason out for themselves ; and if it formed part of an original 
 revelation, the lapse of time would tend to weaken, not to strengthen 
 
 1 Similarly, the Iliad says nothing 
 about the death of Achilleus : yet the 
 poet is aware that his life is to be short. 
 
 jU^rep, iirel p? ereKes ye /j.tvvv8dSidv irep 
 Mvto. 
 
 is the frequent reproach of Achilleus to 
 
 his mother Thetis. But the truth is 
 that our Iliad and Odyssey presuppose 
 everywhere on the part of the hearer or 
 reader an acquaintance with legends 
 or stories which are referred to merely 
 in passing, and sometimes with a bare 
 allusion. 
 
MYTHOLOGY AND MORALITY 9 
 
 it. If, again, this corrupting process had for its cause a moral cor- CHAP. 
 
 ruption going on in the hearts and lives of men, then this corruption ■ 1 ■ 
 
 would be intensified in proportion to the degree in which the original 
 revelation was overlaid. In the Hellenic mythology this process is 
 reversed. Even as it appears in the poems which we call Homeric 
 it must have undergone a developement of centuries ; but if it is im- 
 possible to measure, by any reference to an older Greek literature, 
 the personality and attributes of each god as compared with the con- 
 ceptions of a previous age, it is obvious that the general tone of feel- 
 ing and action, and the popular standard of morality had not been 
 debased with the growth of their mythology. Whether the Hesiodic 
 poems belong to a later period than our Iliad and Odyssey is a 
 question into which it is unnecessary here to enter : but it must be 
 admitted that if their theology is more systematised, and their 
 theogony more repulsive, their morality and philosophy is immeasur- 
 ably higher and more true. With the growth of a mythology and its 
 more systematic arrangement the perception of moral truth has be- 
 come more keen and intense ; and the same age which listened to the 
 book of the generations of Zeus, Kronos, and Aphrodite, learnt 
 wisdom from the pensive precepts of the " Works and Days." 
 
 It is perhaps difficult to determine how far the characters of Compari- 
 Phoibos and AthenS have been drawn out and systematised by the Homeric 
 genius and moral instinct of the poet himself. We have no evidence, ™* the 
 in any extant literature, of the precise state in which he found the thology. 
 national mythology ; but it seems unlikely that he had what may be 
 termed a theological authority for every statement which he makes 
 and every attribute which he assigns to the one or the other. It is 
 certain that Athene once conspired against the freedom of Zeus ; * 
 but we cannot tell how far the poet himself intensified the general 
 harmony of her will to that of the King of gods and men, nor can we 
 forget that Ushas is as dear to gods and men as Athene" herself, and 
 that Ushas is undeniably nothing but the morning. But language has 
 , furnished evidence, which it is impossible to resist, of the gradual pro- 
 cess which imparted to these mythical deities both their personality 
 and their attributes. The literature of another branch of the same 
 Aryan race exhibits a mythology whose substantial identity with that 
 of the Greeks it is impossible to dispute ; but in that mythology beings, 
 whose personality in our Homeric poems is sharply drawn and whose 
 attributes are strictly defined, are still dim and shadowy. Even the 
 great Olympian king has not received the passions and appetites, and 
 certainly not the form of man. Nay, in that older mythology their 
 
 1 Iliad, i. 400. 
 
IO MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK persons and their attributes are alike interchangeable. That which 
 L among the Greeks we find as a highly developed and complicated 
 system, is elsewhere a mere mass of floating legend, nay, almost of 
 mere mythical phrases, without plan or cohesion. But the unformed 
 mythology of the Veda followed in its own land a course analogous 
 to that of the mythology of Greece. There was the same systematic 
 developement, with this difference, that in India the process was 
 urged on by a powerful sacerdotal order who found their interest in 
 the expansion of the old belief. In the earlier Vedas there is no pre- 
 dominant priesthood, and only the faintest indications of caste ; there 
 are no temples, no public worship, and, as it would seem, no images 
 of the gods ; and (what is of immeasurably greater importance in 
 reference to the mythological creed of the Homeric poets) there are 
 " no indications of a triad, the creating, preserving, and destroying 
 power. Brahma does not appear as a deity, and Vishnu, although 
 named, has nothing in common with the Vishnu of the Puranas : no 
 allusion occurs to his Avataras. . . . These differences are palpable, 
 and so far from the Vedas being the basis of the existing system, they 
 completely overturn it" 1 The comparison is scarcely less fatal to 
 the mythological Trinity of the Greeks. 
 ., , „ r We come at length to the question of fact. What was the 
 
 Methods of . .... 
 
 determin- measure of divine truth imparted to man on his creation, or lm- 
 exf ent of mediately after the fall, and under what forms was it conveyed ? To 
 primitive a u_ e g e the rabbinical traditions and speculations of comparatively 
 recent times a as evidence for the latent meaning of Greek mythology, 
 is to treat the subject in a way which would simply make any solution 
 of the problem impossible. The force of a current, when its stream 
 has been divided, will not tell us much about the course or depth of 
 kindred streams which have branched off in other directions. Thus 
 the era of the division of races is the latest limit to which we can 
 bring down a common tradition for all mankind ; and for that tradi- 
 tion we are, it seems, confined to the first eleven chapters of the 
 Book of Genesis. 3 
 Evidence From these chapters we must derive our proof that our first 
 
 of the parents and their immediate descendants possessed the idea of an 
 Genesis. Infinite Being whose perfect goodness arose, not from external 
 restraints, but from an unchangeable internal determination of 
 character 4 — of a Trinity of Co-equal Persons in the Divine Unity — 
 
 1 Professor H. H. Wilson, in the idolatrous. His remarks on the general 
 
 Edinburgh Review for October i860, character of the Vedic religion deserve 
 
 No. CCXXVIII. p. 382 ; and Vishnu the deepest attention. 
 Purana, p. ii., where he emphatically 2 Gladstone, Homer, &>c, ii. 50. 
 
 denies that the old Vedic religion was a Ibid. 4. * Ibid: 18. 
 
PRIMEVAL REVELATION. II 
 
 of a Redeemer who should hereafter assume their nature and deliver CHAP. 
 
 from death and sin — of a Divine Wisdom which was with pod from ■ ^— -- 
 
 the beginning, and of an Evil One, who, having fallen from his 
 throne in heaven, had now become an antagonistic power, tempting 
 men to their destruction. 1 
 
 Whether these early chapters may contain this theological scheme Its charac- 
 by just and legitimate inference, is a question with which we are not 
 here concerned. It is not a question of doctrine or belief or theo- 
 logical analysis. It is a simple question of fact which must determine 
 whether various races of mankind were or were not guilty of wilful 
 perversion of high and mysterious doctrines. Taken wholly by 
 themselves, and not interpreted by the light thrown on them by the 
 thought and belief of later ages, these records tell us of man as being 
 (in some sense not explicitly defined) made in the Divine image and 
 likeness — of one positive prohibition, the violation of which was to 
 be followed by immediate death — of a subtle beast which tempts the 
 woman to disobey the command, and of a sense of shame which 
 follows the transgression. They tell us of flight and hiding when the 
 man hears the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the 
 day — of an attempt to transfer the blame from the man to the woman, 
 from the woman to the serpent — of a sentence of humiliatioa passed 
 upon the latter, with the warning that its head should be bruised by 
 the woman's seed— of a life of toil and labour for the former, ending 
 with a return to the dust from which he had been made. Besides 
 this, they.tell us briefly that after some generations men began to call 
 upon the name of the Lord ; that in the course of time they sank 
 (with but one exception) into brute lust and violence; and that on 
 the renovation of the earth men were made answerable for each 
 other's blood, and received the token of the rainbow as a warrant for 
 the future permanence of the course of nature. But of any revelation 
 before the fall, beyond a command to till the garden and to abstain 
 from the fruit of a particular tree, these records give not the slightest 
 indication. 
 
 If the doctrines which are thus supposed to have made up the Limits of 
 primitive revelation are contained in these chapters, they are so, it is dence. 
 admitted, by a dim and feeble foreshadowing. 2 They tell us nothing 
 of God in the perfection of His nature, or of a Unity of Three 
 Persons in the Godhead. They tell us of a subtle serpent, not of a 
 fallen angel, of the seed of the woman as bruising that serpent's head, 
 not of a Divine Redeemer delivering from sin and spiritual death. 
 Still less do they tell us of a Divine Wisdom, of an institution of 
 1 Gladstone, Homer, &c, ii. 42. s Ibid. 39. 
 
12 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Course of 
 revelation 
 in the Old 
 Testament 
 
 Necessity 
 of account- 
 ing for the 
 character 
 of Greek 
 mythology. 
 
 sacrifice, 1 or of a spiritual communion in prayer as existing from the 
 • first between man and God. All these doctrines may be legitimate 
 deductions; but if to us the record itself gives only mysterious 
 glimpses of a future fuller revelation, if to us these inferences from 
 its contents are the result of careful comparison with the later books 
 of the Old Testament, if even to us their harmony with the belief of 
 prophets and righteous men of later ages seems clear only because we 
 have been taught to regard it as clear, then what evidence have we 
 that in the time of which the third chapter of Genesis speaks to us, 
 our first parents had a full, or indeed any, apprehension of what even 
 to us apart from later associations would be faint and shadowy? For 
 if on the revelation made to them the vast mass of Greek mythology 
 grew up as a corrupt incrustation, they must have received these 
 truths not in their germ but in full dogmatic statement It is difficult 
 to understand how such a statement would have been to them any- 
 thing more than a dead unmeaning formula, waiting to be quickened 
 into life by the breath of a later revelation or by the evidence of later 
 facts. 
 
 If, again, there is any one lesson which may be drawn before 
 others from the character of the Old Testament records, it is that 
 ideas, dim and feeble at first, acquire gradually strength and con- 
 sistency, that the clearness of revelation is increased as the stream 
 widens, and that all positive belief is the result of years and genera- 
 tions of discipline. But in some mysterious way, while the course of 
 the Jewish people was from the lesser to the greater, they, in whose 
 hands the Homeric theology was moulded started with a fulness of 
 doctrinal knowledge which was not attained by the former until a 
 long series of centuries had passed away. 
 
 There is an instinctive reluctance to accept any theory which 
 heightens human depravity and corruption, unless there are weighty 
 reasons for doing so. 2 And, unquestionably, on the hypothesis which 
 has just been examined, the mythology of the Greeks exhibits an 
 instance of wilful and profane perversion, to which it would not be 
 easy to find a parallel. But the character of that mythology still 
 remains when we have rejected this supposition. We have still 
 before us the chronicles or legends of gods who not merely eat and 
 drink and sleep, but display the working of the vilest of human 
 passions. Some process, therefore, either conscious or unconscious, 
 
 1 The fact of offerings • is obviously 
 very different from an ordinance com- 
 manding such offerings. 
 
 2 For the mass of facts which seem 
 
 to negative the hypothesis of degenera- 
 tion see Sir J. Lubbock's Prehistoric 
 Times. 
 
COMPARISON OF LEGENDS. 13 
 
 must have brought about a result so perplexing ; and if even for CHAP. 
 
 conscious invention there must have been some groundwork, much < • 
 
 more must this be the case if we take up an alternative which even 
 less admits the exercise of a creative faculty. 
 
 If then the mythology of the Aryan nations is to be studied to Allegorical 
 good purpose, the process applied to their legends must be strictly J"Jf^ r ^ 
 scientific In every Aryan land we have a vast mass of stories, some myths, 
 preserved in great epic poems, some in the pages of mythographers 
 or historians, some in tragic, lyric, or comic poetry, and some again 
 only in the oral tradition or folklore of the people. All these, it is 
 clear, must be submitted to that method of comparison and differ- 
 ences by which inductive science has achieved its greatest triumphs. 
 Not a step must be taken on mere conjecture : not a single result 
 must be anticipated by ingenious hypothesis. For the reason of their 
 existence we must search, not in our own moral convictions, or in 
 those of ancient Greeks or Romans, but in the substance and mate- 
 rials of the myths themselves. We must deal with their incidents 
 and their names. We must group the former according to their 
 points of likeness and difference ; and we must seek to interpret the 
 latter by the principles which have been established and accepted as 
 the laws of philological analysis. 
 
H 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RELATION OF MYTHOLOGY TO LANGUAGE. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Origin of 
 
 abstract 
 words. 
 
 Expansive 
 power of 
 sensuous 
 words. 
 
 The analysis of language has fully justified the anticipation of 
 Locke, that " if we could trace them to their sources, we should find 
 in all languages the names which stand for things that fall not under 
 our senses to have had their first rise from sensible ideas." So tho- 
 roughly, indeed, has this conjecture been verified, that the assertion 
 is fast passing into the number of trite and hackneyed sayings ; and 
 though the interest and vast importance of the fact remains, few are 
 now tempted to question the conclusion that every word employed to 
 express the highest theological and metaphysical conceptions at first 
 denoted mere sensuous perception. 1 
 
 If to these primaeval sensuous words we are indebted for all the 
 wealth of human language, these words must necessarily have pos- 
 sessed an almost boundless power of expansion. A single instance 
 will amply suffice to prove this fact. The old root which expressed 
 the idea of crushing, grinding, or pounding has given birth *ot only 
 to its direct representatives the Greek /u.vA.17, the Latin mola, the Irish 
 meile, and the English mill and meal ; but it may be traced through 
 a vast number of words between the meaning of which there is no 
 obvious connexion. In the Greek judova/wu, to fight, the root has 
 acquired that metaphorical meaning which is brought out more clearly 
 in its intransitive forms. In these it embodies naturally the ideas of 
 decay, softening, or destruction ; and so it furnished a name for man, 
 as subject to disease and death, the morbus and mors of the Latins. 
 If, again, man was /?po-ros or mortal, the gods were apfipoToi, and 
 drank of the amrita cup of immortality. 2 The grinding away of time 
 was expressed in the Latin mora, and in the French demeurer, while 
 the idea of dead water is perhaps seen in mare, 7iier, the sea The 
 root was fruitful in proper names. The Greeks had their gigantic 
 Moliones, or Pounders, while the Norseman spoke of the hammer 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Lectures on 
 guage, second series, viii. 343. 
 
 Lan- 
 
 10. 
 
 Southey, Curse of Kekama, xxiv. 
 
STAGES IN THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. IS 
 
 of Thor Miolnir. So, again, the huge Aloadai derived their name CHAP, 
 from oAcdt;, the threshing-floor, a word belonging to the same root, as ■ 
 
 SXevpov, corn, existed in the form p.d\evpov. From the same source 
 came the Sanskrit Maruts, or Storms, the Latin Mars, the Slavonic 
 Morana, and the Greek ap-qs and aperf. But the root passes into 
 other shades of meaning. Under the form marj or mraj, it gave 
 birth to the Greek p,iXyui, the Latin mulgeo and mulceo, the English 
 milk (all meaning, originally, to stroke) ; and in these words, as well 
 as in the Greek fS\a£, /taXa/cos, paXOdo-o-bs, the Latin marridus and 
 mollis, the Greek p.iXi, and Latin mel, it passed into the ideas of soft- 
 ness, sweetness, languor, and decay. From the notion of melting 
 the transition was easy to that of desiring or yearning, and we find it, 
 accordingly, in this sense, in the Greek p.eXeS<ivri and eX.Sop.aL (which 
 may on good ground be traced to an older p-eXSopai), and finally, in 
 ikirk, hope. Not less strange, yet not less evident, is the passage of 
 the root jan from its original force of making or producing (as shown 
 in the Sanskrit janas, the Greek yeVos, yovcus, and yoyos, the English 
 kin ; in the Sanskrit janaka, the Teutonic konig, the English king, in 
 ywq, and queen, and quean) to the abstract idea of knowing, as seen 
 in the Sanskrit jna, the Greek yvGrai, the Latin gnosco, the English 
 know. The close relationship of the two ideas is best seen in the 
 Teutonic kann (can) and kenne (ken). 1 
 
 The facts which the growth of these words brings before us are Origin of 
 in the strictest sense historical. The later meanings presuppose the 'anguage. 
 earlier significations, and the stages are reached in a chronological 
 as well as a philosophical order, while the several developements mark 
 an advance of human thought, and a change in the conditions of 
 human society. From the highest conceptions of the profoundest 
 thinkers we are carried back step by step to the rudest notions of an 
 intellect slowly and painfully awakening into consciousness ; and we 
 realise the several phases of primaeval life, as vividly as if they had 
 been recorded by contemporary chroniclers. But if the process 
 invests the study of words with a significance which it is impossible 
 to overrate, it completely strips the subject of its mystery. No room 
 is left for theories which traced the origin of speech to a faculty no 
 longer possessed by mankind, 2 when the analysis of words exhibits 
 from the beginning the working of the same unvarying laws. 8 If the 
 
 1 Max Muller, Lectures on Lan- Study of Language, passim. Mr. Whit- 
 guage, second series, vii. ; Chips, ii. ney has carried to its logical results 
 257. the proposition that man was born, not 
 
 2 Max Muller, Lectures on Lan- with speech, but simply with the ca- 
 guage, first series, 370, et sea. pacity for speech. 
 
 * Whitney, On Language and the 
 
i6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Immo- 
 bility of 
 savage 
 races. 
 
 words denoting purely spiritual ideas are all evolved from roots ex- 
 • pressing mere sensuous perceptions, if these words are thus confess- 
 edly accidental or arbitrary or conventional signs, without any essen- 
 tial or necessary relation to the notions signified, although they are a 
 necessary growth from the original verbal stem, the real question at 
 issue is set at rest. The sensations expressed in these primary words 
 are felt by infants, by the deaf and dumb, by brute animals, as well 
 as by speaking men ; they might therefore, rather they must, have 
 been felt by man before he made the first attempt to acquaint his 
 comrade with the thoughts which were passing in his own mind 
 The word was needed not to enable him to realise the perception 
 for himself, but to give him the power of awakening the same idea 
 in another. It mattered not, therefore, what sound conveyed the 
 thought, so long as the signal or message was understood ; and thus, 
 where at the outset all was arbitrary, there might be many signs for 
 the same object or the same idea. The notions which, as we have 
 seen, found expression in words derived from the roots MR or ML, 
 might have been denoted as easily by words derived from the stem 
 GR. And in fact the latter has been scarcely less fertile than the 
 former. To it we owe the words which denote the grating and 
 grinding sound of things rubbed forcibly against each other, the grain 
 which serves as grist for the mill, the gravel which the digger scrapes 
 up as he delves his grave, the groan of pain, the grunt of indolence, 
 the scribbling of the child and the delicate engraving of a Bewick 
 or an Albert Durer. 1 We see, further, that words drawn from imita- 
 tions of natural sounds have furnished names for impressions made 
 on other senses besides that of hearing, and that a presumption is 
 thus furnished for the similar origin of all words whatsoever. 
 
 It may seem a poor foundation for a fabric so magnificent as the 
 language of civilised mankind ; 2 but whatever belief may be enter- 
 tained of the first beginnings of articulate speech, the gradual growth 
 of language from its earliest elements is disputed by none ; and the 
 examination of our own language carries us back to a condition of 
 thought not many degrees higher than that of tribes which we regard' 
 as sunk in hopeless barbarism. Yet that this difference of degree- 
 involved in this instance a difference of kind is proved by the very 
 
 there been a new language. What does- 
 that mean ? Neither more nor less than 
 that in speaking as we do, we are using, 
 the same materials, however broken up,, 
 crushed, and put together anew, which 
 were handled by the first speaker, i.e. 
 the first real ancestor of our race." — 
 Max MUUer, Chips, ii. 255. 
 
 1 To this list may be added the 
 name for corn as ground or crushed, 
 in the Scottish girnel, the Lithuanian 
 gimds, the Gothic quaimus, our quern. 
 Max Muller, " Comparative Mytho- 
 logy," Chips from a German Workshop, 
 ii. 43. 
 
 " "Never in the history of man has 
 
THE INFANCY OF THE ARYAN RACE. 17 
 
 fact that the one class of men has risen indefinitely in the scale of CHAP. 
 
 being, while the other exhibits no power whether of self-cujfure or ■— ■ ' . • 
 
 of imitation. These are facts which, like other physical facts, we 
 
 cannot gainsay, although we may not be called on to determine the 
 
 further question of the unity or plurality of the human race. The 
 
 point with which we are more immediately concerned, is the light 
 
 thrown by the history of words on the social and political history of 
 
 the race, and on the consequences which followed the disruption or 
 
 separation of tribes speaking dialects more or less closely akin. 
 
 It can never be too often repeated that the facts laid bare in Historical 
 
 the course of philological inquiry are as strictly historical as any th^ina- 
 
 which are recorded of the campaigns of Hannibal, Wellington, or 'y sis of 
 
 language. 
 Napoleon. The words possessed in common by different Aryan 
 
 languages point to the fact that these now separated tribes once 
 dwelt together as a single people, while a comparison of these 
 common words with others peculiar to the several dialects furnishes 
 evidence of the material condition of the yet undivided race. Thus, 
 from the identity of words connected with peaceful occupations as 
 contrasted with the varying terms for war and hunting, we may 
 gather " that all the Aryan nations had led a long life of peace 
 before they separated, and that their language acquired individu- 
 ality and nationality as each colony started in search of new homes, ' 
 new generations forming new terms connected with the warlike 
 and adventurous life of their onward migrations." 1 But these new 
 terms were evolved from the common stock of verbal stems, and 
 the readiness with which these roots lent themselves to new shades 
 of meaning would not only render it easier to express thoughts 
 already needing utterance, but would itself be a fruitful source 
 of new ideas and notions. This process would be, in fact, a mul- 
 tiplication of living images and objects, for all names in the earliest 
 stages of language were either masculine or feminine, " neuters 
 being of later growth, and distinguishable chiefly in the nominative." 
 Thus the forms of language would tend to keep up a condition of 
 thought analogous to that of infants ; and the conscious life of all 
 natural objects, inferred at first from the consciousness of personality 
 
 1 So again from the fact that in San- " teach us lessons more important than 
 
 skrit, Greek, and Gothic "/ know" is all the traditions put together, which 
 
 expressed by a perfect, meaning origin- the inhabitants of India, Greece, and 
 
 ally "I have perceived," Professor Max Germany have preserved of their earliest 
 
 Miiller infers that " this fashion or idiom migrations, and of the foundations of 
 
 had become permanent before the their empires, ascribed to their gods, or 
 
 Greeks separated from the Hindus, to the sons of their gods and heroines. * 
 
 before the Hindus became unintelligible — Chips, ii. 252. 
 to the Germans." Such facts, he insists, 
 
1 8 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK in the speaker or thinker, would become an article of belief sanctioned 
 l - by the paramount authority of names, and all descriptions of pheno- 
 mena would bring before them the actions of conscious things. 
 Man would thus be living in a magic circle, in which words would 
 strengthen an illusion inseparable from the intellectual condition of 
 childhood. Yet we can scarcely fail to see the necessity of his being 
 left to ascertain the truth or falsehood of his impressions by the 
 patient observation of facts, if he was ever to attain to a real know- 
 ledge and a true method for its attainment — if, in other words, he 
 was to have an education, such as the wisest teacher would bestow 
 upon a child. Ages may have been needed to carry him forward 
 a single step in the upward course ; but the question of time can 
 throw no doubt on the source from which the impulse came. The 
 advance made, whether quick or slow, would be as much the work 
 of God as the existence of man in the class of mammalia. Until 
 it can be shown that our powers of sensation and motion are self- 
 originated, the developement of a higher idea from a sensuous con- 
 ception must be ascribed to the Divine Spirit, as truly as the noblest 
 thought which can be embraced by the human mind. Hence each 
 stage in the growth of language marks the formation of new wants, 
 new ideas, and new relations. "It was an event in the history. of 
 man when the ideas of father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, 
 were first conceived and first uttered. It was a new era when the 
 numerals from one to ten had been framed, and when words like 
 law, right, duty, generosity, love, had been added to the dictionary 
 of man. It was a revelation, the greatest of all revelations, when 
 the conception of a Creator, a Ruler, a Father of man, when the 
 name of God was for the first time uttered in this world" 1 
 Earliest In that primaeval time, therefore, after he had learnt to express 
 
 onhougiu nis Dodu y feelings in articulate sounds, but before he had risen to 
 any definite conception of a Divine Being, man could interpret the 
 world around him only through the medium of his own sensations. 
 It was thus impossible that he could fail to attribute sensations like 
 
 1 Max Muller, Lectures on Lan- ment dans la mythologie originaire et 
 
 guage, second series, vii. 308 ; History ne s'en degagea que peu-a-peu. Quoique 
 
 of Sanskrit Literature, 528, et sea. l'lnde ait eta" plus tard le pays par 
 
 After tracing the evolution of a moral excellence de la theologie, le Rig-Veda 
 
 and spiritual meaning from myths ne contient de theologie que dans ses 
 
 originally purely physical, M. Baudry parties les moins anciennes. II en faut 
 
 concludes, " Le sentiment moral et prendre son parti ; la metaphysique, 
 
 religieux n'existait qu'implicitement la morale elle-meme en tant qu'elle 
 
 dans le naturalisme primitif. L'idee arrive a se formuler, sont des fruits du 
 
 du Dieu createur, pere des hommes, developpement intellectuel et non des 
 
 aimant le bien et menant la cr&tion souvenirs d'une antique sagesse. "— De 
 
 vers ce but final, n'apparait pas nette- I' Interpretation Mythologique, 30. 
 
SENSUOUS INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 
 
 19 
 
 his own to every object on which his eyes rested in the material CHAP. 
 
 universe. His notions about things external to himself would be ■ : — 
 
 the direct result of his psychological condition ; and for their utter- 
 ance he would have in language an instrument of boundless power. 1 
 
 1 I do not know that I am called 
 upon to refute or even to notice the 
 paper on Professor Max Miiller's "Phi- 
 losophy of Mythology," contributed by 
 Mr. A. Lang to Preiser's Magazine 
 for August 1 88 1. I can but ask the 
 reader to weigh Mr. Lang's statements 
 carefully and impartially, while I confess 
 for myself that, having read his paper 
 more than once or twice, I can gather 
 from it only the following points : (1) 
 that he objects to Professor Max Miiller's 
 sequence of the Rhematic and Mytho- 
 pceic ages, or to the chronological limits 
 assigned to them ; (2) that he looks on 
 the general material of mythology, and 
 not merely on certain portions of it, as 
 lewd, foul, revolting, and unnatural, as 
 the gross growth of disgusting savagery ; 
 (3) that he regards this silly, senseless, 
 and obscene talk as consisting of phrases 
 or expressions spoken "directly of the 
 heavenly bodies and powers of nature, 
 conceived of as beings with human 
 passions ; " and (4) that the whole mul- 
 titude of mythical names and the vast 
 fabric of mythical narration has grown 
 up anyhow, like the Lucretian fortuitous 
 concourse of atoms, which has brought 
 us into a world impressed in a very odd 
 way with appearances of design in every 
 part of it ; that the legend of Hermes 
 has nothing to do with the wind, that 
 of Prokris nothing to do with the dew, 
 and that of Io and Argos Panoptes no- 
 thing to do with the moon and the stars. 
 
 As to the value of these conclusions 
 the reader must be judge. I can only 
 
 say that when we come to anything like 
 a theory in Mr. Lang's paper, it seems 
 (1) to agree very singularly with that 
 of Professor Max Muller ; that (2) I 
 do not find in Professor Max Miiller's 
 volumes the sharply defined boundaries 
 of a mythopceic age, to which Mr. Lang 
 most strongly objects ; that (3) the great 
 bulk of Vedic, Hellenic, or Teutonic 
 myths is not silly, gross, obscene, dis- 
 gusting, and revolting ; and (4) that the 
 attempt to explain the growth of Aryan 
 mythical traditions as the result of acci- 
 dent is worth as much and as little as 
 the attempt to construct a system of 
 astronomy without gravitation. 
 
 I cannot bring myself to see any 
 need of going into details. It is enough 
 to note Mr. Lang's remark on the myth 
 of Urvast and Pururavas. Professor Max 
 Muller had said that the story told of 
 them is one that is true only of the sun 
 and the dawn. Mr. Lang positively 
 denies this, holding the gist of the story 
 to be "merely that Urvast vanishes, 
 when Pururavas transgresses a point 
 of matrimonial etiquette," " similar eti- 
 quette being a common fact in man- 
 ners from North America to Bulga- 
 ria, and round again to South Africa." 
 That it is not so, the reader may perhaps 
 feel satisfied when he has examined the 
 accounts given in this volume of the 
 stories, not of Urvast only, but of Bheki, 
 Melusina, Psyche, and the multitude 
 of tales of which these may be regarded 
 as the types. 
 
*G 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The in- 
 fancy of 
 mankind. 
 
 Earliest 
 condition 
 of thought 
 and its 
 conse- 
 quences. 
 
 THE SOURCE OF MYTHICAL SPEECH. 
 
 If the analysis of language and the researches of antiquarians bring' 
 before us, in the earliest annals of mankind, a state of society which 
 bears to our own a resemblance not greater than that of infancy to 
 mature manhood, we shall scarcely realise that primaeval condition 
 of thought except by studying closely the mind of children. Stubborn 
 facts disclose as the prominent characteristics of that early time the 
 selfishness and violence, the cruelty and slavishness of savages ; yet 
 the mode in which they regarded the external world became a 
 source of inexhaustible beauty, a fountain of the most exquisite 
 and touching poetry. So true to nature and so lovely are the forms 
 into which their language passed, as they spoke of the manifold 
 phases of the changing year ; so deep is the tenderness with which 
 they describe the death of the sun-stricken dew, the brief career 
 of the short-lived sun, and' the agony of the earth-mother mourning 
 for her summer-child, that we are tempted to reflect back upon the 
 speakers the purity and truthfulness of their words. If the theory 
 of a corrupted revelation as the origin of mythology imputes to 
 whole nations a gross and wilful profanity which consciously travesties 
 the holiest things, the simplicity of thought which belongs to the 
 earliest myths presents, as some have urged, a picture of primaeval 
 humanity too fair and flattering. 
 
 No deep insight into the language and ways of children is needed 
 to dispel such a fancy as this. The child who will speak of the 
 dawn and the twilight as the Achaian spoke of Prokris and Eos will 
 also be cruel or false or cunning. There is no reason why man in 
 his earliest state should not express his sorrow when the bright being 
 who had gladdened him with his radiance dies in the evening, or 
 feel a real joy when he rises again in the morning, and yet be selfish 
 or oppressive or cruel in his dealings with his fellows. His mental 
 condition determined the character of his language, and that con- 
 
THE MYTHOPCEIC STAGE OF LANGUAGE. 21 
 
 dition exhibits in him, as in children now, the working of a feeling chap. 
 which endows all outward things with a life not unlike his own. Of • — f-li — 
 the several objects which met his eye he had no positive knowledge, 
 whether of their origin, their nature, or their properties. But he 
 had life, and therefore all things else must have life also. He was 
 under no necessity of personifying them, for he had for himself 
 no distinctions between consciousness and personality. He knew 
 nothing of the conditions of his own life or of any other, and there- 
 fore all things on the earth or in the heavens were invested with the 
 same vague idea of existence. The sun, the moon, the stars, the 
 ground on which he trod, the clouds, storms, and lightnings were 
 all living beings ; could he help thinking that, like himself, they 
 were conscious beings also ? His very words would, by an inevitable 
 necessity, 1 express this conviction. His language would admit no 
 single expression from which the attribute of life was excluded, while 
 it would vary the forms of that life with unerring instinct 8 Every 
 object would be a living reality, and every word a speaking picture. 
 For him there would be no bare recurrence of days and seasons, 
 but each morning the dawn would drive her bright flocks to the 
 blue pastures of heaven before the birth of the lord of day from the . 
 toiling womb of night. Round the living progress of the new-born 
 sun there would be grouped a lavish imagery, expressive of the 
 most intense sympathy with what we term the operation of material 
 forces, and not less expressive of the utter absence of even the 
 faintest knowledge. Life would be an alternation of joy and sorrow, 
 of terror and relief; for every evening the dawn would return 
 leading her bright flocks, and the short-lived sun would die. Years 
 might pass, or ages, before his rising again would establish even 
 the weakest analogy ; 3 but in the meanwhile man would mourn for 
 
 1 I should wish to place, if possible, exercised by language on thought in 
 
 a stronger stress on these words now every possible sphere of mental activity. " 
 
 than when I wrote them some twelve It follows, of course, that the history of 
 
 or thirteen years ago. Professor Max philosophy is the history of a long battle 
 
 Miiller has well said that on the ques- with mythology, in which the victory 
 
 lion, whether the growth of myths of thought belongs still to " the distant 
 
 be inevitable or not, the whole problem future." — Selected Essays, i. 590-591. 
 of mythology seems to turn, and there- 2 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 268. 
 
 fore that the certainty of the result * In spite of the incredulity which 
 
 cannot be too strongly insisted on. My- one or two critics have expressed 
 
 thology thus becomes "an inherent for this assertion, I see no reason for 
 
 necessity of language," and is, " in fact, qualifying a proposition for which we 
 
 the dark shadow which language throws have abundant evidence. See Max 
 
 on thought, and which can never disap- Miiller, Selected Essays, i. 600. But 
 
 pear till language becomes altogether even after the analogy had been estab- 
 
 commensurate with thought, which it lished, and a sense of order had been 
 
 never will." Mythology, then, in its impressed upon the mind, it was this 
 
 highest sense is strictly "the power very order which, was regarded with 
 
22 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Primary 
 myths. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 his death, as for the loss of one who might never return. For every 
 aspect of the material world he would have ready some life-giving 
 expression; and those aspects would be scarcely less varied than 
 his words. The same object would at different times, or under 
 different conditions, awaken the most opposite or inconsistent con- 
 ceptions. But these conceptions and the words which expressed 
 them would exist side by side without producing the slightest con- 
 sciousness of their incongruity ; nor is it easy to determine the exact 
 order in which they might arise. The sun would ■ awaken both 
 mournful and inspiriting ideas, ideas of victory and defeat, of toil 
 and premature death. He would be the Titan, strangling the 
 serpents of the night before he drove his chariot up the sky ; and 
 he would also be the being who, worn down by unwilling labour 
 undergone for men, sinks wearied into the arms of the mother who 
 bare him m the morning. Other images would not be wanting ; the 
 dawn and the dew and the violet clouds would be not less real and 
 living than the sun. In his rising from the east he would quit the 
 fair dawn, whom he should see no more till his labour drew towards 
 its close. And not less would he love and be loved by the dew 
 and by the morning herself, while to both his life would be fatal 
 as his fiery car rose higher in the sky. So would man speak of all 
 other things also ; of the thunder and the earthquake and the storm, 
 not less than of summer and winter. But it would be no personifi- 
 cation, and still less would it be an allegory or metaphor. It would 
 be to him a veritable reality, which he examined and analysed as 
 little as he reflected on himself. It would be a sentiment and a belief, 
 but in no sense a religion. 
 
 In these spontaneous utterances of thoughts awakened by out- 
 ward phenomena, we have the source of the myths which must be 
 regarded as primary. But it is obvious that such myths would be 
 produced only so long as the words employed were used in their 
 original meaning. While men were conscious of describing only 
 the departure of the sun when they said " Endymion sleeps," the 
 myth had not passed beyond its first stage ; but if once the meaning 
 of the word were either in part or wholly forgotten, the creation of 
 a new personality under this name would become inevitable, and 
 the change would be rendered both more certain and more rapid 
 by the very wealth of words which they lavished on the sights and 
 objects which most impressed their imagination. A thousand phrases 
 
 profound and reverent awe and admira- 
 tion. The state of mind which can see 
 signs and wonders only in what is 
 
 irregular belongs, as Professor Miiller 
 has remarked, to a later time. 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF THE DAY. 23 
 
 would be used to describe the action of the beneficent or consuming chap. 
 sun, of the gentle or awful night, of the playful or furious wind : and - — ^ — • 
 every word or phrase became the germ of a new story, as loon as 
 the mind lost its hold on the original force of the name. 1 
 
 Thus in the Polyonymy which was the result of the earliest form Secondary 
 of human thought, we have the germ of the great epics of later mytbs ' 
 times, and of the countless legends which make up the rich stores 
 of mythical tradition. There was no bound or limit to the images 
 suggested by the sun in his ever varying aspects ; and for every one 
 of these aspects they would have a fitting expression, nor could 
 human memory retain the exact meaning of all these phrases when 
 the men who used them had been scattered from their original home. 
 Old epithets would now become the names of new beings, and the 
 legends so framed would constitute the class of secondary myths. 
 But in all this there would be no disease of language. The failure 
 would be that of memory alone, — a failure inevitable, yet not to be 
 regretted, when we think of the rich harvest of beauty which the 
 poets of many ages and many lands have reaped from these half- 
 remembered words. 2 
 
 It mattered little, then, of what object and phenomenon they Pclyono- 
 might happen to speak. It might be the soft morning light or the f^ing the 
 fearful storm-cloud, the wind or the thunder. In each case there growth of 
 
 myfho- 
 
 would be Polyonymy, the employment of many names to denote the logy, 
 same thing. In each case, their words would express truthfully the 
 
 1 " That Titanic assurance with he terms the bane of antiquity. This 
 which we say, the sun must rise, was view is opposed by M. Baudry in his 
 unknown to the early worshippers of able paper, De V Interpretation Mytholo- 
 nature, or if they also began to feel the gique. After quoting the sentence just 
 regularity with which the sun and the cited, he adds, " Voila le langage accuse^ 
 other stars perform their daily labour, de maladie et de revolte, fort injuste- 
 they still thought of free beings kept in ment a notre avis, car la faute n'est 
 temporary servitude, chained for a time, qu'aux defaillances de la memoire, qui 
 and bound to obey a higher will, but a garde le mot mais oublie' le sens. Ce 
 sure to rise, like Herakles, to a higher mal arrive tantot pour un mot, tantot 
 glory at the end of their labours."— pour une figure symbolique dont on a 
 Max Muller, " Comparative Mytho- perdu la clef. Mais parce qu'une re- 
 logy," Chips, &C, ii. 96. presentation mal comprise d'un eveque 
 
 2 In his Lectures on Language, second debout devant des catechumenes plonges 
 series, 358, Professor Max Muller asserts dans la cuve baptismale a donne lieu a 
 that "whenever any word, that was at la legende de saint Nicholas ressuscitant 
 first new metaphorically, is new without les enfants, en faut-il conclure aussi que 
 a clear conception of the steps that led la sculpture efciit malade ? " But after 
 to its original metaphorical meaning, all there is no real antagonism between 
 there is danger of mythology ; when- the view taken by Professor Max Muller 
 ever those steps are forgotten and arti- and that of M. Baudry. With the 
 ficial steps put in their places, we have former, mythology arises when the steps 
 mythology, or, if I may say so, we have which led to a metaphor are in greater 
 diseased language, whether that Ian- or less degree forgotten ; in other words, 
 guage refers to religious or secular in- from a failure of memory, not from dis- 
 terests." The mythology thus produced ease in language. 
 
24 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK impressions which the phenomena left on their senses, and their 
 I- truthfulness would impart to their language an undying beauty ; but 
 the most fruitful source of mythical phrases would be found un- 
 doubtedly in the daily or yearly course of the lord of day. In the 
 thought of these early ages the sun was the child of night, or dark- 
 ness ; the dawn came before he was born, and died as he rose in the 
 heavens. He strangled the serpents of the night ; he went forth like 
 a bridegroom out of his chamber, and like a giant to run his course. 
 He had to do battle with clouds and storms. Sometimes his light 
 grew dim under their gloomy veil, and the children of men shuddered 
 at the wrath of the hidden sun. Sometimes his ray broke forth only, 
 after brief splendour, to sink beneath a deeper darkness ; sometimes 
 he burst forth at the end of his course, trampling on the clouds 
 which had dimmed his brilliancy and bathing his pathway with blood. 
 Sometimes, beneath mountains of clouds and vapours, he plunged 
 into the leaden sea. Sometimes he looked benignly on the face of 
 his mother or his bride who came to greet him at his journey's end. 
 Sometimes he was the lord of heaven and of light, irresistible in his 
 divine strength ; sometimes he toiled for others, not for himself, in a 
 hard, unwilling servitude. His light and heat might give life or 
 destroy it. His chariot might scorch the regions over which it 
 passed ; his flaming fire might burn up all who dared to look with 
 prying eyes into his dazzling treasure-house. He might be the child 
 destined to slay his parents, or to be united at the last in an unspeak- 
 able peace to the bright dawn who for brief space had gladdened his 
 path in the morning. He might be the friend of the children of 
 men, and the remorseless foe of those powers of darkness who had 
 stolen away his bride. He might be a warrior whose eye strikes 
 terror into his enemies, or a wise chieftain skilled in deep and 
 hidden knowledge. Sometimes he might appear as a glorious being 
 doomed to an early death, which no power could avert or delay. 
 Sometimes grievous hardships and desperate conflicts might be^ 
 followed by a longer season of serene repose. Wherever he went,* 
 men might welcome him in love, or shrink from him in fear and 
 anguish. He would have many brides in many lands, and his off- 
 spring would assume aspects beautiful, strange, or horrible. His 
 course might be brilliant and beneficent, or gloomy, sullen, and 
 capricious. As compelled to toil for others, he would be said to 
 fight in quarrels not his own ; or he might for a time withhold the 
 aid of an arm which no enemy could withstand. He might be the 
 destroyer of all whom he loved, he might slay the dawn with his 
 kindling rays, he might scorch the fruits who were his children ; he 
 
GERMS OF EPIC POETRY. 2% 
 
 might woo the deep blue sky, the bride of heaven itself, and an in- chap. 
 
 evitable doom might bind his limbs on the blazing wheel for ever ■ : — • 
 
 and ever. Nor in this crowd of phrases, all of which have borne 
 their part in the formation of mythology, is there one which could 
 not be used naturally by ourselves to describe the phenomena of the 
 outward world, and there is scarcely one perhaps, which has not 
 thus been used by our own poets. 
 
 But in truth we need not go back to that early time for evidence Use of 
 of the fact that language such as this comes naturally to mankind, andcon- 
 Abstract names are the result of long thought and effort, and they crete 
 are never congenial to the mass of men. They belong to a dialect 
 which can never be spoken by poets, for on such unsubstantial food 
 poetry must starve and die. Some of us may know now that there 
 is nothing in natural phenomena which has any positive relation with 
 the impressions produced on our minds, that the difference between 
 the temperatures of Baiae and Nova Zembla is simply the difference 
 of a few degrees more or less of solar heat, as indicated by Reaumur 
 or Fahrenheit ; that the beautiful tints of morning and evening are 
 being produced every moment, and that they are mere results of the 
 inclination which the earth at a particular moment may have to the 
 sun. We may know that the whispering breeze and the roaring 
 storm are merely air moving with different degrees of force, that 
 there is no generic difference between ice and water, between fluids 
 and solids, between heat and cold. What if this knowledge were 
 extended to all ? Would it be a gain if the language of men and 
 women, boys and girls, were brought into strict agreement with 
 scientific facts, and made to exhibit the exactness of technical defini- 
 tions ? The question is superfluous, for so long as mankind remain 
 what they are, such things are impossible. In one sense, the 
 glorious hues which spread over the heavens at sunrise and sundown, 
 the breeze and the hurricane, are to us nothing. The forces which 
 produce the phenomena of the outward world take no notice of us. 
 Shall it then be said that there is not One who does take note of the 
 impressions which the sights or the sounds of nature make upon our 
 minds ? Must we not recognise the feelings which those phenomena 
 irresistibly evoke in us as not less facts than the phenomena them- 
 selves? We cannot rid ourselves of these impressions. They are 
 part of us ; they grow with our growth, and it is best for us if they 
 receive a wholesome culture. Modern science may show that our 
 feelings are merely relative; but there is still that within us which 
 answers to the mental condition from which the mythical language 
 of our forefathers sprang. It is impossible for us to look on the 
 
26 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Myths 
 arising 
 from the 
 use of 
 equivocal 
 words. 
 
 changes of day and night, of light and darkness, of summer and 
 - winter, with the passionless equanimity which our philosophy re- 
 quires ; and he who from a mountain summit looks down in solitude 
 on the long shadows as they creep over the earth, while the sun 
 sinks down into the purple mists which deaden and enshroud his 
 splendours, cannot shake off the feeling that he is looking on the 
 conscious struggle of departing life. He is wiser if he does not 
 attempt to shake it off. The peasant who still thinks that he hears 
 the soft music of the piper of Hameln, as the leaves of the wood 
 rustle in the summer air, will be none the better if he parts with this 
 feeling for some cold technical expression. The result of real science 
 is to enable us to distinguish between our impressions and the facts 
 or phenomena which produce them, whenever it may be necessary to 
 do so ; but beyond this, science will never need to make any trespass 
 on the domain of the poet and the condition of thought which finds 
 its natural expression in the phrases that once grew up into a 
 mythology. 1 
 
 To the primary myths which spring from phrases employed in 
 their original meaning to express the phenomena of the outward 
 world, and to the secondary myths which arose from a partial or 
 complete forgetfulness of that meaning, must be added a third class, 
 which came into existence from the use of equivocal words. If, as 
 the tribes and families of men diverged from common centres, there 
 was always a danger that words expressing sensuous ideas might be 
 petrified into personal appellatives, there was also the more imminent 
 danger that they might be confounded with other words most nearly 
 resembling them in sound. The result would be, in grammatical 
 phrase, false etymology : the practical consequence would be the 
 growth of a mythology. Many of the tales belonging to the most 
 complicated mythical systems arose simply from the misinterpretation 
 of common words. From a root which meant to shine, the Seven 
 Shiners received their name ; possibly or probably to the same roots 
 belongs the name of the Golden Bear (apKTos and ursa), as the 
 Germans gave to the lion the title of Goldfusz ; and thus, when the 
 epithet had, by some tribes, been confined to the Bear, the Seven 
 Shiners were transformed first into seven bears, then into one with 
 Arktouros (Arcturus) for their bearward. 2 In India, too, the mean- 
 ing of riksha was forgotten ; but instead of referring the word to 
 bears, they confounded it with risAi, and the Seven Stars became the 
 abode of the Seven Poets or Sages, who enter the ark with Menu 
 
 1 See further Max Miiller, " Com- 
 parative Mythology," Chips, ii. 96. 
 
 8 Lectures on Language, second 
 series, 303. 
 
THE SEVEN STARS AND THE SEVEN SAGES. 27 
 
 (Minos), and reappear as the Seven Wise Men of Hellas, the Seven CHAP. 
 
 Children of Rhodos and Helios, 1 and the Seven Champions of -^— - 
 
 Christendom. The same lot, it would seem, befell another name for 
 this constellation. They who spoke of the seven Iriones had long 
 forgotten that their fathers spoke of the stars as taras (staras) or 
 strewers of light, and converted the bearward into Bo6tes, the 
 ploughman, while the Teutonic nations, .unconscious that they had 
 retained the old root in their word stern or star, likewise embodied a 
 false etymology in wagons or wains. But when we turn to the 
 Arkadian tale, that Kallisto, the mother of the eponymous hero 
 Arkas, was changed into a bear by the jealousy of Here" and im- 
 prisoned in the constellation, we find ourselves in that boundless 
 region of mythology, the scenes of which are sometimes so exquisitely 
 fair, sometimes so gloomy, hideous, and repulsive. The root van, to 
 convey (the Latin veho), gave a name to the horse, to the flame of 
 fire, and to the rays of the sun. 8 The magic wand of metaphor, with- 
 out which there can be no growth or expansion of language, soon 
 changed the rays of the sun into horses. But these horses, vahni, 
 had yet another epithet, Harit, which signified at first the brilliancy 
 produced by fat and ointment. Like the Greek words o-ryaAoeis and 
 Xnrapo's, applied to things' anointed with lard or oil, ghritct,-prishthah 
 (glittering with fat) furnished a title for the horses (or flames) of 
 Agni, ignis, the fire. Thus the Harits became the immortal steeds 
 who bear the chariot- of Indra across the sky and the car of Archil- 
 leus over the plains of Ilion. The Greek carried away the name at 
 an earlier stage ; and the Charites, retaining simply the qualities of 
 grace and brightness, became the lovely beings who, with Himeros 
 and the Muses, charm earth and heaven with their song. But before 
 the Hesiodic theogony had defined their numbers and fixed their 
 attributes, Charis remained a mere name of Aphrodite, the radiant 
 dawn who springs from the sea before the rising of the sun. Still, 
 though even at that early time Aphrodite" was the goddess of sensuous 
 beauty and love, she was yet, with a strange adherence to the old 
 meaning of her name, known as Enalia and Pontia, the child of the 
 sea foam. For yet another title which she bore they could but 
 frame a tale that Argynnis, the beloved of Agamemnon, had died at 
 Kephisos. Yet that title, identified with the Sanskrit arjuni, spoke 
 simply of dazzling loveliness. By a similar process of metaphor, the 
 rays of the sun were changed into golden hair, into spears and lances, 
 and robes of light. Over the shoulders of Phoibos LykSgengs, the 
 
 1 Pind. 01. vii. 132. 
 
 * See further Max Muller, Rig Veda Sanhitd, vol. i. p. 26. 
 
28 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 I. 
 
 Disinte- 
 gration of 
 myths. 
 
 light-born, flow the sacred locks which no razor might touch. On the 
 - head of Nisos, as on that of Samson, 1 they become a Palladion in- 
 vested with a mysterious power. From Helios, the sun, who can 
 scorch as well as warm, comes the robe of Medeia, which reappears 
 in the poisoned garments of Deianeira. Under the form of spears 
 and arrows the rays of the sun are seen in almost every page of all 
 Aryan mythology. They are the invincible darts of Phoibos, Achil- 
 leus, and Meleagros, of Herakle"s and Theseus, of Artemis, Perseus, 
 and Bellerophon, the poisoned arrows which Philoktetes and 
 Odysseus, the model, as some will have it, of Hellenic character, 
 scruple not to use. 
 
 Thus the disintegration of the primary myths would be insured 
 by the wealth of synonyms which the earliest form of human thought 
 had brought into existence. If the Greek mythographers had been 
 conscious that Kephalos and Prokris meant only the sun and the 
 dew, the legend would have continued to belong to the same class 
 with the myths of Indra and his cloud-enemy Vritra. As it is, it 
 stands midway between these primary legends and the later tales which 
 sprung up when the meaning of such names as Lykaon, Koronis, 
 and Sarpedon had been wholly forgotten. The form of thought 
 which looked on all sensible phenomena as endowed with a con- 
 scious life, found utterance in a multiplicity of names for the same 
 object, and each of these names became or might become the 
 groundwork of a new myth, as in process of- time they were con- 
 founded with words which most nearly resembled them in sound 
 
 1 Dean Stanley (Lectures on the and those of Herakles. See also Gold- 
 Jewish Church, i. 368) points out the ziher's Mythology among the JJebrews, 
 likeness between the features of Samson p. 22. 
 
( 2 9 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DEVELOPEMENT OF MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 When in the Vedic songs we read of Indra, the sun-god, as fighting CHAP, 
 with Vritra, the dark power who imprisons the rain in the storm- IV ' ■ 
 cloud, or with Ahi, the throttling snake, or as pursuing the beautiful Elasticity 
 Dahana, of the dawn as the mother or the bride of the sun, or of the cal speech, 
 sun as slaying the dark parent from whom he has sprung, 1 we feel at 
 once, that in such language we have an instrument of wonderful 
 elasticity, that the form of thought which finds its natural utterance 
 in such expressions must be capable of accommodating itself to every 
 place and every climate, and that it would have as much room for its 
 exercise among the frozen mountains of the North as under the 
 most smiling sky and genial sun. But the time during which this 
 mythical speech was the common language of mankind, would be a 
 period of transition, in which the idea of existence would be sooner 
 or later expanded into that of personality. Probably before this 
 change had taken place, the yet unbroken Aryan family would be 
 scattered to seek new homes in distant lands ; and the gradual 
 change of language, which that dispersion rendered inevitable, would 
 involve a more momentous change in their belief. They would carry 
 away with them the old words and expressions ; but these would now 
 be associated with new ideas, or else be imperfectly or wrongly under- 
 stood. Henceforth, the words which had denoted the sun and moon 
 would denote not merely living things but living persons. From 
 personification to deification the steps would be but few; and the 
 process of disintegration would at once furnish the materials for 
 a vast fabric of mythology. All the expressions which had attached 
 a living force to natural ojbjects would remain as the description 
 of personal and anthropomorphous gods. Every word would become 
 an attribute, and all ideas once grouped round a single object would 
 blanch off into distinct personifications. The sun had been the lord 
 of light, the driver of the chariot of the day; he had toiled and 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 404. 
 
30 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK laboured for the sons of men, and sunk down to rest, after a hard 
 
 ■ l' - - battle, in the evening. But now the lord of light would be Phoibos 
 
 Apollon, while Helios would remain enthroned in his fiery chariot, 
 and his toils and labours and death-struggles would be transferred to 
 HeraklSs. The violet clouds which greet his rising and his setting 
 would now be represented by herds of cows which feed in earthly 
 pastures. There would be other expressions which would still 
 remain as floating phrases, not attached to any definite deities. These 
 would gradually be converted into incidents in the life of heroes, and 
 be woven at length into systematic narratives. Finally, these gods or 
 heroes, and the incidents of their mythical career, would receive each 
 " a local habitation and a name." These would remain as genuine 
 history, when the origin and meaning of the words had been either 
 wholly or in part forgotten. 
 Results of But in such a process as this, it is manifest that the men amongst 
 mythical w h om it sprang up would not be responsible for the form which it 
 might assume. Words, applied at first simply to outward objects or 
 phenomena, would become the names of personal gods ; and the 
 phrases which described those objects would then be transferred to 
 what were now deities to be adored. But it would not follow that a 
 form of thought which might apply, not only without harm but with 
 a marvellous beauty, to things if living yet not personal, would bear 
 translation into the conditions of human life. If in the older speech, 
 the heaven was wedded to the earth, which returned his love with 
 a prodigal fertility, in the later time the name of the heaven would be 
 the name of a god, and that god would necessarily be earthly and 
 sensual. But this developement of a mythology, much of which would 
 inevitably be immoral and even repulsive, would not necessarily 
 exercise a like debasing influence on the morality and practice of 
 the people. It had started with being a sentiment, not a religion, — a 
 personal opinion, but not a moral belief; and the real object of 
 the heart's adoration would remain not less distinct from the creations 
 of mythology than it had been before. Nay, it might be that, with 
 any given people, the tone of thought and the character of society 
 might be more' and more raised, even while the incongruous mytho- 
 logical fabric assumed more stupendous proportions. But the first 
 condition of thought, which regarded evelry object in creation, would 
 have in itself only two possible developements. It must issue, either 
 in an anthropomorphous polytheism, or in a degrading fetish worship. 
 The character of the people would in each case determine whether 
 the result for them should be an idolatrous terror of inanimate 
 things, or the multiplication of deities with human forms and human 
 
DEGREES IN THE DEVELOPEMENT OF MYTHS. 3 1 
 
 passions, mingling with men, and sharing their partialities and CHAP, 
 their feuds. • ^— — : — • 
 
 For the proofs of these assertions, we shall look in vain to the Evidence 
 earliest Hellenic literature. But the Vedic poems furnish indis- ^eveiope- 
 putable evidence, that such as this was the origin and growth ofmentfur- 
 
 . nished by 
 
 Greek and Teutonic mythology. In these poems, the names of the Rig- 
 many, perhaps of most, of the Greek gods, indicate natural objects e a ' 
 which, if endued with life, have not been reduced to human per- 
 sonality. In them Daphne is still simply the morning twilight 
 ushering in the splendour of the new-born sun ; the cattle of Helios 
 there are still the light-coloured clouds which the dawn leads out 
 into the fields of the sky. There the idea of Herakles has n,ot been 
 separated from the image of the toiling and struggling sun, and the 
 glory of the life-giving Helios has not been transferred to the god 
 of Delos and Pytho. In the Vedas the myths of Endymion, of 
 Kephalos and Prokris, Orpheus and Eurydikg, are exhibited in the 
 form of detached mythical phrases, which furnished for each their 
 germ. 1 The analysis may be extended indefinitely : but the con- 
 clusion can only be, that in the Vedic language we have the 
 foundation, not only of the glowing legends of Hellas, but of the 
 dark and sombre mythology of the Scandinavian and the Teuton. 
 Both alike have grown up chiefly from names which have been 
 grouped around the sun ; but the former has been grounded on those 
 expressions which describe the recurrence of day and night, the 
 latter on the great tragedy of nature in the alternation of summer 
 and winter. 
 
 Of this vast mass of solar myths, some have emerged into inde- Relative 
 pendent legends, others have furnished the groundwork of whole Q r e e ° k 
 epics, others have remained simply as floating tales whose intrinsic myths, 
 beauty no poet has wedded to his verse. Whether the whole may 
 be classified in order of priority, may be doubtful ; but the strong 
 presumption would be, that those whi£h have not been systematised 
 into coherent narratives are the oldest, as not having sufficiently lost 
 their original meaning. At the least, they exhibit to us the substance 
 of mythology in its earliest form. Thus the legends of Kephalos and 
 Prokris, of Daphne, Narkissos, and Endymion, have come down 
 to us in a less artificial form than that of Herakles, while the myth 
 of Herakles has been arrested at a less advanced stage than those of 
 Zeus and Apollon. But all alike can be translated back into 
 mythical expressions, and most of these expressions are found in the 
 
 1 See the analysis of these myths in parative Mythology," Chips from a 
 Professor Max Miiller's essay on " Com- German Workshop, vol. ii. 
 
32 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Solar 
 myths. 
 
 Vedas with their strict mythical meaning. The marvellous exuber- 
 ance of this early language, and the wealth of its synonyms, may well 
 excite astonishment as we watch its divergence into such myths as 
 those of Kephalos and Endymion, Herakles, Daphne, the Pythian 
 and Delian Apollon, Phaethon and Meleagros, Memnon and 
 Bellerophon. 
 
 That the form of thought which found utterance in mythical 
 language would lead to the accumulation of a vast number of names 
 for the same object, we have already seen ; and so clearly does the 
 mythology of the Aryan nations exhibit the working of this process, 
 that the task of tracing it through the several legends of which it is 
 composed becomes almost a superfluous work. It seems impossible 
 not to see that when the language of mythology was the ordinary 
 speech of daily life, the night laboured and heaved with the birth 
 of the coming day, and that his toil and labour are reproduced in 
 the Homeric hymn, in which L&to, the power of forgetfulness and 
 sleep, gives birth to the lord of light in Delos. His coming was 
 preceded by the pale twilight who, in mythical times, drove his 
 cows to their pastures ; but in the Odyssey his herds feed at Tainaron 
 or in Thrinakia far away, where Phaethousa and LampetiS, the bright 
 and gleaming daughters of Neaira, the early morning, tend them at 
 the rising and the setting of the sun. The old mythical feeling 
 is strikingly manifest throughout the whole legend, not merely in the 
 names and office of the wife and children of Helios, but in the delight 
 with which the Sun-god gazes on his cattle at the beginning and 
 the close of his daily course, and in the indignation which prompts 
 him, when they are slain, to hide his light in the regions of the dead. 
 But the sun loves not only the clouds but the dawn who is their 
 leader ; and so the dawn comes before us as followed by him, and 
 flying from his love, or else as returning it. The former phrase 
 (" the dawn flies from the sun ") is embodied in the legend of Daphne, 
 who flies from her lover and vanishes away as he seeks to embrace 
 her. In the tale of Orpheus she appears, 'under the name of 
 Eurydike, as the bride of the sun, loved by him and returning his 
 love, yet falling a victim to it, for whether to Daphne or Eurydike' 
 the brightness of his glance is fatal as he rises higher in the heaven. 
 The same feeling is manifest under a form, if possible, more intense, 
 in the tale of Kephalos and Prokris. "The sun loves the dew,'' was 
 the old mythical phrase ; and it is reproduced in the love of Kephalos 
 (the head of the sun) for Prokris, the glittering dewdrop. But "the 
 morning loves the sun." E6s seeks to win Kephalos for herself; and 
 her jealousy of Prokris is at once explained. But again the dewdrops 
 
MYTHS OF WANDERERS AND BONDMEN. $3 
 
 each reflect the sun, and Prokris becomes faithless to her lover, while CHAP. 
 
 she grants him her love under a new disguise ; and finally, when her • ^ — • 
 
 fault has been atoned, she dies by the spear of Artemis, with which 
 the sun unwittingly strikes her down. It is the old tale of Daphne 
 and Eurydike" : and Kephalos goes mourning on his solitary journey, 
 labouring not for himself, but for men who need his help, until he 
 sinks to sleep beneath the western sea. 
 
 But, as we have seen, the sun may be spoken of as either bene- Chang-e- 
 ficent or destructive, as toiling for the good of men or as slaying of the g Uru 
 them. Sometimes he may sink to rest in quietness and peace, while 
 the moon comes to give him her greeting of love ; or he may die 
 after a battle with the struggling clouds, leaving a solitary line of 
 blood-red light behind him. So in the Hellenic legend, Phoibos 
 cannot rest in his birthplace of Lykia or Delos ; he must wander far 
 westwards over many lands, through the fair vale of Telphoussa, to 
 his western home in Delphi. There the mighty power of his rays is 
 shown in the death of the great dragon, whose body is left to rot at 
 Pytho. Yet it was strange that the sun, whose influence was com- 
 monly for life and gladness, should sometimes vex and slay the sons 
 of men ; and so the tale went that plague and pestilence came when 
 Phaethon had taken the place of Helios, and vainly sought to guide 
 aright his fire-breathing horses. So again the legend of Meleagros 
 exhibits only the capricious action of the sun, and the alternations of 
 light and shade are expressed in the sudden exploits and moody 
 sullenness of the hero ; but his life is bound up with the torch of day, 
 the burning brand, and when its last spark flickers out the life of the 
 hero is ended. More commonly, however, he is the mighty one 
 labouring on and finally worn out by an unselfish toil, struggling in 
 his hard task for a being who is not worthy of the great and costly 
 sacrifice. So Phoibos Apollon, with his kinsman Herakles, serves 
 the Trojan Laomedon ; and so he dwells as a bondman in the house 
 of Admetos. So likewise, as Bellerophontes, he encounters fearful 
 peril at the bidding of a treacherous host, and dies, like Sarpedon and 
 Memnon, in a quarrel which is not his own. But nowhere is his un- 
 utterable toil and scanty reward brought out so prominently as in the 
 whole legend, or rather the mass of unconnected legend, which is 
 gathered round the person of Herakles. Doomed before his birth to 
 be the slave of a weak and cruel master, he strangles, while yet in his 
 cradle, the serpents of the night, which stung to death the fair Eury- 
 dike. His toils begin. His limbs are endued with an irresistible 
 power, and he has a soul which knows no fear. He may use this 
 power for good or for evil, and his choice for good furnishes the 
 
34 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Repulsive 
 develope- 
 mcnts of 
 solar 
 legends. 
 
 Origin of 
 
 these 
 
 develope- 
 
 cnents. 
 
 groundwork for the apologue of Prodikos. Other legends there were 
 which perverted this idea ; and in these he is exhibited under gross, 
 uncouth, or repulsive forms. But he goes upon his way, and is 
 hurried on through many lands. In all he has mighty works to do, 
 and he fails in none. The remembrance of Iole may linger in his 
 memory, but there are others who claim his love in the days of his 
 strength and power, and it would seem as though he had forgotten 
 the daughter of Eurytos. But his time draws towards its close : the 
 beautiful maiden, whose face had gladdened him long ago, returns to 
 cheer him in the evening of his life. With her comes the poisoned 
 robe (the mantle of cloud), which he strives in vain to tear away from 
 his bleeding limbs. In a deeper and redder stream flows the life- 
 blood, till, after a convulsive struggle, the strife is closed in the dead 
 silence of night 
 
 But it is in the case of Herakles that the perfect truth of the old 
 mythical language gave rise more especially to that apparently strange 
 and perplexing meaning which repelled and even disgusted the poets 
 and philosophers of Greece. Pindar refuses to believe that any god 
 could be a sensualist or a cannibal ; he might in the same spirit have 
 rejected the tales which impute something of meanness or cowardice 
 to the brave and high-souled Herakles. For Herakles fights with 
 poisoned arrows, and leaves them as his bequest to PhiloktStes. But 
 the poisoned arrows are the piercing rays which burn in the tropical 
 noon-day, and they reappear as well in the poisoned robe of Deianeira 
 as in that which the Kolchian Medeia professes to have received 
 from her kinsman Helios. 
 
 A deeper mythical meaning, however, underlies and accounts for 
 the immorality and licence which was introduced into the transmuted 
 legend of Herakles. The sun looks down on the earth, and the 
 earth answers to his loving glance by her teeming and inexhaustible 
 fertility. In every land she yields her special harvest of fruits and 
 flowers, of corn and wine and oil. Her children are countless, but 
 all spring up under the eye of the sun as he journeys through the 
 wide heaven. It is easy to see what must be the result when the sun 
 is transmuted into the human, yet god-like, Herakles, and how repul- 
 sive that myth must become which, in its primitive form, only told how 
 
 The sunlight clasps the earth, 
 And the moonbeams kiss the sea. 1 
 
 The same explanation removes the mystery of the even greater de- 
 gradation to which the Hellenic mythology reduces Zeus himself, the 
 
 1 Shelley, Love's Philosophy. 
 
REPULSIVE ASPECTS OF MYTHS. 35 
 
 supreme father of gods and men. He who should be the very type CHAP. 
 
 of all purity and goodness becomes the very embodiment «of head- : — • 
 
 strong lust and passion, while the holiness of the lord of life and light 
 is transferred to Apollon and his virgin sister, Athene. The difficulty 
 is but slight Zeus, the Vedic Dyaus, is but another form of Ouranos, 
 the veiling heaven or sky ; and again, as in the words of our own 
 poet, who sings how 
 
 Nothing in the world is single, 
 All things by a law divine 
 
 In another's being mingle, 
 
 and how 
 
 The mountains kiss high heaven, 
 
 so Ouranos looked down on Gaia, and brooded over her in his deep, 
 unfailing, life-giving love. But these are phrases which will not bear 
 translation into the conditions of human life, without degrading the 
 spiritual god into a being who boasts of his unbounded and shameless 
 licence. 1 
 
 The same process which insured this degradation insured at the Tendency- 
 same time the local boundaries which were assigned to mythical Mythical 6 
 heroes or their mythical exploits. When the adventures of Zeus incidents, 
 assumed something like consistency, the original meaning of his name 
 was less and less remembered, until his birthplace was fixed in a 
 Cretan cave, and his throne raised on a Thessalian hill. So Apollon 
 was born in Lykia or in Delos, and dwelt at Patara or Pytho. So 
 Endymion had his tomb in Elis, or slept his long sleep on the hill of 
 Latmos. So Kephalos first met Prokris on the Hymettian heights, 
 and fell from the Leukadian cape into the Western Sea. So, as she 
 wandered westward in search of her lost child, Telephassa (a name 
 which, like those of Phaethousa, Lampetie, and Brynhild, tells its own 
 tale), sank to sleep on the Thessalian plain in the evening. 
 
 Yet although much was forgotten, and much also, it may be, lost Vitality of 
 for ever, the form of thought which produced the old mythical' 1 ^™ 5 " 110 " 
 language had not altogether died away. Showing itself sometimes in faculty. 
 directly allegorical statement of historical fact, sometimes in similar 
 descriptions of natural objects or of the incidents of common life, 
 it still threw the halo of a living reality over everything of which it 
 spoke. So the flight of Kaunos from Miletos to Lykia, and the 
 sorrow of the sister whom he had left behind, figured the migration 
 of colonists from the one land to the other. So in the Hesiodic 
 
 " Mr. Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. gives may be added the marriage of 
 
 261, traces not only such legends, but mothers with sons, ascribed by Hero- ; 
 
 incestuous marriages, to mythical dotos to Semiramis. 1 
 
 phrases. To the instances which he 
 
36 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Constant 
 demand 
 for new 
 mythical 
 narratives. 
 
 Theogony, Nyx (night) is the mother of Hypnos, (sleep,) and Oneiros,. 
 - (dream,) of Eris, (strife,) and Apate, (deceit,) and Momos, (blame,) 
 where we speak merely of sleeping and dreaming, and of evil deeds 
 wrought in secrecy and darkness. 1 
 
 If, again, the mythology of the Homeric poets, as handed down to 
 us, points to an age long anterior to their own, yet the mythopoeic 
 faculty still exerted itself, if not in the invention of myths altogether 
 new, yet in the embellishment and expansion of the old. It was not 
 easy to satisfy the appetite of an imaginative age which had no canon 
 of historical criticism, and which constantly craved its fitting food. 
 It was not easy to exhaust the vein opened in almost every mythical 
 theme. The sun as toiling and suffering, the sky as brooding over 
 and cherishing the earth, the light as gladdening and purifying all 
 visible things, would suggest an infinity of details illustrating each 
 original idea. The multiplication of miracles and marvels stimulated 
 the desire for more ; and new labours were invented for Herakles, 
 new loves for Zeus, as easily as their forefathers uttered the words to 
 which the myths of Zeus and HeraklSs owed their existence. The 
 mere fact of their human personification insured the growth of in- 
 numerable fictions. If Zeus had the form and the passions of men, 
 then the conditions of his life must be assimilated to theirs. He 
 must have wife and children, he must have father and mother. The 
 latter must be no less divine than himself; but as he is enthroned 
 above them, they must belong to a dynasty which he has overthrown. 
 Their defeat must have been preceded by a long and fierce struggle. 
 Mighty beings of gigantic force must have fought on each side in that 
 tremendous conflict ; but the victory must belong to the side which 
 to brute force added wise forethought and prudent counsel. 8 Here 
 would be the foundation for that marvellous supernatural machinery 
 of which we have some indications in the Iliad, and which is drawn 
 out with such careful detail in the Hesiodic Theogony. But Zeus, 
 to whom there were children born in every land, must have his 
 queen; and the jealousy of Here against 16, or SemelS, or Alkmene 
 would follow as a necessary consequence. The subject might 
 be indefinitely expanded, and each subject would of itself suggest 
 others; but there was no fear that the poet should weary the 
 patience of his hearers, if only his additions, whether of incident or 
 detail, did not violate the laws of mythological credibility. Nothing 
 must be related of Herakles which was repugnant to the fundamental 
 
 1 Max Miiller, " Comparative Mythology," 
 64, et seq. 
 " Hence the mythical Prometheus. 
 
 Chips from a German Workshop, 
 
ARTIFICIAL MYTHS. $? 
 
 idea of his toil and suffering for a master weaker than himself; CHAP. 
 
 nothing must be told of Athene which would rather call up*associa- ■ ™ m -, 
 
 tions of the laughter-loving Aphrodite. 
 
 And, finally, there would be a constant and irresistible temptation Transmu- 
 
 ,....., , r tation of 
 
 to sever historical incidents and characters from the world of reality, names 
 and bear them into the cloudland of mythology. Round every hero tStoncal. 
 who, after great promise, died in the spring-time of his life, or on 
 whom the yoke of an unworthy tyrant lay heavy, would be grouped 
 words and expressions which belonged to the myth of the brilliant 
 yet quickly dying sun. The tale of Achilleus and Meleagros may be 
 entirely mythical ; but even if it be in part the story of men who 
 really lived and suffered, that story has been so interwoven with 
 images borrowed from the myths of a bygone age, as to conceal for 
 ever any fragments of history which may lie beneath them. 1 
 
 But if the mythical phrases which gave birth to the legends of Ground- 
 HeraklSs, Endymion, and Orpheus, of Phaethon, Meleagros, and ^° r mytho- 
 Bellerophontes, spoke of the daily course of the sun, there were Io &y of 
 others which told of alternating seasons. For the character of Europe, 
 mythical speech must necessarily be modified, and its very phrases 
 suggested by the outward features and phenomena of the country. 
 The speech of the tropics, and still more, of the happy zone which 
 lies beyond its scorching heat, would tell rather of splendour than of 
 gloom, of life rather than decay, of constant renovation rather than 
 prolonged lethargy. But in the frost-bound regions of the North 
 the speech of the people would, with a peculiar intensity of feeling, 
 dwell on the tragedy of nature. It would speak not so much of the 
 daily death of the sun (for the recurrence of day and night in other 
 lands would bring no darkness to these), but of the deadly sleep of 
 the earth, when the powers of frost and snow had vanquished the 
 brilliant king. It would speak, not of Eos rising from the Titan's 
 couch, or of Helios sinking wearied into his golden couch behind 
 the sea, but of treasures stolen from the earth and buried in her 
 hidden depths beyond the sight and reach of man. It would tell of 
 a fair maiden, wrapped in a dreamless slumber, from which the touch 
 of one brave knight alone could rouse her ; it would sing of her 
 rescue, her betrothal, and her desertion, as the sun, who brought 
 back the spring, forsook her for the gay and wanton summer. It 
 would go on to frame tales of strife and jealousy, ending in the death 
 of the bright hero ; it would speak of the bride whom he has forsaken 
 as going up to die upon his funeral pile. This woful tragedy, whose 
 long sorrow called forth a deep and intense sympathy which we, 
 1 Max Miiller, "Comparative Mythology,'' Chips, &c, vol. ii. 112. 
 
38 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK perhaps, can scarcely realise, is faintly indicated in* the beautiful 
 *• hymn to Demeter ; but winter, in the bright Hellenic land, assumed 
 a form too fair to leave any deep impression of gloom and death on 
 the popular mythology. The face of .nature suggested there the 
 simple tale which speaks of Persephone as stolen away, but brought 
 back to her mother by a covenant insuring to her a longer sojourn 
 on the bright earth than in the shadowy kingdom of Hades. But 
 how completely the tragedy, to which this hymn points, forms the 
 groundwork of the Volsung myth and of the Edda into which it was 
 expanded, to what an extent it has suggested the most minute details 
 of the great epics of the North, Professor Max Miiller has shown, 
 with a force and clearness which leave no room for doubt 1 Like 
 Achilleus, Sifrit or Sigurd can be wounded only in one spot, as the 
 bright sun of summer cannot grow dim till it is pierced by the thorn 
 of winter. Like Phoibos, who smites the dragon at Pytho, the 
 Northern hero slays the serpent Fafnir, and wins back the treasure 
 of the Niflungar, while he rouses Brynhild from her long slumber. 3 
 This treasure is the power of vegetation, which has been lulled to 
 sleep by the mists and clouds of winter ; the seeds which refuse to 
 grow while Demeter sorrows for her child Persephone. The deser- 
 tion of Brynhild is the advance of spring into summer : and from it 
 follows of necessity the hatred of Brynhild for Gudrun, who has 
 stolen away the love of Sigurd. A dark doom presses heavily on him, 
 darker and more wpful than that which weighed down the toiling 
 Herakles ; for the labour of Herakles issued always in victory, but 
 Sigurd must win his own wife Brynhild only to hand her over to 
 Gunnar. The sun must deliver the bright spring, whom he had 
 wooed and won, to the gloomy powers of cold and darkness. Gudrun 
 only remains ; but though outwardly she is fair and bright, she is of 
 kin to the wintry beings, for the late summer is more closely allied 
 to death than to life. Yet Gunnar, her brother, cannot rest; the 
 wrath of the cold has been roused, and he resolves to slay the bright 
 
 1 "Comparative Mythology," p. he is on the point of deserting for the 
 io8, &c. The story of Sigurd and daughter of Osten, when Kraka reveals 
 Brynhild comes up again in the legends herself as the child of Sigurd and Bryn- 
 of Ragnar and Thora, and again of hild. See Thorpe's Northern Mytho- 
 Ragnar and Aslauga. Like Brynhild, logy, vol. i. pp. 108, 113. 
 Thora with the earth's treasure is 2 The same myth, as' we might ex- 
 guarded by a dragon whose coils en- pect, forms the subject of several of 
 circle her castle ; and only the man who the " Sculptured Stones " of Scotland 
 slays the dragon can win her for his "The legend of a dragon holding a 
 bride. But Ragnar Lodbrog, who so maiden in thrall until he is slain by a 
 wins her, is still the son of Sigurd. valiant knight, occurs more than once " 
 Thora dies, and Ragnar at length woos —Burton, History of Scotland, vol i 
 the beautiful Kraka, whom, however, p. 150. 
 
HOMERIC MYTHOLOGY. 39 
 
 and beautiful Sigurd. The deed is done by Gunnar'a brethren — the chap. 
 cloud, the wind, and the storm ; and Brynhild, filled again with her - IV - - 
 earl y love , lies down to die with him who had forsaken her. 
 
 Phrases similar to those which gave birth to the legends of the Ground- 
 Volsungs and the Nibelungs lie at the root of the epics to which ^"Ho- 
 Greek genius has imparted such wonderful consistency and beauty. meric " mv - 
 Yet it can scarcely be too often repeated, that these poets adopted 
 as much of the popular mythology as suited their purpose, and no 
 more. If casual expressions throughout these poems leave no room 
 to doubt that they knew of wars among the heavenly beings, of the 
 dethronement of Kronos, the good service and the hard recompense 
 of Prometheus, and the early death of Achilleus, it appears not less 
 manifest, that the idea of Oinone and of her relations to Paris could 
 not have dawned for the first time on the mind of a later age. It 
 was no part of the poet's design to furnish a complete mythology ; 
 and the Iliad exhibits only that process of disintegration which was 
 perpetually multiplying new tales and new beings from the old 
 mythical language. In no instance, perhaps, is this process brought 
 out with greater clearness than in that of Paris. This son of Priam, 
 as leading away the beautiful Helen from the far west and hiding her 
 through ten long years in his secret chambers, represents the dark 
 power which steals the light from the western sky, and sustains a ten 
 hours' conflict before he will yield her up again. Paris thus is Pani, 
 the dark thief of the Vedic songs, who hides the bright cattle of 
 Indra in his dismal caves ; in other words, he is Vritra, the veiling 
 enemy, and Ahi, the throttling serpent of night. Such is he in his 
 relations to Menelaos and the children of the Sun, who come to 
 reclaim the lost Helen. But among his own people Paris is the most 
 prominent actor in the great drama which ends in the fall of Ilion. 
 The night has its beauty, although, as with Kirke, with Kalypso, and 
 with Ursula, this beauty may be a thing rather to be feared than 
 loved Paris, therefore, is beautiful, he is brave, and he is fated to 
 bring ruin on his kinsfolk ; for the night not less than the day slays 
 its parents, and falls a victim to its own offspring. Like Perseus, 
 Telephos, and others among the host of fatal children, the babe is 
 exposed on the slopes of Ida. Nourished by a bear, he grows up 
 beautiful in form ; and if his love is sensual, so also in many myths 
 is that of HeraklSs. 1 If, again, after the seduction of Helen, his 
 
 1 The term yvvatfiavfis, as applied Priam, are "the lovers of the girls,'' 
 
 to Paris, only translates in a somewhat "the husbands of the brides." The 
 
 strengthened form a common epithet of idea would not fail to assume a sensual 
 
 Indra and of the black Krishna, the aspect when the actors of the tale were 
 
 nocturnal sun, who, like the son of invested with human personality. 
 
40 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK former bravery gives place to sullen or effeminate inaction, the same 
 
 • 1 change is seen in Meleagros and Achilleus. If he is capricious, so 
 
 are they ; and each sits burnishing his golden armour in his tent or 
 
 his secret chamber, making ready for the fight, yet doing nothing. 
 
 If, again, it is by the weapon of Paris that Achilleus is to fall in the 
 
 western gates, the arrow which slays Paris is drawn from the quiver 
 
 of Herakles. But with the fatal wound comes back the love of 
 
 Paris for the lost Oinone" ; and not less forgiving than Prokris to the 
 
 faithless Kephalos, Oinone" stands before him. With a soft and 
 
 tender grief she gazes on the face which had once, filled the whole 
 
 earth for her with beauty. She sees his life-blood flowing away ; but 
 
 though she has the power of the soft evening time to soothe the woes 
 
 of mortal men, she cannot heal the poisoned wound which is slaying 
 
 Paris. But with the death of him who once was called Alexandras, 
 
 the light of her life is gone. Paris rests in the sleep of death, and 
 
 Oindne lies down to die by his side. 
 
 C om . The Iliad is, in short, the Volsung tale, as wrought out by the 
 
 parison of p 0e j; S f a bright and fertile land. 1 Yet, if the harsh climate of the 
 
 Norse north modified the Norse mythology, it also moulded indefinitely the 
 
 myt oogy. nat j ona j character, and the two acted and reacted on each other. 
 
 Bred up to fight with nature in a constant battle for existence, the 
 
 1 The Hellenic myths can no longer 
 be regarded as exponents of abstract 
 physical truths or theories. There can 
 be no doubt that (whatever appearance 
 of such a system may have been im- 
 parted to it by the priests), the supposi- 
 tion does not apply with more force 
 even to Egyptian mythology. In Egypt, 
 as well as in Greece and Northern 
 Europe, we have again the solar legend. 
 The spring was the time of festival, the 
 autumn of fast and mourning. It would 
 almost seem as though the Egyptian 
 myths were in this respect more closely 
 akin to those of Northern than of 
 Southern Europe. — See Milman, His- 
 tory of Christianity, vol. i. p. 13. 
 Compare also the Surtr of the Icelandic 
 mythology, Dasent's " Norsemen in Ice- 
 land," Oxjord Essays for 1858, p. 198. 
 The groundwork of the Volsunga 
 Saga, of the tales of Helen, Alkestis, 
 SarpSdon, and Memnon, reappears in 
 the legends and the worship of Adonis. 
 The origin of the myth is in this case 
 self-evident, while the grossness of the 
 forms which it has assumed shows the 
 degree to which such legends may either 
 influence or be modified by national 
 characteristics or the physical conditions 
 
 of a country. F,ven m their worst as- 
 pects, Zeus and Odin retain some 
 majesty and manly power ; but in the 
 legend of Adonis, the idea of the sun as 
 calling the earth back to life has been 
 sensualised to a degree far beyond the 
 sensuousness of Greek or Teutonic my- 
 thology. In fact, the image of Dern6ter 
 has passed by a very easy transmutation 
 into that of Aphrodite : but there not 
 only remains the early death of Adonis, 
 but it is assigned to the very cause 
 which cuts short the life of Achilleus, 
 Sigurd, Baldur, and Meleagros. The 
 boar's tusk, which reappears in the 
 myth of Odysseus, is but the thorn of 
 winter and the poisoned robe of He- 
 rakles ; and accordingly there were 
 versions which affirmed that it was 
 Apoll&n who, in the form of a boar, 
 killed the darling of Aphrodite". The 
 division of time also varies. In some 
 legends the covenant is the same as 
 that which is made with Demeter for 
 Persephong. In others, he remains four 
 months with Hades, four with Aphro- 
 dite, while the remaining four, being at 
 his own disposal, he chooses to spend 
 with the latter. 
 
TRADITIONS OF NORTHERN EUROPE. 4 1 
 
 Northman became fearless, honest, and truthful, ready to smite and chap. 
 ready to forgive, shrinking not from pain himself and careless of ■ — ^ — - 
 inflicting it on others. Witnessing everywhere the struggle of con- 
 flicting forces, he was tempted to look on life as a field for warfare, 
 and to own no law for those who were not bound with him in ties of 
 blood and friendship. Hence there was impressed on him a stern 
 and fierce character, exaggerated not unfrequently into a gross and 
 brutal cruelty ; and his national songs reflected the repulsive not less 
 than the fairer aspect of his disposition. In the Volsung tale, as in 
 the later epics, there is much of feud, jealousy, and bloodshed, much 
 which to the mind of a less tumultuous age must be simply distaste- 
 ful or even horrible. To what extent this may be owing to their own 
 character it may perhaps be difficult to determine with precision ; yet 
 it would seem rash to lay to their charge the special kinds of evil 
 dealing of which we read in their great national legends. It is not 
 easy to believe that the relations between Sigurd and Gunnar were 
 (even rarely) realised in the actual life of the Norwegian or the Ice- 
 lander. But whether with the Greek or the Northman, all judgment 
 is premature until we have decided whether we are or are not dealing 
 with legends which, whether in whole or in part, have sprung from 
 the mythical expressions of which the meaning has been more or less 
 forgotten. We can ■ draw no inference from the actions of Zeus or 
 Herakles as to the character of the Greeks ; we cannot take the fatal 
 quarrels of Brynhild, Gunnar, and Sigurd as any evidence of the 
 character of the Northman. 
 
 Living in a land of icebound fjords and desolate fells, hearing the Special 
 mournful wail of the waving pine-branches, looking on the stern strife f st f c r s a of er " 
 of frost and fire, witnessing year by year the death of the short-lived Gre f; k , 
 summer, the Northman was inured to sombre if not gloomy thought, 
 to the rugged independence of the country as opposed to the artificial 
 society of a town. His own sternness was but the reflexion of the 
 land in which he lived ; and it was reflected, in its turn, in the tales 
 which he told, whether of the heroes or the gods. 1 The Greek, 
 dwelling in sunnier regions, where the interchange of summer and 
 winter brought with it no feelings of overpowering gloom, exhibited 
 
 ' It was reflected most of all in the Religion and Mythology of the Aryans 
 terrific pictures drawn of Ragnarok, the of Northern Europe, § 15. But the 
 Twilight of the Gods, in which Odin belief of the Norsemen did not stop 
 and the ^Esir will be overthrown, and short with this direful ruin. From the 
 the fall of the world tree Yggdrasil will dead sun springs a daughter more beau- 
 complete the destruction of the earth, tiful than her sire, and mankind starts 
 and end the long Aion of the gods of afresh from the Life-raiser and his bride 
 Asgard. For an excellent description Life. For this regeneration see Brown, 
 of this great catastrophe see Brown, ibid., § 17. 
 
42 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK m hi s words and songs the happiness which he experienced in him- 
 !• self. Caring less, perhaps, to hold communion with the silent 
 mountains and the heaving sea, he was drawn to the life of cities, 
 where he could share his joys and sorrows with his kinsmen. The 
 earth was his mother : the gods who dwelt on Olympos had the like- 
 ness of men without their pains or their doom of death. There Zeus 
 sat on his golden throne, and beside him was the glorious Apollon, 
 not the deified man, 1 but the sun-god invested with a human 
 personality. But (with whatever modifications caused by climate 
 and circumstances) both were inheritors of a common mythology, 
 which with much that was beautiful and good united also much 
 that was repulsive and immoral. Both, from the ordinary speech 
 of their common forefathers, had framed a. number of legends 
 which had their gross and impure aspects, but for the grossness of 
 which they were not (as we have seen), and they could not be, 
 responsible. 
 Fulide- But if the mythology of the Greeks is in substance and in 
 
 mei^ 6 " developement the same as that of the North, they differed widely 
 of Greek j n their later history. That of the Greeks passed through the stages 
 logy. of growth, maturity, and decay, without any violent external re- 
 
 pression. The mythical language of the earliest age had supplied 
 them with an inexhaustible fountain of legendary narrative ; and 
 the tales so framed had received an implicit belief, which, though 
 intense and unquestioning, could scarcely be called religious, and 
 in no sense could be regarded as moral. And just because the 
 belief accorded to it was not moral, the time came gradually when 
 thoughtful men rose through earnest effort (rather, we would say, 
 through Divine guidance) to the conviction of higher and clearer 
 truth. If even the Greek of the Heroic age found in his mythology 
 neither a rule of life nor the ideal of that Deity whom in his heart 
 he really worshipped, still less would this be the case with the poets 
 and philosophers of later times. For ^Eschylos Zeus was the mere 
 name z of a god whose actions were not those of the son of Kronos ; 
 to Sophokles it made no difference whether he were called Zeus or 
 by any other name, as long as he might retain the conviction of His 
 eternity and His righteousness. 3 If from his own moral perception 
 
 1 The common mythology of the converts Athene 1 into the Kolchian Me- 
 
 whole Aryan race goes against the sup- deia. The latter type, when still further 
 
 position that Apollon and Athene owe degraded, becomes the Latin Canidia, 
 
 their existence to man-worship and a close approximation to the ordinary 
 
 woman- worship respectively. Athene" witch of modern superstition, 
 was to the Greek an embodiment of ' Agamemnon, 160. 
 
 moral and intellectual greatness. The a Oid. Tyr., 903. 
 
 absence or deterioration of the former 
 
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 43 
 
 Pindar refused to credit charges of gluttony or unnatural crime CHAP, 
 against the gods, no violent shock was given to the popular belief; • ^— ' 
 
 and even Sokrates might teach the strictest responsibility of man 
 to a perfectly impartial judge, even while he spoke of the mythical 
 tribunal of Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos. 1 He was accused 
 indeed of introducing new gods. This charge he denied, and with 
 truth : but in no sense whatever was he a worshipper of the Olympian 
 Zeus, or of the Phoibos who smote the Pythian dragon. 
 
 As compared with the Greek, the mythology of Northern Europe Arrested 
 was arrested almost in its middle growth. After a fierce struggle, Northern 
 Christianity was forced upon the reluctant Northmen long before ™^ ho ~ 
 poets could rise among them to whom the sensuality or ferocity of 
 their mythology would be repulsive or revolting, long before philo- 
 sophers could have evolved a body of moral belief, by the side of 
 which the popular mythology might continue peacefully to exist. 
 By a sudden revolution, Odin and the iEsir, the deitiSs of the North, 
 were hurled from their ancient thrones, before the dread Twilight 
 of the Gods had come. Henceforth they could only be regarded 
 either as men or as devils. The former alternative made Odin a 
 descendant of Noah ; 2 by the latter, the celestial hierarchy became 
 malignant spirits riding on the storm-cloud and the whirlwind. If 
 these gods had sometimes been beneficent before, they were never 
 beneficent now. All that was beautiful and good in the older belief 
 had been transferred to the Christian ideas of chivalry and saintli- 
 ness, which furnished a boundless field and inexhaustible nourish- 
 ment for the most exuberant inventive faculty. 8 The demons of 
 Hesiod were the spirits of the good who had died the painless 
 death of the Golden Age ; but even in heathen times they were 
 gradually invested with a malignant character. 4 With Thor and 
 Odin the transmutation was more rapid and complete ; and Frigga 
 and Freya became beings full of a wisdom and power which they 
 used only for evil. The same character passed to those who were, 
 or professed to be, their votaries ; and the assumption of an un- 
 lawful knowledge paved the way for that persecution of a fictitious 
 witchcraft which has stamped an indelible disgrace on mediaeval 
 Christendom. 6 
 
 1 Plato, Gorgias, Ixxx. . * Grote, History of Greece, i. 96. 
 
 2 Grote, History of Greece, vol. i. s Lecky, History of the Rise and 
 p. 264. Influence of Rationalism in Europe, 
 
 ' Grote, History of Greece, vol. i. p. vol. i. ch. i. Some valuable remarks on 
 
 628. M. de Montalembert's History, this subject may be found in Mr. Price's 
 
 Les Moines d 'Occident, is a storehouse preface to Warton's History of English 
 
 of legends belonging to the ideal of Poetry. (P. 57.) It was this idea of a 
 
 saintliness. knowledge gained unlawfully from evil 
 
44 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I 
 
 Light 
 thrown on 
 both by 
 the Vedic 
 hymns. 
 
 Stages in 
 the growth 
 of my- 
 thical 
 systems. 
 
 So marvellous is that chronicle of heathen mythology, as it lies 
 spread out before us in the light of the ancient speech, marvellous 
 not only as showing how nations, utterly severed from each other, 
 preserved their common inheritance, but as laying bare that early 
 condition of thought without which mythology could never have had 
 a being. Yet, if it has much to astonish us, it has nothing to 
 bewilder or even to perplex, for the simultaneous developement of 
 the same myths by countless tribes unknown to each other would 
 be a marvel too vast even for the greediest credulity to swallow — 
 a standing miracle without purpose and without meaning. To the 
 earliest records of Aryan literature is due the discovery that the 
 vehement accusations of Christian controversialists and the timid 
 explanations of heathen apologists were alike unfounded, 1 that the 
 impersonations of the old mythology had no substantial existence, 
 and that the mythical narratives which grew up around them were 
 not wrought out by a vile and corrupt imagination deliberately 
 profaning the deposit of a revealed truth which it was hopeless that 
 they should understand To the language of the early Vedic hymns 
 we owe our knowledge that the developement of such a mythology 
 wias inevitable, and that the phrases of that early speech, when 
 their original meaning was once forgotten or misapprehended, would 
 give rise to just those coarse, sensual, and immoral images, Irom which 
 the purer feeling of later times would instinctively recoil. 
 
 Step by step this analysis of mythology leads us back to what 
 would seem to be the earliest condition of the human mind, and 
 from that onwards through the mythopceic age to the philosophy 
 of historical Greece. On the general character of its course there 
 can be no doubt, nor is the question materially affected by the 
 hypothesis that a period of pure monotheism intervened between 
 the earliest time and that which multiplied the mythical inhabitants 
 of Asgard or Olympos. 2 In one sense the supposition may be 
 true : in another it might be truer to say that the monotheism so 
 attained never died away. It was impossible that any real fetish 
 worship could arise while man had not arranged his first conceptions 
 with regard to the nature of all material things, or even to his own. 
 • If from the consciousness of his own existence he attributed the 
 
 spirits which, far more perhaps than a 
 habit of submission to church authority, 
 impeded or repressed all researches in 
 physical science. Gerbert of Ravenna 
 (Sylvester II.) and Roger Bacon alike 
 acquired the reputation of dabbling in 
 diabolical lore. In the time of Galileo, 
 the accusers confined themselves to the 
 
 simple charge of an unlawful use of 
 human intellect. 
 
 1 Grote, History of Greece, part i. 
 ch. i. p. 15. 
 
 2 Dasent, Norse Tales, introduction, 
 p. lxvii. Max Miiller, "Semitic Mono- 
 theism ; " Chips from a German Work- 
 shop, vol. i. 
 
FETISH-WORSHIP. 45 
 
 same existence to all outward objects, he did so, as we have seen, chap. 
 
 without drawing any distinctions between consciousness j.nd per- ■ '—^ 
 
 sonality. The idea of their divinity in any sense would be an 
 inference, not a sensation ; and the analysis of language, which 
 shows that all predicative words are the expression of general ideas, 
 does not show us that the human mind was immediately exercised 
 by any train of connected reasoning. If, however, this earliest state 
 was not followed by one which invested outward things with a 
 personal life, if in some way men could believe in a malignant yet 
 unconscious and nonsentient power residing in stones and rocks, 
 there would at once be developed a fetish worship, the most de- 
 grading and the most hopeless, which, if expanded at all, could 
 issue only in a polytheism of devils. Yet even here some faint 
 perceptions might remain of moral qualities, unless we believe that 
 the Divine likeness might be wholly blotted out ; but is it possible 
 to account for the loathsome earthliness of some forms of heathenism, 
 except by the hypothesis that on them the idea of Deity has never 
 dawned ? If, however, when gradually awakened, the conscious- 
 ness of their own personality might lead others to attribute the 
 same personal life to outward objects, the deification of these objects 
 or powers would not follow as an immediate or even as a necessary 
 consequence. For a long time they might scarcely be conscious 
 of the degree to which they personified them ; or they might con- 
 tinue to look upon them as beings condemned to the same life 
 of toil and trouble with themselves. Such a thought, it is obvious, 
 might lead at once to the idea of One (distinct from all that they 
 saw or heard), who ordained this life of labour ; and the conviction 
 of a supreme God, the Maker of all things, might take possession 
 of the mind. 1 But it is not less clear that such a conviction would 
 not necessarily affect their ideas as to what they saw in the world ♦ 
 
 around them. The Sun in all his various aspects, the Morning, the 
 Evening, and the Night, might become more and more personal, 
 even while the belief in a God exalted high above all might con- 
 tinue to gain strength. In other words, the foundation of their moral 
 belief would at once be distinct from the foundation of their future 
 mythology. Still, except to the thoughtful few, the personality of 
 the great objects of the natural world would be more and more 
 
 1 This state might also easily pass Hebrew idolatry with that of the reli- 
 
 into Eastern dualism. The develope- gion of Jehovah, see Kalisch, Historical 
 
 ment of the Hellenic mind was more and Critical Commentary on the Old 
 
 wholesome. The prevalence of evil Testament, "Leviticus," part i. ch. 
 
 never led it to regard evil as co-ordinate xxiii. p. 380. 
 with good. For the parallel growth of 
 
46 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK exalted, even while it assumed more and more a strictly human 
 ' form. The result would be a polytheism of anthropomorphous gods, 
 in which the chief divinities would be the heaven and the sun. To 
 the former, as covering and shielding all things, would be assigned 
 those attributes which almost make us look on the Olympian Zeus 
 and the Teutonic Alfadir as faint reflexions of Him who has made 
 and loves mankind. But neither for the majesty of Zeus or Odin, 
 nor for the unsullied purity of Phoibos Apollon, of Athene, or of 
 Artemis, need we look further than to mythical phrases, which spoke 
 once of Dyaus, Varuna, or Indra. 
 
( 47 ) 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DIFFUSION OF MYTHS. 
 
 If in the legends of any people we find a number of names which CHAP. 
 
 explain themselves, if further the exploits of the gods or heroes who ^r — '■ 
 
 bear these names are in strict accordance with those meanings, then mon ele- 
 at once we are warranted in conjecturing that other names in the Aryan my- 
 same legends not yet interpreted may be of the same nature, while thol °gy- 
 at the same time a basis is furnished for classifying the several 
 stories. If further we find that in the traditions of different Aryan 
 tribes, or even of the same tribe, the same characters reappear with 
 no other difference than that of title and local colouring, the in- 
 ference is justified that a search into the mythical stores of all the 
 Aryan tribes would disclose the same phenomenon. If here too our 
 conjectures are verified, it will be impossible to withstand the con- 
 clusion that these tribes must have started from a common centre, 
 and that from their ancient home they must have carried away, if not 
 the developed myth, yet the quickened germ from which might 
 spring leaves and fruits varying in form and hue according to the 
 soil to which it should be committed, and the climate under which 
 the plant might reach maturity. These variations in the names, it 
 may be, of all the actors, as well as in the minor details of their 
 career, would prove, in exact proportion to the fidelity with which 
 the essential type was preserved, that this germ was furnished by the 
 every-day speech of the people, or, in other words, by their way of 
 regarding the phenomena of the outward world. If these facts are 
 established, two important consequences follow : I. The hypothesis 
 of any conscious borrowing or adaptation of myths on a large scale 
 by one tribe from another after their separation from the common 
 home becomes untenable, unless we assume an amount of intercourse 
 between them far in excess of any for which we have the evidence 
 of history ; and the clearest proof of direct importation in the case 
 of any given story or fable which does not belong to the genuine 
 mythology of a people fails to throw any suspicion on the latter. 
 
4 8 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The Greek 
 mythology 
 of itself 
 explains 
 the nature 
 of this 
 common 
 element. 
 
 II. The process of analysis and comparison will have deprived these 
 legends of all claim to the character of historical traditions ; and 
 even if it were maintained in the last resort that the myth as brought 
 from the common home grew up from some historical fact or facts, 
 still no such title can be made out for the same incidents when we 
 find them repeated in the same order and with the same issue in 
 different ages and different lands. If in the primaeval home there 
 was a war brought about by the carrying off of a beautiful woman, a 
 strife between two chieftains, and a time of inaction for the hero of 
 the story followed by his signal victory and his early death, then 
 unquestionably these incidents, with a hundred others common to 
 the background of these legends, did not repeat themselves at Ilion 
 and Delphoi, in Ithaka and Norway, in Lykia and Iran. 
 
 This is the goal to which we must be brought if the track be of 
 this kind ; and the matter may perhaps be soonest brought to an 
 issue if we take the most complicated myths of the Hellenic tribes 
 as our starting-point. We can scarcely read the legends of Herakles 
 and Demeter, of Theseus, Kadmos, Perseus, and a host of other 
 mythical heroes, without feeling that a few simple phrases might well 
 have supplied the germ for the most intricate of these traditions. 
 Every incident in the myth of the Eleusinian De"met£r may be 
 accounted for, if only men once said (with the conviction that the 
 things of which they spoke had a conscious life), " The earth mourns 
 for the dead summer. The summer lies shut up in the prison of 
 Hades, the unseen " — or, as in the language of the Northman, " She 
 sleeps in the land of the Niflungs, the cold mists, guarded by the 
 serpent Fafnir ; and the dwarf Andvari keeps watch over her buried 
 treasures." The tale of Endymion seems to speak for itself; "The 
 moon comes to gaze on her beloved, the sun, as he lies down to 
 sleep in the evening." In the story of Niobe, we seem to see the 
 sun in his scorching power, consuming those who dare to face his 
 dazzling brightness ; in that of Orpheus, we seem to hear his lamen- 
 tation for the beautiful evening which has been stung by the serpent 
 of the night, and which he brings back to life only to lose her at the 
 gates of day. In the myth of Eurdpe we have the journey of the 
 sun from the far East to the Western land, until Telephassa, the far- 
 shining, sinks down wearied on the Thessalian plain. Still more 
 transparent appear the tales of Kephalos and Daphne". Prokris, 
 even in the mouth of the Greek, is still the child of HersS, the dew : 
 Eos is still the morning, Kephalos still the head of the bright sun. 
 In Daphne we seem to behold the dawn flying from her lover and 
 shrinking before his splendour. In the Homeric Hymn, LSto, the 
 
COMMON ELEMENTS OF ARYAN MYTHS. 49 
 
 night, dark and still as death, promises that Phoibos shall long abide chap. 
 
 in Delos, the bright land. Doubtless she made the same promise to • — X: • 
 
 Lykians, Argives, Arkadians, Athenians, and all others who called 
 themselves the children of the light ; but the sun cannot tarry, and in 
 spite of her plighted word he hastens onward to slay the serpent of 
 darkness. In Herakles we see the sun in other guise, loving and 
 beloved wherever he goes, seeking to benefit the sons of men, yet 
 sometimes harming them in the exuberance of his boisterous strength. 
 In the tale of Althaia we read the sentence that the bright sun must 
 die when the torch of day is burnt out. In Phaethon we seem to 
 see the plague of drought which made men say, " Surely another, who 
 cannot guide the horses, is driving the chariot of the sun.'' The 
 beautiful herds, which the bright and glistening daughters of early 
 morning feed in the pastures of Thrinakia, seem to tell us of the 
 violet-coloured clouds which the dawn spreads over the fields of the 
 blue sky. In Bellerophon, as in Perseus, Theseus, Phoibos, and 
 Herakles, we find again the burden laid on the sun, who must toil 
 for others, although the forms of that toil may vary. Perseus goes 
 to the dwelling of the Graiai, as men might have said, " The sun has 
 departed to the land of the pale gloaming." When Perseus slays 
 Medousa, the sun has killed the night in its solemn and death-like 
 beauty, while the wild pursuit of the immortal Gorgons seems to be 
 the chase of Darkness after the bright Sun who, with his golden 
 sandals, just escapes their grasp as he soars into the peaceful morning 
 sky, the Hyperborean gardens, which sorrow, strife, and death can 
 never enter. In the death of Akrisios we have the old tale which 
 comes up in many another legend, where Oidipous and Theseus 
 mourn that they have unwittingly slain their fathers. 
 
 If the Greek legends by themselves thus exhibit, or seem to The Norse 
 exhibit, their ancient framework, the Norse tradition points with at J^^^f 7 
 the least equal clearness in the same direction. If any now can be precisely 
 found to assert that the one set of legends were copied from the direction. 
 other, he not only maintains a theory which hangs on a single thread, 1 
 but he displays a credulity which needs not to shrink from the 
 avowal that the whole of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments is a 
 genuine and veracious history. The wildest prejudice can scarcely 
 shelter itself behind these treacherous and crumbling barriers, 
 although it may urge that, whether in Teutonic or in Greek mytho- 
 logy, the dawn, the evening, and the night, the toiling and capricious 
 sun are already persons with human forms and a fixed local habitation. 
 But even this position would be greatly strained. Mr. Grote himself 
 1 Dasent, Popular Tales from the None, introduction, p. xliii. 
 
 E 
 
poems. 
 
 SO MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book allows that what he terms allegory is one of the constituent elements 
 
 ■ ' • of Greek mythology. 1 But even if we admit the objection in its full 
 
 force, we lack but a single link to complete the chain of evidence and 
 
 turn an overwhelming probability into fact Have we any records ol 
 
 that old time in which men spoke as Greek and Norse myths seem 
 
 to tell us that they spoke ? Have we any actual relics of that speech 
 
 in which men talked of Daphng as chased by Phoibos, even while 
 
 Daphne was still a common name of the dawn, and Phoibos meant 
 
 simply the sun ? a 
 
 The mis- The Vedic hymns of the Mantra period stand forth to give us the 
 
 sing link is answer . but they do so only to exhibit a fresh marvel. While they 
 
 the older show to us the speech which was afterwards petrified into the forms 
 
 Vedic • • 
 
 of Greek and Norse mythology, they point to a still earlier time, of 
 which no record has come down, and of which we can have no 
 further evidence than that which is furnished by the laws which 
 determine the growth of language. Even in the Mantra period, the 
 earliest in all Sanskrit, and therefore (as exhibiting the earliest form 
 of thought) the oldest in all human literature, 8 the whole grammar is 
 definitely fixed, and religious belief has assumed the character of a 
 creed. And if in this period man has not lived long enough to trace 
 analogies and arrive at some idea of an order of nature, he has grown 
 into the strongest conviction that behind all the forms which come 
 before his eyes there is a Being, unseen and all-powerful, whose 
 bidding is done throughout the wide creation, and to whom men may 
 draw nigh as children to a father. 
 The key to When, therefore, in these hymns, Kephalos, Prokris, Hermes, 
 myu\Z an Daphne, Zeus, Ouranos, stand forth as simple names for the sun, the 
 logy. dew, the wind, the dawn, the heaven and the sky, each recognised as 
 
 such, yet each endowed with the most perfect consciousness, we feel 
 that the great riddle of mythology is solved, and that we no longer 
 lack the key which shall disclose its most hidden treasures. When 
 
 1 History of Greece, vol. i. p. 2. of the German faith with the Norse, and 
 
 * It is scarcely necessary to say that the antiquity of the latter, are thereby 
 
 on this evidence of language Grimm vindicated." Thus of the identity of 
 
 lays the greatest possible stress. The their mythic notions and nomenclature 
 
 affinity of the dialects spoken by all " the agreement of the O.H.G. muspilli, 
 
 Teutonic and Scandinavian tribes being O. Sax. mudspelli, with the Eddie mus- 
 
 admitted, we have to consider the fact pell, of the O. H. G. itis, A. Sax. ides, 
 
 of their joint possession of terms relating with the Eddie dts, or of the A. Sax. 
 
 to religious worship. " If," he says, brosinga-mene with the Eddie brtsinga- 
 
 " we are able to produce a word used men, affords perfectly conclusive evi- 
 
 by the Goths in the fourth century, by dence." — Teutonic Mythology, Stally- 
 
 the Alemanni in the eighth, in exactly brass. 
 
 the same form and sense as it continues 3 Max Miiller, History of Sanskrit 
 
 to bear in the Norse authorities of the Literature, pp. 528, 557. 
 twelfth or thirteenth century, the affinity 
 
HYMNS OF THE DAWN. S r 
 
 we hear the people saying, " Our friend the sun is dead Will he CHAP. 
 
 rise ? Will the dawn come back again ? " we see the rfleath of ■ : ■ 
 
 Herakles, and the weary waiting while Leto struggles with the birth 
 of Phoibos. When on the return of day we hear the cry — 
 
 " Rise ! our life, our spirit is come back, the darkness is gone, the 
 light draws near ! " 
 
 — we are carried at once to the Homeric hymn, and we hear the 
 joyous shout of all the gods when Phoibos springs to life and light in 
 Delos. 1 The tale of Urvasi and Pururavas 2 (these are still the 
 morning and the sun) is the tale of Orpheus and Eurydike. Purii- 
 ravas, in his dreary search, hears the voice of Urvasi saying, " I am 
 gone like the first of the dawns ; I am hard to be caught, like the 
 wind." Yet she will come back to him at the close of the night, and 
 a son, bright and beaming, shall be born to them. Varuna is still 
 the wide heaven, the god " who can be seen by all," the lord of the 
 whole earth : but in him we recognise at once the Greek Ouranos, who 
 looks lovingly on Gaia from his throne in the sky. Yet more, we 
 read the praises of Indra, and his great exploit is that 
 
 " He has struck the daughter of Dyaus (Zeus), a woman difficult 
 to vanquish — 
 
 " Yes, even the daughter of Dyaus, the magnified, the Dawn, thou, 
 O Indra, a great hero hast ground to pieces. 8 
 
 " The Dawn rushed off from her crushed car, fearing that Indra, 
 the bull, might strike her. 
 
 " This her car lay there, well ground to pieces : she went far 
 away." 
 
 The treatment is rude, but we have here not merely the whole story 
 of Daphne, but the germ of that of Europe borne by the same bull 
 across the sea. More commonly, however, the dawn is spoken of as 
 bright, fair, and loving, the joy of all who behold her. 
 
 " She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being 
 to go to his work. 
 
 " She rose up, spreading far and wide (Euryganeia, Eurydike), and 
 moving towards every one. She grew in brightness, wearing her 
 brilliant garment. The mother of the cows (the morning clouds, the 
 
 1 4k 8' eBop e vpb </«WBe • flectl 5' character of the Homeric Achilleus ad- 
 
 bK6hv{av iwMrai. heres as closely to the original idea as 
 
 Hymn to A folio, 119. do those of Urvasi and Pururavasin the 
 
 2 In the essay on Comparative My- later poetry of Kalidasa. For the 
 thology, Professor Max Miiller has given Semitic expressions of a like feeling 
 not only the older forms of this myth, see Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, i. 
 but a minute analysis of the play of 245. 
 
 Xalidasa on this subject. This poem is Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, 
 
 very instructive, as showing that the i. 13. 
 
52 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Homeric herds of the sun), the leader of the days, she shone gold- 
 
 ~ coloured, lovely to behold. 
 
 " She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the god (Kephalos, or 
 the one-eyed Odin), who leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), 
 the Dawn was seen revealed by her rays ; with brilliant treasures she 
 follows every one. 
 
 " Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who 
 lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us food, who 
 givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots. 
 
 " Thou, daughter of the sky (Dyaus, Zeus), thou high-born Dawn 
 give us riches high and wide." 1 
 
 Still more remarkable, as exhibiting the germs of the ideas which 
 find their embodiment in the Hellenic Athene and the Latin Minerva, 
 is the following hymn. 
 
 " The wise priests celebrate with hymns the divine, bright-charioted 
 expanded Dawn ; worshipped with holy worship, purple-tinted, radiant, 
 leading on the sun. 
 
 " The lovely Dawn, arousing man, goes before the Sun, preparing 
 practicable paths, riding in a spacious chariot ; expanding everywhere 
 she diffuses light at the commencement of the days. 
 
 " Harnessing the purple oxen to her car, unwearied she renders 
 riches perpetual ; a goddess praised of many, and cherished by all, 
 she shines manifesting the paths that lead to good. 
 
 " Lucidly white is she, occupying the two (regions, the upper and 
 middle firmament), and manifesting her person from the East : she 
 traverses the path of the sun, as if knowing (his course), and harms 
 not the quarters of the horizon. 
 
 "Exhibiting her person like a well-attired female, she stands 
 before our eyes (gracefully) inclining like (a woman who has been) 
 bathing (Aphrodite' Anadyomen£). Dispersing the hostile glooms, 
 Ushas, the daughter of heaven, comes with radiance. 
 
 " Ushas, the daughter of heaven, tending to the West, puts forth 
 her beauty like a (well-dressed) woman ; bestowing precious treasures 
 on the offerer of adoration, she, ever youthful, brings back the light 
 as of old." a 
 Germs ai We can but wonder at the marvellous exuberance of language, 
 
 taieV. a hnost every expression of which may manifestly serve as the germ 
 
 of a mythical tale. We say, " The fire burns, the wood crackles and 
 smokes." They said, 
 
 " Neighing like a horse that is greedy for food, it steps out from 
 
 1 Max Miiller, History of Sanskrit * H. H. Wilson, Rig Veda Sanhita- 
 
 Literature, p. 551. vol. iii. p. 369. 
 
EARLY MYTHS OF FIRE AND LIGHT. S3 
 
 the strong prison : then the wind blows after his blast : thy path, O chap. 
 Agni (Ignis), is dark at once." «, ■ : • 
 
 The Latin carried with him the name of the Hindu Fire -god to Truthful- 
 little purpose. In the hands of the Greek similar phrases on the "hfcal d™ y " 
 searching breath of the wind grew up into the legend of Hermes, scription. 
 Nor can it be said that the instinct of the Greek was less true than 
 that of the old Vedic poet to the sights of the natural world. If we 
 recur with feelings of undiminished pleasure to the touching truthful- 
 ness of the language which tells of the Dawn as the bright being 
 whom age cannot touch, although she makes men old, who thinks on 
 the dwellings of men and shines on the small and great, we feel also 
 that the " Homeric " poet, even while he spoke of a god in human 
 form born in Delos, was not less true to the original character 
 of the being of whom he sang. He thought of the sun rising in 
 a cloudless heaven, and he told how the nymphs bathed the lord 
 of the golden sword in pure water, and wrapped him in a spotless 
 robe. 1 Still, although the stress of the hymn lies wholly on the 
 promise of Leto that her child shall have his chief home in Delos, 
 the poet feels that Delos alone can never be his home, and so he 
 sang how Apollon went from island to island, watching the ways and 
 works of men ; how he loved the tall sea-cliffs, and every jutting 
 headland, and the rivers which hasten to the broad sea, even though 
 he came back with ever fresh delight to his native Delos. 2 
 
 Thus the great mystery of Greek as of other mythology is dispelled Ground- 
 like mist from the mountain-side at the rising of the sun. All that Aryan My- 
 is beautiful in it is invested with a purer radiance, while much, if not thol °gy- 
 all, that is gross and coarse in it is refined, or else its grossness is 
 traced to an origin which reflects no disgrace on those who framed 
 or handed down the tale. Thus, with the keynote ringing in our 
 ears, we can catch at once every strain that belongs to the ancient 
 harmony, although it may be heard amid the din of many discordant 
 voices. The groundwork of Greek mythology was the ordinary 
 
 ' ivBa. ae, IjTe SoijSt, 6eaX \oiov SSetTi &K\on p.iv r' 4iti Kvvdov ifficrao 
 
 ko\$ TmnraK6evros, 
 
 Lyuas leal KaBapur avipiair S' iv SAAoTe S' oS vijirovs Te ko! avepas 
 
 <papeX\evK$ fade/cafe- 
 
 \eitTtf vnyareip. • • • • • • 
 
 Hymn to Apollo, 120. irairoi 8* o-Komal tc (ptkcu lea! 
 
 This is the white and glistening irpiioves aicpoi 
 
 robe in which Cyrus and Arthur are l^itXaw^ bpluv, Trorttp.ol 6' &\aSe 
 
 wrapped, when they are carried away irpopeovTes • 
 
 from the house in which they were . . . _ . 
 
 k orn aAAa ff6 AtJAco, $o7£e, /xdAitrr' eirl- 
 
 1 AJtIs 8', ap7«/)(JTo|e, Sra{, e/caTTj- Tepireai fyop. 
 
 Ufa' 'AttoAAo?, ' Hymn to Apollo, 140. 
 
54 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Greek 
 
 dynastic 
 
 legends. 
 
 speech which told of the interchange of day and night, of summer 
 - and winter ; but into the superstructure there may have been intro- 
 duced any amount of local or personal detail, any number of ideas 
 and notions imported from foreign philosophical or religious systems. 
 The extent of such importations is probably far less than is generally 
 imagined ; but however this may be, the original matter may still be 
 traced, even where it exists only in isolated fragments. The robe 
 with which Medeia poisons the daughter of Kreon was a gift from 
 Helios, the burning sun, and is seen again as the poisoned robe 
 which Deianeira sends to the absent Herakles ; as the deadly arrow 
 by which Philoktetes mortally wounds the Trojan Paris; as the golden 
 fleece taken from the ram which bears away the children of (Nephele) 
 the mist; as the sword which Aigeus leaves under the stone for 
 Theseus, the son of Aithra, the pure air ; as the spear of Artemis 
 which never misses its mark ; as the sword of Perseus which slays all 
 on whom it may fall ; as the unerring weapons of Meleagros ; as the 
 fatal lance which Achilleus alone can wield. The serpents of night 
 or of winter occur in almost every tale, under aspects friendly or 
 unkind. The dragon sleeps coiled round Brynhild or Aslauga, as 
 the snakes seek to strangle the infant Herakles or sting the beautiful 
 EurydikS. If the power of the sun's rays is set forth under such 
 different forms, their beauty is signified by the golden locks of 
 Phoibos, over which no razor has ever passed ; 1 by the flowing hair 
 which streams from the head of Kephalos, and falls over the shoulders 
 of Perseus and Bellerophon. They serve also sometimes as a sort 
 of Palladion, and the shearing of the single golden lock which grew 
 on the top of his head leaves Nisos, the Megarian king, powerless as 
 the shorn Samson in the arms of the Philistines. In many of the 
 legends these images are mingled together, or recur under modified 
 forms. In the tale of Althaia there is not only the torch of day which 
 measures the life of Meleagros, but the weapons of the chieftain 
 which no enemy may withstand. In that of Bellerophon there are 
 the same invincible weapons, while the horrible Chimaira answers 
 to the boar of Kalydon, or to that of Erymanthos which fell by the 
 arm of Herakles. 
 
 If the greater number of Greek legends have thus been reduced 
 to their primitive elements, the touch of the same wand will lay open 
 others which may seem to have been fashioned on quite another 
 model. Even the dynastic legends of Thebes will not resist the 
 
 1 $ojj8os iKepcreKifyiijs (Iliad, xx. 39), 
 a significant epithet, which of itself 
 would suffice to give birth to such a 
 
 legend as that of Nisos and Skylla. 
 The shearing of the locks of the sun 
 must be followed by darkness and ruin. 
 
THEORY OF THE IMPORTATION OF MYTHS. 55 
 
 method which has disclosed so many secrets. For most other tales chap. 
 
 the work is done. There is absolutely nothing left for further analysis • : • 
 
 in the stories of Orpheus and Eurydike, of Kephalos and Prokris, of 
 Selene" and Endymion, Niobe and Leto, D£m£t£r and Persephone, 
 Daphne and Apollon. Not an incident remains unexplained in the 
 legends of Herakles, of Althaia and the burning brand, of Phaethon, 
 Memnon, and Bellerophon. If there are bypaths in the stories of 
 AriadnS, EuropS, Medeia, Semele, Prometheus, or of the cows of the 
 Sun in the Odyssey, they have been followed up to the point from 
 which they all diverge. 
 
 If then in the vast mass of stories which make up the mythology Growth of 
 of the Aryan nations there seems to be evidence showing that in traditions, 
 some cases the legend has been brought by direct importation from 
 the East to the West or from West to East, the presumption of con- 
 scious borrowing cannot with any fairness be extended to tales for 
 which such evidence is not forthcoming. The great epic poems of 
 the Aryan race sprung into existence in the ages which followed the 
 dispersion of the tribes, and during which all intercourse between 
 them was an impossibility; yet these epic poems exhibit an identical 
 framework, with resemblances in detail which even defy the influences 
 of climate and scenery. But many of the actors in these great 
 dramas reappear in the popular stories of the Aryan tribes, with 
 subtle points of likeness and difference, which can be accounted for 
 by conscious borrowing only on the supposition that the traditions 
 of one country were as intimately known to the people of another 
 country as the traditions of many, if not most, of the Aryan nations 
 are now known to us through the long toil and vast researches of 
 comparative mythologists, aided by the mighty machinery of the 
 printing press. In truth, the more that we examine this hypothesis 
 of importation as affecting the general stock of mythical tradition 
 in any country, the more scanty and less conclusive will the evidence 
 appear ; and in the issue we shall find ourselves driven practi- 
 cally to reject it altogether, or to suppose that the impulse of 
 borrowing amounted to a universal and irresistible mania. The 
 dynastic legends of Thebes do but reproduce those of Argos ; the 
 legends of both alike do but repeat the career of Achilleus or of 
 Sigurd ; and the great heroes of those tales reappear as the Boots 
 and the disguised beggar of Teutonic and Hindu folklore. The sup- 
 position of any deliberate borrowing attributes to Greeks, Teutons, 
 Scandinavians, and Hindus, a poverty of invention not less amazing 
 than their skill in destroying the evidence of the theft, and in 
 wearing borrowed plumage as with an inborn grace. Unless we are 
 
56 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Aryan 
 folklore. 
 
 Legends 
 seemingly 
 not resolv- 
 able into 
 phrases re- 
 lating to 
 physical 
 pheno- 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 prepared to say that the borrowing was wholesale, and to determine the 
 source of this exhaustless store of wealth, it is more prudent and more 
 philosophical to admit that in every country the myths which have their 
 roots in phrases relating to physical phenomena have been kept alive 
 by independent tradition from the times of the first dispersion. 
 
 But if the story of Achilleus, as told in the Iliad, is only another 
 form of the legend which relates the career of the Ithakan chief in 
 the Odyssey ; if this tale reappears in the Saga of the Volsungs and 
 the Nibelungen Lied, in the epical cycles of Arthur and Charle- 
 magne, in the lay of Beowulf and the Shahnameh of Firdusi, and if 
 further all these streams of popular poetry can be traced back to a 
 common source in phrases which described the sights and sounds of 
 the outward world, the resemblances thus traced are nevertheless by 
 no means so astonishing as the likeness which runs through a vast 
 number of the popular tales of Germany and Scandinavia, of Greece 
 and Rome, of Persia and Hindustan. On the hypothesis of a form 
 of thought which attributed conscious life to all physical objects, we 
 must at once admit that the growth of a vast number of cognate 
 legends was inevitable. Nor is there anything bewildering in the 
 fact, that phrases which denoted at first the death of the dawn, or 
 her desertion by the tun as he rose in the heavens, or the stealing 
 away of the evening light by the powers of darkness, should give 
 birth to the legends of Helen and Guenevere, of Brynhild and 
 Gudrun, of Paris and of Lancelot, of Achilleus and Sigurd. All 
 that this theory involves is that certain races of mankind, or certain 
 tribes of the same race, were separated from each other while their 
 language still invested all sensible things with a personal life, and 
 that when the meaning of the old words was either wholly or in part 
 forgotten, the phenomena of the earth and the heavens reappeared 
 as beings human or divine, and the Pani, or Night, which sought to 
 lure Sarama, the Dawn, into his dismal cave, became the Paris who 
 beguiled Helen to Troy, and the Lancelot who corrupted the faith 
 of the wife of Arthur. 
 
 The wonder becomes greater when from the necessary outgrowth 
 of certain conditions of thought and speech we turn to popular 
 stories which appear at first sight as if they could not be brought 
 within this class of epical legends, and which yet exhibit, in spite of 
 differences of detail and local colouring, a closeness of resemblance 
 which establishes their substantial identity. If, among the stories 
 which Hindu, Persian, Greek, or Teutonic mothers recounted to 
 their children, we find tales which turn on the same incidents, and 
 in their most delicate touches betray the influence of precisely the 
 
STORIES OF THE MASTER THIEF. 57 
 
 same feelings, we must conclude either that these legends were chap. 
 passed from the one tribe or clan to the other, or that befere these ■ ^ 
 
 tribes separated from their common home they not only possessed 
 in mythical phrases relating to physical phenomena the germs of the 
 future epics of Europe and Asia, but had framed a number of stories 
 which cannot be traced back to such phrases, which seem to point 
 rather to a storehouse of moral proverbs, and which cannot be 
 accounted for on any hypothesis of conscious borrowing by one 
 distinct people from another It would, indeed, be safer to affirm 
 of any given story that it has not been thus borrowed than to say 
 that it cannot be traced back to the one source from which have 
 sprung the great epic poems of the world. 
 
 The story of the Master Thief is a case in point. It looks at first The 
 
 Brahipan 
 
 sight as though it had nothing to do with the legends of the great and the 
 Norse or Hellenic heroes, and the resemblance of some of its incidents goat- 
 to those of a story told in the Hitopadesa suggests the conclusion 
 that it found its way into Europe through the Arabic translation 
 known as the Kalila and Dinana. Professor Max Muller, plainly 
 avowing this belief, says that " the story of the Master Thief is told . 
 in the Hitopadesa." l The Sanskrit tale is that of the Brahman who, 
 on hearing from three thieves in succession that the goat which he . 
 carried on his back was a dog, throws the animal down and leaves it 
 as a booty for the rogues who had hit upon this mode of cheating 
 him. "The gist of the story," adds Professor Muller, "is that a man 
 will believe almost anything, if he is told the same by three different 
 people.'' But, while a far greater resemblance to the Egyptian tale 
 is exhibited by the Hindu version of the Master Thief as told by 
 Somadeva Bhatta, presently to be noticed, it may fairly be asked 
 whether this is either the story or the moral of the European " Master 
 Thief." In the Teutonic version we find no incidents resembling 
 those of the Sanskrit tale. The Norse story exhibits some points of 
 likeness, together with differences which rather force us to think that 
 it cannot have been suggested by the Eastern fable. 
 
 In the latter the Brahman is directly deceived by others ; in the The 
 Norse legend the peasant deceives himself, and the moral seems Thief? 7 
 to be, not that a man can be brought to believe anything if he 
 hears it asserted by several seemingly independent witnesses, but 
 that experience is thrown away on one who will put his hand into 
 the fire after he has been burnt. In the Norse tale, the farmer 
 intends to drive one of his three oxen to market, and the youth, 
 "who is a postulant for the novitiate in the worshipful order of 
 1 Chips from a German Workshop, ii. 229. 
 
58 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK thieves, is told that his desire shall be granted if he can steal this 
 - ox on the road, without the owner's knowledge and without doing 
 him any harm. The lad accordingly puts a silver-buckled shoe in 
 the way. The man admires it, but passes on without picking it up, 
 as an odd shoe would be of little use. Presently he sees before 
 him the same shoe, which the thief, having run by another way, has 
 again cast on the road, and tying up his ox hastens back to pick 
 up the fellow, while the lad goes away with the beast. Determined 
 to test him further, the fraternity tell the boy that he shall be as 
 good as any one of them if, under the same conditions, he can 
 steal the second ox, which the man was now driving to market. 
 As he goes along, the peasant sees a lad hung under the armpits 
 to a tree, but passes on with little concern until he sees as he 
 supposes another lad in the same position on another tree. Still 
 not caring to give any help, he plods onwards until the thief hangs 
 himself up for the third time on his road. The man, thinking 
 that he is bewitched, resolves to go back and see whether the 
 other two still hang where he saw them, and the ox which he leaves 
 tied up is the second sacrifice. The thieves now tell the youth 
 that if he can steal the third ox he shall be their master. So 
 he places himself in a thicket, and as the man draws near with his 
 last beast, imitates the bellowing of cattle; and the peasant, his 
 wits even more flustered than before, hurries away to catch the lost 
 oxen, leaving his third animal a prey to the thief. 1 At this point the 
 resemblance of the Norse to the Brahman story ceases ; but the 
 career of the Master Thief is as yet scarcely begun. He has yet to 
 overreach the society over which he now presides. The thieves set 
 out to see whether they cannot do something surpassing all that he 
 had done ; and the lad, taking advantage of their absence to drive 
 the three oxen into the road to the great delight of their owner, who 
 sees them return to the farm, carries off all the precious things which 
 formed the common store of the robbers. Thus far the Norse story 
 agrees in its main features with the Scottish tale of the Shifty Lad, a 
 although even here the points of difference are so great as to pre- 
 clude the idea that the one was derived from the other. The sequel 
 of the Norse tale is substantially the same as the Teutonic story of 
 the Master Thief. This story has, therefore, really nothing to do 
 with the fable of the Brahman and the goat, and it may fairly be 
 dot ilited whether, on the supposition that the idea was gained from 
 the Hitopadesa, " nothing was easier than to invent the three varia- 
 
 ' Dasent, Norse Tales, " The Mas- * Campbell, Popular Tales of the 
 
 ter Thief," 268. West Highlands, vol. i. p. 320. 
 
RHAMPSINITOS AND THE MASTER THIEF. 59 
 
 tions which we find in the Norse Master Thief" and the Shifty Lad CHAP. 
 
 of Highland tradition. Professor Max Miiller adds that "the case ■ Y"-~ - 
 
 would be different if the same story occurred in Herodotos." 
 
 " At the time of Herodotos." he continues, " the translations of The legend 
 the Hitopadesa had not yet reached Europe, and we should be ptimtos?" 
 obliged to include the Master Thief within the most primitive stock 
 of Aryan lore. But there is nothing in the story of the two sons of 
 the architect who robbed the treasury of Rhampsinitos which turns 
 on the trick of the Master Thief. There were thieves, more or less 
 clever, in Egypt as well as in India, and some of their stratagems 
 were possibly the same at all times. But there is a keen and well- 
 defined humour in the story of the Brahman and his deference to 
 public opinion. Of this there is no trace in the anecdote told by 
 Herodotos. That anecdote deals with mere matter of fact, whether 
 imaginary or historical. The story of Rhampsinitos did enter into 
 the popular literature of Europe, but through a different channel. 
 We find it in the " Gesta Romanorum," where Octavianus has taken 
 the place of Rhampsinitos, and we can hardly doubt that there it 
 came originally from Herodotos." 1 But what are really the facts of 
 the case? The evidence which proves that the Herodotean story 
 was reproduced in the "Gesta Romanorum" cannot be taken as of 
 itself establishing the same origin for the Norse, the Teutonic, and 
 the Irish legend. The incident of the Brahman and the goat may 
 be left on one side, as only distantly resembling a very subordinate 
 part of the Norse version ; but the real story of the Master Thief's 
 career is precisely the story of the architect's son in the legend of 
 Rhampsinitos. The possible affinity of thievish stratagems in all 
 countries can scarcely account for a series of extraordinary incidents 
 and astounding tricks following each other in the same order, although 
 utterly different in their outward garb and colouring. Strangely 
 enough, the Highland version, which agrees with the Norse tale in 
 making the young thief cheat his master, agrees most closely with 
 the Egyptian myth. 2 In the latter, the younger of the two sons who 
 
 1 Chips from a German Workshop, wealth of Rhampsinitos as amassed by 
 
 ii. 231. extortion if not by direct robbery. Here 
 
 1 The groundwork of the Arabian also one of the brothers is unlucky ; 
 
 Nights' story of the Forty Thieves is but although he is found alive in the 
 
 manifestly the same, but the likeness to cave, the thieves are none the wiser, 
 
 the legend of Rhampsinitos is not as he is immediately killed. Here too 
 
 nearly so close. Here, however, as in the body is nailed up against the wall, 
 
 the Egyptian tale, we have two brothers, but it is within the cave; and it is 
 
 who become possessed of the secret of a taken away by the other brother, who 
 
 treasure-house. The king is replaced is impelled to this task, not by the 
 
 by the forty thieves ; but it may be mother of the dead man, but by his 
 
 noted that Herodotos speaks of the wife. The thieves are not less per- 
 
60 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK have learnt from their father the secret of entering the treasure-house 
 
 ■ ■ ' ' - is caught in a trap, placed there by the king when he found his gold 
 
 and jewels dwindling away. At his own request the elder brother 
 cuts off his head, and the king, astounded at finding a headless body, 
 bids his guards to impale it on a wall, with strict charge to bring 
 before him any one whom they might hear mourning for the dead 
 man. The mother, seeing her son's body thus exposed, threatens 
 to tell the king everything unless the body is brought safely home 
 to her. Loading some asses with skins full of wine, the elder son, 
 as he approaches the guard, loosens the string of two or three wine- 
 skins, and the soldiers, rushing up at the sight of wine trickling on 
 the ground, try to soothe the seemingly distracted owner, while they 
 solace themselves by the liquor which they catch in their cups, until 
 at length, overcoming the young man's reluctance, they sit down 
 with him, and drink themselves to sleep. The dead body is then 
 taken away by the brother, who, hearing of the new device by which 
 the king proposed to catch him, crowns his exploits by cheating the 
 king's daughter, and leaving a dead man's hand in hers. His mar- 
 riage with the princess follows, and he is held in honour as the 
 cleverest man of the cleverest people in the world. 1 
 The story The Hindu version of the story of Rhampsinitos is in every way 
 
 ancf Gata ra mferior to the well-pointed legend of Herodotos. It is related by 
 Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmir in his " Ocean of the Streams oi 
 Narrative," a professed abridgement of the still older collection called 
 the Vrihat Katha. In this tale the elder of the two thieves simply 
 makes a hole through the wall (which would at once betray their 
 mode of entrance) in order to reach the chamber in which the king 
 has placed not only his treasures but his daughter. He remains 
 with her too long, and being caught in the morning, is hanged, but 
 not before he has by signs bidden his brother Gata to carry off and 
 save the princess. Gata therefore on the next night enters the 
 chamber of the princess, who readily agrees to fly with him. The 
 body of Karpara is then exposed, in order to catch the surviving 
 malefactor, who tricks them much after the fashion of the Egyptian 
 story, the chief difference being that Gata burns the body of his 
 
 plexed than Rhampsinitos when they the action of lightning. —Curious Myths 
 
 find that the body has been removed, of the Middle Ages, second series, 
 
 and that thus some one else is possessed "Schamir." 
 
 of their secret. The spell which opens The story of Rhampsinitos becomes 
 
 the cave connects the Arabian story in the Seven Wise Masters the tale of 
 
 with the vast mass of legends turning the " Man who threw his father's head 
 
 on substances which have the power of in a muck-heap." 
 
 splitting rocks, and which Mr. Gould ' Herodotos, ii. 121, &c • Tales of 
 
 has resolved into phrases descriptive of Ancient Greece, 385. ' ' 
 
KARPARA AND GATA. 6l 
 
 brother Karpara, for whom he contrives to perform the necessary chap. 
 amount of mourning by dashing on the ground a karpara, er pot of '■ • 
 
 rice, and then bewailing his loss by the words, " Alas for my precious 
 Karpara," — words which the guards of course apply to the broken 
 pipkin, and not to the dead thief The story winds up with a pro- 
 clamation from the king, promising half his realm to the magician 
 who has done all this : but the princess bids him beware, and Gata 
 goes away with her to another country. 1 
 
 The mason's secret is much more closely reproduced in the story The story 
 which Pausanias tells of Trophonios and Agamedes, the builders of phonios 
 the temple of Phoibos, after he had slain the dragon at Delphoi. an iy^ ga ~ 
 These two builders also raise the treasury of Hyrieus, placing one of 
 the stones so that they could remove it from the outside. Hyrieus, 
 astonished at the lessening of his wealth, sets a snare, in which 
 Agamedes is caught, and Trophonios cuts off his head to save him 
 from torture and himself from discovery. The latter precaution seems 
 unnecessary, since Pausanias adds that the earth opened and received 
 Trophonios as in the myth of Amphiaraos. 
 
 In the Scottish story the Shifty Lad goes through his apprentice- The 
 ship not among a company of thieves, but under the sole charge of 
 the Black Rogue, of whom he rids himself by getting him to try the 
 pleasant sensation of being hung by the neck. The trick answers to 
 that of the Norse thief, but the mode of effecting it differs widely. 
 Having disposed of his master, he engages himself to a carpenter 
 whom he persuades to break into the king's storehouse. The advice 
 of the Seanagal whom the king consults is that a hogshead of soft 
 pitch should be placed near the entrance. The wright, again making 
 the venture, sinks into the pitch, and the Shifty Lad, stepping in on 
 his shoulders, takes as much as he can carry, and then sweeping off 
 his master's head, leaves the body in the hogshead. Again the 
 Seanagal is consulted, and his answer is " that they should set the 
 trunk aloft on the points of the spears of the soldiers, to be carried 
 from town to town, to see if they could find any one at all that would 
 take sorrow for it." As they pass by the wright's house, his wife 
 screams, but the Shifty Lad cutting himself with an adze leads the 
 captain of the guard to think that the cry was caused by sorrow at 
 
 1 See Mr. Cowell's Paper " On the the legends which tell of unsuccessful 
 
 Hindu Version of the Story of Rham- attempts to rescue the imprisoned 
 
 psinitos," in the Journal of Philosophy, maiden, who is finally won only by the 
 
 No. I. p. 66. The imprisonment of the peerless knight or irresistible warrior 
 
 king's daughter in the treasure-chamber who can leap the hedge of spears or 
 
 can scarcely fail to remind us of Bryn- cross the fiery barrier. See also book 
 
 hild within her flaming walls ; and thus ii. ch. viii. sect. 2. 
 the myth seems to exhibit an affinity to 
 
62 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK his own hurt. The body is then by the king's order hung on a tree, 
 
 ■ '- • the guard being ordered to seize any one who should venture to take 
 
 it down. The lad, driving before him a horse loaded with two kegs 
 of whisky, approaches the soldiers as though he wished to pass them 
 stealthily, and when they catch the horse's bridle, he runs off, leaving 
 the men to drink themselves to sleep, and then returning takes 
 away the wright's body. This exploit is followed by others which 
 occur in no other version : but the final scene is a feast, at which, 
 according to the Seanagal's prediction, the Shifty Lad asks the king's 
 daughter to dance. The Seanagal upon this puts a black mark upon 
 him ; but the lad, like Morgiana in the story of " AH Baba and the 
 Forty Thieves," discovering the mark, puts another on the Seanagal, 
 and on twenty other men besides him. The king is then advised to 
 say that the man who had done every trick that had been done must 
 be exceedingly clever, and that if he would come forward and give 
 himself up, he should have the princess for his wife. All the marked 
 men accordingly claim the prize ; and the craft of the Shifty Lad 
 is once more called into practice, to secure the maiden for himself. 1 
 Mr. Campbell, who relates this story, gives full weight to the sug- 
 gestion that the incidents in which it resembles the version of 
 Herodotos may "have been spread amongst the people by those 
 members of their families who study the classics at the Scotch Uni- 
 versities ; " but he adds with good reason, that if the resemblances to 
 other stories not classical are to be accounted for in the same way, 
 it must be supposed " that these books have all been read at some 
 time so widely in Scotland as to have become known to the labouring 
 population who speak Gaelic, and so long ago as to have been 
 forgotten by the instructed who speak English and study foreign 
 languages." 2 
 Point and In the Norse and Teutonic versions it seems impossible not to 
 these see ^ e most striking incident of the Egyptian tale in a connexion 
 
 stories. an( } under forms which force on us the conclusion that they are not 
 related to each other in any other way than by their growth from a 
 
 1 The theft of treasure by a clever huge mill-stone which he places round 
 
 rogue occurs in the story of the Travels his neck, and so keeps watch all night, 
 
 of Dummling, who is Boots under He is assailed by evil demons, but he 
 
 another name. Compare also Grimm's returns every blow with interest — a 
 
 stories of " The Four Accomplished description which reminds us of the 
 
 Brothers," "The Rogue and his Hesiodic narrative of the toil of Hermes 
 
 Master," and of the " Young Giant." the whole night through. The only 
 
 In the latter tale Hermes takes more reward which he asks is the pleasure of 
 
 the form of the Maruts, or Crushers ; kicking his master, who is sent spinning 
 
 and the myth of the Molionids is re- into the air and is never more seen, 
 enacted with singular exactness. The 2 Tales of the West Highlands, i. 
 
 young giant brings up from the water a 352. 
 
THE THEFTS OF HERMES. 63 
 
 common root In these versions the king is represented by a good- chap. 
 
 humoured squire who makes himself merry over the successful ■ : 
 
 devices of the Master Thief, as he accomplishes the several tasks 
 imposed upon him. These tasks taken separately are much the 
 same in each, but the difference of order indicates that no one was 
 regarded at the first as essentially more difficult than another. In 
 none of them, however, does the humour of the story turn on the 
 force of public opinion. The whole point lies in the utter inability 
 of any one to guard against the thief, even when they know that they 
 are going to be robbed and have themselves pointed out the object 
 to be stolen. Here, as in the stories of Rhampsinitos and the Shifty 
 Lad, the means for achieving one of the tasks is wine : but the thief 
 has to take away not the dead body of a man, but a living horse, on 
 which sits a groom, or, as in the Norse tale, twelve horses, each with 
 a rider guarding them. The disguise assumed by the thief is the 
 dress of a beggar-woman, and her wine, which in the German story 
 is powerfully drugged, soon puts the guards to sleep as soundly as 
 the soldiers of the Egyptian king. In this version the thief swings 
 the rider, saddle and all, in the air by ropes tied to the rafters of the 
 stable ; in the Norse tale, the twelve grooms find themselves astride 
 the beams in the morning. The theft of the sheet and ring from 
 the persons of the squire and his wife is an incident not found in 
 either the Egyptian or the Scottish stories ; but the trick practised on 
 the priest occurs again in the Hindu tale of the nautch-girl Champa 
 Ranee, under a disguise which cannot hide the common source from 
 which the stories have come down to us, while it leaves no room for 
 the notion that the one version has been suggested by the other. 
 
 But in truth the supposition is in this case wholly uncalled for. The 
 The story of the Master Thief was told in Europe, probably ages mLi™ 
 before the Homeric poems were put together, certainly ages before Thief - 
 Herodotos heard the story of the Egyptian treasure-house. In all 
 the versions of the tale the thief is a young and slender youth, 
 despised sometimes for his seeming weakness, never credited with 
 his full craft and strength. No power can withhold him from doing 
 aught on which he has set his mind : no human eye can trace the 
 path by which he conveys away his booty. It is the story of the 
 child Hermes, and even under the most uncouth disguise it has lost 
 but little either of its truthfulness or its humour. Bolts and bars are 
 no defence against him ; yet the babe whom Phoibos can shake in 
 his arms is the mighty marauder who has driven off all his oxen from 
 Pieria. When his work is done, he looks not much like one who 
 needs to be dreaded ; and the soft whistling sound which closes his 
 
^4 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK defence wakes a smile on the face of Phoibos, 1 as the Teutonic squire 
 \- laughs on finding himself tricked in the northern story. In each 
 case the robber is exalted to the same high dignity. 
 
 "Well, friend," said Apollon with a smile, "thou wilt break into 
 many a house, I see, and thy followers after thee ; and thy fancy for 
 beef will set many a herdsman grieving. But come down from the 
 cradle, or this sleep will be thy last Only this honour can I promise 
 thee, to be called the Master Thief for ever." 2 
 The origin The thief in the northern stories marries the squire's daughter, as 
 ° t f the of the architect's son marries the daughter of Rhampsinitos. The 
 the Master marriage represents the compact made between Phoibos the all- 
 seeing and Hermes the sweet .singer. In this peaceful alliance with 
 the squire the Teutonic tale leaves him ; but there are other sides to 
 the character of the Master Thief, and each of these describes with 
 singular fidelity the action and power of air in motion. He is the 
 child breathing softly in the cradle, he is the giant rooting up trees 
 in his fury. No living thing can resist the witchery of his harping. 
 As he draws nigh, life is wakened where before he came there had 
 been stillness as of the dead. With him comes joy or sorrow, health 
 or the pestilence. His lyre is the harp of Orpheus, and it discourses 
 the music of the Vedic Ribhus, or of the Finnic Wainamoinen, the 
 son of Ilmatar, the daughter of theAir, 3 whose singing draws the 
 sun and moon from heaven. The beasts of the field come to hear 
 him, like the clouds which gather in the sky when the wind blows ; 
 the trees move along his track when he comes in his sterner moods. 
 Nothing can remain still when he pipes. The leaf must wave on the 
 hill-side, the Jew must dance in the thorn-bush, while the music 
 lasts. 4 He is the Erlking, whose mysterious harmony is heard by 
 
 1 This is precisely reproduced by one literature into another being se- 
 Horace in his well-known ode, with an condary or inorganic. The number of 
 incident which is not mentioned in the stories belonging to the latter class is 
 Homeric hymn, but is in close agree- probably much smaller than is generally 
 ment with the spirit of the Norse tale. supposed. 
 
 — Carm. i. x. 3 As Hermes is one of the fire- 
 
 2 tovto yh.p oZv ical iirsiTa /xer a6a- making or fire-bringing gods, so Wai- 
 
 vdrois yepas ?£eis, nambinen catches the fish that has 
 
 APXOS *HAHTEfiN KeKK^creat swallowed the fire, which, struck by 
 
 ij/iara Trdvra. Ukko, the lord of the air, from the new 
 
 Hymn to Hermes, 292. sun and moon, has fallen into the sea. 
 
 This may, I think, be considered For an examination of the Finnic epic, 
 
 demonstrative evidence that the story see Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, i. 
 
 of the Master Thief belongs to the class 147, et seq. As the Finnish thunder- 
 
 of myths which Professor Max Miiller god, Ukko has his hammer, like the 
 
 calls organic, as being legends " which Slavonic Perkunos and the Teutonic 
 
 were known to the primeval Aryan Thor. 
 
 race, before it broke up into Hindus, * This story of "The Jew among the 
 
 Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Celts," Thorns," in Grimm's Household Tales, 
 
 all stories imported in later times from is reproduced under » hundred forms ; 
 
PAUL PRY AND PEEPING TOM. 65 
 
 the child nestled in his father's arms. 1 He is the piper of Hameln, 2 chap. 
 
 who drives away the noisome rats, but who also draws the«children ■ ^ — ■ 
 
 of the town happy and joyous to the blue river where they leave all 
 griefs behind them, as gently as the Homeric Psychopompos guides 
 the souls across the waters of Lethe. But in all his offices he retains 
 his character of searching subtlety. The barred gates of the unseen 
 land cannot stay the harping breeze, whether he comes as Orpheus 
 or Wainamoinen : and his curious searching into every nook and 
 cranny, his mocking laugh at those who come to see the mischief 
 wrought by him, are reproduced under a strange disguise in Paul 
 Pry and Peeping Tom of Coventry. Nay, the Hindu deity Rudra, 
 the " bountiful," the " gracious," the " thousand quivered," appears 
 sometimes in an aspect scarcely more dignified. Like Hermes and 
 the Shifty Lad, he too is " the lord of thieves, the robber, the cheater, 
 the deceiver, the lord of pilferers and robbers." 8 
 
 Thus, then, in the story of the Master Thief, the idea of any Limits tc- 
 lateral transmission becomes inadmissible. But as this tale in all thesiTof" 
 its modifications can be traced back to phrases denoting physical conscious 
 phenomena, we have yet to see whether there are other tales which 
 apparently cannot be resolved into such expressions, and for which 
 the idea of any such borrowing is equally untenable or superfluous. 
 If any such stories be forthcoming, we cannot avoid the conclusion 
 that before the several branches of the Aryan race separated from 
 their common home, they not only had in their language the germs 
 of all future mythological systems, but carried with them as nursery 
 tales a number of stories not evolved from phrases descriptive of 
 natural phenomena, the ideas of which were impressed on their minds 
 not less firmly than the more strictly mythical words and phrases 
 were impressed on their memories. These stories were, however, 
 little more than outlines, for it cannot be too often repeated that even 
 
 but in few or none of these can it be * " Horest du nicht 
 
 maintained with any show of reason Was Erlenkonig mir leise verspricht ? " 
 that one has been deliberately adapted Goethe. 
 
 from another. The fiddle which makes 2 The magic pipe or lyre reappears 
 
 the Jew dance is reproduced in the form in the legend of "The Rose of the 
 
 of a stick in "The Lad who went to Alhambra," where it is applied with 
 
 the North Wind " (Dasent, Norse Tales, great humour to cure the mad freak of 
 
 263). The stick is of course the gift Philip V.— Irving's Alhambra. 
 of the wind, just as Hermes gives the 3 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. ch. 
 
 harp to Phoibos. In the German story iii. section vii. Slightly altered, the 
 
 the Jew is made to yield up his purse to story of Godiva in Coventry is told 
 
 the fiddler, who, when brought to trial, again in the tale of Allah-ud-deen, 
 
 excuses himself by a quibble like that who sees through a crevice the king's 
 
 of Hermes. He had not robbed any daughter on her way to the bath, when 
 
 one : the Jew gave the money of his it is death for any one to be seen abroad 
 
 own'free will. Hermes is a very truthful or to be found looking on her. 
 person and knows not how to tell a He. 
 
66 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK in the tales which exhibit the closest likeness in their most developed 
 • forms, the points of difference in detail and colouring are so striking 
 as to leave no room for doubt that the Aryan tribes carried away with 
 them for these stories no rigid types to which they were compelled to 
 adhere with Egyptian slavishness, but living ideas which each tribe 
 might from time to time clothe in a different garb. How these ideas 
 were furnished is a question which it may be by no means as easy to 
 answer as it is to resolve the life of Achilleus and Meleagros into the 
 daily course of the sun through the heavens. It becomes therefore 
 of the utmost importance in such an inquiry as this, to bring together 
 and compare the popular traditions of nations whose geographical 
 positions show that their parting when they left the common home 
 was for them a final separation. No one could have the hardi- 
 hood to maintain that the countrymen of Herman had access to the 
 pages of Pausanias, or that the soldiers of Varus had in their child- 
 hood listened to stories borrowed from the epic of Wainamoinen, 
 Yet the children's tales gathered during the last half-century have 
 established the general affinity of the folk-lore of Greeks, Romans, 
 Germans, and Scandinavians, and a likeness not less astonishing runs 
 through the popular tales of these races and those of the Hindu. 1 
 In India, as in Germany, old women, who doubtless thought them- 
 selves fit for nothing, have preserved to us a series of exquisite 
 legends which pour a flood of light on the early history of the human 
 mind. The Hindu child is still roused and soothed by the stories 
 of the sweet Star-Lady and the lovely Queen of the Five Flowers, 
 just as the young German and Norseman used to listen to the tale 
 of the beautiful Briar-rose sleeping in death-like stillness until the 
 kiss of the pure Knight rouses her from her slumber. We are clearly 
 debtors to the old women for the preservation of thousands of lovely 
 and touching legends which have never found their way into epic 
 poetry. Had it not been for the grandmothers of Hellas, we should 
 in all likelihood never have heard of the grief of Demeter, as she 
 sank down by the fountain in Eleusis, or of the woe of Telephassa, 
 which ended as she sank to rest on the Thessalian plain in the 
 evening. Schools in Athens, Thebes, or Argos, doubtless did their 
 inevitable destructive work ; but we can as little doubt that many 
 an Athenian mother pointed on the slopes of Hymettos to the spot 
 
 » Old Deccan Days a series of tales finitely enhanced if, as the translator 
 
 taken down from the dictation of Anna assures us, they are given precisely as 
 
 Mi,? fL/ -r? Za ' . aD - d translat r ed b y the y ™e from the lips of the narrator, 
 
 Miss *rere. The stories are of great without additions or embellishments 
 importance; but their value is inde- "ausnments. 
 
TRANSMISSION OF POPULAR TALES. 67 
 
 where the glistening form of Prokris first met the eye of I^ephalos chap. 
 as he stepped forth on the shore, and the young Delian learnt to be *— — '■ — -- 
 proud of the rugged island, where the nymphs bathed the infant 
 Phoibos in pure water and swathed him in broad golden bands. 
 Clearly we have to thank old crones for the story of Narkissos who 
 died for love of his own fair face, and of Selene' gazing on Endymion 
 as he slept on the hill of Latmos. 
 
 Among these Hindu tales we find a large class of stories which Frame- 
 have little or nothing in common with the epic poems of the Aryan popular 
 nations, but which exhibit a series of incidents in striking parallelism storles - 
 with those of the corresponding Teutonic versions. These incidents 
 are in themselves so strange, and the result is brought about by turns 
 so unexpected, that the idea of their independent developement among 
 separated tribes who had carried away with them nothing but some 
 proverbial sayings as the groundwork of these stories becomes a wild 
 extravagance. Whatever the consequences may be, the conclusion 
 seems irresistible that these stories had been wrought out into some 
 detail, while these tribes or nations still continued to form a single 
 people; and if these tales can scarcely be resolved into phrases 
 denoting physical phenomena, they are perhaps more wonderful even 
 than the epic poems, the growth of which from common germs would 
 be inevitable if the theory of comparative mythologists be regarded 
 as established. The resemblances between these stories may perhaps 
 bring down the time of separation to a comparatively late period ; 
 but the geographical position of Hindu and German tribes must still 
 throw that time back to an indefinitely distant past ; and close as the 
 parallelism may be, the differences of detail and colouring are such 
 that we cannot suppose these Aryan emigrants to have carried away 
 with them to their new abodes more than the leading incidents 
 grafted on the leading idea. The fidelity with which the Hindu 
 and the German tales adhere to this framework is indeed astonishing. 
 ' One of the most remarkable of these coincidences is furnished by The ; story^ 
 the story of the "Dog and the Sparrow," in Grimm's collection, 1 °Ji t e he ° s 
 as compared with an episode in the " Wanderings of Vicram Maha- Sparrow, 
 raja." In both a bird vows to bring about the ruin of a human 
 being ; in both the bird is the helper and avenger of the innocent 
 against wanton injury, and in both the destruction of the guilty is the 
 result of their own voluntary acts. There are other points of like- 
 ness, the significance of which is heightened by points of singularly 
 subtle difference. In the German story, the sparrow is offended 
 
 1 For a Russian variant of the " Dog and Sparrow," see, Gubernatis, Zoological 
 Mythology, ii. 268. 
 
68 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK because a carter, not heeding the warning which she had given him, 
 L drove his waggon over a dog which she had saved from starving. 
 
 " You have killed my brother, the dog," she said, " and that shall 
 cost you your horses and your cart." 
 
 " Horses and cart, indeed," said the carrier. " What harm can 
 you do to me ? " and he drove on. 
 
 But presently the sparrow contrived to force out the cork from 
 the bunghole of one of the casks in the waggon, and all the wine ran 
 out on the ground. " Ah me ! I am a poor man now," cried the 
 carter, when he saw it. " Not poor enough yet," said the sparrow, 
 as she perched on the head of one of the horses, and picked out his 
 eye. The carter in his rage took up his hatchet to kill the bird, but 
 instead of it, he hit his horse, which fell down dead. So it fared 
 with the second cask and the two remaining horses. Leaving his 
 waggon on the road, the carter found his way home, and bemoaned 
 to his wife the loss of his wine and his beasts. 
 
 "Ah my husband," she replied, "and what a wicked bird has 
 come to this house ; she has brought with her all the birds in the 
 world, and there they sit among our corn, and are eating every ear 
 of it." 
 
 " Ah me, I am poorer than ever," said the man, as he beheld the 
 havoc. " Still not poor enough, carrier ; it shall cost you your life," 
 said the bird as she flew away. By and by the sparrow appeared at 
 the window-sill, and uttered the same words, and the carrier, hurling 
 his axe at it, broke the window-frame in two. Every other piece of 
 furniture in the house was demolished as he vainly attempted to hit 
 the bird. At length he caught her, and his wife asked if she should 
 kill her. 
 
 " No," said he, " that were too merciful ; she shall die much more 
 horribly, for I will eat her alive." So saying, he swallowed her 
 whole ; but she began to flutter about in his stomach, and presently 
 came again into his mouth, and cried out, " Carrier, it shall cost you 
 your life." 
 
 Thereupon the man handed the axe to his wife, saying, " Kill me 
 the wretch dead in my mouth." His wife took it, and aimed a blow, 
 but missing her mark struck her husband on the head and killed him. 
 Then the sparrow flew away and was never seen there again. 1 
 
 1 This last incident is clearly the head with the axe. This story from 
 
 same as that which brings about the the Panchatantra Professor Max Miiller 
 
 death of the bald carpenter, who being (Chips, &°c, ii. 232) identifies with the 
 
 attacked by a mosquito called his son fable in Phaadrus, of the bald man who, 
 
 to drive it away. The son aiming a trying to kill a gnat, gives himself a 
 
 blow at the insect, splits his father's severe blow in the face, and he attri- 
 
GERMAN AND HINDU STORIES. 69 
 
 In the Hindu story the bird is a parrot, and the dog's place is CHAP, 
 taken by a poor woodcutter, from whom a dancing-girl attempts to • — ^- — • 
 extort a large sum of money by deliberate falsehood. The girl thus ofthe tory 
 represents the carter, and at once the framework of the tale is provided; ^ ] u ^" 
 but the method by which the sparrow wreaks her vengeance on the man the Parrot, 
 is thoroughly awkward and unartistic when compared with the simple 
 scheme which brings about the ruin of the nautch-woman. She, like 
 the carrier, is rich ; but she cannot resist the temptation of making 
 more money by charging the woodcutter with the dowry which she 
 said that he had promised to pay on marrying her, the promise and 
 the marriage being alike purely imaginary. The raja, being called 
 to give judgement in the case, determines to abide by the decision of 
 a parrot famed for his wisdom, and belonging to a merchant in the 
 town. When the woodcutter had given his version of the matter, 
 the parrot bade Champa Ranee, the nautch-girl, tell her story. After 
 hearing it, he asked where the house was to which her husband had 
 taken her. " Far away in the jungles," was the reply. "And how 
 long ago ? " The day was named, and twenty witnesses proved that 
 Champa was at the time in the city. The parrot then gave judge- 
 ment for the woodcutter against the nautch-girl, as the sparrow had 
 befriended the dog against the carter. Great was the praise bestowed 
 on the wise parrot, but the incensed nautch-girl said, " Be assured 
 I will get you in my power, and when I do, I will bite off your head." 
 
 Then follows the vow of the parrot, answering to the oath of the 
 sparrow ; but he has no need to repeat it. 
 
 "Try your worst, madam," said he, "but in return I tell you 
 this ; I will live to make you a beggar. Your house shall be by your 
 own orders laid even with the ground, and you for grief and rage shall 
 kill yourself." 
 
 Time goes on, and the nautch-girl, summoned to the merchant's 
 house, dances so well that he asks her to name her own reward ; and 
 the price which she demands is the parrot, Taking the bird home, 
 she ordered her servants to cook it for her supper, first cutting off its 
 head and bringing it to be grilled, that she might eat it before tasting 
 any other dish. The parrot is accordingly plucked, but while the 
 servant goes to fetch water wherein to boil him, the bird, who had 
 pretended to be dead and thus escaped having his neck wrung, slipped 
 into a hole let into the wall for carrying off the kitchen sewage. In 
 this dilemma the maid grilled a chicken's head, and placed it before 
 Champa Ranee, who, as she eat it, said — 
 
 butes it, therefore, to some old Aryan carter has certainly all the appearance 
 proverb. The German story of the of a more independent growth. 
 
•JO MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book "Ah ! pretty Polly, so here is the end of you. This is the brain 
 
 _£: that thought so cunningly and devised my overthrow; this the tongue' 
 
 that spoke against me; this is the throat through which came the 
 threatening words. Ha ! ha ! who is right now, I wonder ? " 
 
 With some little fear the parrot heard her words, for the loss of 
 his wing feathers had left him unable to fly ; but at length he con- 
 trived to find his way to a neighbouring temple, and to perch behind 
 the idol. It was the favourite god of Champa Ranee, who, in her 
 abject fear of death, had long besought him to translate her to 
 heaven without the process of dying. So when she next came to 
 offer her wonted supplication, the parrot spoke, and the nautch-girl 
 at once took its words for the utterances of the god. 
 
 " Champa Ranee, nautch-girl, your prayer is heard, this is what 
 you must do ; sell all you possess, and give the money to the poor, 
 and you must also give money to all your servants and dismiss them. 
 Level also your house to the ground, that you may be wholly 
 separated from earth. Then you will be fit for heaven, and you may 
 come, having done all I command you, on this day week to this 
 place, and you shall be transported thither body and soul." 1 
 
 The infatuated woman does as she is bidden, and after destroying 
 her house and giving away all her goods, she returns to the temple, 
 attended by a vast train of men and women whom she had invited 
 to be witnesses of her glorification. 
 
 1 This incident recurs in the Norse you in a sack ; and all your gold and 
 version of the Master Thief. Here, your silver and all that you have of 
 however, there is no real bird, but only this world's goods you must lay together 
 the thief disguised as a bird, nor are in a heap in your dining-room. ' Well, 
 the victims of the trick actually killed. Father Lawrence fell on his knees be- 
 but they are grievously mauled, and fore the angel and thanked him; and 
 are robbed as effectually as the nautch- the very next day he preached a. fare- 
 girl. What is more to the point is, that well sermon and gave it out how there 
 the property is in each case abandoned had come down an angel into the big 
 by an act of their own'free will. Having maple in his garden, who had told him 
 undertaken to cheat the priest and his that he was to be taken up alive into 
 clerk, the thief "dressed himself up heaven for his piety's sake, and he 
 like a bird, threw a great white sheet preached and made such a touching dis- 
 over his body, took the wings of a course that all who were at church wept, 
 goose and tied them to his back, and both young and old." — Dasent, Norse 
 so climbed up into a great maple which Tales, "Master Thief." Here, as in 
 stood in the priest's garden, and when the Hindu story, the time is fixed, and 
 the priest came home in the evening the farewell sermon answers to the in- 
 the 1 youth began to bawl out, ' Father vitations sent out by Champa Ranee to 
 Lawrence, Father Lawrence, ' — for that all her friends that they should come 
 was the priest's name. ' Who is that and witness her ascension. Another 
 calling me?' said the priest. ' I am an priest is deceived in the admirable 
 angel,' said the Master Thief, 'sent Gaelic story of the " Son of the Scottish 
 from God to let you know that you Yeoman who stole the Bishop's Horse 
 shall be taken up alive into heaven for and Daughter, and the Bishop Himself." 
 your piety's sake. Next Monday night See also Mr. Campbell's excellent re- 
 you must hold yourself ready for the marks on this story, Tales of the West 
 journey, for I shall come then to fetch Highlands, ii. 263. 
 
THE STORY OF CHAMPA RANEE. 7 1 
 
 As they waited, a fluttering of little wings was heard, and a parrot chap. 
 
 flew over Champa Ranee's head, calling out, " Nautch-girl, nautch- ■ : — • 
 
 girl, what have you done ? " Champa Ranee recognised the voice as 
 Vicram's : he went on, " Will you go body and soul to heaven ? 
 Have you forgotten Polly's words ? " 
 
 Champa Ranee rushed into the temple, and falling on her knees 
 before the idol, cried out, " Gracious Power, I have done all as you 
 commanded ; let your words come true ; save me, take me to heaven." 
 
 But the parrot above her cried, "Good-bye, Champa Ranee, 
 good-bye ; you ate a chicken's head, not mine. Where is your house 
 now ? Where are your servants and all your possessions ? Have 
 my words come true, think you, or yours ? " 
 
 Then the woman saw all, and in her rage and despair, cursing her 
 own folly, she fell violently down on the floor of the temple, and, 
 dashing her head against the stone, killed herself. 1 
 
 It is impossible to question the real identity of these two stories, Origin 
 and incredible that the one could have been invented apart from the of these W 
 other, or that the German and the Hindu tale are respectively stor 'es. 
 developements merely from the same leading idea. This idea is that 
 beings of no repute may be avengers of successful wrongdoers, or to 
 put it in the language of St. Paul, that the weak things of the earth 
 may be chosen to confound the strong, and foolish things to confound 
 the wise. But it was impossible that this leading idea should of 
 itself suggest to a Hindu and a Teuton that the avenger should be a 
 bird, that the wrongdoer should punish himself, and should seal his 
 doom by swallowing his persecutor or by at least thinking that he 
 was devouring him. There is no room here for the argument which 
 Professor Max Miiller characterises as sneaking when applied even 
 to fables which are common to all the members of the Aryan family. 2 
 A series of incidents such as these could never have been thought 
 out by two brains working apart from each other ; and we are driven 
 to admit that at least the machinery by which the result was to be 
 brought about had been devised before the separation, or to main- 
 tain that the story has in the one case or in the other been imported 
 bodily. Probably no instance could be adduced m which a bor- 
 rowed story diners so widely from the original. In all cases of 
 adaptation the borrower either improves upon the idea or weakens 
 it. Here both the stories exhibit equally clear tokens of vigorous 
 and independent growth. 8 
 
 1 Frere, Old Dcccan Days, p. 127. ' It is scarcely an exaggeration to 
 
 1 Chips from a German Workshop, say that there is scarcely one important 
 
 ii. 233. feature of the Hindu popular stories 
 
72 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 and Her- 
 motimos. 
 
 But the story of the nautch-girl is only one incident in a larger 
 drama. The bird of the German tale is a common sparrow ; the 
 <rf h Vioram S parrot which brings about the death of Champa Ranee is nothing 
 less than the Maharaja Vicram, who has received from the god of 
 wisdom the power of transporting his soul into any other body, while 
 by an antidote he keeps his own body from corruption. And here 
 we are brought to a parallelism which cannot be accounted for on 
 any theory of mediaeval importation. The story of Vicram is essen- 
 tially the story of Hermotimos of Klazomenai, whose soul wanders at 
 will through space, while his body remains undecayed at home, until 
 his wife, tired out by his repeated desertions, burns his body while 
 he is away, and thus effectually prevents his resuming his proper 
 form. A popular Deccan tale, which is also told by Pliny and 
 Lucian, must have existed, if only in a rudimentary state, while 
 Greeks and Hindus still lived as a single people. But a genuine 
 humour, of which we have little more than a faint germ in the Greek 
 legend, runs through the Hindu story. In both the wife is vexed by 
 the frequent absence of her husband : but the real fun of the Deccan 
 
 which are not to be found in those of 
 Germany and Scandinavia, and which 
 are not repeated in Celtic traditions. 
 In each case the story is the same, yet 
 not the same, and the main question 
 becomes one rather of historical than of 
 philological evidence. The substantial 
 identity of the tales is indisputable ; 
 and if the fact be that these stories 
 were in the possession of Germans and 
 Norwegians, Irishmen and Scottish 
 Highlanders, long before any systematic 
 attempt was made to commit to writing 
 and publish the folklore of Europe, the 
 further conclusion is also involved that 
 these stories do not owe their diffusion 
 to book-learning ; and assuredly the 
 commercial intercourse which would ac- 
 count for them implies an amount and 
 a frequency of communication beyond 
 that of the most stirring and enter- 
 prising nations of the present day. Mr. 
 Campbell, in his invaluable collection 
 of Popular Tales of the West High- 
 lands, dismisses the hypothesis as 
 wholly untenable. Of the notion that 
 these Highland traditions may have 
 sprung up since the publication of 
 Grimm's and Dasent's collections of 
 German and Norse tales, he asserts 
 that a manuscript lent to him by the 
 translator proves that the stories were 
 known in Scotland before these transla- 
 tions were made public (vol. i. p. xlvi. ), 
 and adds, reasonably enough, that 
 
 " when all the narrators agree in saying 
 that they have known these stories all 
 their lives, and when the variation is so 
 marked, the resemblance is rather to be 
 attributed to common origin than to 
 books" (ib. xlviii.). More definitely he 
 asserts, " After working for a year and 
 weighing all the evidence that has come 
 in my way, I have come to agree with 
 those who hold that popular tales are 
 generally pure traditions " (ib. 227). 
 The care with which he has examined 
 the large bodies of Celtic traditions, 
 gives his judgement the greatest weight, 
 and fully justifies his conclusion that 
 " popular tales are woven together in a 
 network which seems to pervade the 
 world, and to be fastened to everything 
 in it. Tradition, books, history, and 
 mythology hang together; no sooner 
 has the net been freed from one snag, 
 and a mesh gained, than another mesh 
 is discovered ; and so, unless many 
 hands combine, the net and the con- 
 tents will never be brought to shore " 
 (ib. 229). It is not a little startling to 
 find that the so-called classical mytho- 
 logy of the Greeks, in which the myth 
 of Psyche" was supposed to be almost 
 the only popular tale accidentally pre- 
 served to us, contains the germs, and 
 more than the germs, of nearly every 
 story in the popular traditions of Ger- 
 many, Norway, India, and Scotland. 
 
THE SLEEP OF VICRAM. 73 
 
 tale rises from the complications produced by the carpenter's son, chap. 
 
 who overhears the god Gunputti as he teaches Vicram th# mystic ■ '■ ' 
 
 words which enable him to pass from his own body into another ; 
 but as he could not see the antidote which Vicram received to keep 
 his tenantless body -from decay, the carpenter's son was but half 
 enlightened. No sooner, however, had Vicram transferred his soul 
 to the parrot's body, than the carpenter's son entered the body of 
 Vicram, and the work of corruption began in his own. The pseudo- 
 raja is at once detected by the Wuzeer Butti, who stands to Vicram 
 in the relation of Patroklos to Achilleus, or of Theseus to Peirithoos, 
 and who recommends the whole court to show a cold shoulder to the 
 impostor, and make his sojourn in Vicram's body as unpleasant as 
 possible. Worn out at last with waiting, Butti sets off to search for 
 his friend, and by good luck is one of the throng assembled to 
 witness the ascension of Champa Ranee. Butti recognises his friend, 
 and at once puts him into safe keeping in a cage. On reaching 
 home it became necessary to get the carpenter's son out of Vicram's 
 body, and the Wuzeer, foreseeing that this would be no easy task, 
 proposes a butting match between two rams, the one belonging to 
 himself, the other to the pseudo-raja. Butti accordingly submits his 
 own ram to a training, which greatly hardens his horns; and so 
 when the fight began, the pretended raja, seeing to his vexation 
 that his favourite was getting the worst in the battle, transported his 
 soul into the ram's body, to add to its strength and resolution. No 
 sooner was this done, than Vicram left the parrot's body and re- 
 entered his own, and Butti, slaying the defeated ram, put an end to 
 the life of the carpenter's son, by leaving him no body in which to 
 take up his abode. But fresh troubles were in store for Butti ; and 
 these troubles take us back to the legends of Brynhild and Perse- 
 phone, of Tammuz (Athamas), Adonis, and Osiris. Not yet cured 
 of his wandering propensities, Vicram goes to sleep in a jungle with 
 his mouth open, into which creeps a cobra who refuses to be dis- 
 lodged — the deadly snake of winter and darkness, which stings the 
 beautiful Eurydike, and lies coiled around the maiden on the glisten- 
 ing heath. The raja, in his intolerable misery, leaves his home, just 
 as Persephone is taken away from Demeter, and Butti seeks him in 
 vain for twelve years (the ten years of the struggle at Ilion), as he 
 roams in the disguise of a fakeer. Meanwhile, the beautiful Buc- 
 coulee who had recognised her destined husband under his squalid 
 rags as Eurykleia recognises Odysseus, had succeeded in freeing 
 Vicram from his tormentor, and thus all three returned to the long 
 forsaken Anar Ranee. But before we examine incidents which take 
 
74 MYTHOL.OGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK us into the more strictly mythical regions of Aryan folk-lore, it is 
 
 • ~ • necessary to show how large is that class of stories to which the tale 
 
 of the Dancing Girl and the Woodcutter belongs. There are some 
 which are even more remarkable for their agreement in the general 
 scheme with thorough divergence in detail. 
 The Table, In the story entitled " The Table, the Ass, and the Stick," in 
 
 the Ass 
 
 and the' Grimm's collection, a goat, whose appetite cannot be satisfied, brings 
 Stick - a tailor into grievous trouble by leading him to drive his three sons 
 away from their home on groundless charges. At last, finding that 
 he had been cheated, he scourges the goat, which makes the best of 
 its way from his dwelling. Meanwhile, the three sons had each been 
 learning a trade, and each received his reward. To the eldest son 
 was given a table, which at the words " Cover thyself," at once pre- 
 sented a magnificent banquet ; the second received a donkey, which 
 on hearing the word " Bricklebrit " rained down gold pieces, 1 and 
 both were deprived pf their gifts by a thievish innkeeper, to whom 
 they had in succession revealed their secret. On reaching home, 
 the eldest son, boasting to his father of his inexhaustible table, was 
 discomfited by finding that some common table had been put in its 
 place ; and the second in like manner, in making trial of his ass, 
 found himself in possession of a very ordinary donkey. But the 
 youngest son had not yet returned, and to him they sent word of the 
 scurvy behaviour of the innkeeper. When the time of the third son's 
 departure came, his master gave him a sack, adding, " In it there lies 
 a stick." The young man took the sack as a thing that might do him 
 good service, but asked why he should take the stick, as it only made 
 
 1 This donkey is, in fact, Midas, at they grant to her the power of becoming 
 
 whose touch everything turns to gold — more beautiful every day, and that a 
 
 a myth which reappears in the Irish piece of gold shall fall out of her mouth 
 
 tradition of Lavra Loingsech, who had every word that she speaks. But she 
 
 horse's ears, as Midas had those of an has a step-sister, the winter, who, not 
 
 ass. The reeds betrayed the secret in having her kindly feelings, refuses to 
 
 the case of Midas ; the barber of Lavra share her bread with the dwarfs, who 
 
 whispered the secret in the Irish story decree that she shall grow more ugly 
 
 to a willow ; the willow was cut down every day, and that toads shall spring 
 
 and the harp made of the wood mur- from her mouth whenever she speaks, 
 
 mured "Lavra Loingsech has horse's This is the story of "Bushy Bride" 
 
 ears." (Fergusson, The Irish before the in Dasent's' Norse Tales. The dawn- 
 
 Conquest.) The horse and the ass children reappear in the story of Hansel 
 
 doubtless represent the Harits of Hindu and Grethel, who, wandering into the 
 
 mythology ; the production of gold (the forest (of night or winter), come upon 
 
 golden light) by the sun or the dawn a house with windows made of clear 
 
 recurs again and again in Aryan legends. sugar (ice), where they fall into the 
 
 In Grimm's story of the "Three Little power of a witch (Hades), who, like 
 
 Men in the Wood," the kindly dawn- the dwarfs, guards the hoard of treasure, 
 
 child shares her bread with the dwarfs, The old witch is destroyed by Grethel 
 
 who, as in the Volsung tale, guard the after the fashion of the cannibal in the 
 
 treasures of the earth, and in return Zulu tale. (Max Muller, Chips, ii. 214.) 
 
GERMAN AND HINDU TALES. 75 
 
 the sack heavier to carry. The stick, however, was endowed with CHAP. 
 
 the power of jumping out of the sack and belabouring any one • - ■ 
 
 against whom its owner had a grudge. Thus armed, the youth went 
 cheerfully to the house of the innkeeper, who, thinking that the sack 
 must certainly contain treasure, tried to take it from the young man's 
 pillow while he slept. But he had reckoned without his host. The 
 stick hears the fatal word, and at once falls without mercy on the 
 thief, who roars out that he will surrender the table and the ass. 
 Thus the three gifts reach the tailor's house. 1 As for the goat, 
 whose head the tailor had shaven, it ran into a fox's house, where 
 a bee stung its bald pate, and it rushed out, never to be heard of 
 again. 
 
 In the Deccan tale we have a jackal and a barber in the place of The 
 the goat and the tailor : and the mischief is done, not by leading the the j ac i ia i > 
 barber to expel his children, but by cheating him of the fruits of his ?, n< y he 
 garden. The parallel, however, is not confined to the fact of the 
 false pretences ; the barber retaliates, like the tailor, and inflicts a 
 severe wound on the jackal. As before, in the German story, the 
 goat is a goat; but the jackal is a transformed raja, none other in 
 short than the Beast who is wedded to Beauty and the monster who 
 becomes the husband of Psyche, and thus even this story lies within 
 the magic circle of strictly mythical tradition. But before he wins his 
 bride, the jackal-raja is reduced to sore straits, and his adventures 
 give occasion for some sharp satire on Hindu popular theology. 
 Coming across a bullock's carcass, the jackal eats his way into it, 
 while the sun so contracts the hide that the jackal finds himself unable 
 to get out Fearing to be killed if discovered, or to be buried alive if 
 he escaped notice, the jackal, on the approach of the scavengers, 
 cries out, "Take care,, good people, how you touch me, for I am a 
 great saint." The mahars in terror ask him who he is, and what he 
 wants. " I," answered the jackal, " am a very holy saint. I am also 
 the god of your village, and I am very angry with you, because you 
 never worship me nor bring me offerings." " O my lord," they cried, 
 "what offerings will please you ? Tell us only, and we will bring you 
 whatever you like." " Good," said the jackal ; " then you must fetch 
 hither plenty of rice, plenty of flowers, and a nice fat chicken : place 
 them as an offering beside me, and pour a great deal of water over 
 them, as you do at your most solemn feasts, and then I will forgive 
 you your sins." The wetting, of course, splits the dry bullock's skin, 
 and the jackal, jumping out, runs with the chicken in his mouth to 
 
 1 The Norse story of " The Lad who went to the North Wind " turns on the 
 same machinery. 
 
j6 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK the jungle. When again he was nearly starved, he heard a Brahman 
 *• bewailing his property, and declaring that if a dog or a jackal were to 
 offer to marry one of his daughters, he should have her — an eagerness 
 in complete contrast with the reluctance of the merchant who is 
 obliged to surrender his child to the beast The jackal takes him at 
 his word, and leads his wife away to a splendid subterranean palace, 
 where she finds that each night the jackal lays aside his skin, and 
 becomes a beautiful young man. Soon the Brahman comes to the 
 jackal's cave to see how his child gets on; but just as he is about to 
 enter, the jackal stops him, and, learning his wants, gives him a 
 melon, the seeds of which will bring him some money. A neighbour, 
 admiring the fruit produced from these seeds, buys some from the 
 Brahman's wife, and finding that they are full of diamonds, pearls, 
 and rubies, purchases the whole stock, until the Brahman himself 
 opens a small withered melon, and learns how he has been over 
 reached. In vain he asks restitution from the woman who has 
 bought them ; she knows nothing of any miraculous melons, and a 
 jeweller to whom he takes the jewels from the withered melon, 
 accuses him of having stolen the gems from his shop, and impounds 
 them all. Again the Brahman betakes himself to the jackal, who, 
 seeing the uselessness of giving him gold or jewels, brings him out a 
 jar which is always full of good things. 1 The Brahman now lived in 
 luxury ; but another Brahman informed the raja of the royal style in 
 which his once poorer neighbour feasted, and the raja appropriated 
 the jar for his own special use. When once again he carried this 
 story of his wrongs to his son-in-law, the jackal gave him another jar, 
 within which was a rope and a stick, which would perform their work 
 of chastisement as soon as the jar was opened. Uncovering the jar 
 while he was alone, the Brahman had cause to repent his rashness, 
 for every bone in his body was left aching. With this personal ex- 
 perience of the powers of the stick, the Brahman generously invited 
 the raja and his brother Brahman to come and test the virtues of his 
 new gift ; and a belabouring as hearty as that which the wicked inn- 
 keeper received in the German tale made them yield up the dinner- 
 making jar. The same wholesome measure led to the recovery of 
 the precious stones from the jeweller, and the melons from the 
 woman who had bought them. It only remained now, by burning 
 
 1 This jar is, of course, the horn of serves as the source of life and wealth 
 
 Amaltheia, the napkin of Rhydderch, will be more fitly examined when we 
 
 the never-failmg table of the Ethiopians, come to analyse the myth of the divine 
 
 the cup of the Malee's wife in the ship Argo. See the section -on the 
 
 .Hindu legend ; but the countless forms Vivifying Sun, Book ii. 
 assumed by the mysterious vessel which 
 
wish. 77 
 
 the enchanted raja's jackal-skin, the lion-skin of HeraklSs, to trans- CHAP. 
 
 form him permanently into the most splendid prince eve» seen on • : 
 
 earth. 1 • 
 
 The independent growth of these tales from a common framework The Lad 
 is still more conclusively proved by the fact that the agreement of the t0 t h e 
 Norse with the Hindu legend is far more close and striking than the ^nd* 
 likeness which it bears to the German story. In the Norse version 
 we have not three brothers, but one lad, who represents the Brah- 
 man ; and in the Norse and Hindu stories alike, the being who does 
 the wrong is the one who bestows the three mysterious gifts. The 
 goat in the German version is simply mischievous : in the Norse tale, 
 the North Wind, which blows away the poor woman's meal, bestows 
 on her son the banquet-making cloth, the money-coining ram, and 
 the magic stick. 2 The jackal and the cloth are thus alike endowed 
 with the mysterious power of the Teutonic Wish. 8 This power is ex- 
 hibited under a thousand forms, among which cups, horns, jars, and 
 basins hold the most conspicuous place, and point to the earliest 
 symbol used for the expression of the idea. 
 
 The points of likeness and difference between the Hindu story of Thestor? 
 Punchkin and the Norse tale of the " Giant who had no Heart in his ?? Punch- 
 Body" are perhaps still more striking. In the former a rajah has 
 seven daughters, whose mother dies while they are still children, and 
 a stepmother so persecutes them that they make their escape. In 
 the jungle they are found by the seven sons of a neighbouring king, 
 who are hunting ; and each takes one of the princesses as a wife, the 
 handsomest of course marrying the youngest After a brief time of 
 happiness, the eldest prince sets off on a journey, and does not return. 
 His six brothers follow him, and are seen no more. After this, as 
 Balna, the youngest princess, rocks her babe in his cradle, a fakeer 
 makes his appearance, and having vainly asked her to marry him, 
 transforms her into a dog, and leads her away. As he grows older, 
 Balna's son learns how his parents and uncles have disappeared, and 
 resolves to go in search of them. His aunts beseech him not to do 
 
 1 In the mythology of Northern terbuch, s.v. ) to point to mulgeo, mulceo, 
 
 Europe the lion-skin becomes a bear- and thus to denote the wizard or the 
 
 sack, and thus, according to the story sorcerer. The story of his remaining 
 
 of Porphyry, Zalmoxis, the mythical hidden for years in a cave, and then 
 
 legislator of the Getai, was a Berserk, reappearing among the Getai, is a. 
 
 as having been clothed in a bearskin as variant of the myths of Persephone - , 
 
 soon as he was born. Probably the Adonis, Baldur, Osiris, and other deities 
 
 explanation is about as trustworthy as of the waxing and waning year, 
 that which traces the name Tritogeneia 2 Dasent, Tales from the Norse, xciv.. 
 
 to a Cretan word trito, meaning head. cxli. 266. 
 
 The other form of the name, Zamolxis, 8 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 327.. 
 
 has been supposed (Nork, Real-Wbr- 
 
?8 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK so ; but the youth feels sure that he will bring them all back, and at 
 • length he finds his way to the house of a gardener, whose wife, on 
 hearing his story, tells him that hi* father and uncles have all been 
 turned into stone by the great magician Punchkin, who keeps Balna 
 herself imprisoned in a high tower because she will not marry him. 
 To aid him in his task, the gardener's wife disguises him in her 
 daughter's dress, and gives him a basket of flowers as a present for 
 the captive princess. Thus arrayed, the youth is admitted to her 
 presence, and while none are looking, he makes himself known to his 
 mother by means of a ring which she had left on his finger before the 
 sorcerer stole her away. But the rescue of the seven princes seemed 
 to be as far off as ever, and the young man suggests that Balna 
 should now change her tactics, and by playing the part of Delilah to 
 Samson, find out where his power lies, and whether he is subject to 
 death. The device is successful, and the sorcerer betrays the secret. 
 
 " Far away, far away, hundreds of thousands of miles away from 
 this, there lies a desolate country covered with thick jungle. In the 
 midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm trees, and in the centre of 
 the jungle stand six jars full of water, piled one above another ; below 
 the sixth jar is a small cage which contains a little green parrot ; on 
 the life of the parrot depends my life, and if the parrot is killed I 
 must die." 1 
 
 But this keep is guarded by myriads of evil demons, and Balna 
 tries hard to dissuade her son from the venture. He is resolute, and 
 he finds true helpers in some eagles whose young he saves by killing 
 a large serpent which was making its way to their nest. The parent 
 birds give him their young to be his servants, and the eaglets, crossing 
 their wings, bear him through the air to the spot where the six water 
 jars are standing. In an instant he upsets the jar, and snatching the 
 parrot from his cage, rolls him op in his cloak. The magician in his 
 dismay at seeing the parrot in the youth's hands yields to every de- 
 mand made by him, and not only the seven princes but all his other 
 victims are restored to life — a magnificent array of kings, courtiers, 
 officers, and servants. 2 Still the magician prayed to have his parrot 
 given to him. 
 
 1 In the Gaelic story of the "Young 2 This portion of the story is found 
 King of Easaidh Ruadh," which con- in the Arabian Nights' tale of "The 
 tains this story, this puzzle is thus put : Two Sisters who were jealous of their 
 "There is a great flagstone under the Younger Sister." Here also the en- 
 threshold. There is a wether under chantments are overcome by gaining 
 the flag. There is a duck in the possession of a bird, and the malignant 
 wether's belly, and an egg in the belly demons who guard it are represented 
 of the duck, and it is in the egg that by dismal cries and jeering voices which 
 my soul is." assail all who attempt the task. The 
 
STORIES OF BOOTS. 79 
 
 "Then the boy took hold of the parrot, and tore off one of his chap. 
 wings, and when he did so, the magician's right arm fell off* ^—^ 
 
 " Punchkin then stretched out his left arm, crying, ' Give me my 
 parrot' The prince pulled off the parrot's second wing, and the 
 magician's left arm tumbled off. 
 
 '"Give me my parrot,' cried he, and fell on his knees. The 
 prince pulled off the parrof s right leg, the magician's right leg fell off; 
 the prince pulled off the parrot's left leg, down fell the magician's 
 left 
 
 " Nothing remained of him save the limbless body and the head ; 
 but still he rolled his eyes, and cried, ' Give me my parrot ! ' ' Take 
 your parrot, then,' cried the boy ; and with that he wrung the bird's 
 neck, and threw it at the magician, and as he did so, Punchkin 
 twisted round, and with a fearful groan he died." 1 
 
 In its key-note and its leading incidents this story is precisely The Giani 
 parallel to the Norse tale of the "Giant who had no Heart in his no Heart in 
 Body." Here, as in the Deccan legend, there is a king who has ^ Body - 
 seven sons, but instead of all seven being sent to hunt or woo, the 
 youngest is left at home ; and the prince whose children they marry 
 has six daughters, not seven. This younger brother who stays at 
 home is the Boots of European folk-lore, a being of infinitely varied 
 character, and a subject of the highest interest for all who wish to 
 know whence the Aryan nations obtained the materials for their epic 
 poems. Seemingly weak and often despised, he has keener wit and 
 more resolute will than all who are opposed to him. Slander and 
 obloquy are to him as nothing, for he knows that in the end his truth 
 shall be made clear in the sight of all men. We see him in a thou- 
 sand forms. 2 He is the Herakles on whom the mean Eurystheus de- 
 bird, as in the Hindu tale, is won by to shiver than the sun. At midnight 
 the youngest of the family, but it is the he is still quick with the heat of fire, 
 princess Parizade disguised as a man which cannot be cooled even by contact 
 who performs the exploit, having, like with the dead. Like Sigurd, he recovers 
 Odysseus, as he approached the Seiren's the treasures in the robber's keeping, 
 land, filled her ears with cloth. Nor and he learns to shiver only when his 
 is the bird less mighty than the magi- bride pours over him at night a pail of 
 cian, although he is not killed off in the water full of fish — in other words, when 
 same way. See also Tylor, Primitive Helios plunges into the sea as Endy- 
 Cullure, i. 305. mion. Elsewhere, he is not only the 
 
 1 For Slavonic stories of external wanderer or vagabond, but the dis- 
 hearts see Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, charged soldier, or the strolling player, 
 109; Songs of the Russian. People, 165. who is really the king Thrushbeard in 
 
 2 Dasent, Norse Tales, cliv. Some the German story, who tames the pride 
 of the stories told of Boots are very sig- of the princess as Indra subdues Da- 
 nificant. Among the most noteworthy hana ; or he is the countryman who 
 is Grimm's story of " One who travelled cheats the Jew in the story of the 
 to learn what shivering meant." The "Good Bargain." He is the young 
 stupid boy in this tale shows marvellous king of Easaidh Ruadh in the Scottish 
 strength of arm, but he is no more able story, who gets for the giant the Glaive 
 
8o MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK lights to pour contempt ; he is Cinderella sitting in the dust, while 
 her sisters flaunt their finery abroad ; he is the Oidipous who knows 
 nothing, 1 yet reads the mysterious riddle of the Sphinx; he is the 
 Phoibos who serves in the house of Admetos and the palace of 
 Laomedon ; he is the Psyche who seeks her lost love almost in de- 
 spair, and yet with the hope still living in her that her search shall not 
 be unsuccessful ; above all, he is the Ithakan chief, clothed in beggar's 
 rags, flouted by the suitors, putting forth his strength for one moment 
 to crush the insolent Arnaios, then sitting down humbly on the thres- 
 hold, 2 recognised only by an old nurse and his dog, waiting patiently 
 till the time comes that he shall bend the unerring bow, and having 
 slain his enemies appear' once more in glorious garb by the side of a 
 wife as radiant in beauty as when he left her years ago for a long and 
 a hard warfare far away. Nay, he even becomes an idiot, but even 
 in this his greatest humiliation the memory of his true greatness is 
 never forgotten. Thus the Gaelic " Lay of the Great Fool " relates 
 
 the 
 
 Tale of wonder, that was heard without lie, 
 Of the idiot to whom hosts yield, 
 A haughty son who yields not to arms, 
 Whose name was the mighty fool. 
 
 The might of the world he had seized 
 In his hands, and it was no rude deed ; 
 It was not the strength of his blade or shield, 
 But that the mightiest was in his grasp.* 
 
 He becomes, of course, the husband of Helen, 
 
 The mighty fool is his name, 
 
 And his wife is the young Fairfine ; 
 The men of the world are at his beck, 
 
 And the yielding to him was mine ; 
 
 and the Helen of the story has, of course, her Paris. The fool goes 
 to sleep, and as he slumbers a Gruagach gives her a kiss, and like 
 Helen " the lady was not ill-pleased that he came.'' But his coming 
 
 of Light (Excalibur, or the spear of who is wheedled of his three wish-gifts, 
 
 Achilleus), and who rides a dun filly, but recovering them in the end is seen 
 
 gifted like the horse Xanthos with the in his native majesty. 
 
 power of speech. He is the "bald ' S /aiSev' elSdbs Oltitirovs. 
 
 rough-skinned gillie " of the smithy in Sophokles, Oid. Tyr. 397. 
 
 the Highland tale of " The Brown Bear So again of Odysseus, &tppova t' 
 
 of the Green Glen," on whose head the oi/Tmr. — //. iii. 220. 
 
 mysterious bird alights to point him out ' Odyssey, xviii. no. 
 
 as the father of the dawn-child. In the » Campbell, Tales of the West High- 
 
 story of the "Three Soldiers" in the lands, iii. 154. 
 
 same collection, he is the poor soldier 
 
BEASTS IN MYTHOLOGY. 8 1 
 
 is for evil luck, and the deceiver shall be well repaid when the fool chap. 
 comes to take vengeance. , - v - 
 
 Still will I give my vows, 
 Though thou thinkest much of thy speech ; 
 When comes the Gruagach of the tissue cloak, 
 He will repay thee for his wife's kiss. 
 
 Boots then acts the part of Balna's son in the Hindu story, while Mythical 
 the sorcerer reappears in the Norse tale as a giant, who turns the an^com- 3 
 six princes and their wives into stone. The incident is by no means binations. 
 peculiar to this tale, and the examples already adduced would alone 
 warrant the assertion that the whole mass of folk-lore in every 
 country may be resolved into an endless series of repetitions, com- 
 binations, and adaptations of a few leading ideas or of their develope- 
 ments, all sufficiently resembling each other to leave no doubts of 
 their fundamental identity, yet so unlike in outward garb and colour- 
 ing, so thoroughly natural and vigorous under all their changes, as to 
 leave no room for any other supposition than that of a perfectly 
 independent growth from one common stem. If, speaking of the 
 marvels wrought by musical genius, Dr. Newman could say, " There 
 are seven notes in the scale ; make them thirteen, yet how slender an 
 outfit for so vast an enterprise," 1 we may well feel the same astonish- 
 ment as we see the mighty harvest of mythical lore which a few seeds 
 have yielded, and begin to understand how it is that ideas so 
 repeated, disguised, or travestied never lost their charm, but find us 
 as ready to listen when they are brought before us for the hundredth 
 time in a new dress, as when we first made acquaintance with them. 
 
 In the modified machinery of the Norse tale, the remonstrances Agency of 
 addressed to Balna's son in the Hindu story are here addressed to thesV '" 
 Boots, 2 whose kindness to the brute creatures who become his stones - 
 
 1 University Sermons, p. 34S. In the seducer whom she loathes ; and as 
 
 these two stories the Magician Punchkin Helen calls herself the dog-faced, so 
 
 and the Heartless Giant are manifestly Balna is transformed into a dog when 
 
 only other forms of the dark beings, Punchkin leads her away. The eagles 
 
 the Panis, who steal away the bright whose young he saves, like the heroes 
 
 treasures, whether cows, maidens, or of so many popular tales, are the bright 
 
 youths, from the gleaming west. In clouds who bear off little Surya Bai to 
 
 each case there is a long search for the nest on the tree-top. 
 
 them ; and as Troy cannot fall without 3 The stories of Boots and Cinder- 
 
 Achilleus, so here there is only one who ella lead us to a vast family of kindred I 
 
 can achieve the exploit of rescuing the myths. In all of these the beauty of 
 
 beings who have been turned into stone, the hero or heroine is disfigured by a 
 
 as Niobg is hardened into rock. The squalid dress, and sometimes by a 
 
 youthful son of Balna in his disguise is dark-brown staining of the face and 
 
 the womanlike Theseus, Dionysos, or arms. In each case, while the heroine 
 
 Achilleus. Balna herself imprisoned in carries away in nutshells or in other 
 
 the tower with the sorcerer whom she tiny receptacles dresses gleaming with 
 
 hates is Helen shut up in Ilion with the splendour of the stars, the moon, 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 friends is drawn out in the more full detail characteristic of Western 
 ■ legends. The Hindu hero helps eagles only ; Boots succours a 
 raven, a salmon, and a wolf, and the latter having devoured his 
 horse bears him on its back with the speed of light to the house of 
 the giant who has turned his brothers into stone. 1 There he finds, 
 not his mother, like Balna's son, but the beautiful princess who is to 
 be his bride, and who promises to find out, if she can, where the 
 giant keeps his heart, for, wherever it be, it is not in his body. The 
 
 and the sun, she is clothed with the 
 skin of a cat, a dog, or an ass, or, as 
 in the instance of Allerleirauh, of all 
 the beasts of the land. In each case, 
 after escaping from desperate dangers 
 by the help of a horse or a bull, she 
 becomes a scullion, whose abode is a 
 cellar into which the light of day cannot 
 penetrate. From this noisome dungeon 
 she is rescued by a threefold ordeal. 
 In the English story of Catskin, the 
 cook, in the first case, dashes a basin 
 of water in her face ; in the second, he 
 breaks her head with the ladle ; in the 
 third, he smites her with the skimmer. 
 In other versions the person who so 
 ill-treats her under her mean disguise 
 is the king or prince, whom she after- 
 wards marries ; but the three smitings, 
 followed each by a greater display of 
 splendour, are to be found in all. 
 Whence came these features? That 
 they could suggest themselves spon- 
 taneously to the fancy of savages in all 
 parts of the world is beyond all bounds 
 of belief. In its oldest shape seemingly 
 the myth comes before us in the Vedic 
 story of Apala (the water-maiden), who 
 comes down from the mountain to draw 
 water, and in so doing draws Soma, or 
 ambrosia, which she presents to the 
 sun-god Indra. But the maiden is ugly 
 and deformed, and to free her of her 
 loathsomeness, Indra consents to pass 
 over her three times. This threefold 
 smiting is brought out more clearly in a 
 legend of the BrihaddevatS, in which 
 the water-maiden beseeches Indra to 
 make for her a beautiful and faultless 
 skin. Indra accordingly passes over her 
 with wheel, chariot, and rudder. By 
 three efforts he takes off her ugly skin, 
 and Apala appears in a beautiful one. 
 The Sorna which Apala brings to Indra 
 becomes in the popular stories of Europe 
 the soup which the kitchen drudge pre- 
 pares for the king, or prince, or lord 
 in the story, who in each case marries 
 her. But the three smitings of Indra 
 
 constitute his marriage with the maiden, 
 and there can be little doubt that the 
 rudder of his chariot in the torn bosom 
 of Apala has a fuller signification. 
 This legend is cited in the "Zo- 
 ological Mythology " of De Gubernatis, 
 of which Mr. Coote, Folk Lore Record, 
 vol. iii. part i., speaks as "one of the 
 most remarkable combinations of erudi- 
 tion and imagination which this age 
 has produced. " 
 
 1 The constant agency of wolves and 
 foxes in the German stories at once 
 suggests a comparison with the Myrmi- 
 dons whom the Homeric poet so elabo- 
 rately likens to wolves, with Phoibos 
 himself as the wolf-god of ^Eschylos, 
 and with the jackal princes of eastern 
 story. In Grimm's story of " The Two 
 Brothers," the animals succoured are 
 the hare, fox, wolf, and lion, and they 
 each, as in the Hindu tale, offer their 
 young as ministers to the hero who has 
 spared their lives. In the beautiful 
 legend of the Golden Bird, the youngest 
 brother and the fox whom by his kind- 
 ness he secures as his ally, alike repre- 
 sent the disguised chieftain of Ithaka, 
 and the rajas of the Hindu stories. 
 The disguise in which the youngest 
 brother returns home is put on by him- 
 self. He has exchanged clothes with a 
 beggar ; the fox is of course enchanted, 
 and can be freed only by destroying the 
 bodyin which he is imprisoned. But 
 this idea of enchantment would inevi- 
 tably be suggested by the magic power 
 of Athene in seaming the face of Odys- 
 seus with the wrinkles of a squalid 
 old age, while the Christianised North- 
 man would convert Athene herself into 
 a witch. In this story the mere presence 
 of the disguised youth, who was supposed 
 to be murdered, just as the suitors sup- 
 posed Odysseus to be dead, makes the 
 golden bird begin to sing, the golden 
 horse begin to eat, and the beautiful 
 maiden to cease weeping. The meaning 
 is obvious. 
 
GIANTS WITHOUT HEARTS. S3 
 
 colloquies which lead at length to the true answer exhibit the giant chap. 
 
 in the more kindly and rollicking character frequently best«wed on ^ 
 
 trolls, dwarfs, elves, and demons, in the mythology of the Western 
 Aryans. The final answer corresponds precisely to that of Punch- 
 kin. " Far, far away in a lake lies an island ; on that island stands 
 a church ; in that church is a well ; in that well swims a duck ; in 
 that duck there is an egg; and in that egg there lies my heart, you 
 darling." His darling takes a tender farewell of Boots, who sets off 
 on the wolf's back, to solve, as in the Eastern tale, the mystery of 
 the water and the bird. The wolf takes him to the island ; but the 
 church keys hang high on the steeple, and the raven is now brought 
 in to perform an office analogous to that of the young eaglets in the 
 Deccan legend. At last, by the salmon's help, the egg is brought 
 from the bottom of the well where the duck had dropped it. 
 
 " Then the wolf told him to squeeze the egg, and as soon as ever 
 he squeezed it, the giant screamed out. 
 
 ' " ' Squeeze it again,' said the wolf ; and when the prince did so, 
 the giant screamed still more piteously, and begged and prayed so 
 prettily to be spared, saying he would do all that the prince wished 
 if he would only not squeeze his heart in two. 
 
 " ' Tell him if he will restore to life again your six brothers and 
 their brides, you will spare his life,' said the wolf. Yes, the giant 
 was ready to do that, and he turned the six brothers into king's sons 
 again, and their brides into king's daughters. 
 
 " ' Now squeeze the egg in two,' said the wolf. So Boots squeezed 
 the egg to pieces, and the giant burst at once." 
 
 The supposition that these stories have been transmitted laterally Influence 
 is tenable only on the further hypothesis, that in every Aryan land, literature 
 from Eastern India to the Highlands of Scotland, the folk-lore of the ? n Folk " 
 
 ' lore. 
 
 country has had its character determined by the literature of written : 
 books, that in every land men have handled the stories introduced 
 from other countries with the deliberate purpose of modifying and 
 adapting them, and that they have done their work in such a way as 
 sometimes to leave scarcely a resemblance, at other times scarcely to 
 effect the smallest change. In no other range of literature has any 
 such result ever been achieved. In these stories we have narratives 
 which have confessedly been received in the crudest form, if the 
 fable of the Brahman and the goat is to be taken as the original of 
 the Master Thief, and which have been worked up with marvellous 
 vigour and under indefinitely varied forms, not by the scholars who 
 imported the volumes of the Kalila and Dimna, or the Exploits of 
 the Romans, but by unknown men among the people. The tales 
 
s 4 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Faithful 
 John. 
 
 have been circulated for the most part only among those who have 
 . no books, and many, if not most, of them have been made known 
 only of late years for the first time to the antiquarians and philo- 
 logists who have devoted their lives to hunting'them out. How then 
 do we find in Teutonic or Hindu stories not merely incidents which 
 specially characterise the story of Odysseus, but almost the very 
 words in which they are related in the Odyssey? The task of 
 analysing and comparing these legends is not a light one even for 
 those who have all the appliances of books and the aid of a body of 
 men working with them for the same end. Yet old men and old 
 women reproduce in India and Germany, in Norway, in Scotland, 
 and in Ireland, the most subtle turns of thought and expression, and 
 an endless series of complicated narratives, in which the order of 
 incidents and the words of the speakers are preserved with a fidelity 
 nowhere paralleled in the oral tradition of historical events. It may 
 safely be said that no series of stories introduced in the form of 
 translations from other languages could ever thus have filtered down 
 into the lowest strata of society, and thence have sprung up again, 
 like Antaios, with greater energy and heightened beauty, and 
 " nursery tales are generally the last things to be adopted by one 
 nation from another." * But it is not safe to assume on the part of 
 Highland peasants or Hindu nurses a familiarity with the epical 
 literature of the Homeric or Vedic poets ; and hence the production 
 of actual evidence in any given race for the independent growth of 
 popular stories may be received as throwing fresh light on questions 
 already practically solved, but can scarcely be regarded as indispen- 
 sable. It can scarcely be necessary to prove that the tale of the 
 Three Snake Leaves was not derived by the old German story-tellers 
 from the pages of Pausanias, or that Beauty and the Beast was not 
 suggested by Appuleius. There is nothing therefore which needs to 
 surprise us in the fact that stories already familiar to the western 
 Aryans have been brought to us in their eastern versions only as 
 yesterday. 
 
 Probably no two stories furnish more convincing evidence of the 
 extent to which the folk-lore of the Aryan tribes was developed, 
 while they still lived as a single people, than that which we find in 
 the German legend of Faithful John and the Deccan story of Rama 
 and Luxman, who reflect the Rama and Laxmana of Purana legends. 
 A comparison of these legends clearly shows that at least the follow- 
 ing framework must have been devised before Hindus and Germans 
 started on the long migration which was to lead the one to the 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 216. 
 
FRAMEWORK OF STONES. 85 
 
 regions of the Ganges and the Indus, and the other to the countries chap. 
 watered by the Rhine and the Elbe. Even in those early days the - — Y'— • 
 story must have run that a king had seen the likeness of a maiden 
 whose beauty made him faint with love ; that he could not be with- 
 held from seeking her; that his faithful friend went with him and 
 helped him to win his bride ; that certain wise birds predicted that 
 the trusty friend should save his master from three great dangers, but 
 that his mode of rescuing him should seem to show that he loved his 
 master's wife ; that for his self-sacrifice he should be turned into a 
 stone, and should be restored to life only by the agency of an 
 innocent child. That two men in two distant countries knowing 
 
 o 
 
 nothing of each other could hit upon such a series of incidents as 
 these, none probably will have the hardihood to maintain. Still less 
 can any dream of urging that Hindus and Germans agreed together 
 to adopt each the specific differences of their respective versions. In 
 the German story the prince's passion for the beautiful maiden is 
 caused by the sight of her portrait in a gallery of his father's palace, 
 into which the trusty John had been strictly charged not to let the 
 young man enter. 1 Having once seen it, he cannot be withheld from 
 going to seek her, and with his friend he embarks as a merchant in a 
 ship laden with all manner of costly goods which may tempt the 
 maiden's taste or curiosity. The scheme succeeds ; but while the 
 princess is making her purchases the Faithful John orders all sail to 
 be set, and the ship is far at sea when the maiden turns to go home. 
 At once we recognise the form in which Herodotos at the outset of 
 his history has recorded the story of 16, and are tempted to think 
 that Herodotos did not in this instance invent his own rationalistic 
 explanation of a miraculous story, but has adopted a version of the 
 myth current in his own day. The comparative freedom from super- 
 natural incidents would of course determine his choice. The next 
 
 1 This is substantially the Rabbi- the case before the Rabbis, who decide 
 
 nical story of " The Broken Oath," the that he must go back ; but on his per- 
 
 difference being that the young man is sistent refusal, she beseeches him to 
 
 already in Fairy Land, and finds in the suffer her to take leave of him and to 
 
 forbidden chamber, not the picture, but embrace him. " He replied that she 
 
 the maiden herself. The sequel of this might, and as soon as she embraced 
 
 story exhibits the maiden as the Fairy him, she drew out his soul, and he 
 
 Queen, who lays the man under a died." Thus far the story runs like 
 
 pledge to remain with her. After a that of Fouque's Undine ; but in the 
 
 while he feels a yearning to return to sequel the insensibility of the Jew to 
 
 his earthly home. He is suffered to do the ludicrous is shown in the words put 
 
 so on pledging his word that he will into the mouth of the fairy, who leaves 
 
 come back. But the pledge redeemed her son Solomon in the keeping of the 
 
 without murmuring by Thomas of Rabbis, assuring him that he will pass 
 
 Ercildoune is set at nought by the hero examinations satisfactorily. — Keightley, 
 
 of this tale. The forsaken fairy carries Fairy Mythology, 505. 
 
86 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 R^ma 
 
 and 
 
 Luxman. 
 
 scene in the drama is a colloquy between three crows, whose lan- 
 guage Faithful John understands, and who foretell three great dangers 
 impending over the prince, who can be saved only at the cost of his 
 preserver. On his reaching shore a fox-coloured horse would spring 
 towards him, which, on his mounting it, would carry him off for ever 
 from his bride. No one can save him except by shooting the horse, 
 but if any one does it and tells the king, he will be turned into stone 
 from the toe to the knee. If the horse be killed, the prince will 
 none the more keep his bride, for a bridal shirt will lie on a dish, 
 woven seemingly of gold and silver, but composed really of sulphur 
 and pitch, and if he puts it on it will burn him to his bones and mar- 
 row. Whoever takes the shirt with his gloved hand and casts it into 
 the fire may save the prince ; but if he knows and tells him, he will 
 be turned to stone from his knee to his heart. Nor is the prince 
 more safe even if the shirt be burnt, for during the dance which fol- 
 lows the wedding the queen will suddenly turn pale and fall as if 
 dead, and unless some one takes three drops of blood from her right 
 breast she will die. But whoever knows and tells it shall be turned 
 to stone from the crown of his head to the toes of his feet. The 
 friend resolves to be faithful at all hazards, and all things turn out as 
 the crows had foretold ; but the king, misconstruing the act of his 
 friend in taking blood from his wife, orders him to be led to prison. 
 At the scaffold he explains his motives, but the act of revelation seals 
 his doom; and while the king intreats for forgiveness the trusty 
 servant is turned into stone. In an agony of grief the king has the 
 figure placed near his bed, and vainly prays for the power of restoring 
 him to life. Years pass on ; twin sons are born to him, and one day, 
 as he gives utterance to the longing of his heart, the statue says that 
 it can be brought back to life if the king will cut off the heads of the 
 twins and sprinkle the statue with their blood. The servant is 
 restored to life, and when he places the children's heads on their 
 bodies they spring up and play as merrily as ever. 
 
 In truth and tenderness of feeling this story falls far short of the 
 Deccan tale, in which the prince Rama sees the image of his future 
 bride, not in a picture, but in a dream. Having won her by the aid 
 of Luxman, he is soon after attacked by the home-sickness which is 
 common to the heroes of most of these tales, and which finds its 
 highest expression in the history of Odysseus. During the journey, 
 which answers to the voyage of the king with Faithful John, Luxman, 
 who, like John, understands the speech of birds, hears two owls 
 talking in a tree overhead, and learns from them that three great 
 perils await his master and his bride. The first will be from a rotten 
 
HISTORY OF RAMA AND LUXMAN. 87 
 
 branch of a banyan-tree, from the fall of which Luxman will just save chap. 
 
 them by dragging them forcibly away ; the next will be, from an ^ 
 
 insecure arch, and the third from a cobra. This serpent, they said, 
 Luxman would kill with his sword. 
 
 " But a drop of the cobra's blood shall fall on her forehead. The 
 wuzeer will not care to wipe off the blood with his hands, but shall 
 instead cover his face with a cloth, that he may lick it off with his 
 tongue ; but for this the raja will be angry with him, and his re- 
 proaches will turn this poor wuzeer into stone. 
 
 " ' Will he always remain stone ? ' asked the lady owl. ' Not for 
 ever,' answered the husband, ' but for eight long years he will remain 
 so.' ' And what then ? ' demanded she. ' Then,' answered the other, 
 ' when the young raja and ranee have a baby, it shall come to pass 
 that one day the child shall be playing on the floor, and, to help 
 itself along, shall clasp hold of the stony figure, and at that baby's 
 touch the wuzeer will come to life again.' " 
 
 As in the German tale, everything turns out in accordance with 
 the predictions of the birds. When, therefore, Luxman saw the 
 cobra creep towards the queen, he knew that his life must be for- 
 feited for his devotion, and so he took from the folds of his dress 
 the record of the owl's talk and of his former life, and, having laid 
 it beside the sleeping king, killed the cobra. The raja, of course, 
 starts up just as his friend is licking the blood from his wife's fore- 
 head, and, drawing the same inference with the German prince, 
 overwhelms him with reproaches. 
 
 " The raja had buried his face in his hands : he looked up, he 
 turned to the wuzeer ; but from him came neither answer nor reply. 
 He had become a senseless stone. Then Rama for the first time 
 perceived the roll of paper which Luxman had laid beside him ; and 
 when he read in it of what Luxman had been to him from boyhood, 
 and of the end, his bitter grief broke through all bounds, and falling 
 at the feet of the statue, he clasped its stony knees and wept aloud." 
 
 Eight years passed on, and at length the child was born. A few 
 months more, and in trying to walk, it "stretched out its tiny hands 
 and caught hold of the foot of the statue. The wuzeer instantly came 
 back to life, and stooping down seized the little baby, who had 
 rescued him, in his arms and kissed it." 1 
 
 1 The calamity which overtakes into a frog. But this transformation is 
 
 Luxman and Faithful John is seen in merely the sinking of the sun into the 
 
 an earlier and less developed form in western waters (see note 3, p. 165), and 
 
 the' German story of the Frog Prince. the time of his absence answers to the 
 
 Here the faithful friend is overwhelmed charmed sleep of Endymion. Trusty 
 
 with grief because his master is turned Henry is so grieved at the loss that he 
 
88 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Mythical 
 imagery 
 of these 
 
 There is something more quiet and touching in the silent record 
 - of Luxman which stands in the place of Faithful John's confession 
 at the scaffold, as well as in the doom which is made to depend on 
 the reproaches of his friend rather than on the mere mechanical act 
 of giving utterance to certain words. But the Hindu legend and 
 the German story alike possess a higher interest in the links which 
 connect them, like most of the popular stories already noticed, with 
 the magnificent epic to which we give the name of Homer, with the 
 songs of the Volsungs and Nibelungs, with the mythical cycle of 
 Arthur and Charlemagne, and the Persian Rustem. The bridal shirt 
 of sulphur and pitch, which outwardly seemed a tissue of gold and 
 silver, carries us at once from the story of Faithful John to the myth 
 of Dei'aneira and the poisoned coat which put an end to the career 
 of Herakles. We enter again the charmed circle, where one and the 
 same idea assumes a thousand different forms, where we can trace 
 clearly the process by which one change led to another, but where 
 any one disregarding the points of connexion must fail to discern 
 their sequence, origin, and meaning. In the legend of Dei'aneira, 
 as in that of Iason and Glauke, the coat or shirt is laden with destruc- 
 tion even for Herakles. It represents, in fact, " the clouds which 
 rise from the waters and surround the sun like a dark raiment." 
 This robe Herakles tries to tear off, but the " fiery mists embrace 
 him, and are mingled with the parting rays of the sun, and the dying 
 hero is seen through the scattered clouds of the sky, tearing his own 
 body to pieces, till at last his bright form is consumed in a general 
 conflagration." 1 In the story of Medeia this robe is the gift of Helios, 
 which imparts a marvellous wisdom to the daughter of the Kolchian 
 king. It is the gleaming dress which reappears in story after story of 
 Hindu folk-lore. "That young raja's wife," people said, "has the 
 most beautiful saree we ever saw : it shines like the sun, and dazzles 
 our eyes. We have no saree half so beautiful." It is the golden 
 fleece of the ram which bears away the children of the Mist (Nephele) 
 to the Eastern land. In other words, it is the light of Phoibos, the 
 splendour of Helios, the rays or spears of the gleaming Sun. As 
 such, it is identified with the sword of Apollon the Chrysaor, with 
 the sword which Aigeus leaves to be discovered by Theseus under 
 the broad stone, with the good sword Gram which Odin left in the 
 
 binds three iron bands round his heart 
 for fear it should break with grief and 
 sorrow. When the Frog Prince sets out 
 with his bride in the morning, the iron 
 bands break and Trusty Henry is set 
 free. This is the stony sleep of Lux- 
 
 man, brought on by grief, and broken 
 only by the light touch of early morning, 
 there represented by the innocent child 
 of Rama. 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Chip from a German 
 Workshop, ii. 89. 
 
THE GLASS PALACE. 89 
 
 tree trunk for Volsung to draw out and wield, with the lion's skin CHAP. 
 
 • ■ v 
 of Herakles, with the jackal's skin worn by the enchanted rajas of »— — J- • 
 
 Hindu story, with the spear of Achilleus and the deadly arrows 
 
 of Philoktetes, with the invincible sword of Perseus and the sandals 
 
 which bear him through the air like a dream, with the magic shoes 
 
 in the story of King Putraka and of the Lad who went to the North 
 
 Wind, with the spear of Artemis and the unerring darts of Meleagros. 1 
 
 Whether under the guise of spears or fleece or arrows, it is the golden 
 
 hair on the head of Phoibos Akersekomes, which no razor has ever 
 
 touched ; the wonderful carpet of Solomon, which figures in the 
 
 Arabian Nights as the vehicle for relieving distressed lovers from 
 
 their difficulties. 
 
 In the Hindu story, the bride of Rama is won after an exploit The sleep 
 
 which in its turn carries us away to the deeds of Hellenic or Teutonic °£ g^ 
 
 heroes. When the prince tells Luxman of the peerless beauty whom mer. 
 
 he has seen in his dream, his friend tells him that the princess lives 
 
 far away in a glass palace. 2 " Round this palace runs a large river, 
 
 and round the river is a garden of flowers. Round the garden are 
 
 four thick groves of trees. The princess is twenty-four years old, but 
 
 she is not married, for she has determined only to marry whoever 
 
 can jump across the river and greet her in her crystal palace ; and 
 
 though many thousand kings have assayed to do so, they have all 
 
 perished miserably in the attempt, having either been drowned in the 
 
 river or broken their necks by falling." The frequent recurrence of 
 
 this idea in these Hindu tales might of itself lead any one who knew 
 
 nothing of the subject previously to doubt whether such images could 
 
 refer to any actual facts in the history of any given man or woman. 
 
 In the story of Rama it has lost much of its old significance. The 
 
 death-like cold of a northern winter gives place to the mere notion 
 
 of solitude and seclusion. Running streams and luxuriant gardens 
 
 show that the myth has been long transferred to a more genial 
 
 climate ; but it is scarcely necessary to say that the changes in the 
 
 story indefinitely enhance its value, so long as the idea remains the 
 
 same. In some form or other this idea may be said to run through 
 
 almost all these legends. In the story of " Brave Seventee Bai" it 
 
 1 In a number of little Russian songs his foes and gain his bright bride."— 
 
 this invincible hero is represented as Ralston, Songs of the Russian people, 
 
 besieging a town, and gaining from 191. The search of this hero for the 
 
 it a bride. " He is tall and radiant ; peerless maiden is described in another 
 
 he sits within a tent made of white silk, song.— Ibid. 223. 
 
 or ridel on a horse with a mane of * The glass or marble of the H.nda 
 
 gold • his sabre flashes like the sun, tale answers to tue ice of the JSorse 
 
 and s'o do the swords of his trusty com- legends, 
 rades, who enable him to drive away 
 
go 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 Origin of 
 fill myths 
 relating to 
 charmed 
 sleep of 
 beautiful 
 maidens. 
 
 assumes a form more closely akin to the imagery of Teutonic mytho- 
 ■ logy ; and there we find a princess who declares that she will marry 
 no one who has not leaped over her bath, which " has high marble 
 walls all round, with a hedge of spikes at the top of the walls." In 
 the story of Vicram Maharaja the parents of Anar Ranee "had 
 caused her garden to be hedged round with seven hedges made of 
 bayonets, so that none could go in nor out ; and they had published 
 a decree that none should marry her but he who could enter the 
 garden and gather the three pomegranates on which she and her 
 maids slept." So, too, Panch Phul Ranee, the lovely Queen of the 
 Five Flowers, " dwelt in a little house, round which were seven wide 
 ditches, and seven great hedges made of spears." The seven hedges 
 are, however, nothing more than the sevenfold coils of the dragon of 
 the Glistening Heath, who lies twined round the beautiful Brynhild. 
 But the maiden of the Teutonic tale is sunk in sleep which rather 
 resembles death than life, just as Demeter mourned as if for the death 
 of Persephone while her child sojourned in the dark kingdom of 
 Hades. This idea is reproduced with wonderful fidelity in the story 
 of Little Surya Bai, and the cause of her death is modified in a 
 hundred legends both of the East and the West The little maiden 
 is high up in the eagle's nest fast asleep, when an evil demon or 
 Rakshas seeks to gain admission to her, and while vainly striving 
 to force an entrance leaves one of his finger-nails sticking in the crack 
 of the door. When on the following morning the maiden opened 
 the doors of her dwelling to look down on the world below, the sharp 
 claw ran into her hand, and immediately she fell dead. The powers 
 of winter, which had thus far sought in vain to wound her, have at 
 length won the victory ; and at once we pass to other versions of the 
 same myth, which tell us of Eurydike stung to death by the hidden 
 serpent, of Sifrit smitten by Hagene (the Thorn), of Isfendiyar slain 
 by the thorn or arrow of Rusten, 1 of Achilleus vulnerable only in his 
 heel, of Brynhild enfolded within the dragon's coils, of Meleagros 
 dying as the torch of doom is burnt out, of Baldur the brave and pure 
 smitten by the fatal mistletoe, of the sweet Briar Rose plunged in her 
 slumber of a hundred years. 
 
 The idea that all these myths have been deliberately transferred 
 from Hindus or Persians to Greeks, Germans, and Norsemen may be 
 dismissed as a wild dream. Yet of their substantial identity in spite 
 of all points of difference and under all the disguises thrown over 
 them by individual fancies and local influences, there can be no 
 question. The keynote of any one of the Deccan stories is the key- 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 323. 
 
DRAGONS AND SLEEPING MAIDENS. 91 
 
 note of almost all ; and this keynote runs practically through the great CHAP. 
 
 body of tales gathered from Germany, Scandinavia, Ireland, and ^— — : ■ 
 
 Scotland. It is found again everywhere in the mythology of the 
 Greeks, whether in the legends which have furnished the materials 
 for their magnificent epics, or have been immortalised in the dramas 
 of their great tragedians, or have remained buried in the pages of 
 mythographers like Pausanias or Diodoros. If then all these tales 
 have some historical foundation, they must relate to events which 
 took place before the dispersion of the Aryan tribes from their original 
 home. If the war at Troy took place at all, as the Homeric poets 
 have narrated it, it is, to say the least, strange that precisely the same 
 struggle, for precisely the same reasons, and with the same results, 
 should have been waged in Norway and Germany, in Wales and Persia. 
 Unless we are to adopt the hypothesis of conscious borrowing in i^ 
 most exaggerated form, the dream of a historical Ilion and a histories 
 Carduel must fade away before the astonishing multitude of legends 
 which comparative mythologists have traced to phrases descriptive 
 of physical phenomena. At the least it must be admitted that the 
 evidence seems to point in this direction. To take these stories after 
 any system, and arrange their materials methodically, is almost an 
 impossible task. The expressions or incidents worked into these 
 legends are like the few notes of the scale from which great musicians 
 have created each his own world, or like the few roots of language 
 which denoted at first only the most prominent objects and processes 
 of nature and the merest bodily wants, but out of which has grown 
 the wealth of words which feed the countless streams of human 
 thought. In one story we may find a series of incidents briefly 
 touched, which elsewhere have been expanded into a hundred tales, 
 while the incidents themselves are presented in the countless combi- 
 nations suggested by an exuberant fancy. The outlines of the tales, 
 when these have been carefully analysed, are simple enough; but 
 they are certainly not outlines which could have been suggested by 
 incidents in the common life of mankind. Maidens do not fall for 
 months or years into death-like trances, from which the touch of one 
 brave man alone can arouse them. Dragons are not coiled round 
 golden treasures or beautiful women on glistening heaths. Princes 
 do not everywhere abandon their wives as soon as they have married 
 them, to return at length in squalid disguise and smite their foes with 
 invincible weapons. Steeds which speak and which cannot die do 
 not draw the chariots of mortal chiefs, nor do the lives of human 
 kings exhibit everywhere the same incidents in the same sequence. 
 Yet every fresh addition made to our stores of popular tradition does 
 
92 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Charms 
 or spells 
 in the 
 Odyssey 
 and in 
 Hindu 
 stories. 
 
 but bring before us new phases of those old forms of which mankind, 
 -- we may boldly say, will never grow weary. The golden slipper of 
 Cinderella is the slipper of Rhodopis, which an eagle carries off and 
 drops into the lap of the Egyptian king as he sits on his seat of 
 judgement at Memphis. 1 This slipper reappears Li the beautiful 
 Deccan story of Sodewa Bai, and leads of course to the same issue 
 as in the legends of Cinderella and Rhodopis. The dragon of the 
 Glistening Heath represents the seven-headed cobra of the Hindu 
 story, and in the legend of Brave Seventee Bai the beautiful Brynhild 
 becomes his daughter, just as the bright Phoibos is the child of the 
 sombre Leto. In the Greek myth dragons of another kind draw the 
 chariot of Medeia, the child of the sun, or impart mysterious wisdom 
 to Iamos and Melampous, as the cobras do to Muchie Lai. That 
 the heroes of Greek and Teutonic legends in almost every case are 
 separated from, or abandon, the women whom they have wooed or 
 loved is well known ; and the rajas and princes of these Hindu 
 stories are subjected to the same lot with Herakles and Odysseus, 
 Oidipous and Sigurd, Keph^los and Prokris, Paris and Oinone. 
 Generally the newly-married prince feels a yearning to see his father 
 and his mother once more, and, like Odysseus, pines until he can 
 set his face homewards. Sometimes he takes his wife, sometimes 
 he goes alone ; but in one way or another he is kept away from 
 her for years, and reappears like Odysseus in the squalid garb of 
 a beggar. 
 
 Curiously enough, in these Hindu stories the detention of the 
 wandering prince or king is caused by one of those charms or spells 
 which Odysseus in his wanderings discreetly avoids. The Lotos- 
 eaters and their magic fruit reappear in the nautch-people or con- 
 jurors, whom the rajah who has married Panch Phul Ranee, the Lady 
 of the Five Flowers, asks for rice and fire. The woman whom he 
 addresses immediately brings them. " But before she gave them 
 to him, she and her companions threw on them a certain powder, 
 containing a very potent charm ; and no sooner did the raja receive 
 them than he forgot about his wife and little child, his journey and 
 all that had ever happened to him in his life before : such was the 
 peculiar property of the powder. And when the conjuror said to him, 
 ' Why should you go away ? Stay with us and be one of us,' he 
 willingly consented." 2 Unless the translator has designedly modified 
 
 1 ./Elian, V. H. xiii. 33 ; Strabo, about in many of the German stories 
 
 xvii. p. 808. Gubernatis, Zoological by his allowing his parents to kiss him 
 
 Mythology, i. 31, 126. on one side of his face, or on his lips. 
 
 3 This forgetfulness of his first love In the Gaelic story of the Battle of 
 
 en the part of the solar hero is brought the Birds neither man nor other crea- 
 
THE ROD AND THE LOTOS. 
 
 93 
 
 the language of the Deccan tale-teller (and in the absence of any chap. 
 
 admission to this effect we cannot suppose this), we may fairly quote • -^~ — 
 
 the words as almost a paraphrase from the Odyssey : — 
 
 r&v 5* os tis \arroio tpdyot fie\i7j54a Kapv6v, 
 oiix £r' vLirayyelKai ird\iv ij6e\ev ou5e yectrBcu, 
 &A\* avTov &oi\ovTO per' avdpdfft AtoTotpdyotaiv 
 Aarbi/ tyeTrrtfievoL fxtvepsv v6fnov re \adea9ai. 1 
 
 The nautch-woman here has also the character of Kirke, and the 
 charm represents the Kama ^dpfiaxa which turn the companions of 
 Eurylochos into swine, while Kirke's wand is wielded by the sor- 
 cerers who are compelled to restore to life the victims whom they 
 had turned into stone, and by the Rakshas from whom Ramchundra, 
 in the story of Truth's Triumph, seeks to learn its uses. " The 
 rod," she replies, "has many supernatural powers; for instance, by 
 simply uttering ycur wish, and waving it in the air, you can conjure 
 up a mountain, a river, or a forest, in a moment of time." At length 
 the wanderer is found ; but Panch Phul Ranee and Seventee Bai 
 have the insight of Eurykleia, and discern his true majesty beneath 
 the fakeer's garb. 3 " The raja came towards them so changed that 
 
 ture is to kiss him, and the mischief is 
 done by his greyhound, who recognises 
 him as Argos knows Odysseus. Camp- 
 bell, i. 34. 
 
 1 Od, ix. 97. 
 
 2 This garment of humiliation ap- 
 pears in almost innumerable legends. 
 In the German story of the Golden 
 Bird the prince puts it on when, on 
 approaching his father's house, he is 
 told that his brothers are plotting his 
 death. In the tale of the Knapsack, 
 the Hat, and the Horn, the wanderer 
 who comes in with a coat torn to rags 
 has a knapsack from which he can pro- 
 duce any number of men, and a horn 
 (the horn of the Maruts) at whose blast 
 the strongest walls fall down. He thus 
 takes on his enemies a vengeance pre- 
 cisely like that of Odysseus, and for 
 the same reason. In the story of the 
 Golden Goose, Dummling, the _ hero 
 who never fails in any exploit, is de- 
 spised for his wretched appearance. In 
 that of the Gold Child the brilliant hero 
 comes before the king in the guise of a 
 humble bear-hunter. The tale of the 
 King of the Golden Mountain repeats 
 the story of King Putraka, and shows 
 the Gold Child in a shepherd's ragged 
 frock. Elsewhere he is seen as the 
 poor miller's son (the Miller's Son and 
 the Cat), and he becomes a discharged 
 
 soldier in the story of " The Boots 
 made of Buffalo Leather.'' The beg- 
 gar reappears in the Norse tale of 
 Hacon Grizzlebeard, the Thrushbeard 
 of Grimm's collection, while Boots, 
 who grovels in the ashes, is the royal 
 youth who rides up the mountain of ice 
 in the story of the Princess on the 
 Glass Hill. In another, Shortshanks, 
 who by himself destroys all the Trolls 
 opposed to him, is a reflexion of 
 Odysseus, not only in his vengeance, 
 but in his bodily form. Odysseus is 
 Shortshanks when compared with Mene- 
 laos (Iliad va. 210-11). In the tale of 
 the Best Wish (Dasent), Boots carries 
 with him in the magic tap the horn of 
 Amaltheia, and is seen again as a 
 tattered beggar in the story of the 
 Widow's Son. In the legend of Big 
 Bird Dan he is the wandering sailor, 
 who, like Odysseus, is tossed, worn and 
 naked, on the Phaiakian shore ; in that 
 of Soria Moria Castle (a tale in which 
 the Sun seeks for the Dawn, the re- 
 verse of the Psych6 story) he is Halvor 
 who grubs among the ashes — the con- 
 nexion with fire and light being never 
 forgotten in these stories, for these 
 ashes are always living embers. The 
 adventure of Halvor is for the recovery 
 of a Helen, who has been stolen away 
 by a Troll ; but no sooner is the Ilion 
 
94 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK not even his own mother knew him ; no one recognised him but his 
 
 — — ' wife. For eighteen years he had been among the nautch-people ; 
 
 his hair was rough, his beard untrimmed, his face thin and worn, 
 sunburnt, and wrinkled, and his dress was a rough common blanket." 
 Can we possibly help thinking of the wanderer, who in his beggar's 
 dress reveals himself to the swineherd; or of his disguise, when 
 AthenS destroyed his golden locks and clothed him in tatters; 1 
 and lastly of his recognition by his old nurse when she saw the 
 wound made by the bite of the boar who slew Adonis ? So in the 
 Vengeance of Chandra we see the punishment of the suitors by 
 Odysseus, an incident still further travestied in Grimm's legend of 
 the King of the Golden Mountain. So too as we read of the body 
 of Chundun Raja, which remained undecayed though he had 
 been dead many months, or of Sodewa Bai, who a month after her 
 death looked as lovely as on the night on which she died, we are 
 reminded of the bodies of Patroklos a and of Hektor s which Aphrodite 
 or Apollon anointed with ambrosial oil, and guarded day and night 
 from all unseemly things. 
 The Snake gut though the doom of which Achilleus mournfully complained 
 
 T 6Q.VCS 
 
 to Thetis lies on all or almost all of these bright beings, they cannot 
 be held in the grasp of the dark power which has laid them low. 
 Briar-Rose and Surya Bai start from their slumbers at the magic touch 
 of the lover's hand, and even when all hope seemed to be lost, wise 
 beasts provide an antidote which will bring back life to the dead. 
 In the story of Panch Phul Ranee these beneficent physicians are 
 jackals, who converse together like the owls of Luxman or the crows 
 in the tale of Faithful John. "Do you see this tree?" says the 
 jackal to his wife. " Well, if its leaves were crushed, and a little of 
 the juice put into the raja's two ears and upon his upper lip, and 
 some upon his temples also, and some upon the spear-wound in his 
 side, he would come to life again, and be as well as ever." These 
 leaves reappear in Grimm's story of the Three Snake Leaves, in 
 which the snakes play the part of the jackals. In this tale a prince 
 is buried alive with his dead wife, and seeing a snake approaching 
 her body, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently another snake, 
 crawling from the corner, saw the other lying dead, and going away 
 soon returned with three green leaves in its mouth ; then, laying the 
 parts of the body together, so as to join, it put one leaf on. each 
 
 or stronghold of the robber demolished the Gaelic tale of the Sea-Maiden, 
 
 than, like Odysseus, he begins to feel Campbell, i. 101. 
 
 an irresistible longing to see his father ' Od. xvi. 175, 207 ; xiii. 435 ; xxi. 
 
 and his home once more. 208. 
 
 The story of Shortshanks is told in 2 //. xix. 32. 3 lb. xxiv. 20. 
 
THE SNAKE LEAVES. 95 
 
 wound, and the dead snake was alive again. The prince applying chap. 
 
 the leaves to his wife's body restores her also to life. The» following v - 
 
 are the words of Apollodoros * in relating the story, also told by 
 i ./Elian, of Glaukos and Polyidos : — " When Minos said that he must 
 ' bring Glaukos to life, Polyidos was shut up with the dead body ; 
 and, being sorely perplexed, he saw a dragon approach the corpse. 
 This he killed with a stone, and another dragon came, and, seeing 
 the first one dead, went away, and brought some grass, which it 
 placed on the body of the other, which immediately rose up. Polyidos, 
 having beheld this with astonishment, put the same grass on the body 
 of Glaukos, and restored him to life." 2 
 
 These magic leaves become a root in the German story of the The Two 
 Two Brothers, a tale in which a vast number of solar myths have 
 been rolled together. The two brothers, " as like one another as 
 two drops of water,'' are the Dioskouroi and the Asvins, or the other 
 twin deities which run through so large a portion of the Aryan 
 mythology. They are also the Babes in the Wood, although it is 
 their father himself who, at the bidding of his rich brother, thrusts 
 them forth from their home, because a piece of gold falls from the 
 mouth of each every morning. They are saved by a huntsman, who 
 makes them marksmen as expert as Kastor and Polydeukes. When 
 at length they set out on their adventures, the huntsman gives them 
 a knife, telling them that if, in case of separation, they would stick it 
 into a tree by the wayside, he who came back to it might learn from 
 the brightness or the rusting of the blade whether the other is alive 
 and well. If the tale thus leads us to the innumerable stories which 
 turn on sympathetic trees, gems, and stones, it is not less noteworthy 
 
 1 iii. 3, I. See further Professor is the same with the story of the Master 
 
 Max Miiller's " Essay on the Migration Thief, who has his familiar title in the 
 
 of Fables," Selected Essays, vol. i. p. so-called Homeric Hymn — a hymn, 
 
 500. In this essay the strange and whatever its date, older than the days 
 
 unexpected ramifications of stories are of Thucydides. 
 
 traced with wonderful skill ; and the 2 Apollodoros, iii. 3, I. Mr. Gould, 
 
 presence of a story in Iceland and Italy, referring to this story as introduced in 
 
 without its being found in other parts Fouque's " Sir Elidoc," places these 
 
 of Europe, is shown to be not neces- flowers or leaves in the large class of 
 
 sarily conclusive proof of their inde- things which have the power of restor- 
 
 pendent origin. But the chronological ing life, or splitting rocks, or opening 
 
 test, wherever it can be applied, dis- the earth and revealing hidden trea- 
 
 penses with this inquiry. The presence sures. The snake leaves represent in 
 
 of the story of the Snake Leaves in short the worms or stones which shatter 
 
 India and in Germany in our own day rocks, the sesame which opens the rob- 
 
 leaves it barely possible that it may bers' cave, and finally the vulgar hand 
 
 have been taken straight from Germany of glory, which, when set on fire, aids 
 
 to India, or from India to Germany ; the treasure-seeker in his search. All 
 
 but when we find it in the pages of these fables Mr. Gould refers to one and 
 
 Apollodoros, the fact of its having been the same object— lightning.— Curious 
 
 known in Europe two thousand years Myths of the Middle Ages, second 
 
 ago is established beyond dispute. It series, p. 145, &c. 
 
g6 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK as bringing before us almost all the brute animals, whose names were 
 *• once used as names of the sun. The two brothers lift their weapons 
 to shoot a hare, which, begging for life, promises to give up two 
 leverets. The hare is suffered to go free, and the huntsmen also 
 spare the leverets, which follow them. The same thing happens with 
 a fox, wolf, bear, and lion, and thus the youths journey, attended 
 each by % five beasts, until they part, having fixed the knife into the 
 trunk of a tree. The younger, like Perseus, comes to a town where 
 all is grief and sorrow because the king's daughter is to be given up 
 on the morrow to be devoured by a dragon on the summit of the 
 dragon's mountain. Like Theseus and Sigurd, the young man 
 becomes possessed of a sword buried beneath a great stone, and, 
 like Perseus, he delivers the maiden by slaying the dragon. Then 
 on the mountain-top the youth rests with the princess, having charged 
 his beasts to keep watch, lest any one should surprise them. But 
 the victory of the sun is followed by the sleep of winter, and the lion, 
 overcome with drowsiness, hands over his charge to the bear, the 
 bear to the wolf, the wolf to the fox, the fox to the hare, until all are 
 still. The Marshal of the kingdom, 1 who here plays the part of 
 Paris, now ascends the mountain, and, cutting off the young man's 
 head, leads away the princess, whom, as the dragon-slayer, he claims 
 as his bride. At length the sleep of the lion is broken by the sting 
 of a bee, and the beast rousing the bear asks the reason of his failing 
 to keep watch. The charge is passed from one beast to the other, 
 until the hare, unable to utter a word in its defence, begs for mercy, 
 as knowing where to find a root which, like the snake leaves, 
 shall restore their master to life. A year has passed away, and the 
 young man, again approaching the town where the princess lived, 
 finds it full of merriment, because she is going on the morrow to be 
 married to the Marshal. But the time of his humiliation is now past. 
 The huntsman in his humble hostel declares to the landlord that he 
 will this day eat of the king's bread, meat, vegetables, and sweet- 
 meats, and drink of his finest wine. These are severally brought to 
 him by the five beasts, and the princess, thus learning that her lover 
 is not dead, advises the king to send for the master of these animals. 
 The youth refuses to come unless the king sends for him a royal 
 equipage, and then, arrayed in royal robes, he goes to the palace, 
 where he convicts the Marshal of his treachery by exhibiting the 
 dragon's tongues which he had cut off and preserved in a handker- 
 chief bestowed on him by the princess, and by showing the necklace, 
 
 1 In the romance of Tristram, the Steward of the King of Ireland plays the 
 part of the Marshal. 
 
THE STAR-CLAD QUEEN. 97 
 
 of which she had given a portion to each of his beasts, and which is, chap. 
 
 in fact, the necklace of Freya and the Kestos or cestus of Ajphrodite. ■ : ■ 
 
 But the tale is not told out yet, and it enters on another cycle of the 
 sun's career. The youth is no sooner married to the princess than, 
 like Odysseus or Sigurd, he is separated from her. Following a white 
 doe into a forest, he is there deceived by a witch, at whose bidding 
 he touches his beasts with a twig, and turns them into stones, and is 
 then changed into a stone himself. Just at this time the younger 
 brother returns to the place where the knife, now partially covered 
 with rust, remained fixed in the tree. He becomes, of course, as in 
 the myth of Baldur, the avenger of his brother, and the witch under- 
 goes the doom of Punchkin or of the Giant who had no heart in his 
 body ; but when he tells the younger brother that even his wife had 
 taken him to be her husband, and admitted him into her chamber, 
 the latter cuts off the elder's head. The magic root is again brought 
 into use, and he learns how faithful his brother had been when his 
 wife asks him why, on the two previous nights, he had placed a 
 sword in the bed between them. The story thus, in its last incident, 
 runs into the tales of Sigurd and the Arabian Allah-ud-deen. 1 
 
 If we sought to prove the absolute identity of the great mass of Myths of 
 Hindu, Greek, Norse, and German legends, we surely need go no the Moot,' 
 further. Yet there are other points of likeness, at least as striking as *" d the 
 any that have been already noticed, between the stories which in the 
 East and West alike relate to the phenomena of night. In the 
 Hindu tale the disguised wife of Logedas Raja finds Tara Bai on a 
 gold and ivory throne. " She was tall and of a commanding aspect. 
 Her black hair was bound by long strings of pearls, her dress was of 
 fine-spun gold, and round her waist was clasped a zone of restless, 
 throbbing, light-giving diamonds. Her neck and her arms were 
 covered with a profusion of costly jewels, but brighter than all shone 
 her bright eyes, which looked full of gentle majesty.'' But Tara Bai 
 is the star (boy ) child, or maiden, the Asteropaios of the Iliad, of 
 whom the Greek myth said only that he was the tallest of all their 
 men, and that he was slain after fierce fight by Achilleus, whom he 
 had wounded 8 Elsewhere she reappears as Polydeukes, the glittering 
 twin brother of Kastor, and more particularly as the fairy Melusina, 
 who is married to Raymond of Toulouse. This beautiful being, who 
 has a fish's tail, as representing the moon which rises and sets in the 
 sea, vanishes away when her full form is seen by her husband 8 In 
 
 1 The Norse tale of Shortshanks * //. xxi. 1 66, &c. 
 
 (Dasent) is made up in great part of 3 The name Melusina is identified by 
 
 the materials of this story. Mr. Gould with that of the Babylonian 
 
9 8 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 The 
 
 battle of 
 light and 
 darkness. 
 
 another phase she is Kalypso, the beautiful night which veils the sun 
 -- from mortal eyes in her chamber flashing with a thousand stars, and 
 lulls to sleep the man of many griefs and wanderings. 1 Lastly, she is 
 St. Ursula, with her eleven thousand virgins (the myriad stars), whom 
 Cardinal Wiseman, in a spirit worthy of Herodotos, transforms into a 
 company, or rather two companies, of English ladies, martyred by 
 the Huns at Cologne, but whose mythical home is on Horselberg, 
 where the faithful Eckhart is doomed to keep his weary watch. 
 Labouring on in his painful rationalism, Cardinal Wiseman tells us 
 of one form qf the legend which mentions a marriage-contract made 
 with the father of St. Ursula, a very powerful king, by which it was 
 arranged that she should have eleven companions, and each of these 
 a thousand followers. 2 There are thus twelve, in addition to the 
 eleven thousand attendants, and these twelve reappear in the Hindu 
 tales, sometimes in dark, sometimes in lustrous forms, as the twelve 
 hours of the day or night, or the twelve moons of the lunar year. 
 Thus in the story of Truth's Triumph a raja has twelve wives, but 
 mo children. At length he marries Guzra Bai, the flower girl, who 
 bears him a hundred sons and one daughter ; and the sequel of the 
 tale relates the result of their jealousy against these children and 
 their mother. Their treacherous dealing is at last exposed, and 
 they suffer the fate of all like personages in the German and Norse 
 tales. 
 
 There is, in fact, no end to the many phases assumed by the 
 struggle of these fairy beings, which is the warfare between light and 
 darkness. But the bright beings always conquer in the end, and 
 return like Persephone from the abode of Hades to gladden the 
 heart of the Mater Dolorosa. 3 The child in the Deccan stories 
 appears not only as Guzra Bai, but as Panch Phul Ranee, as Surya 
 Bai, as the wife of Muchie Lai, the fish or frog-sun. 4 All these 
 
 Mylitta, the Syrian moon-goddess. — 
 Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 
 second series, "Melusina." 
 
 Mr. Gould connects Melusina, as 
 first seen close to a. fountain, with the 
 Apsaras, or water-maidens, of Vedic 
 mythology, and the swan maidens of 
 Teutonic legend. She thus belongs to 
 the race of Naiads, Nixies, and Elves, 
 the latter name denoting a running 
 stream, as the Elbe, the Alpheios. The 
 fish's or serpent's tail is not peculiar to 
 Melusina, and her attributes are also 
 shared with the Assyrian fish-gods, and 
 the Hellenic Proteus. 
 
 1 Od. v. 60, Sec. 
 
 2 Essays on Religion and Literature, 
 
 edited by Archbishop Manning (1865), 
 p. 252. 
 
 3 Grote, History of Greece, i. 55. 
 
 * The frog prince or princess is only 
 one of the thou.' and personifications of 
 names denoting originally the pheno- 
 mena of clay and night. As carrying 
 the morning light from the east to the 
 west, the sun is the bull bearing Europe 
 from the purple land (Phoinikia) ; and 
 the same changes which converted the 
 Seven Shiners into the Seven Sages, or 
 the Seven Sleepers' of Ephesus, or the 
 Seven Champions of Christendom, or 
 the Seven Bears, transformed the sun 
 into a wolf, a bear, a lion, a swan. As 
 resting on the horizon in the morn- 
 
VESSELS OF PLENTY. 
 
 99 
 
 women are the daughters of a gardener or a milkwoman, in whom we 
 see the image of Demeter, the bountiful earth, who lavishes on her ■ 
 children her treasures of fruits, milk, and flowers. In her hand she 
 holds her mystic cup, into which falls the ripe mango, which is her 
 child transformed, as the ripe fruit falls on the earth. This cup, 
 again, is the horn of Amaltheia, the table of the Ethiopians, of which 
 Herodotos speaks as laden continually with all good things, the cup 
 into which Helios sinks each night when his course is run, the 
 modios of Serapis, 1 the ivory ewer containing the book of Solomon's 
 occult knowledge, which Rehoboam placed in his father's tomb, the 
 magic oil-bowl or lamp of Allah-ud-deen, and finally the San-Greal 
 which furnishes to the knights of Arthur's round table as splendid a 
 banquet as their hearts can desire. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 V. 
 
 ing, he is Apollon swathed by the 
 water-maidens in golden bands, or the 
 wounded and forsaken Oidipous ; as 
 lingering again on the water's edge 
 before he vanishes from sight, he is the 
 frog squatting on the water, a homely 
 image of Endymion and Narkissos. In 
 this aspect the sun is himself an apsara, 
 or water-maiden ; and thus the Sanskrit 
 Bheki is a beautiful girl, whom a king 
 wins to be his wife on the condition 
 that he is not to let her see a drop of 
 water. Of course the king one day 
 forgets his promise, shows her water, 
 and Bheki vanishes. This is the 
 counterpart to the legend of Melusina, 
 who also dies if seen in the water. The 
 sun and moon must alike sink when 
 they reach the western sea. "This 
 story," says Professor Max Muller, 
 ' ' was known at the time when Kapila 
 wrote his philosophical aphorisms in 
 India, for it is there quoted as an illus- 
 tration. But long before Kapila, the 
 story of Bheki must have grown up 
 gradually, beginning with a short saying 
 about the sun — 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." — Chips 
 from a German Workshop, ii. 248. In 
 the Teutonic version, the change of 
 the sun into the form of a frog is the 
 result of enchantment ; but the story of 
 the Frog Prince has more than one 
 point of interest. The frog is com- 
 pelled to iump into the fountain, out of 
 which only the youngest daughter^ of 
 the king has the power of drawing him. 
 These daughters again are the com- 
 panions of Ursula; the daughters of 
 
 the raja who are jealous of their 
 youngest sister ; the hours of the night, 
 sombre in their beauty, and envious of 
 the youngest and the fairest of all the 
 hours, the hour of the dawn, which 
 alone can bring the frog prince out of 
 the pond. In the German story the 
 enchantment can be ended only by the 
 death of the frog ; but this answers to 
 the burning of the enchanted raja's 
 jackal skin in the Hindu tale. The 
 sun leaping fully armed into the heaven 
 as Chrysaor might well be another 
 being from the infant whom the nymphs 
 swathe with golden bands in his gleam- 
 ing cradle. The warrior comes to life 
 on the death of the child, and the frog 
 on being dashed against the wall be- 
 comes a beautiful prince. Of course he 
 takes away his bride, " early in the 
 morning as soon as the sun rose, in a 
 carriage drawn by eight white horses 
 with ostrich feathers on their heads, 
 and golden bridles," the Harits who 
 draw the car of Indra, the glistening 
 steeds of Helios, the undying horses 
 who are yoked to the chariot of Achil- 
 leus. But with Achilleus comes Pa- 
 troklos ; and as Luxman attends on 
 Rama, so "Trusty Henry,' who comes 
 with the carriage of the Frog Prince, 
 represents the Faithful John of the 
 Teutonic legend. 
 
 1 Duncker, History of Antiquity, i. 
 139. " The living Apis was called the 
 Hapi-anch, or Living Apis," as the in- 
 carnation of the god Ptah. " At his 
 death he was canonized, and became 
 Osir-Hapi," or the dead Apis— a name 
 which the Greeks converted into Se- 
 rapis. — Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, 
 i. 198 ; ii. 122. 
 
ICO MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK It is scarcely necessary to go further. If we do, we shall only be 
 
 • v - - confronted by the same astonishing parallelism which is exhibited by 
 
 the several versions of the stories already cited. The hypothesis of 
 of Aryan conscious borrowing is either superfluous or dangerous. It is unne- 
 foikiore. cggsary-j if adduced to explain the distant or vague resemblances in 
 one story, while they who so apply it admit that it cannot account 
 for the far more striking points of likeness seen in many others. It 
 is dangerous because it may lead us to infer an amount of inter- 
 course between the separated Aryan tribes for which we shall vainly 
 seek any actual evidence. It is inadequate, because in a vast number 
 of instances the point to be explained is not a similarity of ideas, but 
 a substantial identity in the method of working them out, extending 
 to the most unexpected devices and the subtlest turns of thought and 
 expression. That the great mass of popular tradition has been thus 
 imported from the East into the West, or from the West into the 
 East, has never been maintained ; and any such theory would rest 
 on the assumption that the folk-lore of a country may be created by 
 a few scholars sitting over their books, and deliberately determining 
 the form in which their stories shall be presented to the people. It 
 would be safer to affirm, and easier to prove, that no popular stories 
 have thus found their way from learned men to the common people 
 The ear of the people has in all ages been deaf to the charming of 
 the scholars, charm they never so wisely. Bookmen may, if they 
 please, take up and adapt the stories of the people ; but the legend 
 of "the Carter, the Dog, and the Sparrow " would never have found 
 Its way into the nurseries of German peasants if written by Grimm 
 himself in imitation of some other Aryan tale. The importation of 
 one or two stories by means of written books is therefore a matter of 
 very slight moment, so long as it is admitted that legends, displaying 
 the most astonishing parallelism in the most distant countries of 
 Europe and Asia, cannot be traced to any intercourse of the tribes 
 subsequent to their dispersion from a common home. We thus have 
 before us a vast mass of myths, fables, legends, stories, or by what- 
 ever name they are to be called, some in a form not much advanced 
 beyond the proverbial saying which was their kernel, others existing 
 apparently only as nursery tales, others containing the germs of the 
 great epics of the Eastern and the Western world. All these may be 
 placed together in one class, as springing from phrases which at firsi 
 denoted physical phenomena ; and enough has perhaps been already 
 said to show that this class includes a very large proportion of strictly 
 popular stories which seem at first sight to be in no way connected 
 with epical mythology. There remain the comparatively few stories 
 
UBIQUITY OF THE TROJAN WAR. . IOI 
 
 which seem to have had their origin in proverbs or adages ; and it is, chap. 
 
 of course, possible that some or all of these may belong to those — — '■ 
 
 more recent times when men had attained to some notion of the 
 order of a moral world, to some idea of law and duty. But it is im- 
 possible not to see that some at least of these stories turn on notions 
 suggested by the older mythical speech. The dog and the parrot in 
 the stories of the Carter and the Nautch-girl are weak things which 
 bring down the pride of those who oppress the helpless ; but this is 
 simply the character and the office of Boots in Teutonic stories, and 
 Boots and Cinderella, Oidipous and Herakles, alike represent the 
 sun, who, weak and powerless as he starts on his course, is at length 
 victorious over all his enemies. The phenomena of nature present 
 analogies to the order of the moral world, which are perhaps closer 
 than theologians have imagined. If the words which we use to 
 denote the most abstract ideas were at first mere names of sensible 
 things, 1 the phrases which described the processes of nature must be 
 capable of receiving a moral meaning. The story of the sun starting 
 in weakness and ending, in victory, waging a long warfare against 
 darkness, clouds, and storms, and scattering them all in the end, is 
 the story of all heroism, of all patient self-sacrifice, of all Christian 
 devotion. There is, therefore, nothing to surprise us if the phrases 
 which we use with a spiritual meaning, and the proverbs in which we 
 sum up our spiritual experience, should have been suggested by the 
 very phenomena which furnished the groundwork of Aryan epic 
 poetry. The tendency of physical science is to resolve complex 
 agencies into a single force : the science of language seems to be 
 doing the same work for the words and the thoughts of men. 
 
 But the story of the heroes of Teutonic and Hindu folk-lore, the Historical 
 stories of Boots and Cinderella, of Logedas Raja, and Surya Bai, ™™an 
 are the story also of Achilleus and Oidipous, of Perseus and Theseus, pop" 1 ? 1 " 
 
 J , . traditions. 
 
 of Helen and Odysseus, of Baldur and Rustem and Sigurd. Every- 
 where there is the search for the bright maiden who has been stolen 
 away, everywhere the long struggle to recover her. 1 The war of Uion 
 has been fought out in every Aryan land. Either, then, the historical 
 facts which lie at the root of the narrative of the Iliad took place 
 before the dispersion of the Aryan tribes from their common home, 
 or they are facts which belong to the beautiful cloudiand, where the 
 misty Ilion " rises into towers " at early dawn. 
 
 ' If theie be monotony in the charac- mythology when he said, " It is curious 
 
 ter thus imparted to popular stories, the to remark at how little expense of in- 
 
 monotony is not confined to these tales. vention successive ages are content to 
 
 Sir Walter Scott was not thinking of receive amusement." 
 
102 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MYTHICAL PHRASES AS FURNISHING MATERIALS FOR THE TEUTONIC 
 EPIC POEMS, AND THE LEGENDS OF ARTHUR AND ROLAND. 
 
 The results obtained from an examination of Greek epic poetry, 
 so far as it has come down to us, have a direct and important bearing 
 on the mythology of northern Europe, and on the estimate which we 
 must take of it. Of the general character of the Hellenic tribes 
 we can form a notion more or less exact from the evidence of 
 tome epics, contemporary documents, as soon as we reach the historical age ; 
 but, whatever may be its defects or its vices, we are fully justified in 
 saying that it is not the character of the great Achaian chieftains as 
 exhibited either in the Iliad or the Odyssey. We have absolutely no 
 warrant for the belief that the ancestors of Perikles or Themistokles, 
 within ten or even more generations, were men who would approve 
 the stabbing of enemies behind their backs, the use of poisoned 
 arrows, and the butchery of captives deliberately set apart to grace 
 the funeral sacrifices of a slain chief. Nay, more, we shall look in 
 vain in any historical record for any portrait which will justify the 
 belief that the picture of Achilleus in the Iliad is the likeness of an 
 actual Achaian chieftain, while on any psychological analysis we 
 seem to be driven to the conclusion that the character is one 
 removed altogether from the bounds of humanity. If the analysis * 
 of the character of Odysseus and Achilleus shows that almost every 
 feature is traditional, and that the portraits, as a whole, are not 
 of the poet's making, that the wisdom and the falsehood, the truth- 
 fulness and the sullenness, whether of the one hero or the other, 
 were impressed upon each by a necessity which no poet could resist, 
 and that these conclusions are proved by the evidence, overwhelming 
 in its amount, which shows that Achilleus and Odysseus are reflexions 
 of Perseus, Theseus, Herakles, and these, again, of Phoibos and 
 Helios, or of other deities who share their attributes — if the whole 
 story which has gathered round the names of these great national 
 
 1 For this analysis I must refer Science of Comparative Mythology, ch. ix. 
 the reader to my Introduction to the section 2. 
 
LIKENESS BETWEEN GREEK AND TEUTONIC EPICS. 103 
 
 heroes resolves itself into the cloudland of heaven with its never- chap. 
 
 ceasing changes, we are at once justified in thinking that %: history ■ — li — • 
 
 of the Teutonic heroes may be of much the same kind ; and if on 
 
 examining it we not only find this suspicion borne out, but discern 
 
 in it some of the most important incidents and sequences which 
 
 mark the Greek legends, the conclusion is forced upon us that the 
 
 Teutonic epics, like the Hellenic, are the fruit of one and the same 
 
 tree which has spread its branches over all the Aryan lands, and that 
 
 the heroes of these epics no more exhibit the actual character of 
 
 Northmen and Germans than the portraits of the heroes in the Iliad 
 
 and Odyssey are the pictures of actual Achaian chieftains. When 
 
 we find further that the action in each case turns on the possession 
 
 of a beautiful woman and the treasures which make up her dowry, 
 
 that this woman is in each case seduced or betrayed, while the hero 
 
 with his invincible weapons is doomed to an early death after the 
 
 same stormy and vehement career, we see that we are dealing with 
 
 materials which under different forms are essentially the same ; and 
 
 our task becomes at each stage shorter and simpler. 
 
 Hence as we begin the story of Volsung (who is Diogenes or the The Vol- 
 son of Odin, his father Rerir and his grandfather Sigi being the only suns Iale - 
 intermediate links), we suspect at once that we are carried away from 
 the world of mortal men, when we find that he is one of those 
 mysterious children whose birth from a mother destined never to see 
 them 1 portends their future greatness and their early end ; and as we 
 read further of the sword which is left for the strongest in the roof- 
 tree of Volsung's hall, no room is left for doubt that we have before 
 us the story of Theseus in another dress. The one-eyed guest with 
 the great striped cloak and broad flapping hat, who buries the sword 
 up to its hilt in the huge oak stem, 2 is Odin, the lord of the air, 
 who in Teutonic mythology is like the Kyklops, one-eyed, as Indra 
 Savitar is one-handed. But Aigeus in the Argive story is but one of 
 the many names of Zeus Poseidon, and as the husband of Aithra, the 
 ether, he also is lord of the air. In vain, when Odin has departed, 
 
 1 So in the Hindu popular story, point of view, most important of the 
 
 Vikramaditya (the child of Aditi, stories of fatal children is that of 
 
 Kronos, or the Dawn-land of the East), Havelok the Dane, which has assumed 
 
 is the son of Gandharba-sena. When its final shape as Hamlet under the hand 
 
 his sire died, his grandfather, the deity of Shakespeare. For the history of 
 
 Indra, resolved that "the babe should this myth and its variants, the tales of 
 
 not be born, upon which his mother Argentile and Curan, &c., see Intro- 
 
 stabbed herself. But the tragic event duetion to Comparative Mythology, 
 
 duly happening during the ninth month, 304-309. 
 
 Vikramaditya came into the world by 2 This tree grows through the roof 
 
 himself." — Burton, Tales of Indian of the hall and spreads its branches 
 
 Devilry, preface, p. xv. One of the far and wide in the upper air. It is 
 
 most remarkable and, from a certain manifestly the counterpart of Yggdrasil. 
 
104 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK do Siggeir, the husband of Volsung's daughter Signy, and the other 
 • guests at her marriage-feast, strive to draw the sword. It remains 
 motionless in the trunk until it is touched by Sigmund, 1 the youngest 
 and bravest of Volsung's sons — a reproduction in part of Volsung 
 himself, as Odysseus is of Autolykos. To Sigmund's hand, as to 
 Arthur, the sword yields itself at once, without an effort. Theseus 
 lifts the huge stone beneath which Aigeus had placed his magic 
 sword and sandals. The weapon of the Greek story is the sword 
 of Chrysaor ; that of the Teutonic legend is the famous Gram, the 
 Excalibur of Arthur and the Durandal of Roland, and Sigmund thus 
 becomes, like Achilleus, the possessor of an irresistible arm. In 
 truth, the whole myth of Volsung and his children is but a repetition, 
 in all its phases, of that great drama of Greek mythology which begins 
 with the loss of the golden fleece and ends with the return of the 
 Herakleidai. This drama represents the course or history of the sun 
 in all its different aspects, as ever young or growing old, as dying or 
 immortal, as shooting with poisoned weapons or as hating a lie like 
 death, as conquering the powers of darkness or as smitten by their 
 deadly weapons; and thus in the defeat of Sigmund we have an 
 incident belonging as strictly to the solar myth as the victory of 
 Achilleus over Hektor, or the discomfiture of the Sphinx by Oidipous. 
 It could not be otherwise. Odin and Phoibos live while Baldur and 
 Asklepios die, but these rise again themselves or live in their children. 
 So, too, there must be a struggle between Siggeir and Sigmund for 
 the possession of Gram, for Siggeir stands to Sigmund in the 
 relation of Polydektes to Perseus, or of Paris to Menelaos. But he 
 is the dark being regarded for the present as the conqueror, and 
 Sigmund and his ten brothers, the hours of the sunlit day, are taken 
 and bound. The ten brothers are slain ; Sigmund himself is saved 
 by his sister Signy, and with his son Sinfiotli, now runs as a were- 
 wolf through the forest, the Lykeian or wolf-god wandering through 
 the dark forest of the night — a dreary picture which the mythology 
 of sunnier lands represented under the softer image of the sleeping 
 Helios sailing in his golden cup from the western to the eastern 
 ocean. But the beautiful Signy is no other than Penelope, and 
 
 1 The Sigmund of Beowulf and the many or most mythical champions, can 
 
 Volsung Tale bears a name which is an be wounded only in one part of his 
 
 epithet of Odin, the giver of victory. body. If again Fafnir, when dying by 
 
 He is drawn by Regin from the trunk his hand, tells him of the things which 
 
 of a poplar tree, he is loved by the shall happen hereafter, we must remem- 
 
 Valkyrie Brynhild, and instructed by ber that the Pythian dragon guarded 
 
 the wise Gripir, as Achilleus and other the oracle of Delphi. — Grimm, Deutsche 
 
 heroes are taught by Cheiron. He Mythologie, 343. 
 wtars the invisible helmet, and like 
 
THE SAGA OF THE VOLSUNGS. 10$ 
 
 Siggeir's followers are the suitors who eat up the substance of Sigmund, chap. 
 
 as they had deprived him of his armour. There remains therefore : — • 
 
 to be wrought again a vengeance like that of Odysseus : and when 
 Sinfiotli is, like Telemachos, strong enough to help his father, the 
 two, like the Ithakan chieftains, burn up Siggeir and all his followers, 
 the mode in which they are slain pointing to the scorching heat 
 of the sun not less clearly than the deadly arrows which stream from 
 the bow of Odysseus. Sigmund now regains his heritage, and for him, 
 as for Odysseus, there follows a time of serene repose. Like Nestor, 
 who is exaggerated in Tithonos, he reaches a good old age : but as 
 Odysseus must yet go through the valley of death, so Sigmund has to 
 fight the old battle over again, and is slain in a war with the sons of 
 King Hunding, in whom are reflected the followers of Siggeir. But 
 Achilleus is slain only when Apollon guides the spear of Paris ; and so 
 when Sigmund's hour is come, the one-eyed man with the flapping hat 
 and the blue garment (of ether) is seen again. As he stretches out his 
 spear, Sigmund strikes against it his good sword Gram, and the blade- 
 is shivered in twain. The hero at once knows that Odin stands before 
 him, and prepares to die on the battle-field. But Iole stood by the 
 funeral pile of Herakles, and Sigmund dies in the arms of his young 
 wife Hjordis, youthful as Daphne or Arethousa, " refusing all leech- 
 craft and bowing his head to Odin's will," as in the Trojan myth 
 Paris cannot be healed even though Oinone would gladly save him. 
 
 So ends the first act of the great drama ; but the wheel has only The Story 
 to make another turn, and bring back the same series of events with ° Sl S urd - 
 slight differences of names and colouring. Sigmund leaves Hjordis 
 the mother of an unborn babe, the Phoibos, who is the child of Leto, 
 and of the Sun who sank yestereve beneath the western waters. This 
 child, who receives the name of Sigurd, is bom in the house of Hial- 
 prek, who is localised as king of Denmark, but who represents Laios 
 or Akrisios in the Theban and Argive legends ; and these, we need 
 not say, are simply reflexions of Vritra, the being who wraps all 
 things in the veil of darkness. Sigurd himself is the favourite hero 
 of northern tradition. Like Achilleus, he is the destined knight who 
 succeeds where all others have failed before him. Troy cannot fall 
 if the son of Peleus be absent ; Fafnir cannot be slain, nor Brynhild 
 rescued, except by the son of Sigmund. Physically, there is no 
 difference between them. Both have the keen blue eyes, and golden 
 locks, and invincible weapons of Phoibos and Athene ; on both alike 
 rests the glory of a perfect beauty ; and to both their weapons and 
 their armour come from the god of fire. But in the Norse story 
 there is a connexion between Regin, the mysterious smith of King 
 
106 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Hialprek, and the dragon Fafnir, which cannot be traced between 
 
 • *' _. Hephaistos and the Delphian Python, but which is fully explained by 
 
 the differences of a northern and a mediterranean climate. In the 
 Norse story, there is enmity between Fafnir and Regin, between the 
 serpent who has coiled round the treasure of Brynhild (as the Panis 
 hide the cows of Indra), and the faculties of life and growth repre- 
 sented by the dwarfs to whose race Regin belongs. 1 Regin, in short, 
 is one of that class of beings who supply warmth and vigour to all 
 living things ; Fafnir is the simple darkness or cold, which is the 
 mere negation of life and light. Hence from Regin comes the bid- 
 ding which charges Sigurd to slay Fafnir ; but the mode in which 
 this enmity is said to have been excited is singularly significant. In 
 their wanderings, Odin, Loki, and Hahnir, the gods of the glistening 
 heavens, come to a river where, nigh to a ford, an otter is eating 
 a salmon with its eyes shut. Loki, slaying the beast with a stone, 
 boasts that at one throw he has got both fish and flesh. This is the 
 first blow dealt by the lords of light to the powers of cold and dark- 
 ness : but the way is as yet by no means open before them. Many 
 a day has yet to pass, and many a hero yet to fall, before the beauti- 
 ful summer can be brought out from the prison-house hedged in by 
 its outwork of spears or ice. The slain otter is a brother of Fafnir 
 and Regin, and a son of Reidmar. in whose house the three gods 
 ask shelter, showing at the same time their spoil. At Reidmar's bid- 
 ding his two surviving sons bind Loki, Odin, and Hahnir, who are 
 not set free until they promise to fill the otter's skin with gold, and so 
 to cover it that not a white hair shall be seen — in other words, the 
 powers of the bright heaven are pledged to loosen the ice-fetters of 
 the earth, and destroy every sign of its long bondage. But the gold 
 is the glistening treasure which has been taken away when Perse- 
 phone" was stolen from her mother Demeter and Brynhild left to 
 sleep within the walls of flame. Hence Loki must discharge the 
 office of Hermes when he goes to reclaim the maiden from the rugged 
 lord of Hades ; and thus Odin sends Loki to the dwelling of the dark 
 elves, where he compels the dwarf Andvari (who reappears as Albe- 
 rich in the Nibelung legend) to give up the golden treasures which 
 
 1 "The dwarfs of Teutonic my tho- qualities." Bunsen (God in History, 
 
 logy are distinguished from its giants, ii. 484) rightly adds, "The word must 
 
 because they do not, like the latter, be a simple Teutonic one, and we most 
 
 represent the wild and lawless energies likely come on the traces of its primary 
 
 of nature, but the contrivance and significance in our word Zwerch, as 
 
 wonderful properties present in the equivalent to quer, wicked or cross, 
 
 mineral and vegetable kingdoms, and the intellectual application of which has 
 
 shown in form and shape, in colour survived in the English queer." 
 and growth, in various hurtful or useful 
 
REGIN AND FAFNIR. 107 
 
 he had hoarded in the stony caves, whose ice-like walls answer to the , CHAP. 
 dismal den of the Vedic Panis. One ring alone Andvafi seeks to -J2: — ■ 
 keep. It is the source of all his wealth, and ring after ring drops 
 from it He wishes, in other words, to keep his hold of the summer 
 itself as represented by the symbol of the reproductive power in 
 nature. The ring is the magic necklace of Harmonia and Eriphyle, 
 the kestos of Aphrodite, the ship of Isis and Atheng, the Yoni of 
 Vishnu, the Argo which bears within itself all the chieftains of the 
 Achaian lands. Andvari prays in vain, but before he surrenders the 
 ring, he lays on it a curse, which is to make it the bane of every man 
 who owns it. It is, in short, to be the cause of more than one 
 Trojan war, 1 the Helen who is to bring ruin to the hosts who seek to 
 rescue her from thraldom. The beauty of the ring tempts Odin to 
 keep it, but the gold he yields to Reidmar. It is, however, not 
 enough to hide all the white hairs of the otter's skin. One yet 
 remains visible, and this can be hidden only by the ring which Odiir 
 is thus compelled to lay upon it, as the ice cannot be wholly melted 
 till the full warmth of summer has come back to the earth. Thus the 
 three ^Esir go free, but Loki lays again on the ring the curse of the 
 dwarf Andvari. The working of this curse is seen first in the death 
 of Reidmar, who is slain by Regin and Fafnir, because he refuses to 
 share with them the gold which he had received from the ^Esir. The 
 same cause makes Regin and Fafnir enemies. Fafnir will not yield 
 up the treasure, and taking a dragon's form he folds his coils around 
 the golden heaps upon the glistening heath, as the Python imprisons 
 the fertilising streams at Delphoi. Thus foiled, Regin beseeches 
 Sigurd to sniite the dragon ; but even Sigurd cannot do this without 
 a sword of sufficient temper. Regin forges two, but the blades of 
 both are shivered at the first stroke. Sigurd exclaims bitterly that 
 the weapons are untrue, like Regin and all his race, — a phrase which 
 points with singular clearness to the difference between the subter- 
 ranean fires and the life-giving rays of the sun, which alone can 
 scatter the shades of night or conquer the winter's cold. It is clear 
 that the victory cannot be won without the sword which Odin drove 
 into the oak trunk, and which had been broken in the hands of 
 Sigmund. But the pieces remain in the keeping of Hjordis, the 
 mother of Sigurd, and thus the wife of Sigmund plays here precisely 
 the part of Thetis. In each case the weapons with which the hero is 
 to win his victory come through the mother, and in each case they 
 
 1 This ring reappears with precisely and it is absurd to suppose that such a 
 the same qualities and consequences in series of incidents was constantly recur- 
 many of the sagas of Northern Europe ; ring in actual history. 
 
IOS MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK are forged or welded by the swarthy fire-god ; but the Norse tale is 
 ; • even more true than the Homeric legend, for the sword which smites 
 
 the darkness to-day is the same blade which the enemies of the sun 
 yestereve snapped in twain. With the sword thus forged from the 
 shattered pieces of Gram Regin bids Sigurd smite the Dragon : but 
 the hero must first avenge his father's death, and King Hunding, his 
 sons, and all his host are slain, like the suitors by the arrows of 
 Odysseus, before Sigurd goes forth on his good steed Gran, which 
 Odin had brought to him as Athene" brought Pegasos to Bellerophon, 
 to encounter the guardian of the earth's treasures. But no sooner is 
 the Dragon slain than Regin in his turn feels the desire of vengeance 
 for the very deed which he had urged Sigurd to do, and he insists 
 that the hero shall bring him his brother's heart roasted. Then filling 
 himself with Fafnir's blood, Regin lies down to sleep, and Sigurd, as 
 he roasts the heart, wonders whether it be soft, and putting a portion 
 to his lips, finds that he understands the voices of the birds, who, 
 singing over his head, bid him eat it all and become the wisest of 
 men, and then, cutting off Regin's head, take possession of all his 
 gold. This is manifestly the legend of Iamos and Melampous, while 
 the wisdom obtained by eating the heart of Fafnir has a further con- 
 nexion with the Python as the guardian of the Delphic oracle. 1 
 The rescue With this exploit begins the career of Sigurd as Chrysaor. As 
 hiid ryn Achilleus is taught by Cheiron, so is Sigurd instructed by Gripir, the 
 wise man, and thus in the fulness of wisdom and strength, with his 
 golden hair flowing over his shoulders, and an eye whose glance 
 dazzled all who faced it, he rides over the desolate heath, until he 
 comes to the circle of flame within which sleeps the Valkyrie Bryn- 
 hild. 2 No other horse but Gran can leap that wall of fire, no knight 
 
 1 Grimm regards the words Python the Odysseus who wanders very far 
 and Fafnir as standing to each other in over many lands, after the fall of Ilion, 
 the relation of 6)ip and (piip. "Die which again answers to the slaying of 
 Erlegung des Drachen Fafnir gemahnt the dragon. The Fitela of Beowulf is 
 an Tlv9av, den Apollo besiegte, und wie clearly the Sinfibtli of the Volsung tale. 
 Python das delfische Orakel hiitete, For some remarks on the comparative 
 weissagt der steibende Fafnir." — antiquity of these two legends see 
 Deutsche Mythologie, 345. In the lay Ludlow, Popular Epics of the Middle 
 of Beowulf this serpent or dragon ap- Ages, i. 41. The substantial identity 
 pears under the name Grendel ; and, in of the two myths renders the question 
 fact, the whole story of Sigurd is in of date of comparatively little import- 
 that poem related substantially, although ance. The real point for consideration 
 not with the same fulness of detail, of is that these stories are further identical 
 Sigmund the father of Beowulf, the with the sagas of the three Helgis, and 
 Waelsing, who, having slain the worm, of Baldur, and thus also with the myths 
 becomes the possessor of the ring hoard of Adonis, Dionysos, Sarpedon, Mem- 
 which he may enjoy at pleasure. Like non, and other gods and heroes of 
 the Norse Sigurd, Sigmund is "of Hellenic tradition. 
 , wanderers by far the greatest through- a Brynhild, as we might suppose, 
 out the human race :' ' he is, in short, reappears in many Teutonic stories. In 
 
BRYNHILD AND GUNNAR. 
 
 IC9 
 
 VI. 
 
 but Sigurd can guide him across that awful barrier : but at his touch chap. 
 the maiden is roused from the slumber which had lasted«since Odin *- 
 thrust the thorn of sleep or winter into her cloak, like the Rakshas' 
 claw which threw the little sun-girl of the Hindu tale into her magic 
 trance. At once she knows that before her stands the only man who 
 never knew fear, the only man who should ever have her as his bride. 
 But Brynhild also has the gift of marvellous wisdom, and as the 
 Teutonic Alrune, 1 she reflects the knowledge of the Greek Athene' 
 and the Latin Minerva. From her Sigurd receives all the runes, but 
 these scarcely reveal to him so much- of the future as had been laid 
 bare for him in the prophecies of Gripir. 2 By the latter he had been 
 told that Brynhild (like Helen) would work him much woe : but 
 Brynhild knew, as Sigurd rode on to the hall of Giuki the Niflung, 
 that her place was now to be taken by another, and that her own lot 
 was to be that of Ariadne, Aithra, Oinone, or Medeia. It is the old 
 tale, repeated under a thousand different forms. The bright dawn 
 who greeted the newly risen sun cannot be with him as he journeys 
 through the heaven ; and the bride whom he weds in her stead is 
 nearer and more akin to the mists of evening or the cold of winter. 
 Thus Gudrun, loving and beautiful as she is, is still the daughter of 
 Niflung, the child of the mist, and stands to Sigurd precisely in the 
 relation of Deianeira to Herakles, as the unwitting cause of her hus- 
 band's ruin. But Brynhild yet lives, and Gunnar, who, like Hogni or 
 Hagene, is a son of the Niflung and brother of Gudrun, seeks to have 
 
 the story of Strong Hans (Grimm), she 
 is the chained maiden who is guarded 
 by the dwarf (Andvari). When Hans 
 (Sigurd) slays the dwarf, the chains im- 
 mediately fall off her hands. In the 
 story of the True Bride, the prince is as 
 faithless as Sigurd, but the princess 
 recovers him in the end with the hap- 
 pier lot of Penelop£. In the story of 
 the Woodcutter's Child the Knight has 
 to cut his way through the thorny 
 hedges, as Sigurd has to ride through 
 the flames. As the fearless hero, Sigurd 
 is the theme of the story of the " Prince 
 who was afraid of Nothing," and whose 
 fortunes are much like those of the 
 deliverer of Brynhild. 
 
 1 The Aurinia of Tacitus, Germ. 8. 
 — Bunsen, God in History, ii. 454. 
 
 * With the runes he also receives a 
 great deal of good advice, pointing pre- 
 cisely to those features in the myths of 
 Phoibos, Helios, Hermes, and Hera- 
 kles, which, when translated into the 
 conditions of human morality, become 
 faults or vices; Helios may burn his 
 
 enemies without scruple or shame, but 
 Sigurd must not do this, nor must he 
 be, like Indra and Paris, yvvaipavks, 
 nor a liar like Odysseus. The warn- 
 ings which she adds are much of the 
 same sort. 
 
 The winter sleep of Brynhild is tra- 
 vestied in the later story of Dietrich 
 and Sigenot (Ludlow, Popular Epics, 
 i. 263). Dietrich is here the Sigurd or 
 bright hero, who wears the helmet of 
 Grein whom he has slain, and who is 
 the nephew of the giant Sigenot. Sige- 
 not now carries off Dietrich and shuts 
 him up in a hollow stone or tower, 
 where, like Ragnar Lodbrog, he is 
 attacked by many a strong worm or 
 serpent — the snakes of night. One of 
 his followers tries to raise him by a. 
 rope, which breaks, and Dietrich tells 
 him that the wounds which he has 
 received cannot be healed. Things, 
 however, turn out better than he ex- 
 pects ; but the one night which he 
 spent in the house seemed to him as 
 thirty years. 
 
HO MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK her as his wife. His desire can be satisfied only through Sigurd, who 
 
 I. 
 
 by the arts and philtres of Grimhild has been made to forget his first 
 love and betroth himself to Gudrun. In vain Gunnar x strives to ride 
 through the flames that encircle Brynhild, until at last, by the arts of 
 Grimhild, Sigurd is made to change shapes and arms with Gunnar, 
 and, mounting on Gran, to force Brynhild to yield. Thus Sigurd 
 weds the Valkyrie in Gunnar's form, and lies down by her side with 
 the unsheathed blade of Gram between them. 2 In the morning he 
 gives to Brynhild the ring which was under the double curse of 
 Andvari and Loki, receiving from her another ring in return. This 
 ring is necessarily connected with the catastrophe ; but in the mode 
 by which it is brought about, the Northern poets were left free to 
 follow their fancy. In the Volsung tale, Gudrun and Brynhild are 
 washing their hair in the same stream, when Brynhild says that no 
 water from Gudrun's head shall fall upon her own, as her husband is 
 braver than Gudrun's. When Gudrun replies that Sigurd, to whom 
 she was wedded, had slain Fafnir and Regin and seized the hoard, 
 Brynhild answers that Gunnar had done yet a braver deed in riding 
 through the flames which surrounded her. A few words from Gudrun 
 show her how things really are, and that the seeming Gunnar who 
 had placed on her finger the ring won from the spoils of Andvari was 
 really Sigurd who had transferred to Gudrun the ring which he had 
 received from Brynhild. Thus her old love is re-awakened, only to 
 be merged in the stinging sense of injustice which makes Oinone" in 
 one version of the myth refuse to heal the wounded Paris, and leads 
 Deianeira to resolve on the death of Herakles. The three instances 
 are precisely the same, although Oinone is of the three the most 
 gentle and the most merciful. But in all there is the consciousness 
 
 * "Gunnar Gjukason seems to sig- story of the Two Brothers, and in the 
 
 nify darkness, and thus we see that the romance of Tristram. In the Norse 
 
 awakening and budding spring is gone, legend of the Big Bird Dan, who is no 
 
 carried away by Gunnar, like Proser- other than the Arabian Roc, the princess 
 
 pine by Pluto ; like SitS. by Ravana. lays the bare sword between her and 
 
 Gudrun, the daughter of Grimhild, and Ritter Red. Sir G. W. Dasent adds 
 
 sometimes herself called Grimhild, many more instances, as the story of 
 
 whether the latter name meant summer Hr61f and Ingegerd, of Tristan and Isolt, 
 
 (cf. Gharma in Sanskrit), or the earth and he rightly insists that " these mythi- 
 
 and nature in the latter part of the cal deep-rooted germs, throwing out 
 
 year, is a. sister of the dark Gunnar, fresh shoots from age to age in the 
 
 and though now married to the bright popular literature of the race, are far 
 
 Sigurd, she belongs herself to the more convincing proofs of the early 
 
 nebulous regions." — Max Muller, Chips, existence of their traditions than any 
 
 ii. no. For some analysis of the mere external evidence." — Norse Tales, 
 
 Ramayana, which tells the story of introduction, cxlii. It is certainly worth 
 
 Sita, Rama, and Ravana, see Introduc- noting that the incident is related also 
 
 Hon to Comparative Mythology, 347. of Allah-ud-deen in the Arabian Nights' 
 
 2 This incident recurs in Grimm's legend. 
 
THE DEATH OF SIGURD. Ill 
 
 of betrayal and the determination to punish it, and the feeling which chap. 
 animates them is reflected again in the hate of Helen foj Paris after — — : — 
 he has shut her up in Ilion. Thus Brynhild urges Gunnar to avenge 
 her on Sigurd, like the summer twilight allying itself with the powers 
 of winter to blot out the glory of the sun from the heavens. But 
 Gunnar and his brothers cannot accomplish her will themselves : 
 they have made a compact of friendship with Sigurd, and they must 
 not break their oath. But Guttorm their half-brother is under no 
 such covenant, and so this being, who represents the cold of winter, 
 plunges a sword into the breast of Sigurd, who is sleeping in the arms 
 of Gudrun. This weapon is the thorn which is fatal to the Persian 
 Rustem and the gentle Surya Bai of modern Hindu folk-lore. But 
 Sigurd is mighty even in death, and the blade Gram, hurled by his 
 dying hand, cleaves Guttorm asunder, so that the upper part of his 
 body fell out of the chamber, while the lower limbs remained in the 
 room. The change which his death causes in the mind of Brynhild 
 answers precisely to the pity which Oinone" feels when her refusal to 
 heal Paris has brought about his death. Like Helen, who hates her- 
 self, or is hated, for bringing ruin on ships, men, and cities, she 
 bewails the doom which brought her into the world for everlasting 
 damage and grief of soul to many men. Like Deianeira, and Oinone, 
 and Kleopatra, she feels that without the man whom she loves life is 
 not worth living for, and thus she lies down to die on the funeral pile 
 of Sigurd. 
 
 The sequel reproduces the same incidents under other names, The Story 
 and with different colours. As Sigurd, like Theseus and Herakles, of Gudrun - 
 first woos the Dawn, and then has to dwell with the maiden who 
 represents the broad and open day, so Gudrun, the loving companion 
 of the Sun in his middle journey, has to mourn his early death, and 
 in her widowhood to become the bride, first of the gloaming, then of 
 the darkness. Between these there is a necessary enmity, but their 
 hatred only serves the more thoroughly to avenge the death of 
 Sigurd. Atli, the second husband of Gudrun, claims all the gold 
 which Sigurd had won from the dragon, but which the chieftains of 
 Niflheim had seized when he died. In fair fight he could never 
 hope to match them ; so Atli invites Hogni (Haugn or Hagen) and 
 Gunnar to a feast, in which he overpowers them. Hogni's heart is 
 then cut out, an incident which answers to the roasting of the heart 
 of Fafhir ; and as the latter is associated with the recovery of the 
 golden treasure, so the former is connected with the subsequent loss 
 which answers to the coming on of the night when the sun has 
 reached the end of his glorious course. When Sigurd died, Gunnar 
 
112 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and his brothers had thrown the hoard into the Rhine — the water 
 
 ._ J • which receives Endymion as he plunges into his dreamless sleep ; and 
 
 the secret of it is lost when Gunnar is cast into a pit full of snakes, all 
 of whom, like Orpheus, he lulls to sleep by his harping, except one 
 which flies at his heart, and kills him — a tale told over again in the 
 transparent myth of Thora, Aslauga, and Ragnar Lodbrog. Thus 
 the beings who, though they might be akin to the mist and cold of 
 night, had made a covenant of peace and friendship with Sigurd, are 
 all gone, and to Gudrun remains the task of avenging them. The 
 story of her vengeance is practically a repetition of the legend of 
 Medeia. Like the Kolchian woman, she slays the two sons whom 
 she had borne to Atli ; but the ferocity of the Northern sentiment 
 colours the sequel in which we see a sunset as blood-red and 
 stormy as that in which Herakl£s rose from earth to the mansions of 
 the undying gods. Gudrun makes Atli eat the flesh and drink the 
 blood of his sons : and then, having slain him as he sleeps, by the 
 aid of the son of her brother Hogni, she sets fire to the hall, and 
 consumes everything within it. The shades of autumn are now fast 
 closing in, and Gudrun, weary of her life, hastens to the sea shore to 
 end her woes by plunging into the deep. But the waters carry her 
 over to the land of King Jonakr, who makes her his bride, and she 
 now becomes the mother of three sons, Saurli, Hamdir, and Erp, 
 whose raven black hair marks them as the children of clouds and 
 darkness. Once more the magic wheel revolves, and in the fortunes 
 of Svanhild, the daughter of Sigurd and Gunnar, we see the destiny 
 of the fateful Helen. Like her, Svanhild is the most beautiful of 
 women, and Hermanric, the Gothic king, sends his son Randver to 
 woo her for him ; but the young man is advised by the treacherous 
 Bikki to woo her for himself, and he follows the counsel which 
 chimes in only too well with his own inclinations, as with those of 
 Svanhild, Hermanric orders that his son shall be hanged. Presently 
 he receives a plucked hawk which Randver had sent to show him 
 the weakness of parents who deprive themselves of the support of 
 their children, and he gives orders to stop the execution. The 
 messenger comes too late, Randver is already slain ; and Svanhild is 
 trampled to death by the steeds of Hermanric's horsemen as she 
 combs out her golden locks. But Hermanric must pay the penalty 
 for his ill-doing not less than Sigurd 01 Atli. Gudrun's command 
 goes forth to her three Niflung sons, Saurli, Hamdir, and Erp, to 
 avenge Svanhild ; and thus, armed with helmets and cased in mail 
 which no weapons can pierce, they take the way to the house of 
 Hermanric As they go, the Niflungs quarrel among themselves, 
 
STORY OF GUDRUN. 113 
 
 and Saurli and Hamdir slay Erp, because he is his mother's darling. 1 CHAP. 
 The two brothers cut off Hermanric's hands and feet; But Erp is — — - 1 — •• 
 
 not there to smite off his head, and Hermanric has strength to call 
 out to his men, who bind the Niflungs and stone them to death, 
 by the advice of a one-eyed man who tells them that no steel can 
 pierce their panoply. Here the one-eyed man is again the stranger 
 who had left the sword in the oak tree of Volsung's hall, and the 
 men of Hermanric answer to the Achaians in their struggle with the 
 robbers of Ilion. It was time, however, that the tale should end, 
 and it is brought to a close with the death of Gudrun, for no other 
 reason probably than that the revolutions of the mythic wheel must 
 be arrested somewhere. The difference between the climates of 
 northern and southern Europe is of itself enough to account for 
 the more cheerful ending of the Hellenic story in the triumphant 
 restoration of the Herakleidai. 
 
 The very fact that in all this story there is, as we have seen, Helgi 
 scarcely an incident which we do not find in the traditions of other Sa £ as - 
 Aryan nations or tribes, renders it impossible to judge of the character 
 of Northmen or Germans from the legends themselves. It is pos- 
 sible, of course, and even likely that the poets or narrators have in 
 each case thrown over the characters and events of their tale a colour- 
 ing borrowed from the society of the time ; but that as portraits of 
 actual manners they are gross and impossible exaggerations we are 
 justified in concluding not only from the story itself, but from the 
 recurrence of the myth in many lands unchanged in its essence, and 
 even in its most prominent features. It is thrice repeated in the 
 legends of the three Helgis, who, it is scarcely necessary to say, are 
 mere reflexions, the one of the others. These are the holy ones, or 
 
 1 The story of this murder has him. A little farther on Saurli stum- 
 worked its way into the traditional bled and fell forward, but saved himself 
 history of .<Ethelstan and Godwine. At with one hand, and said, ' Here hand 
 the least, it seems impossible to shut helps foot ; better were it that Erp 
 our eyes to the striking similarity of lived.' So they came on Hermanric as 
 these stories ; and as their non-histori- he slept, and Saurli hewed off his 
 cal character in the case of^Ethelstan hands, and Hamdir his feet, but he 
 and Godwine has been placed beyond awoke and called for his men. Then 
 reach of questioning, we are the more said Hamdir, ' Were Erp alive, the 
 justified in saying that the old myth head would be off, and he couldn't call 
 has served as the foundation of the out.'" In the story of yEthelstan and 
 later legend. The Volsung story runs of Godwine we have the same phrases 
 as follows : — "As the three went along, about the hands and feet ; in each case 
 the two asked Erp what help he would a brother is slain, and in each case the 
 give them when they got to Hermanric. loss of this brother is subsequently felt 
 ' Such as hand lends to foot,' he said. as a source of weakness. For the 
 ' No help at all,' they cried ; and pass- several shapes assumed by the legend 
 ing from words to blows, and because see Freeman, Norman Conquest, ii. 
 their mother loved Erp best, they slew 611-12. 
 
 I 
 
U4 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The first 
 Helgi. 
 
 The 
 
 Second 
 
 Helgi. 
 
 saviours, who make whole or restore life, like the Paieon or Asklepios 
 • of Greek mythology. 1 
 
 Of these Helgis, the first is called the son of Hiorvardur, and he 
 is loved by Swava, the daughter of King Eilimir. But his brother 
 Hedin makes a vow on the yule eve that Swava shall be his wife, not 
 the bride of Helgi. He has been misled by the sorceress Hrimgerda, 
 who seeks to make him her own, as Kirke and Kalypso use all their 
 arts to detain Odysseus ; but the northern hero is more scrupulous 
 than the Ithakan chieftain, and he not only rejects her love, but 
 compels her to prophesy till the day dawns and her power is at an 
 end, — a sufficiently clear token of her nature. Soon, however, he 
 repents him of the oath which the sorceress had led him to take, and 
 he confesses his guilt to Helgi, who, foreboding his own death in the 
 coming struggle with Alfur, the son of Hrodmar, promises that when 
 he is slain Swava shall be Hedin's. When he has received the death- 
 wound, he tells Swava of this promise ; but she refuses to abide by 
 it or to have any other husband but Helgi, and Helgi in his turn 
 declares that though he must now die, he will come back again when 
 his death has been avenged. This is manifestly the avenging of 
 Baldur, and Helgi is thus another form of Adonis, or Memn6n, or 
 Dionysos. The younger brother is the waning autumn sun, who 
 thinks to obtain his brother's wife when the sun of summer has lost 
 its power. 
 
 At the birth of the second Helgi, known as Hundingsbana, the 
 Nomas came and fixed the lot of the babe, like the Moirai in the 
 legend of Meleagros. 2 When fifteen years old, he slays King Hund- 
 ing and his sons, and afterwards wins the love of Sigrun, daughter of 
 Hogni, who, like Swava, is a Valkyrie and a sister of Bragi and Dag, 
 the brilliant heaven and the day. She promises Helgi that she will 
 be his wife if he will vanquish the sons of Granmar, the bearded 
 spirit, to one of whom she had been betrothed. Thus again we have 
 the woman whom two heroes seek to obtain, the Helen for whom 
 Menelaos and Paris contend together. In the battle which follows, 
 Sigrun, as a Valkyrie, cheers him on, and Dag alone is spared of all 
 the sons of Granmar. But although Dag swears allegiance to the 
 
 1 They are the Alcis mentioned by 
 Tacitus, Germ. 43, as worshipped by 
 the Naharvali, and as answering to the 
 Roman Castor and Pollux. They are 
 the Teutonic Dioskouroi or Asvins ; 
 and for the loss of the aspirate in the 
 name as given by Tacitus, Bunsen cites 
 the analogous forms Irmin and Her- 
 man, Isco and Hisicion. — God in 
 
 History, ii. 470. 
 
 2 He is also identified as Hermod- 
 hur, Heermuth, the son of Odin, who 
 is sent to fetch up Baldur from the 
 under world and is thus the returning 
 or conquering sun who comes back 
 after the winter solstice. — Bunsen, God 
 in History, ii. 471. 
 
THE HELGI SAGAS. 115 
 
 Volsungs, he yet treacherously stabs Helgi (another of jthe many chap. 
 forms of Baldur's death), and tells Sigrun that he is dead. The — — ^ — - 
 sequel, although essentially the same, shows the working of a new 
 vein of thought. Sigrun curses Dag as one who had broken his 
 oath, and refuses to live 
 
 Unless a glory should break from the prince's grave, 
 
 And Vigblar the horse should speed thither with him ; 
 
 The gold-bridled steed becomes him whom I fain would embrace. 
 
 Her tears disturb the repose of Helgi in his grave, and he rebukes 
 her as making his wounds burst open afresh. But Sigrun is not to 
 be scared or driven away. She prepares a common resting-place for 
 him and for herself, a couch free from all care, and enters of her own 
 free will the land of the dead. 
 
 " Nothing I now declare Unlooked for, 
 
 At Sefafioll Late or early, 
 
 Since in a corpse's ■ Arms thou sleepest, 
 
 Hogni's fair daughter, In a mound, 
 
 And thou art living, Daughter of kings. 
 
 Time 'tis for me to ride On the reddening ways ; 
 
 Let the pale horse Tread the aerial path ; 
 
 I toward the west must go Over Vindhialm's bridge, 
 
 Ere Salgofnir Awakens heroes." l 
 
 The third Helgi, Haddingaheld, is but a reproduction of the second The Thiro. 
 Helgi, while Kara, the daughter of Halfdan, takes the place of Swava e gI ' 
 or Sigrun. In all these tales the heroes and the heroines stand in 
 precisely the same relations to each other ; 2 and thus, having seen 
 that the myths of these heroes merely reproduce the legends of 
 Baldur and of Sigurd the Volsung, we are prepared for the conclu- 
 sion that the story of Siegfried, in the Lay of the Nibelungs, is only 
 another form of the oft-repeated tale. For the most part the names 
 are the same, as well as the incidents. The second Helgi is a son of 
 Sigmund, his mother also being called Sigurlin ; and so Sigurd of the 
 Volsung and Siegfried of the Nibelung Saga are each the son of Sig- 
 mund. The slaying of Hunding by Helgi answers to the slaughter 
 of Fafnir and Regin by Sigurd, Siegfried being also a dragon-slayer 
 like Phoibos, or Oidipous, or Herakles. So too, as Sigurd first won 
 the love of Brynhild and then marries Gudrun, for whose brother 
 
 1 Second Lay of Helgi Hundings- among the German people." — God in 
 
 bana, 46, 47. This is the legend of History, ii. 466. For the resurrection 
 
 Lenore, of which Eunsen says that of Helgi and Sigrun see Introduction 
 
 " Burger caught the soul of the story to Comparative Mythology, p. 289. 
 
 as it was on the point of extinction, s For a tabularview of these paral- 
 
 and lent it a new and immortal life lelisms see Bunsen," to. 470, &c. 
 
u6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 I. 
 
 he finally wins Brynhild as a wife, so Siegfried in his turn marries 
 Kriemhild, sister of the Burgundian Gunther, having wooed Bryn- 
 hild for his brother-in-law. If, again, Brynhild causes the death of 
 Sigurd, the man in whom she has garnered up her soul, so Siegfried 
 is murdered at Brynhild's instigation. If in the Helgi Saga the son 
 of Hogni bears the news of Helgi's death to Sigurd, so in the Volsung 
 tale Hogni informs Gudrun of Sigurd's death, and in the Nibelung 
 song Hagen brings to Kriemhild the tidings of the death of Siegfried. 
 Like Swava and Sigrun, Brynhild kills herself that her body may be 
 burnt with that of Sigurd ; and as in the story of the Volsungs, Atli 
 (who appears as the comrade of the first Helgi) gets possession of 
 Gunnar and Hogni and has them put to death, so Kriemhild in the 
 Nibelungenlied marries Etzel, who catches Gunther and his brothers 
 in the same trap in which Gunnar and Hogni had been caught by 
 Atli. 1 
 
 1 On the historical residuum which 
 may possibly be contained in the later 
 forms of these myths it is really unne- 
 cessary to say anything. In Bunsen's 
 words, " The fundamental element com- 
 mon to them all is purely mythological, 
 namely, the combat of the Sun-God, 
 who is slain by his brother and avenged 
 by a younger brother. . . . This ele- 
 ment constitutes the basis of the Sigurd 
 Saga, and the substance of the Helgi 
 Saga, with the exception of some later 
 additions ; it is the oldest form of the 
 German myth of Herakles." — God in 
 History, ii. 474.. Nevertheless, Bunsen 
 thinks it worth while to make an at- 
 tempt to determine the amount of 
 historical matter wrapped up in it. He 
 finds the name Atli or Etzel, and this 
 represents the historical Attila, a con- 
 clusion which is strengthened by the 
 mention of Bludi as the father of Attila, 
 whereas history speaks of Bleda as his 
 brother. He finds also Gunnar, the 
 brother of Gudrun, and Gunther the 
 king of the Burgundians. Beyond this, 
 seemingly, it is impossible to advance. 
 "It is certainly difficult to make an 
 expedition by Attila himself to the 
 Rhine fit in with what we know of the 
 history of these years. This, no more 
 and no less, is the historical element in 
 that great tragedy of the woes of the 
 Nibelungs." — God in History, ii. 478. 
 If any can be satisfied with claiming 
 for this belief a historical sanction on 
 such evidence as this, it may perhaps 
 be a pity to break in upon their self- 
 complacence ; but on the other side it. 
 
 may fairly be asserted that two or three 
 names, with which not a single known 
 historical event is associated, and of 
 which the stories told cannot be recon- 
 ciled with anything which comes down 
 to us on genuine historical testimony, 
 furnish a miserably insecure foundation, 
 for any historical inferences. If this 
 is all that we learn from the popular 
 tradition, can we be said to learn any- 
 thing ? In the one Bleda is the brother 
 of Attila, in the other he is not : it 
 seems rash, then, to speak of Bludi as a 
 "perfectly historical person." To us- 
 they must remain mere names ; and 
 while we turn aside from the task of 
 measuring the historical authority of 
 these Sagas as a. mere waste of time, 
 we cannot on the same plea refuse con- 
 sideration to evidence which may seem 
 to trace such names as Atli, Bleda, andl 
 Gunnar to a time long preceding the 
 days of Attila, Bludi, and Gunther. It 
 might have been supposed that this 
 question had been long since set at rest. 
 But the controversy has been reopened 
 with singular boldness of assertion by 
 Mr. Mahaffy in his Prolegomena to An- 
 cient History. Mr. Mahaffy takes 
 comfort from the thought that the his- 
 torical basis of the Nibelungenlied is so 
 certain that not even the mythologer's 
 can gainsay it ; but he admits that this 
 basis is one resting on the names of 
 some few of the actors in the drama, 
 and on these alone. Nor does he pre- 
 tend to believe that the historical Attila, 
 or Siegbert, or Gundicar, did any of the 
 things which they are said to do in the 
 
THE NIBELUNGEN LAY. 117 
 
 That the later forms into which the Volsung story has been chap. 
 
 thrown may contain some incidents which may be either trmly told or • ^ — 
 
 else travestied from real history, it is impossible to deny. When at J n g e n' be " 
 the best they who insist most on the historical character of these Lay- 
 poems can but trace a name here and there, or perhaps see in the 
 account of some fight a reference to some actual battle with which it 
 has no likeness beyond the fact that men fought and were killed in 
 both, as the fishes swim in the streams of Macedon and Monmouth, 
 it seems useless to affirm it When the motives are alike in all, 
 when in each case there is a wealthily dowered maiden whose hoard 
 is stolen, a robber who refuses to disclose the secret of the lost 
 treasure, and bloody vengeance by those who lay claim to this wealth, 
 when thousands are murdered in a - single hall, and men lie down 
 contentedly in flaming chambers floating in blood, treading out the 
 falling brands in the gore and recruiting their strength by sucking the 
 veins of the dead, we can scarcely regard it as a profitable task to 
 search amidst such a mass of impossibilities the materials for a 
 picture of society as existing whether amongst Northmen or amongst 
 Greeks. That the colouring thrown over them is in part reflected 
 from the manners of the age, there is no room to doubt ; but when 
 the groundwork of the story has been shown to be purely mythical, 
 this fact will not carry us far. We are confined to mere names or 
 mere customs ; and the attempt to advance further lands us in the 
 region of guesswork. Thus to Mr. Kemble's assertion that Attila 
 " drew into his traditional history the exploits of others, and more 
 particularly those of Chlodowic and his sons in the matter of the 
 Burgundian kingdom," and that this fact will be patent to any one 
 who will look over the accounts of the Burgundian war in Gregory of 
 Tours, Mr. Ludlow replies that the search yields only two names, 
 Godegiselus namely, and Theudericus, answering to the Giselher and 
 Dietrich of the Nibelungen Lay. 1 Nor do we gain much if we find 
 Gundicar, the Burgundian king, as one of the sovereigns conquered 
 by Attila, if the Atli of the Volsung story belonged to the myth long 
 before the days of the Hunnish devastator. The name of the Bishop 
 Pilgrim seems to be more genuinely historical ; but even if he can 
 be identified as a prelate who filled the see of Passau in the tenth 
 century, we know no more about him from the poem than we learn of 
 Hruodlandus from the myth of the Roland who fell at Roncesvalles. 
 
 poem. The end at which Mr. Mahaffy Introduction to Comparative Mytho- 
 
 aims is clear enough, but it is scarcely logy. 
 
 one which reflects much credit on the * Ludlow, Popular Epics of the 
 
 critic. I have examined his position Middle Ages, i. 180. 
 
 more at length in Appendix II. of the 
 
u8 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Sigurd, 
 Siegfried, 
 and 
 Baldur. 
 
 The points of difference between the Norse and the German 
 traditions are simply such as the comparison of one Greek myth with 
 another would lead us to expect. Phoibos may be called the child 
 of the darkness, as strictly as he may be said to be born in Delos or 
 Ortygia. The offspring of Chrysaor, the lord of the golden sword of 
 day, is the three-headed Geryoneus; and Echidna, the throttling 
 snake, who is united with Herakles, is the daughter of Kallirhoe, the 
 fair-flowing stream of the ocean. Hence there is nothing surprising 
 in the fact that in the one set of myths Sigurd fights with, or is slain 
 by, the Niflungs, while in the other he is said to be a Niflung him- 
 self. 1 The real difference between the Teutonic and the Greek epics 
 lies, not so much in the fact that a complex poem exhibits a being 
 like Paris, sometimes in the garb of the Panis, sometimes with 
 the attributes of Surya, as in the greater compass of the northern 
 poems. The Iliad relates the incidents only of a portion of a single 
 year in the Trojan war ; the Nibelung lay adds two or three complete 
 histories to the already completed history of Siegfried. The antiquity 
 of , these several portions of a poem, which by the confession of all 
 has certainly been pieced together, is a question into which we need 
 not enter. It is possible that the portion which relates to Siegfried 
 may have been added at a later time to explain the intense hatred of 
 Kriemhild for her brothers, and that this may be the most modem 
 addition to the Nibelungenlied ; but it is not less certain that the 
 myth of Siegfried is the myth of Baldur, and has existed in many 
 shapes in every Aryan land. The Volsung story may represent the 
 rougher songs of Norse sea-rovers, while the Nibelung song may 
 introduce us to the more stately life and elaborate pageants of 
 German kings and princes; but the heroes have changed simply 
 their conditions, not their mind and temper, by crossing the sea or 
 passing into another land. The doom of perpetual pilgrimage is laid 
 on Perseus, Theseus, Bellerophon, Herakles, Odysseus; and Sigurd and 
 Siegfried are not more exempt from it. 2 In their golden locks and 
 
 " Ludlow, Popular Epics, i. 137. 
 
 s This doom is brought out with 
 singular clearness in the Gaelic story, 
 where the Dame of the Fine Green 
 Kirtle lays the Fair Gruagach under her 
 spell, that he shall not rest by night or 
 by day (Ixt6n, Sisiphos). '"Where 
 thou takest thy breakfast that thou take 
 not thy dmner, and where thou takest 
 thy dinnefthat thou take not thy supper, 
 in whatsoever place thou be, until thou 
 findest out in what place I may be under 
 the four brown quarters of the world.' 
 
 " So it was in the morning of the 
 morrow's day he went away without 
 dog, without man, without calf, without 
 child. 
 
 " He was going and going and jour- 
 neying; there was blackening on his 
 soles, and holes in his shoes ; the black 
 clouds of night coming, and the bright 
 quiet clouds of the day going away, and 
 without his finding a place of staying 
 or rest for him." He is, in short, the 
 wandering Wuotan (Wegtam), Savitar, 
 Odysseus, Bellerophon, Phoibos, Dio- 
 
SIGURD AND SIEGFRIED. Iig 
 
 godlike countenances, in their flashing swords and unerring spears, CHAP. 
 
 there is no difference between them ; and every additional point of : — ■ 
 
 likeness adds to the weight of proof that these epic poems represent 
 neither the history nor the national character of Northmen, Greeks, 
 or Germans. In each case the spirit of the tradition has been care- 
 fully preserved, but there is no servile adherence. In the Volsung 
 story, Gudrun becomes the wife of Siegfried ; in the Nibelung song, 
 her mother Kriemhild takes her place. The Hogni of the former 
 tale becomes in the latter the Hagen of Tronege, against whom 
 Siegfried is warned when he desires to marry Kriemhild, the sister of 
 Gunther, Gemot, and Giselher, and. who recognises Siegfried as the 
 slayer of the Niblungs, the conqueror of their magic sword, Balmung, 
 and of all their treasures, and the possessor of the tarnkappe, or cape 
 of darkness — all of them features with which the earlier legend has 
 made us familiar. The story of Thetis or Demeter plunging Achilleus 
 and Triptolemos into the bath of fire is here represented by the myth 
 that Siegfried cannot be wounded, because he had bathed himself in 
 the blood of a dragon whom he had slain — the Fafnir or Python of 
 the Norse and Delphic legends. At the first glance Kriemhild is 
 filled with love for Siegfried, but the latter cannot see her until he 
 has sojourned for a year in the country of King Gunther — a condi- 
 tion which answers to that under which Hades suffered Orpheus 
 to lead away Eurydike. Here, like Sigurd in the Volsung myth, 
 Siegfried wins Brynhild for Gunther or Gunnar ; but though there is 
 here not the same complication, the narrative scarcely becomes on 
 this account the more human. Like Perseus with the helmet of 
 Hades, Siegfried can make himself invisible at will, and like Apollon 
 Delphinios, he pushes a ship through the sea — a myth in which we 
 recognise also the Wish breeze. 1 Here also, as in the Norse story, 
 the ring and girdle of Brynhild come through Siegfried into the 
 
 nysos, Herakl£s, Perseus, Sigurd, Indra, put into the ground. The necessary 
 Oidipous, Theseus ; and it is unneces- consequence is that the woman has two 
 sary to say that in the end he becomes golden children who, mounting on the 
 the husband of the Dame of the Fine two golden foals of the mare, represent 
 Green Kirtle, who is none other than the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, the 
 Medeia with the magic robe of Helios. pieces put into the ground producing 
 (Campbell, ii. 435.) two golden lilies on which the lives of 
 1 The power of the Fish Sun is the children depend. In the tale of 
 strikingly shown in the German stories the Fisherman and his Wife, the fish 
 of the Gold Children and of the Fisher- accomplishes the wishes of the woman, 
 man and his Wife. In the former a who chooses to become first a lady, then 
 poor man catches the Golden Fish which queen, then pope ; but when she wishes 
 makes him the possessor of the palace of to become the ruler of the universe, the 
 Helios, and bids the man divide him flounder sends her back to her old hovel, 
 into six pieces ; two to be given to his — an incident reflecting the fall of Tan- 
 wife, two to his mare, and two to be talos, Sisyphos, and Ixion. 
 
120 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK possession of Kriemhild ; and at this point the myth assumes a form 
 
 • ^ ■ which reminds us of the relations of Heraklgs with Eurystheus. Like 
 
 H£re in the Greek tale, Brynhild holds that Siegfried ought to do 
 service to Gunther, as Herakles did to his lord, and thus urges him 
 to summon Siegfried to Worms. The hero, who is found in the 
 Niflung's castle on the Norwegian border, loads the messengers with 
 treasures, and Hagen cannot suppress the longing that all this wealth 
 may yet come into the hands of the Burgundians. 1 No sooner has 
 Siegfried, with his father Sigmund and his wife Kriemhild, reached 
 Worms, than Brynhild hastens to impress on Kriemhild that Siegfried 
 is Gunther's man, and that, like Theseus to Minos, he must pay 
 tribute. In deep anger Kriemhild resolves to insult her adversary, 
 and when they go to church, she presses on before Brynhild who 
 bids her as a vassal stand back, and taunting her as having been won 
 by Siegfried, shows him her girdle and ring as the evidence of her 
 words. Gunther, urged by his wife, rebukes Siegfried for betraying 
 the secret, but his anger is soon appeased. It is otherwise with 
 Hogni, or Hagen, who here plays the part of Paris, by whose spear 
 Achilleus is to fall. He sees his sister weeping, and, swearing to 
 revenge her, spreads false tidings of the approach of an enemy, and 
 when he knows that Siegfried is ready to set out against them, he 
 asks Kriemhild how he may best insure her husband's safety. Not 
 knowing to whom she spake, she tells him that when Siegfried bathed 
 himself in the dragon's blood a broad linden leaf stuck between his 
 shoulders, and there left him vulnerable, this place between the 
 shoulders answering to the vulnerable heel of Achilleus. To make 
 still more sure, Hagen asks Kriemhild to mark the spot, and the 
 wife of the hero thus seals his doom. The narrative at this point 
 becomes filled with all the tenderness and beauty of the Odyssey. 
 Kriemhild is awakened to her folly in betraying Siegfried's secret to 
 Hagen. Still, in vain she prays him not to go. He is the knight 
 who knows no fear, and without fear he accompanies Hagen, doing 
 marvellous. things, until one day he asks Hagen why he has brought 
 no wine to drink, when Hagen offers to show him the way to a good 
 spring. Siegfried hastens thither with him, and as he stoops to drink 
 Hagen shoots him through the back on the spot marked by the silver 
 cross. It is scarcely necessary to compare this with the vast number 
 of myths in which the death of the sun is connected with water, 
 
 1 These Burgundians in the later por- present state is put together out of two 
 
 tion of the epic are often spoken of as different legends." — Popular Epics of 
 
 Niblungs, as mythically they assuredly the Middle Ages, i. 133. At the most, 
 
 are. The fact evidently shows, in Mr. it would be but one of two versions of 
 
 Ludlow's opinion, " that the poem in its the legend. 
 
KRIEMHILD AND BRYNHILD. 121 
 
 whether of the ocean or the sea. In the spirting out of Siegfried's chap. 
 blood on Hagen, in the wonderful stroke with which he almost smites — — ^ — • 
 his betrayer dead, in the death wrestle which covers the flowers all 
 around with blood and gore, we have the chief features of the blood- 
 stained sunset which looms out in the legend of the death of 
 Herakles. The body of Siegfried, placed on a golden shield, is 
 borne to the chamber of Kriemhild, who feels, before she is told, 
 that it is the corpse of her murdered husband. " This is Brynhild's 
 counsel," she said, "this is Hagen's deed;'' and she swears to 
 avenge his death by a vengeance as fearful as that of Achilleus. As 
 Siegfried had spoken, so should Hagen assuredly rue the day of his 
 death hereafter. She gives orders to awaken Siegfried's men and his 
 father Sigmund ; but Sigmund has not slept, for, like Peleus, he has 
 felt that he should see his son again no more. Then follows the 
 burial of Siegfried, when Gunther swears that no harm has come to 
 the hero either from himself or from his men : but the lie is given to 
 his words when the wounds bleed as Hagen passes before the dead 
 body. When all is over, Sigmund says that they must return to their 
 own land ; but Kriemhild is at last persuaded to remain at Worms, 
 where she sojourns for more than three years in bitter grief, seeing 
 neither Gunther nor Hagen. The latter now makes Gemot press 
 Kriemhild to have her hoard brought from the Niblung land, and 
 thus at length gaining possession of it, he sinks it all in the Rhine. 
 In other words, Adonis is dead, and the women are left mourning 
 and wailing for him ; or the maiden is stolen away from Demete'r, 
 and her wealth is carried to the house of Hades ; or again, as in the 
 Norse tale, the dwarf Andvari is keeping watch over the treasures of 
 Brynhild : and thus ends the first of the series of mythical histories 
 embodied in the Nibelung Lay. Whether this portion of the great 
 Teutonic epic be, or be not, older than the parts which follow it, it 
 is indubitably an integral narrative in itself, and by no means indis- 
 pensable to the general plan of the poem, except in so far as it ac- 
 counts for the implacable hatred of Kriemhild for her brothers. 
 
 The second part of the drama begins with the death of Helche, The Story 
 the wife of Etzel or Atli, who longs to marry Kriemhild, and who is of Ha & en - 
 restrained only by the recollection that he is a heathen while the 
 widow of Siegfried is a Christian. This objection, however, is over- 
 ruled by the whole council, who, with the one exception of Hagen, 
 decide that Etzel shall marry Kriemhild. Hagen is opposed to it, 
 because Siegfried swore that he should rue the day on which he 
 touched him, and on account of the prophecy that if ever Kriemheld 
 took the place of Helche, she would bring harm to the Burgundians, 
 
122 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK as Helen did to the fleet, the armies, and the cities of Hellas. But 
 - as the forsaken Ariadne' was wedded to Dionysos, so the messengers 
 of Etzel tell Kriemhild that she shall be the lady of twelve rich 
 crowns, and rule the lands of thirty princes. Kriemheld refuses to 
 give an immediate answer; and the great struggle which goes on 
 within her answers to the grief and sickness of soul which makes the 
 mind of Helen oscillate between her affection for her husband 
 Menelaos and the unhallowed fascinations of the Trojan Paris. So 
 is brought about the second marriage of the bride of Siegfried, a 
 marriage the sole interest of which lies in the means which it affords 
 to her of avenging the death of Hagen's victim. This vengeance is 
 now the one yearning of her heart, although outwardly she may be 
 the contented wife of Etzel, just as Odysseus longed only to be once 
 more at home with Penelope even while he was compelled to sojourn 
 in the house of Kirke or the cave of Kalypso ; and if the parallel 
 between Etzel and Paris is not close, yet it is closer than the likeness 
 between the Etzel of the Niblungs' Lay and the Attila of history. The 
 poet declares that her deadly wrath is roused by the reflexion that at 
 Hagen's instigation she has given herself to a heathen ; but through- 
 out it is clear that her heart and her thoughts are far away in the 
 grave of the golden-haired youth who had wooed and won her in the 
 beautiful spring-time, and that of Etzel she took heed only so far as 
 it might suit her purpose to do so. Her object now is to get Hagen 
 into her power, and she sends messengers to Gunther bidding him 
 bring all his best friends, whom Hagen can guide, as from his child- 
 hood he has known the way to the Huns' land. 1 All are ready to go 
 except Hagen, and he is loth to put his foot into the trap which he 
 sees that Kriemhild is setting for him ; but he cannot bear the taunts 
 of his brother Gunther, who tells him that if he feels guilty on the 
 score of Siegfried's death he had better stay at home. Still he 
 advises that if they go they should go in force. So Gunther sets out 
 with three thousand men, Hagen, and Dankwart, his brother, and 
 other chiefs with such as they can muster; and with them goes 
 Volker, the renowned musician, who can fight as well as he can play. 3 
 
 1 Mr. Ludlow here remarks that "this tions of the epic which call for a cord- 
 is one of the passages which imply the parison with other legends, and which 
 legend contained in " Walthar of Aqui- taken together, show the amount of 
 tame," where Hagen is represented as material which the poets of the Nibe- 
 a fellow hostage with Walthar at Etzel's lung song, like those of the Iliad and 
 court.' —Popular Epics, i. 130. It Odyssey, found ready to their hand 
 may be so ; yet the phrase resolves itself The close agreement of the framework 
 into the simple statement that the Tanis of the poem with that of the Volsuns 
 know their way to the land whence they story and the legends of the Helgis and 
 steal the cattle of Indra. the identity of all these with the mvth 
 I must confine myself to those por- of Baldur, has been already shown It 
 
THE GRIEF AND VENGEANCE OF KRIEMHILD. 1 23 
 
 Hagen necessarily discerns evil omens as they journey on.. The CHAP. 
 
 waters of the Danube are swollen, and as he searches alone the banks : 
 
 for a ferryman, he seizes the wondrous apparel of two wise women 
 who are bathing, one of whom promises that if he will give them 
 their raiment, they will tell how he may journey to the Huns' land. 
 Floating like birds before him on the flood, they lure him with hopes 
 of the great honours which are in store for him, and thus they recover 
 their clothes — a myth which feebly reflects the beautiful legends of 
 the Swan maidens and their knights. No sooner, however, are they 
 again clothed, than the wise woman who has not yet spoken tells 
 him that her sister has lied, and that from the Huns' land not one 
 shall return alive, except the king's chaplain. To test her words, 
 Hagen, as they are crossing the river, throws the priest into the 
 stream ; but although he tries to push him down under the water, 
 yet the chaplain, although unable to swim, is carried by Divine aid 
 to the shore, and the doomed Burgundians go onwards to meet their 
 fate. In the house of Rudiger they receive a genial welcome ; but 
 when Rudiger's daughter approaches at his bidding to kiss Hagen, 
 his countenance seemed to her so fearful that she would gladly have 
 foregone the duty. On their departure Rudiger loads them with 
 gifts. To Gemot he gives a sword which afterwards deals the death- 
 blow to Rudiger himself, who resolves to accompany them; while 
 Hagen receives the magnificent shield of Nuodung, whom Witege 
 slew. The ominous note is again sounded when Dietrich, who is 
 sent to meet the Burgundians, tells Hagen that Kriemhild still weeps 
 sore for the hero of the Niblung land ; and Hagen can but say that 
 her duty now is to Etzel, as Siegfried is buried and comes again no 
 more. It is the story of the Odyssey. When Dietrich is asked how 
 he knows the mind of Kriemhild, "What shall I say?" he answers ; 
 " every morning early I hear her, Etzel's wife, weep and wail full 
 sadly to the God of heaven for strong Siegfried's body." 1 It is the 
 sorrow of Penelope, who mourns for the absence of Odysseus during 
 twenty weary years, though the suitors, like Etzel, are by her side, 
 or though, as other versions went, she became a mother while the 
 wise chief was far away fighting at Ilion or wandering over the wine- 
 faced sea. 
 
 is, therefore, quite unnecessary to give where the dawn-maidens mourn _ be- 
 an abstract of the poem throughout, a cause they have to marry the giant, 
 task which has been performed already but are rescued by the man who made 
 by many writers, and among them by the gold and silver cap, as Penelope 
 Mr. Ludlow, Popular Epics, i. is delivered from her suitors by the 
 1 Compare the Gaelic story of the man who wrought the bed in her bridal 
 Rider of Grianaig (Campbell, iii. 18), chamber. 
 
124 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK At .length Hagen and Kriemhild stand face to face : but when 
 
 • the wife of Etzel asks what gifts he has brought, Hagen answers that 
 
 Jeance of one s0 wealthy needs no gifts. The question is then put plainly, 
 Kriem- "Where is the Niblungs' hoard? It was my own, as ye well know." 
 Hagen answers that at his master's bidding it has been sunk in the 
 Rhine, and there it must remain till the day of judgment. But wheu 
 Kriemhild tells the Burgundians that they must give up their arms 
 before going into the hall, Hagen begs to be excused. The honour 
 is greater than he deserves, and he will himself be chamberman. 
 Kriemhild sees that he has been warned, and learns to her grief and 
 rage that the warning has come through Dietrich. 1 But the time for 
 the avenging of Siegfried draws nigh. Etzel's men see Kriemhild 
 weeping as through a window she looks down on Hagen and Volker, 
 and when they assure her that the man who has called forth her 
 tears shall pay for his offence with his blood, she bids them avenge 
 her of Hagen, so that he may lose his life. Sixty men are ready 
 to slay them, but Kriemhild says that, so small a troop can never 
 suffice to slay two heroes so powerful as Hagen and the still more 
 mighty Volker who sits by his side, — words which at once show that 
 we have before us no beings of human race, and that Hagen is akin 
 to the Panis, while Volker is the whispering breeze or the strong 
 wind of the night, whose harping, like that of Orpheus, few or none 
 may withstand. Kriemhild herself goes down to them : but Hagen 
 will not rise to greet her. On his knees she sees the gleaming sword 
 which he had taken from Siegfried, the good blade Gram, which 
 Odin left in the house of Volsung. The words which burst from her 
 bespeak the grief of a Penelop£ who nurses her sorrow in a harsher 
 clime than that of Ithaka. She asks Hagen how he could venture 
 into the lion's den, and who had sent for him to the Huns' country. 
 To his reply that he had come only by constraint of the masters 
 whose man he was, she rejoins by asking why he did the deed 
 for which she bears hate to him. He has slain her beloved Siegfried, 
 for whom if she weeps all her life long she could never weep enough. 
 It is useless to deny the deed, and Hagen does not care to disown it. 
 He tells the queen that he is in truth the man who slew Siegfried and 
 has done to her great wrong; and the preparations for the last 
 struggle go on with more speed and certainty. It is impossible not 
 to think of the suitors in the house of Odysseus, although the bearing 
 
 1 It is at this point that the passage in our present inquiry than as showing 
 
 h inserted which connects the Nibe- the composite character of the great 
 
 Inngenlied with the story ofWalthar of Teutonic epic. — Ludlow, Popular Epics, 
 
 Aquitaine. It is of no further interest i. 146. 
 
THE HALL OF SLAUGHTER. 125 
 
 of Hagen and his men is altogether more dignified. The very chap. 
 
 weakening of the myth, which was too strong to allow the Homeric • ^__- 
 
 poet so to paint them, has enabled the Teutonic bard to ascribe to 
 the slayers of Siegfried a character of real heroism. But here, as in 
 the Odyssey, the scene of vengeance is the great hall ; and we have 
 to ask where the roof has ever been raised under which thousands have 
 fought until scarcely one has been left to tell the tale of slaughter. 
 In this hall the Burgundians are left to sleep on beds and couches 
 covered with silks, ermine, and sable. But they are full of misgivings, 
 and Hagen undertakes with Volker to keep watch before the door. 
 Volker, the Phemios of the Odyssey, does more. With the soft and 
 lulling tones of the harp of Hermes or of Pan, he lulls to sleep the 
 sorrows of the men who are soon to die. Through all the house the 
 sweet sounds find their way, until all the warriors are asleep ; and 
 then Volker takes his shield and goes out to guard his comrades 
 against any sudden onslaught of the Huns. The tragedy begins on 
 the morrow with the accidental slaying of a Hun by Volker at the 
 jousts which follow the morning mass ; and the fight grows hot when 
 Dankwart smites off the head of Blodel, whom Kriemhild had sent 
 to slay him because he was Hagen's brother. But Hagen survives to 
 do the queen more mischief. Her son Ortlieb is being carried from 
 table to table in the banqueting hall, and Hagen strikes off the boy's 
 head which leaps into Kriemhild's lap. The hall runs with blood. 
 Seven thousand bodies are flung down the steps ; but Hagen is still 
 unconquered, and Irinc who had charged himself with the office 
 of Blodel, and succeeded in wounding him in the face, falls in his 
 turn a victim to his zeal. A fresh thousand are poured in to avenge 
 his death : the Burgundians slay them all, and then sit down to keep 
 watch with the dead bodies as their seats. The tale goes on with 
 increasing defiance of likelihood and possibility. Kriemhild and 
 Etzel gather before the hall twenty-thousand men; but still the 
 Burgundians maintain the strife deep into the night. When at length 
 they ask for a truce, and Giselher tells his sister that he has never 
 done her harm, her answer is that he is the brother of Siegfried's 
 murderer, and therefore he and all must die unless they will yield up 
 Hagen into her hands. This they refuse, and Kriemhild sets fire 
 to the hall, an incident which occurs in other sagas, as those of Njal 
 and Grettir. Drink there is none, unless it be human blood, which 
 is gushing forth in rivers ; but with this they slake their thirst and 
 nerve their arms, while the burning rafters fall crashing around them, 
 until the fire is extinguished in the horrid streams which gush from 
 human bodies. Thousands have been slain within this fated hall ; six 
 
126 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Historical 
 element in 
 the Nibe- 
 lungen 
 Lied. 
 
 hundred yet remain ; the Huns attack them two to one. The fight 
 is desperate. Rudiger, compelled to take part in it sorely against his 
 will, is slain with his own sword by Gemot; and at length Volker 
 the minstrel is killed by Hildebrand, who strives in vain to wound 
 Hagen, for he is the master of Balmung, Siegfried's sword, the Gram 
 of the Volsung story. Dietrich is at length more successful, and the 
 slayer of Siegfried is at last brought bound into the presence of the 
 woman who lives only to avenge him. With him comes Gunther, 
 the last of the Burgundian chiefs who is left alive. Once more, in 
 this last dread hour, the story reverts to the. ancient myth. Kriemhild 
 places them apart, and then coming to Hagen, tells him that even 
 now he may go free if he will yield up the treasure which he stole 
 from Siegfried. Hagen's answer is that he cannot say where the 
 hoard is as long as any of his masters remain alive. Kriemhild now 
 takes to him the head of Gunther, the last of his liege lords, and 
 Hagen prepares to die triumphantly. She has slain the last man who 
 knew the secret besides himself, and from Hagen she shall never 
 learn it Frantic in her sorrow, Kriemhild cries that she will at least 
 have the sword which her sweet love bore when the murderer smote 
 him treacherously. She grasps it in her hand, she draws the blade 
 from its sheath, she whirls it in the air, and the victory of Achilleus 
 is accomplished. Hagen is slain like Hektor. Her heart's desire is 
 attained. What matters it, if death is to follow her act of dread 
 revenge, as Thetis told the chieftain of Phthia that his death must 
 follow soon when he has slain Hektor? The night is not far off 
 when the sun appears like a conqueror near the horizon after his long 
 battle with the clouds. The sight of the dead Hagen rouses the grief 
 of Etzel and the fury of Hildebrand who smites Kriemhild and hews 
 her in pieces. 
 
 If we put aside the two or three names which may belong to 
 persons of whose existence we have other evidence, the idea that this 
 story of ferocious and impossible vengeance represents in any degree 
 the history of the age of Attila becomes one of the wildest of dreams. 
 Etzel himself is no more like the real Attila than the Alexandros of 
 the Iliad is like the great son of the Macedonian Philip. The tale is, 
 throughout, the story told, in every Aryan land, of the death of the 
 short-lived sun, or the stealing of the dawn and her treasures, and of 
 the vengeance which is taken for these deeds. It is but one of the 
 many narratives of the great drama enacted before our eyes every 
 year and every day, one of the many versions of the discomfiture of 
 the thieves who seek to deceive the beautiful Sarama. But if this 
 great epic poem contains no history, it is remarkable as showing the 
 
THE FACTS OF THE NIBELUNG STORY. 1 27 
 
 extent to which the myth has been modified by the influence of chap. 
 Christianity and the growth of an historical sense in the* treatment • 
 of national traditions. There is a certain awkwardness in the part 
 played by Etzel, a part ludicrously unlike the action of the historical 
 Attila ; and the pitiable weakness or inconsistency which leads him 
 throughout to favour the schemes of his wife, and then, when Hagen 
 is slain, to mourn for him as the bravest and best of heroes, serves 
 only to bring out more prominently the fact that it is Kriemhild who 
 fights single-handed against all her enemies, and that she is in truth 
 a Penelope who trusts only to herself to deal with the ruffians who 
 have dashed the cup of joy from her lips and stolen away her beauti- 
 ful treasures. But the religious belief of the poets would not allow 
 them to make use of any other method for bringing about the terrible 
 issue. The bards who recounted the myths of the three Helgis would 
 have brought back Siegfried from the grave, and added another to 
 the heroes wno represent the slain and risen gods, Baldur, Dionysos, 
 and Adonis or Osiris. In no other way could Siegfried have been 
 brought back to the aid of his wife, unless like Odysseus he had been 
 represented not as slain, but as fulfilling the doom which compelled 
 him to fight or to wander far away from his home for twenty years. 
 The closeness with which the bards of the Niblung legend followed 
 the Saga of Sigurd rendered this alternative impossible, and it re- 
 mained only to leave Kriemhild to accomplish that which no one else 
 had the strength or the will to achieve on her behalf. But the myth 
 had been further weakened in other directions. The slayer of Sigurd 
 in the Volsung tale and his kindred alike belong with sufficient clear- 
 ness to the dark powers who steal the cattle of Indra or Herakles, 
 and thus they attract to themselves but little sympathy and no love ; 
 but the Christian feeling which could brand Hagen as a murderer 
 refused to make his brothers or his kinsfolk or his liege lords par- 
 takers of his guilt, and thus the cowards of the first part of the story 
 become the dauntless heroes of the second. 1 But to the remark that 
 " Kriemhild's preferring to reside in the neighbourhood of her hus- 
 band's murderers remains perfectly unaccountable," we can but say 
 that the difficulty is confined to the hypothesis which would regard 
 the story as a picture of human character and human society. 
 Kriemhild was under the same necessity which kept Penelope in 
 Ithaka, and the length of time during which the vengeance was 
 delayed is due to the same cause. The sword which slays the dark- 
 ness cannot fall until the ten long hours of the night have come to 
 an end. Hence the many years during which Kriemhild makes 
 1 Ludlow, Popular Epics, i. 172. 
 
128 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The Story 
 of Wal- 
 thar of 
 A quitaine. 
 
 ready for the last dread act, and the many years which go before the 
 fall of Ilion. Nor can we well say that the prominence given to 
 Kriemhild's love for Siegfried as the motive for vengeance over and 
 above the desire to recover the hoard is " the refinement of a later 
 age." 1 The Odyssey shows precisely the same connexion between 
 the desire to avenge Penelope" and the wish to save the substance 
 wasted by the suitors ; and we have more than faint signs of the same 
 mingled feeling in the Saga of the Volsungs. 
 
 The story of Walthar of Aquitaine, a version of the same myth 
 given by a monk of the eighth or ninth century, is noteworthy chiefly 
 as making the hero bear away both the bride and her hoard, and 
 giving him a tranquil and a happy close to his troubled and stormy 
 life. Here also we have the names of Gibicho, Gunther, Etzel : but 
 the Sigurd of this version is Walthar, while the part of Brynhild is 
 played by Hildegund, who declares her readiness to obey her lover's 
 bidding, when he charges her, as the guardian of the treasure, to take 
 out for him a helmet, a coat of mail, and a breastplate, and to fill two 
 chests with Hunnish rings or money. Thus we have the same magic 
 armour and weapons which we find in all such legends, while Hilde- 
 gund leads the war-horse, which appears here under the name Lion. 
 But no sooner have they reached the Frank land than the greed of 
 King Gunther is roused, and he resolves to attack Walthar. But 
 Hagen, who accompanies him, is by no means so doughty as in the 
 Niblung Song, and he is not reassured when he finds Walthar 
 performing a series of exploits which reproduce those of Herakles, 
 Perseus, and Theseus. In the end he decides that he can have a 
 chance of grappling successfully with Walthar only if he pretends 
 to withdraw. His plan succeeds, and he is enabled to come up with 
 Walthar as he is journeying on with Hildegund. In the fight which 
 follows, Walthar smites off a portion of Hagen's armour, and brings 
 Gunther to his knees with a stroke of his sword; but just as he 
 is about to deal him the death-blow, Hagen interposes his helmeted 
 head and the blade is shivered in pieces. Walthar in his impatience 
 and anger throws away the hilt, and Hagen avails himself of the time 
 to smite off Walthar's right hand, the right hand so fearful to princes 
 and people. Here again it is the cap of darkness which is fatal to 
 the gleaming sword, while the loss of Walthar's right hand carries us 
 to the myth of Indra Savitar. The closing scene curiously reflects 
 the death of Sigurd. With failing breath, Walthar deals a blow which 
 strikes out Hagen's right eye ; but whereas in the genuine myth 
 Walthar's death ought here to follow, to be avenged afterwards by 
 1 Ludlow, Popular Epics, i. 176. 
 
WALTHAR OF AQUITAINE. 
 
 129 
 
 that of Hagen, here the two heroes, thus sorely bested, make up their 
 quarrel, and Walthar bids Hildegund bring wine and offer the cup to ■ 
 Hagen, who will not drink first, because Walthar is the better man. 
 In short, the story ends with an interchange of courtesies, which have 
 an air of burlesque not unlike that which Euripides has thrown over 
 the Herakles of his Alkestis, and the bridal of Hildegund has all 
 the joy and brightness which mark the reunion of Penelope" with . 
 Odysseus. 1 
 
 CHAP. 
 VI. 
 
 1 The later lay of Gudrun, of which 
 Mr. Ludlow has given a summary 
 (Popular Epics, i. 193, &c), has many 
 of the features of the Nibelungen Lied 
 and the story of Walthar of Aquitaine. 
 It is scarcely necessary to note the end- 
 less modifications of myths, with which 
 the poets of successive ages allowed 
 themselves to deal as freely as they 
 pleased ; but we are fully justified in 
 referring to the old myth incidents 
 which are found in a hundred mythical 
 traditions, but which never happen in 
 the life of man. Thus, in the Lay of 
 Gudrun, the child who is carried away 
 to the griffin's or eagle's nest, whither 
 three daughters of kings have been 
 taken before, must remind us of the 
 story of Surya Bai, although the child 
 thus taken is Hagen, who grows up so 
 mighty that he becomes celebrated as 
 the Wayland of all kings, a title which 
 sufficiently shows his real nature. Thus, 
 although he is invested with all the 
 splendour of the Trojan Paris, Hagen 
 slays all the messengers sent by princes 
 to sue for the hand of his beautiful 
 daughter, nor can any succeed until 
 Hettel comes — the mighty king at Hege- 
 lingen ; a tale which merely repeats the 
 story of Brynhild, Dornroschen, and 
 all th'e enchanted maidens whom many 
 suitors court to their own death. The 
 wonderful ship which Hettel builds to 
 fetch Hilda, capable of holding three 
 thousand warriors, with its golden 
 rudder and anchor of silver, is the 
 counterpart of the Argo, which goes to 
 bring back the wise and fair Medeia. 
 The good knight Horant, at whose 
 singing " the beasts in the wood let their 
 food stand, and the worms that should 
 go in the grass, the fish that should 
 swim in the wave, leave their purpose," 
 is the fiddler of the Nibelung Song, the 
 Orpheus of the Hellenic legend. Of 
 this feature in the story Mr. Ludlow 
 says, " The quaintly poetical incident of 
 Horant's singing is perhaps the gem of 
 the earlier portion, a phrase to which 
 
 objection can be taken only as it seems 
 to look upon the incident as an original 
 conception of the poets of the Gudrun 
 Lay. From Mr. Ludlow's words no one 
 would necessarily gather that the myth 
 is simply that of Orpheus and nothing 
 more, while the old tradition is further 
 marked by the words puHnto the mouth 
 of Hilda, that she would willingly 
 become king Hettel's wife, if Horant 
 could sing to her every day at morn and 
 even, like the breeze of the dawn and 
 the twilight in the myth of Hermes. 
 Here also we have the magic girdle of 
 Brynhild, Harmonia, and Eriphyle, the 
 Cestus of Freya and Aphrodite 1 ; while 
 in the stealing of Hilda, who is no un- 
 willing captive, and the fury of Hagen, 
 as he sees the ship carry her away 
 beyond the reach of pursuit, we have 
 precisely the fury of Aietes and his 
 vain chase after the Argo, which is 
 bearing away Medeia. Here ends the 
 first part of the tale ; but it starts afresh 
 and runs into greater complications 
 after the birth of Ortwein and Gudrun, 
 the son and daughter of Hettel and 
 Hilda. Like her mother, Gudrun is 
 carried away by Hartmut and his father, 
 and a great struggle is the consequence. 
 The Lay of King Rother (Ludlow, ibid. 
 i. 317) is in great part made up of the 
 same materials. Here also we have 
 the beautiful maiden whose suitors woo 
 her to their own destruction — the 
 wonderful ship which Rother builds to 
 bring away the daughter of King Con- 
 stantine of Constantinople ; the sending 
 of the messengers to the dungeon, where 
 they remain until Rother comes to 
 deliver them. But Rother, who wishes 
 while on his expedition to be called 
 Thiderich or Dietrich, is the splendid 
 prince of the Cinderella story, and he 
 obtains his wife by means of a gold and 
 silver shoe which he alone is able to fit 
 on her foot. But the princess is stolen 
 away again from the home of king 
 Rother, and brought back to Constanti- 
 nople ; and thus we have a repetition of 
 
13° MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 As we approach the later legends or romances, we find, as we 
 might expect, a strange outgrowth of fancies often utterly incon- 
 gruous, and phrases which show that the meaning of the old myths 
 was fast fading from men's minds. Still we cannot fail to see that 
 the stories, while they cannot by any process be reduced into harmony 
 with the real history of any age, are built up with the materials which 
 the bards of the Volsungs and the Nibelungs found ready to their 
 hand. Thus in the story of Dietrich and Ecke, the latter, who plays 
 a part something like that of Hagen or Paris, is exhibited in more 
 lustrous colours than the Trojan Alexandras in the Iliad, although 
 his nature and his doom are those of the Vedic Panis. Three knights, 
 discoursing at Koln of brave warriors, give the palm to Dietrich of 
 Bern, and Ecke who hears his praise swears that he must search 
 through all lands till he finds him, and that Dietrich must slay him 
 or lose all his praise. The incidents which follow are a strange 
 travesty of the Volsung myth. Three queens hear the three knights 
 talking, and the beautiful Seburk is immediately smitten with a love 
 as vehement and lasting as that of Kriemhild in the Nibelung Song. 
 Her one longing is to see Dietrich of Bern and to have him as her 
 husband ; but the means which she adopts to gain this end is to send 
 Ecke in search of him, armed with a breastplate, which answers to 
 the coat of mail wrought for Achilleus by Hephaistos. This breast- 
 plate had belonged to the Lombard king Otnit, to whom it had been 
 a fatal possession, for as he slept before a stone wall (the wall of glass 
 in the Hindu fairy tale) a worm found him and carried him into the 
 hollow mountain — the tower in which Dietrich is confined, in the 
 story of the giant Sigenot. This breastplate was recovered by Wolf- 
 dietrich 1 of Greece, in whom it is hard not to see a reflexion of the 
 Lykeian god of Delos, the Lupercus of Latin mythology ; and it is 
 now given by Seburk to Ecke on the condition that if he finds 
 Dietrich he will let him live. It is the Dawn pleading for the life 
 of the Sun. " Could I but see the hero, no greater boon could be 
 bestowed upon me. His high name kills me. I know not what 
 he hath done to me, that my heart so longs after him." It is the 
 language of Selene and Echo as they look upon Endymion and 
 Narkissos; and all that is said of Dietrich recalls the picture of 
 
 the old story in another dress. It is so closely with the general character of 
 
 unnecessary to say that although we the Volsung and Nibelung legends, that 
 
 hear much of Constantinople and it is unnecessary here to speak of them. 
 
 Babylon, not a grain of genuine history Some remarks on the subject will be 
 
 is to be gleaned amidst this confused found in Mr. Ludlow's Popular Epics, i. 
 
 tangle of popular traditions and fancies. 308, &c. 
 
 The form in which these myths are l Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 2« 
 
 exhibited in the Danish ballads, agrees 
 
DIETRICH OF BERN. I3I 
 
 the youthful Herakles as given in the apologue of Prodikos. He is CHAP. 
 
 the father of the afflicted ; what he wins he shares ; all that is good ^ — ■ 
 
 he loves. Wherever he goes, Ecke hears the people recount the 
 exploits and dwell on the beauty and the goodness of Dietrich. 
 Under a linden tree he finds a wounded man, and looking at his 
 wounds, he cries out that he had never seen any so deep, and that 
 nothing remained whole to him under helmet or shield. " No sword 
 can have done this; it must be the wild thunder-stroke from heaven." 
 Ecke is soon to see the hero who smote down the wounded man ; 
 but no sooner is he confronted with the valiant knight, than he forgets 
 the part which he ought to play if he means to appear as a messenger 
 of Seburk and to do her bidding. He now speaks in his own cha- 
 racter, as the Pani who bears an irrepressible hate for his adversary, 
 while Dietrich is as passive in the matter as Achilleus when he de- 
 clared that the Trojans had never done him any mischief. " I will 
 not strive with thee," he says, " thou hast done me no harm ; give my 
 service to thy lady, and tell her I will always be her knight" But 
 Ecke is bent only upon fighting, and while he refuses to be the 
 bearer of any message, he calls Dietrich a coward and dares him to 
 the contest. Nor can we avoid noting that although Dietrich prays 
 him to wait till the sun shines if fight they must, Ecke by his in- 
 tolerable scoffs brings on the battle while it is yet night, and the strife 
 between the powers of light and darkness is carried on amidst a storm 
 of thunder and lightning until the day breaks. Ecke then thinks that 
 he has won the victory; but just as he is boasting of his success, 
 Dietrich is filled with new strength, and when Ecke refuses to yield 
 up his sword, he runs him through. But he himself is sorely wounded, 
 and as he wanders on he finds a fair maiden sleeping by a spring, as 
 Daphne, Arethousa, Melusina, and the nymphs are all found near the 
 running waters. The being whom Dietrich finds is gifted with the 
 powers which Oinone cannot or will not exercise for the benefit of 
 Paris. She heals him with a wonderful salve, and tells him that she 
 is a wise woman, like Brynhild and Medeia, knowing the evil and the 
 good, and dwelling in a fair land beyond the sea. But the story has 
 been awkwardly put together, and of the fair Seburk we hear no more. 
 This, however, is but further evidence of the mythical character of 
 the materials with which the poets of the early and middle ages for 
 the most part had to deal. 
 
 The poem of the Great Rose Garden is a still more clumsy The Great 
 travesty of the myth of the Phaiakian .or Hyperborean gardens. The ^°^ Gar " 
 birds are there, singing so sweetly that no mournful heart could 
 refuse to be solaced by them ; but the cold touch of the north is on 
 
132 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 The ro- 
 mance of 
 Roland. 
 
 BOOK the poet, and his seat under the linden tree is covered with furs and 
 r ; . . samite, while the wind which whispers through the branches comes 
 from bellows black as a coal. In this garden is waged the same 
 furious fight which fills Etzel's slaughter hall with blood in the Nibe- 
 lung Lay; but the battle assumes here a form so h,orrible and so 
 wantonly disgusting that we need only mark the more modern vein 
 of satire which has used the myth for the purpose of pointing a jest 
 against the monastic orders. The monk Ilsan, who, putting aside 
 his friar's cloak, stands forth clad in impenetrable armour and wield- 
 ing an unerring sword, is Odysseus standing in beggar's garb among 
 the suitors ; but the spirit of the ancient legend is gone, and Ilsan 
 appears on the whole in a character not much more dignified than 
 that of Friar Tuck in Ivanhoe. 
 
 The same wonderful armour is seen again in the beautiful 
 romance of Roland. How thoroughly devoid this romance is of 
 any materials of which the historian may make use, it is scarcely 
 necessary to say; that many incidents in the legend may have 
 been suggested by actual facts in the lifetime of Charles the Great, 
 is an admission which may be readily made. When Charles the 
 Great is made to complain on the death of Roland that now the 
 Saxons, Bulgarians, and many other nations, as those of Palermo and 
 Africa, will rebel against him, it is possible that the story may point 
 to some redoubtable leader whose loss left the empire vulnerable in 
 many quarters : but we do not learn this fact, if it be a fact, from the 
 romance, and the impenetrable disguise which popular fancy has 
 thrown over every incident makes the idea of verifying any of them 
 an absurdity. Whatever may have been the cause of the war, Roland 
 plays in it the part of Achilleus. The quarrel was none of his making, 
 but he is ready to fight in his sovereign's cause ; and the sword 
 Durandal which he wields is manifestly the sword of Chrysaor. 
 When his strength is failing, a Saracen tries to wrest the blade from 
 his hand, but with his ivory horn Roland strikes the infidel dead. 
 The horn is split with the stroke, and all the crystal and gold fall 
 from it. The night is at hand, but Roland raises himself on his feet, 
 and strikes the recovered sword against a rock. " Ha ! Durandal," 
 he cries, " how bright thou art and white ! how thou shinest and 
 (lamest against the sun ! Charles was in the vale of Mauricane when 
 God from heaven commanded him by his angel that he should give 
 thee to a captain ; wherefore the gentle king, the great, did gird thee 
 Dn me." * This is the pedigree of no earthly weapon, and to the list 
 
 1 The address of Roland to his sword 
 is more magniloquently given in the 
 
 "Chronicle of Turpin," Ludlow, Ibid. 
 i. 425- 
 
THE ROMANCE OF ARTHUR. ' 1 33 
 
 of conquests wrought by it in the hands of Roland we may add the CHAP. 
 
 exploits of the good brands Excalibur, and Gram, and Balmung, and ■ '—' 
 
 in short, the swords of all the Hellenic and Teutonic heroes. We 
 
 are thus prepared for the issue when Alda (Hilda), to whom he has 
 
 been betrothed, falls dead when she hears that Roland is slain. 
 
 Kleopatra and Brynhild cannot survive Meleagros and Sigurd. 1 
 
 As useless for all historical purposes, and as valuable to the com- The ro- 
 , . . , .. . T _. , , mance of 
 
 parative mythologist, is the magnificent romance of King Arthur. Arthur. 
 
 Probably in no other series of legends is there a more manifest recur- 
 rence of the same myth under different forms. The structure of the 
 tale is simple enough. Arthur himself is simply a reproduction of 
 Sigurd or Perseus. Round him are other brave knights, and these, 
 not less than himself, must have their adventures; and thus Arthur 
 and Balin answer respectively to Achilleus and Odysseus in the 
 Achaian hosts. A new element is brought into the story with the 
 Round Table, which forms part of the dowry of Guinevere ; and the 
 institution of the Knights furnishes the starting-point for a series of 
 exploits on the part of each knight, which are little more than a clog 
 to the narrative, and may easily be detached from the main thread of 
 it They answer in fact to those books in our Iliad which relate the 
 fortunes of the Achaian chieftains during the inaction of Achilleus. 
 A third series of narratives, rising gradually to a strain of surpassing 
 beauty and grandeur, begins with the manifestation of the Round 
 Table in the form of the holy Grail ; and the legend of the quest for 
 the sacred vessel, while it is really an independent story, is in its 
 essential features a mere repetition of some which have preceded it. 
 In short, the original meaning of these myths had been completely 
 forgotten by the mediaeval romancers ; but, like the Homeric poets, 
 they have felt the irresistible spell, and have adhered to the traditional 
 types with marvellous fidelity. 
 
 Stripped thus of its adventitious matter, the poem assumes a form The birth 
 common to the traditions and folk-lore of all the Teutonic or even all of Arthur, 
 the Aryan nations. Not only is the wonderful sword of Roland seen 
 again in the first blade granted to King Arthur, but the story of the 
 mode in which Arthur becomes master of it is precisely the story of 
 the Teutonic Sigurd and the Greek Theseus. We might almost say 
 with truth that there is not a single incident with which we are not 
 familiar in the earlier legends. The fortunes of Igraine, Arthur's 
 mother, are precisely those of Alkmene, Uther playing the part of 
 Zeus, while Gorlois takes the place of Amphitryon. 2 As soon as he 
 
 1 This is the story of Lord Nann and - The scene in which Sigurd person- 
 
 theKorrigan. — Keightley , Fairy Myllio- ates Gunnar in order to win Brynhild 
 b>£y> 433- lor tlle latter is k ut slightly different 
 
134 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK is born, Arthur is wrapped in a cloth of gold, the same glittering 
 ■raiment which in the Homeric hymn the nymphs wrap round the 
 new-born Phoibos, and like the infant Cyrus, who is arrayed in the 
 same splendid garb, is placed in the hands of a poor man whom the 
 persons charged with him, like Harpagos, meet at the postern-gate of 
 the castle. In his house the child grows like Cyrus and Romulus 
 and others, a model of human beauty, and like them he cannot long 
 abide in his lowly station. Some one must be chosen king, and the 
 trial is to be that which Odin appointed for the recovery of the sword 
 Gram, which he had thrust up to the hilt in the great roof-tree of 
 Volsung's hall. " There was seen in the churchyard, at the east end 
 by the high altar, a great stone formed square, and in the midst 
 thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot high, and therein stuck a fair 
 sword naked by the point, and letters of gold were written about the 
 sword that said thus, " Whoso pulleth out this sword out of this stone 
 and anvil is rightwise born king of England.' " The incident by 
 which Arthur's title is made known answers to the similar attempts 
 made in Teutonic folk-lore to cheat Boots, the younger son, of his 
 lawful inheritance. Sir Kay, leaving his sword at home, sends 
 Arthur for it, and Arthur not being able to find it, draws the weapon 
 imbedded in the stone as easily as Theseus performed the same 
 exploit. Sir Kay, receiving it, forthwith claims the kingdom. Sir 
 Ector, much doubting his tale, drives him to confess that it was 
 Arthur who gave him the sword, and then bids Arthur replace it in 
 the solid block. None now can draw it forth but Arthur, to whose 
 touch it yields without force or pressure. Sir Ector then kneels to 
 Arthur, who, supposing him to be his father, shrinks from the honour ; 
 but Ector, like the shepherds in the myths of Oidipous, Romulus, or 
 Cyrus, replies, " I was never your father nor of your blood, but I wote 
 well ye are of an higher blood than I weened ye were." But although 
 like the playmates of Cyrus, the knights scorn to be governed by a 
 boy whom they hold to be baseborn, yet they are compelled to yield 
 to the ordeal of the stone, and Arthur, being made king, forgives them- 
 all. The sword thus gained is in Arthur's first war so bright in his 
 enemies' eyes that it gives light like thirty torches, as the glorious 
 radiance flashes up to heaven when Achilleus dons his armour. But 
 this weapon is not to be the blade with which Arthur is to perform 
 his greatest exploits. Like the sword of Odin in the Volsung story, 
 
 from the story of Uther as told by gods of the heaven and the light, and 
 
 Jeffrey of Monmouth or in the more as such is exercised by Phoibos the fish 
 
 detailed romance. This power of trans- god, and Dionysos the lion and bear, 
 formation is a special attribute of the 
 
THE ROUND TABLE. 135 
 
 it is snapped in twain in the conflict with Pellinore ; but it is of CHAP, 
 course brought back to him in the form of Excalibur, bv a maiden ■ 
 who answers to Thetis or to Hjordis. 1 Arthur, riding with Merlin 
 along a lake, becomes " ware of an arm clothed in white samite that 
 held a fair sword in the hand." This is the fatal weapon, whose 
 scabbard answers precisely to the panoply of Achilleus, for while he 
 wears it Arthur cannot shed blood, even though he be wounded. 
 Like all the other sons of Helios, Arthur has his enemies, and King 
 Rience demands as a sign of homage the beard of Arthur, which 
 gleams with the splendour of the golden locks or rays of Phoibos 
 Akersekomes. The demand is refused, but in the mediaeval romance 
 there is room for others who reflect the glory of Arthur, while his own 
 splendour is for the time obscured. At Camelot they see a maiden 
 with a sword attached to her body, which Arthur himself cannot 
 draw. In the knight Balin, who draws it, and who " because he was 
 poorly arrayed put him not far in the press," we see not merely the 
 humble Arthur who gives his sword to Sir Kay, but Odysseus, who in 
 his beggar's dress shrinks from the brilliant throng which crowds his 
 ancestral hall. 3 
 
 On the significance of the Round Table we must speak elsewhere. The Round 
 It is enough for the present to note that it comes to Arthur with the t h e San 
 bride whose dowry is to be to him as fatal as the treasures of the Greal - 
 Argive Helen to Menelaos. In the warning of Merlin that Guinevere 
 "is not wholesome for him " we see that earlier conception of Helen 
 in which the Attic tragedians differ so pointedly from the poets of 
 the Iliad and the Odyssey. As Helen is to be the ruin of cities, of 
 men, and of ships, so is Guinevere to bring misery on herself and on 
 all around her, as of Brynhild it is said, " Luckless thou earnest to 
 thy mother's lap, born for the sorrow of all folk.'' Dangers thicken 
 round Arthur, and he is assailed by enemies as dangerous as Kirke 
 and Kalypso to Odysseus. The Fay Morgan seeks to steal Excalibur, 
 and succeeds in getting the scabbard, which she throws into a lake, 
 and Arthur now may both- bleed and die. 8 At the hands of another 
 maiden he narrowly escapes the doom which Medeia and Deianeira 
 
 1 "The Manks hero, Olave of Nor- s The invisible knight who at this 
 way, had a sword with a Celtic name, stage of the narrative smites Sir Her- 
 Macabuin." — Campbell, Tales of the leus wears the helmet of Hades, and 
 West Highlands, i. lxxii. It reappears his action is that of the Erinys who 
 as the sword Tirfing in the fairy tale. wanders in the air. 
 Keightley, Fairy Mythology, 73. In 3 Morgan has the power of trans- 
 some versions, as in " Arthur and formation possessed by all the fish and 
 Merlin," Excalibur is the sword fastened water-gods, Proteus, Onnes, Thetis, 
 in the stone, the sword obtained from &c. 
 the fairy being Mirandoisa. 
 
13^ • MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 brought upon Glaukg and on Heraklgs. The Lady of the Lake 
 1 warns him not to put on this vesture until he has first seen the 
 bringer wear it This accordingly he makes the maiden do, "and 
 forthwith she fell down, and was brent to coals." * . 
 Arthur's The story now ceases practically to be the romance of Arthur, 
 
 n ' s ** until it once more exhibits him in all the majesty of Christian long- 
 suffering and holiness ; but, as we might expect, those portions of the 
 romance which less immediately relate to Arthur are founded on old 
 Teutonic or Hellenic myths. In the three sisters which meet Sir 
 Marhaus, Sir Gawain, and Sir Ewain by the fountain, we can scarcely 
 fail to recognise the three weird sisters, whose office, as belonging to 
 the past, the present, and the future, seems to be betokened by their 
 age and the garb which distinguishes them from each other. The 
 eldest has a garland of gold about her hair, which is white with the 
 snows of threescore winters ; the second, thirty years of age, with 
 more brilliant ornaments, marks the middle stage in which the main 
 action of life lies ; while in the younger sister of fifteen summers, 
 crowned with luxuriant flowers, we have the Norn whose business is 
 only with the time to come. 2 In the good knight Tristram we have 
 another of those fatal children whose mother's eyes may not be long 
 gladdened with the sight of their babes. Like Asklepios and Diony- 
 sos, like Macduff and Sigurd, Tristram is the son of sorrow ; 8 nor did 
 he fail to justify the popular conviction that all such children are 
 born to do great things. 4 In the madness which comes upon Lance- 
 lot when Guinevere rebukes him for the love of Elaine we see the 
 frenzy of Herakles and other heroes, a frenzy which is naturally 
 healed by the San Greal. 6 In the story of the Perilous Seat we have 
 simply another form of a myth already twice given in this romance. 
 " Then the king went forth and all the knights unto the river, and 
 there they found a stone floating, as if it had been of red marble, and 
 therein stuck a fair and a rich sword, and in the pommel thereof were 
 precious stones wrought with subtle letters of gold, which said, 
 ' Never shall man take me hence but he by whom I ought to hang ; 
 and he shall be the best knight of the world ' " — bravery and good- 
 ness being thus made the prize instead of an earthly kingdom as in 
 the case of Arthur. The king tells Lancelot that this sword ought to 
 
 ' La Merit cTArthure, ed. Coney- the differences between the two, see 
 
 beare, book ,11 ch. v. ___ Appendix III. to the Introduction to 
 
 Joid book iv. ch. m. Comparative Mythology. 
 
 "In the Arthur cycle there are two * See p. 103. 
 
 forms of the Tristram story, the one s Coneybeare, La Morte d'Arthure 
 
 occurring in the body of the Arthur book x. ' 
 
 legend, the other gvven separately. For 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL. 137 
 
 be his, but it is the prize which, like the princess for whom the un- CHAP. 
 
 successful suitors venture their bodies, brings ruin on those who fail : — 
 
 to seize it. The hero who is to take it is revealed, when an old 
 man coming in lifts up the cover that is on the Siege Perilous, and 
 discloses the words, "This is the siege of Sir Galahad the good 
 knight" The story of this peerless hero is introduced with an 
 incident which is manifestly suggested by the narrative of Pentecost. 
 As the Knights of the Round Table sat at supper in Camelot, " they 
 heard cracking and crying of thunder, that they thought the place 
 should all-to rive. And in the midst of the blast entered a sunbeam 
 more clear by seven times than ever they saw day, and all they were 
 alighted by the grace of the Holy Ghost Then began every knight 
 to behold other; and each saw other by their seeming fairer than 
 ever they saw afore. Then there entered into the hall the holy 
 Grail covered with white samite, and there was none that might see 
 it nor who bear it And then was all the hall full filled with great 
 odours, and every knight had such meat and drink as he best loved 
 in the world." The wonderful vessel is suddenly borne away, and 
 the knights depart on a search which answers precisely to the quest 
 of the Golden Fleece or the treasures of Helen the fair. The myth 
 of the sword, already thrice given, is presented to us once more on 
 board the ship Faith, on which there was " a fair bed, and at the foot 
 was a sword, fair and rich ; and it was drawn out of the scabbard half 
 a foot or more." " Wot ye well," says a maiden to Sir Galahad, " that 
 the drawing of this sword is warned unto all men save unto you." 
 This ship is the same vessel which carries Helios round the stream of 
 Ocean during the hours of darkness. In other words, it becomes the 
 ship of the dead, the bark which carries the souls to the land of light 
 which lies beyond the grave. This ship carries to the Spiritual Place 
 the body of Sir Percival's sister, who dies to save the lady of the 
 castle by giving her a dish full of her own blood — a myth which 
 reflects the story of Iphigeneia who dies that Helen, the lady of the 
 castle of Menelaos, may be rescued, and of Polyxena, whose blood 
 is shed that Achi'.leus may repose in the unseen land. From the 
 quest of the Grail Lancelot comes back ennobled and exalted. 
 Arthur longs for the return of the good knight Galahad, of Percival, 
 and Bors ; but the face of the purest of all men he may never see 
 again. When at length the eyes of Galahad rest on the mystic vessel, 
 he utters the Nunc Dimittis, and Joseph of Arimathsea says to him, 
 " Thou hast resembled me in two things ; one is, that thou hast seen 
 the San Greal, and the other is that thou art a clean maiden as I am." 
 Then follows the farewell of Galahad to his comrades, as he charges 
 
138 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Sir Bors to salute his father Sir Lancelot and bid him remember this 
 « unstable world " And therewith he kneeled down before the table 
 
 and Gui- 
 nevere. 
 
 and made his prayers, and then suddenly his soul departed unto Jesus 
 Christ. And a great multitude of angels bare his soul up to heaven 
 that his two fellows might behold it ; also they saw come down from 
 heaven a hand, but they saw not the body, and then it came right to 
 the vessel and took it and the spear, 1 and so bare it up into heaven. 
 Sithence was there never a man so hardy as to say that he had seen 
 the San Greal." 
 
 Lancelot The sequel which tells the story of the final fortunes of Lancelot 
 
 and Guinevere presents perhaps the most wonderful instance of the 
 degree to which a myth may be modified, and in this case the 
 modifying influence is strictly and purely Christian. It is true that 
 he estranges the love of Guinevere from her lord Arthur, and that 
 even the sanctifying influence of the holy Grail, which makes him 
 proof against the heart-rending sorrow of Elaine, cannot avail to 
 repress his unconquerable affection for the brightest and the fairest of 
 women. But although the romance throughout speaks of it as his 
 great sin, the love is one which asks only for her heart as its recom- 
 pence, and enables him to say even at the last, that Guinevere is 
 worthy of the love of Arthur. But the same Christian influence 
 which makes Arthur slow to believe any evil of his dear friend 
 Lancelot, could not allow Guinevere to end her days in peace with 
 Arthur, as Helen returns to live and die in the house of Menelaos. 
 Like Paris, whom Menelaos admitted to an equally trustful friend- 
 ship, Lancelot had done a great wrong ; and even when Arthur has 
 closed his brief but splendid career, Guinevere tells Lancelot that all 
 love on earth is over between them. Their lips may not meet even 
 in the last kiss which should seal the death-warrant of their old 
 affection. Arthur is gone. When he will come back again, no man 
 may tell ; but Guinevere is more faithful now to the word which she 
 had pledged to him than she had been while his glorious form rose 
 pre-eminent among the bravest knights of Christendom. Yet in 
 spite of all that Christian influence has done to modify and ennoble 
 the story, the myth required that Guinevere should be separated from 
 Lancelot, as Helen is torn away from Paris ; and the narrative pre- 
 sents us from time to time with touches which vividly recall the old 
 Greek and Teutonic myths. Thus Sir Urre of Hungary has wounds 
 which only Lancelot can heal, as Oinong alone can heal Paris ; and 
 the last battle with Modred is begun when a knight draws his sword 
 on an adder that has stung him in the foot, like the snake which bit 
 1 See book ii. chap. ii. sect. 12. 
 
THE SLEEP OF ARTHUR IN AVILION. 139 
 
 Eurydike. So again, Excalibur is, by the hands of the reluctant Sir chap. 
 
 Bedivere, thrown into the lake from which it had been drawn, as the '-—' 
 
 light of Helios is quenched in the waters from which he sprung in the 
 morning j and the barge, which had borne away the fair maid of 
 Astolat and the sister of Sir Percival, brings the three queens (seem- 
 ingly the weird sisters who have already been seen in another form) 
 to carry off the wounded Arthur. 
 
 But even at the last the story exhibits the influence of the old The death 
 myth. Neither Arthur himself thinks, nor do any others think, that 
 he is really dying. His own words are, " I will unto the vale of 
 Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound." There, in the shadowy 
 valley in which Endymion sinks to sleep, the thought of the renewed 
 life in store for Baldur or Dionyos, Memnon or Sarpedon, or Adonis, 
 showed itself in the epitaph 
 
 " Hie jacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus." 
 
 Of the story of Arthur and Guinevere, Mr. Campbell says that, Guinevere 
 " when stripped to the bones," it " is almost identical with the love ^ aid lar " 
 story of the history of the Feinne," the tradition embodied in the 
 poems which bear the name of Ossian, with not less justice perhaps 
 than the Iliad and Odyssey bear the name of Homer, and the 
 Finnish epic Kalewala that of Wainamoinen. 1 To Grainne, the wife 
 of Fionn, Diarmaid stands in the relation of Lancelot to Guinevere, 
 or of Paris to Helen. Guinevere loves Lancelot at first sight : Diar- 
 maid, when first he meets Grainne, " shows a spot on his forehead, 
 which no woman can see without loving him." But if Lancelot 
 follows Guinevere willingly, Grainne compels Diarmaid to run away 
 with her. In the sequel the conduct of Fionn precisely matches 
 that of Arthur, and Diarmaid is as fearless a knight as Lancelot — 
 the conclusion being that " here are the same traditions worked up 
 into wholly different stories, and differently put upon the stage, 
 according to the manners of the age in which romances are written, 
 but the people go on telling their own story in their own way." 2 
 
 1 For the supposed historical resi- words, the framework of the myth : and 
 duum in the story of Arthur, see with this only we are here concerned. 
 Appendix V. to the Introduction to The story of Sir Bevis of Hampton, Mr. 
 Comparative Mythology. Campbell remarks, reflects the same 
 
 2 Into the question of the authenti- mythology, iv. 267. I must content 
 city of Macpherson's Ossian it 'is alto- myself with calling attention to Mr. 
 gether unnecessary to enter. The Campbell's very valuable section on the 
 matter has been admirably and con- Welsh stories, iv. 270-299. Taken as 
 clusively treated by Mr. Campbell in a whole, they run precisely parallel to 
 the fourth volume of his Tales of the the streams of German, Scandinavian, 
 West Highlands, and no one probably and Hindu folk-lore, and bring Mr. 
 would for an instant suppose that Mac- Campbell to the conclusion that they 
 pherson invented the tradition — in other are " all founded upon incidents which 
 
140 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 It is unnecessary to examine the poems or romances which some 
 writers are fond of arranging under sub-cycles of the main cycle 
 of the Carolingian epics. These epics Mr. Ludlow 1 pronounces 
 "historical" The sort of history contained in them we may 
 take at his own estimate of it. " The history of them is popular 
 history, utterly unchronological, attributing to one age or hero the 
 events and deeds of quite another." In other words, it is a history 
 from which, if we had no other sources of evidence, we could not 
 by any possibility learn anything. Possessing the genuine contem- 
 porary history of the time, the critic has a clue which may here and 
 there furnish some guidance through the labyrinth; but it is the 
 genuine history which enables him in whatever measure to account 
 for the perversions of the poems, not the perversions which add a 
 jot to our knowledge of the facts. But it is more important to 
 remember that these poems are of a quite different class from the 
 general epics of the Aryan nations. They are the result of book- 
 work — in other words, they are not organic ; and to the stories spun 
 by men sitting down at their desks, and mingling mythical or historical 
 traditions at their will, there is literally no end. Yet even in these 
 poems it is remarkable that some of the most prominent or momentous 
 incidents belong to the common inheritance of the Aryan nations. 
 The story of Garin the Lorrainer repeats in great part the story of 
 Odysseus. Thierry's daughter, the White Flower (Blanche Flor), is 
 the Argive Helen. " That maiden," says the poet, " in an evil hour 
 was born, for many a worthy man shall yet die through her." The 
 death of Bego, after the slaying of the boar, is the death of Achilleus 
 after the fall of Hektor. But whatever travesty of real history there 
 may be in parts of this poem, or in the epics of William of Orange 
 and Ogier the Dane, there is next to none in the story of Bertha 
 Largefoot, which simply reflects the myth of Cinderella, Penelope, 
 Punchkin, and perhaps one or two more. 2 In short, it is mere 
 patchwork. As in the case of Cinderella and Rhodopis, the true 
 queen is made known by her feet ; s the only difference being that 
 
 have been woven into popular tales 
 almost ever since men began to speak ; 
 that they are Celtic only because Celts 
 are men, and only peculiarly Celtic be- 
 cause Celts are admitted by all to be a 
 very ancient offshoot from the common 
 root." For the epical cycles in the 
 Arthur myth, see lntrodtution to Com- 
 parative Mythology, 310-339; and for 
 the story of Bevis of Hampton, see ibid. 
 340. For Guy of Warwick, ibid. 
 34«- 
 
 1 Popular Epics of the Middle Ages, 
 vol. ii. p. 13. 
 
 2 Bertha is in name the Teutonic 
 goddess, who in another form -appears 
 as FrauHolle or Holda, the benignant 
 earth, and who, like Penelope, has mar- 
 vellous skill in spinning. 
 
 8 This myth occurs again in the 
 Gaelic story of " The King who wished 
 to marry his Daughter." Mr. Campbell 
 {Tales of the West Highlands, i. 227) 
 mentions other instances, and remarks 
 
THE GRETTIR SAGA. I4 1 
 
 with Bertha it is the great size of her feet which determines the issue, CHAP, 
 not their smallness. To coin a word, she is Eurypous, instead of ■— — -- — 
 Europe ; and there was a version which spoke of her as Queen 
 Goosefoot, a personage over whom it might seem impossible that 
 a poet could become sentimental. Yet the goose-footed queen is 
 simply a swan-maiden, one of the most beautiful creatures of Aryan 
 mythology. 
 
 The same materials will probably be found to have furnished the Saga Lite- 
 framework of at least the greater part of the Saga literature of Europe. 
 Northern Europe. If here and there a name or an incident belonging 
 to real history be introduced into them, this cannot of itself raise the 
 story above the level of plausible fiction. Far too much, probably, 
 has been said of these Sagas as a true picture of society and manners. 
 That the writers would throw over their narrative a colouring borrowed 
 from the ways and customs of their own time is certain ; but the acts 
 which they record are not proved to be deeds which were constantly 
 or even rarely occurring, if they involve either a direct contradiction 
 or a physical impossibility. To say that all incidents involving such 
 difficulties are to be at once rejected, while we are yet to give faith to 
 the residue, is to lay ourselves as bondmen at the feet of Euemeros 
 and his followers, and to bid farewell to truth and honesty. Even in 
 pictures of life and manners there is a certain limit beyond which we 
 refuse to credit tales of cruelty, villainy, and treachery, when they 
 are related of whole tribes who are not represented as mere savages 
 and ruffians ; and unless we are prepared to disregard these limits, 
 the history of many of these Sagas becomes at once, as a whole, 
 incredible, although some of the incidents recorded in them may have 
 occurred. 
 
 This is especially the case with the Grettir Saga, for which a high The 
 historical character has been claimed by the translators. 1 Yet the ^£^ 
 tale from beginning to end is full of impossibilities. In his early 
 youth Grettir, being set by his father to watch his horses, gets on the 
 back of one named Keingala, and drawing a sharp knife across her 
 shoulders and then all along both sides of.the back, flays off the whole 
 strip from the flank to the loins. When Asmund next strokes the 
 horse, the hide to his surprise comes off in his hands, the animal 
 being seemingly very little the worse for the loss. After this impos- 
 
 that " those who hold that popular tales common stock from which all these 
 
 are preserved in all countries and in all races sprang." See also the story of 
 
 languages alike, will hold that the the "Sharp Grey Sheep," Campbell, 
 
 Italian, German, French, Norse, Eng- ii. 289. 
 
 lish, and Gaelic are all versions of the * Eirikr Magmisson and William 
 
 same story, and that it is as old as the Morris. 
 
142 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The cha- 
 racter of 
 Grettir. 
 
 sible result of his exploit, Grettir, having lost a mealbag, finds Skeggf 
 in the same predicament, and joins him in a common search. Skeggi 
 comes across Grettir's bag and tries to hide it. When Grettir com- 
 plains, Skeggi throws his axe at him and is slain in requital. It can 
 scarcely be pretended that we are reading the true story of "an 
 interesting race of men near akin to ourselves," when instead of a 
 fair field and no favour we find that six men do not hesitate to fall 
 upon one. 1 Thorfin, walking away from his boat with a leather 
 bottle full of drink on his back, is assaulted from behind by Thorgeir, 
 who thinks that he has slain him when he has only cut the bottle. 
 He is jeered at next day for his blunder; but the act is no more 
 blamed for its treachery than is the same base deed when Odysseus 
 boastingly relates it of himself. Thorgeir Bottle-jack is slain soon 
 afterwards in a bloody fight over the carcass of a whale, in which 
 half the population of the village seems to be slaughtered Thorbiorn 
 Oxmain thinks it a goodly exploit to knock at a man's door and then 
 to thrust him through with a spear when he comes to open it The 
 same honourable champion, wishing to slay Grettir, discourses thus 
 to his comrades : — 
 
 " I will go against him in front, and take thou heed how matters 
 go betwixt us, for I will trust myself against any man, if I have one 
 alone to meet ; but do thou go behind him, and drive the axe into 
 him with both hands atwixt his shoulders ; thou needest not fear 
 that he will do thee hurt, as his back will be turned to thee." 2 
 
 When at a later time Grettir had slain Thorir Redbeard, Thorir 
 of Garth assails the solitary outlaw with eighty men. Grettir slays 
 eighteen and wounds many more, and the rest take to flight. 8 
 
 This last incident brings us to the main question. It is, of course, 
 a sheer impossibility : 4 and if, as such, it is to be regarded as lying 
 beyond the pale of human history, we are at once driven to ask 
 wherein lies the real value of a narrative in which* such incidents 
 form the staple of the story. The translators tell us that throughout 
 the tale " the Sagaman never relaxes his grasp of Grettir's character, 
 that he is the same man fjom beginning to end, thrust this way and 
 that by circumstances, but little altered by them ; unlucky in all 
 things, yet made strong to bear all ill-luck ; scornful of the world, yet 
 
 1 Preface, pp. i. and 94. 
 
 2 P. 141. 3 P. 169. 
 
 4 In Scott's Old Mortality, ch. xi., 
 old Major Bellenden takes his niece to 
 task for believing that the heroes of 
 romance fought single-handed with 
 whole battalions. " One to three," he 
 
 says, "is as great odds as ever fought 
 and won ; and I never knew anybody 
 who cared to take that except old 
 Corporal Raddlebanes. ... I dare say 
 you would think very little of Raddle- 
 banes if he were alongside of Arta- 
 mines." 
 
MATERIALS OF THE GRETTIR SAGA. 143 
 
 capable of enjoyment and determined to make the most of it ; not chap. 
 
 deceived by men's specious ways, but disdaining to cry out because '—— - 
 
 he must needs bear with them ; scorning men, yet helping them 
 when called on, and desirous of fame ; prudent in theory, and wise 
 in foreseeing the inevitable sequence of events, but reckless even 
 beyond the recklessness of that time and people, and finally capable 
 of inspiring in others strong affection and devotion to him in spite of 
 his rugged self-sufficing temper." 1 It is one thing if this is to be 
 regarded as the portrait of a man who really lived and died on this 
 earth, or as the picture of some inhabitant of the Phaiakian cloud- 
 land The translators raise a vital issue when they say that " to us 
 moderns the real interest in these records of a past state of life lies 
 principally in seeing events true in the main treated vividly and 
 dramatically by people who completely understood the manners, life, 
 and above all the turn of mind of the actors in them." 2 If we have 
 any honest anxiety to ascertain facts, and if we are prepared to give 
 credit to a narrative only when the facts have been so ascertained, 
 then everything is involved in the question whether the events here 
 related are true in the main or not The genealogies given in the 
 earlier part of the Saga agree, we are told, with those of the Land- 
 nama-bok and of the other most trustworthy Sagas ; yet such names 
 tell us as much and as little as the names in the genealogy of the 
 tale-maker Hekataios. A catalogue of names belonging to real 
 persons cannot impart authority to a narrative of fictitious events, if 
 they are fictitious; and when we have put aside these genealogies 
 and the names of one or two kings, as of Olaf, Hacon, and Harold 
 Fairhair, we have numbered all the historical elements in the book : 
 nor is it necessary to say that some safeguard is wanted when we 
 remember that the Carolingian romances take the great Karl to 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 If then we have before us a story, some of the incidents of which Materials 
 are manifestly impossible or absurd, we are scarcely justified in g^* e 
 accepting, on the mere authority of the Saga, other portions which 
 involve no such difficulties. We have the alternative of rejecting 
 the whole story without troubling ourselves to examine it further, or 
 we may take it to pieces, reducing it to its constituent elements, and 
 then seeing whether these elements are to be found in any other 
 narratives. If this should be the case, the character of the narratives 
 in which these common elements are seen will go far towards deter- 
 mining the credibility of the story. Clearly the latter course is the 
 more philosophical and the more honest That the translators had 
 1 P. xiv. 2 P. xiii. 
 
144 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Grettir 
 and Boots, 
 
 Parallel- 
 isms be- 
 tween the 
 Grettir 
 Saga and 
 other 
 myths. 
 
 the clue in their own hands, is clear from the sentence in which, 
 speaking of the events which followed Grettir's death, they tell us 
 that " the Sagaman here has taken an incident, with little or no 
 change, from the romance of Tristram and Iseult." 1 If, as they 
 think, the chapters in which this incident is related were added to 
 the tale, and if this part of the story be substantially the same as that 
 of a romance which is known to be mythical ; if further, as they say, 
 the whole Saga " has no doubt gone through the stages which mark 
 the growth of the Sagas in general, that is, it was for long handed 
 about from mouth to mouth until it took a definite shape in men's 
 minds," 2 a presumption, to say the least, is furnished that other 
 incidents in the Saga may be found to be of a like nature. 
 
 If we take the sentences which tell us of Grettir's childhood, how 
 he had scant love from his father who set him to watch his home- 
 geese, how he was fair to look on, red-haired and much freckled, how 
 he would do no work or spoilt all that he did ; how, when placed on 
 board a boat, he " would move for nought, neither for baling, nor to 
 do aught for the sail, nor to work at what he was bound to work at 
 in the ship in even share with the other men, neither would he buy 
 himself off from the work," 3 how, when he does some great thing, 
 the remark is " we wotted not that thou wert a man of such powers 
 as we have now proved thee," 1 how he goes disguised to the 
 wrestling match, and when Thorbiorn Angle pushes and tugs hard 
 at him, moves not a whit but sits quiet, yet wins the victory, — we 
 have before us the Goose-girl and the Boots of Teutonic story, the 
 Boots who sits among the ashes in the " irony of greatness," biding 
 his time, — the disguised Odysseus, patiently enduring the gibes of 
 the suitors and the beggar Arnaios. 
 
 When the Saga tells us that on coming back from a Thing, 
 " Grettir lifted a stone which now lies there in the grass and is called 
 Grettir's heave," and how " many men came up to see the stone and 
 found it a great wonder that so young a man should heave aloft such 
 a huge rock," it relates a well-known legend in the myths of Theseus 
 and of Sigurd in the Volsung tale. When Grettir is driven forth 
 from his home without arms and his mother draws forth from her 
 cloak the fair sword which has gained many a day, we see before us 
 Thetis and Hjordis bestowing on their children the magic weapons 
 which reappear in the hands of Arthur and of Roland. In the 
 
 1 For the romance of Tristram, see * P. xv. 
 
 Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, * P. 41. 
 
 and Introduction to Comparative Mytho- * P. 58. 
 
 logy, 326-33°- 
 
THE MIGHT AND EXPLOITS OF GRETTIR. 145 
 
 horrible smiting of the bearsarks, who are shut up in a barn, we have CHAP. 
 
 the awful hall of slaughter in the Odyssey and the Nibelung Lay. '■ — • 
 
 In the marvellous story of the demon who is vainly assailed first by 
 Glam who becomes a demon himself, then by Thorgaut, but is finally 
 slain by Grettir, we see the common type of the popular story in 
 which the youngest son, or Boots, wins the day, when his two brothers 
 or comrades fail. In the beaks of the ship which is so full of 
 weather-wisdom that the one whistles before a south wind and the 
 other before a north wind, we have a reminiscence of the divine 
 Argo. 1 In the errand on which, when his companions have no fire, 
 Grettir is sent to bring fire from a distant cliff, although " his mind 
 bids him hope to get nought of good thereby," we see the myth of 
 Prometheus and his recompense. The conflict of Grettir and Snse- 
 koll is related in words so nearly resembling those of the narrative of 
 David's fight with Goliath, that it is hard to resist the suspicion that 
 we may have here an instance of mere copying, 2 or that we have a 
 travesty of the story of Samson, as we read that " on a day as Grettir 
 lay sleeping, the bonders came upon him, and when they saw him 
 they took counsel how they should take him at the least cost of life, 
 and settled so that ten men should leap on him while some laid 
 bonds on his feet ; and thus they did, and threw themselves on him ; 
 but Grettir broke forth so mightily that they fell from off him." 3 In his 
 enormous strength, in his fitftil action, which is as often mischievous 
 as it is beneficent, in the lot which makes him a servant of beings 
 meaner than himself, which stirs up enemies against him in men 
 whom he has never injured, in the doom which he foresees and which 
 he has not the power, and indeed takes no pains, to avert, he is the 
 very counterpart of Heraklgs and Achilleus. When he slays afresh 
 Glam who has been long dead, the demon tells him " Hitherto thou 
 hast earned fame by thy deeds, but henceforth will wrongs and 
 inanslayings fall upon thee, and the most part of thy doings will turn 
 to thy woe and illhap ; an outlaw shalt thou be made, and ever shall 
 it be thy lot to dwell alone abroad." Henceforth he is " the traveller,'* 
 who can know no rest, who seeks shelter of many great men ; " but 
 something ever came to pass whereby none of them would harbour 
 him." This, however, is the doom of Indra and Savitar in many 
 Vedic hymns, of Wuotan Wegtam in Teutonic mythology, of Sigurd, 
 Perseus, Bellerophon, Oidipous, Odysseus, Phoibos, and Dionysos. 
 These are all wanderers and outlaws like Grettir, and there is scarcely 
 an incident in the life of Grettir which is not found in the legends 
 of one or more of the mythical beings just named. The overthrow 
 1 Grettir Saga, 115. 2 lb. 123. » lb. 153. 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 I. 
 
 The 
 
 avenging 
 of Grettir. 
 
 of the eighty assassins led on by Thorir of Garth is the defeat ol 
 -- the Lykian ambuscade by Bellerophontes. After this the wounded 
 hero goes to a cave under Balljdkul, where the daughter of Hallmund 
 heals his wound, and treats him well. " Grettir dwelt long there 
 that summer," like Odysseus in the cave of Kalypso, or Tanhaiiser 
 in the Venusberg, or True Thomas in the coverts of Ercildoune; 
 but we look to find him chafing, as these did, at the enforced rest. 
 We turn over the page and we read, " Now as the summer wore, 
 Grettir yearned for the peopled country, to see his friends and kin." 1 
 It is Odysseus longing to see Penelope once more. But he is under 
 a doom. As Olaf says, " If ever a man has been cursed, of all men 
 must thou have been." 2 It is the curse which is laid on Ixion and 
 Sisyphos, and singularly enough his father Asmund says of his son, 
 " Methinks over much on a whirling wheel his life turns." s Hence 
 also he dreads the darkness like a child, for Herakles, Helios, and 
 Achilleus can do nothing when the sun has gone down. Hence 
 too, the old mother of Thorbiorn lays on him the fate " that thou 
 be left of all health, wealth, and good hap, all good heed and 
 wisdom," the very fate of which Achilleus complains again and again 
 to Thetis in the very bitterness of his heart If again Grettir has 
 his brother Illugi in whom he has garnered up his soul, this is the 
 story of Achilleus and Patroklos, of Peirithoos and Theseus, of 
 the Dioskouroi, and a host of others- Nineteen years he is an 
 outlaw. "Then said the lawman that no one should be longer in 
 outlawing than twenty winters in all," and so Grettir was set free, 
 as Odysseus returns home in the twentieth year. The incident which 
 led to the death of Grettir is simply the myth of PhiloktetSs and of 
 Rustem. The cutting off of Grettir's hand is an incident in the 
 myth of Indra Savitar, of Tyr, and of Walthar of Aquitaine. When 
 again it is said of him that " he is right-well ribbed about the chest, 
 but few might think he would be so small of growth below," 4 we 
 cannot avoid a comparison with the story of Shortshanks in Grimm's 
 collection, or of Odysseus who, when he sits, is far more majestic 
 than Menelaos, although the latter, when standing, towers above him 
 by head and shoulders. 
 
 In short, the Saga, as a whole, ceases practically to have any dis- 
 tinctive features, and even in the sequel which relates the story of 
 Thorstein, Dromund, and Spes, the incident which the translators 
 compare with the romance of Tristram is not the only point of like- 
 ness with other legends. The closing scenes in the lives of the two 
 1 Grettir Saga, 171. * lb. 121. » lb. 126. > lb. 232. 
 
GRETTIR AND ODYSSEUS. 147 
 
 lovers precisely reproduce the last incidents in the myth of Lancelot chap. 
 and Guinevere. Of the avenging of Grettir by Thorstein we need ■ 
 only say that the same issue belongs to the stories of Sigurd and the 
 Three Helgis, and that all these have their type and find their 
 explanation in the avenging of Baldur. 
 
I4-S' MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ETHEREAL HEAVENS. 
 
 Section I.— DYAUS. 
 
 The ancient Vedic mythology exhibits in a state of fusion the ele- 
 ments which the Hellenic legends present to us in forms more or 
 less crystallised; and precisely on this account it has for us an 
 inestimable value as throwing light on the process by which the 
 treasure-house of Aryan mythology was filled. The myths of Achil- 
 leus and Sigurd point clearly enough to the idea of the sun as 
 doomed to an early death : but the Vedic hymns bring before us 
 a people to whom the death of the sun is a present reality, for whom 
 no analogy has suggested the idea of a continuous alternation of day 
 and night, and who know not, as the fiery chariot of the sun sinks 
 down in the west, .whether they shall ever see again the bright face of 
 him who was their friend. 1 All their utterances were thus the utter- 
 ances of children who knew little of themselves and nothing of the 
 world without them, and thus also they could not fail to apply to the 
 same objects names denoting very different relations or characteris- 
 tics. The heaven might be the father of the dawn, or he might be 
 the child of the earth. The morning might be the parent of the sun r 
 or she might be his sister, or his bride ; and we should expect (as we 
 find), that, if the names denoting these ideas came to be employed 
 as names of deities, the characters and powers of these gods would 
 show a constant tendency to run into each other. 
 The But the attribution to all sensible objects of a life as personal 
 
 Ether nmg an( ^ consc ' ous as ^eii own would lead to the thought of one common 
 source or origin of the life of all ; and this source could be found 
 only in the broad bright heaven which brooded over the wide earth 
 1 See p. 21, et seq. 
 
DYAUS AND ZEUS. 
 
 149 
 
 and across which the sun made his daily journey to cheer the 
 children of men. Thus Dyaus, the glistening ether, 1 became to the • 
 Hindu, as Zeus was to the Greek, a name for the supreme pod ; but 
 although some mythical features entered gradually into the conception 
 of this deity, the name retained its original significance too clearly to 
 hold its ground in Hindu theology. Dyaus, like the Hellenic Oura- 
 nos, must be displaced by his child, who at the first had brought 
 out more prominently the supremacy of his father ; and thus Indra 
 became to the Hindu what Zeus was to the Hellenic tribes, while 
 the. Vedic Varuna retained in the east a spiritual character which 
 Ouranos never acquired in the west." 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. 
 
 1 Dyaus, Zeus, Divus, Theos, Deus, 
 Juno, Diana, Dianus or Janus, with 
 many others, are outgrowths from the 
 same root, dyu to shine. But in his 
 Introduction to Greek and Latin Ety- 
 mology, Mr. Peile, while fully allowing 
 that the Sanskrit name Dyaus is repre- 
 sented by the Greek Zeus and by the 
 Latin divus and deus, yet denies that 
 there is any relation between the Latin 
 deus and the Greek Beds. By the laws 
 of phonetic change, he insists, the Latin 
 d must answer to a Greek 5, as in Sd/j.os, 
 domus : hence some other root must be 
 sought for Beds, perhaps OE2, a second- 
 ary form of 0E, the root of rifljjjui, 
 though this is rejected by Professor 
 Curtius, Gr. Et. pp. 230, 404, in favour 
 of a distinct root thes or fes (meaning 
 to pray), which he traces in festus and 
 in BzaawaBtu.. (Pind. N. v. 18.) I 
 venture to think that too great a stress 
 is here laid on laws which undoubtedly 
 apply generally to the Aryan languages, 
 but to which there are yet some instances 
 of apparent and some even of real ex- 
 ception. The Greek Sditpv is rightly 
 represented by the English tear, while 
 SdKos, the biting beast, reappears in its 
 legitimate dress in the German Toggen- 
 burg ; but in English we have not t as 
 in tear, but dog, while in Latin it is 
 seen in "tigris," tiger, which approaches 
 nearly to the English ' ' tyke " as a name 
 for the dog. In the same way ir in the 
 Greek iraros ought to be represented by 
 /in English ; but it appears as "path." 
 The connection of the two words can 
 scarcely be doubted, for if Professor 
 Curtius may give the equation itcStos : 
 ir6vros = Tri9os: irfvBos = 0d8os : j8eV8os, 
 we may also add iraVoi : ir<Sj'Tos=pafh : 
 pond. Hence the fact that the Greek 
 form of Dyaus is Be is, not tieis, scarcely 
 warrants our severing the two words. 
 
 If the Vedic adeva is the Greek &8eos, 
 the relationship of Bebs with the Latin 
 "deus " is established. In this conclu- 
 sion I am following Professor Max 
 Muller, Lectures on Languagt , second 
 series, 425-455. Professor Max Muller 
 has gone into this matter afresh {Selected 
 Essays, vol. i. p. 215, note B), reaching 
 the same conclusion. There are ex- 
 ceptions, he adds, to phonetic laws ; 
 and although the. greatest caution is 
 needed in dealing with them, it is of no 
 use to shut our eyes to them or refuse 
 to consider them. I pointed out one 
 in my History of Greece, vol. i. p. 577, 
 n. 1038. If to this we add Thrinakia, 
 it seems scarcely to follow that we have 
 before us any phonetic anomaly. It 
 would be unsafe to say that kindred 
 tribes, long passed' away, had not said 
 three for 3, and called a tree a tree, and 
 not Spvs. If we cannot venture to 
 identify God and good in English or its 
 kindred dialects, still less can we venture 
 to deny their affinity — in other words, 
 their growth from a common root. 
 
 2 Heaven and earth, it would seem, 
 are in the earliest hymns alike self- 
 existent; but Dr. Muir ("Principal 
 Deities of the Rig Veda," Transactions 
 of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. 
 xxiii. part iii.) remarks that we are 
 not told, as in the Hesiodic Theogony, 
 which of the two is the older. "On the 
 contrary, one of the ancient poets seems 
 to have been perplexed by the difficulty 
 of this question, as at the beginning of 
 one of the hymns (i. 185) he exclaims, 
 ' Which of you twain was the first, and 
 which the last ? How were they pro. 
 duced? Sages, who knows?' His 
 power and wisdom are shown most of 
 all in the creation or evocation of his 
 son Indra. Thus of Indra it is said, 
 ' Thy father was the parent of a most 
 
ISO MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Dyu, then, in the land of the five streams was at once a name 
 
 • : ■ for the sky and a name for God, Dyaus pitar, Dyaus the Father, 
 
 Pnthfvi and answering to the Zeus Pater of the Greeks and the Jupiter and Janus 
 Pater of the Latins. As such, he was Visvakarman, the great archi- 
 tect of the universe, who knows all spheres and worlds, 1 janita 
 (yeverrjp), the parent of all things, Prithivi, the broad earth, being the 
 mother of his children. 2 As, again, with the Greeks Zeus is both the 
 god of rain and the being to whom all who are in pain and sorrow 
 address their prayer, so the Maruts or storms go about in dyu, the 
 sky, while their worshippers on earth invoke the mercy of Dyaus, 
 Prithivi, and Agni. But the Indian land under its scorching sun 
 depends wholly on the bounty of the benignant rain god ; and hence 
 Indra, who is the child of Dyu, and who from Dyu receives his 
 might, becomes more immediately the fertiliser of the earth and is 
 regarded as more powerful than his father. But Dyu, although his 
 greatness is obscured by that of his son, still wields the thunderbolt ; 
 and the original meaning of the name reappears in the myth which 
 represents him as the father of the dawn who is invincible by all but 
 Indra. 
 ideas Thus Dyaus is to Prithivi what Ouranos is to Gaia 8 in the 
 
 the name y Hesiodic theogony, the Greek myth differing from the former only 
 D y u - in deciding that Gaia herself produced Ouranos to be coextensive 
 
 with herself. The Hindu had not so far solved the difficulty; and 
 the doubt expressed on this subject shows the peculiar attitude of the 
 Indian mind to the problems of the sensible universe. The Greek 
 was at once contented with answers suggested by the old mythical 
 phrases, or by the phenomena which he might be describing. The 
 Hindu, ever dwelling on the thought of an unseen world, strove to 
 gain some insight into the nature of things, and to unlock secrets for 
 which the material world could never furnish a key. Hence Dyu 
 was for him sometimes the supreme God, sometimes the heaven 
 which with the earth had been fashioned by the gods and strengthened 
 
 heroic son : the maker of Indra, he who 2 This name is not found in any 
 
 produced the celestial and invincible Greek myth as the designation of a 
 
 thunderer, was a most skilful work- person ; but it is represented by ir\a.Te?a, 
 
 man.'" — R. V. iv. 17, 4. But it was the feminine of irXa-rm, broad, 
 obvious that the abstract conception of ' This name clearly contains the root 
 
 Dyu as the father of Indra could not of a vast number of words denoting the 
 
 stand against the overwhelming weight power of production, this root being 
 
 of the myths which were continually perhaps ge or gen ; nor can we doubt 
 
 springing up from phrases not originally that the reference to this family of words 
 
 antagonistic with the monotheistic belief explains the Latin phrase in the form 
 
 or conviction. of marriage known as Coemptio, in 
 
 1 Muir, Principal Deities of R. V., which the wife says to her husband, 
 
 553- Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia. 
 
HINDU AND GREEK THOUGHT. I5 1 
 
 with undecaying supports, and which trembled and bowed down in chap. 
 
 the presence of the deities. Sometimes he was the aiypervading : ■ 
 
 spirit, sometimes a material and tangible firmament ; and thus again 
 the question arose of the origin of matter. Of his own ignorance the 
 Hindu was perfectly conscious, and he had already begun to think 
 that this ignorance extended even to the gods themselves. " Who 
 can tell whence this creation arose ? The gods are subsequent to its 
 production. Who then knows whence it sprung? He who in the 
 highest heaven is its ruler, he knows, or perhaps not even he." x So 
 far as this question was answered at all, it was answered by Greek 
 and Hindu in the same way. In the Hesiodic theogony, Chaos, 
 Gaia, and Tartaros are beings apparently self-existent ; or at the least 
 the scheme begins with Chaos, and no parents are assigned to Gaia 
 and Tartaros, or to Eros, who immediately follows, and precedes the 
 birth of Erebos z and Nyx, of Aither and Hemera.- The Hellenic 
 poet had brought with him from his primeval home the tradition 
 which he shared with the Hindu : but having given utterance to it, 
 he bestowed no further thought upon it. With the latter the position 
 of Kama, the representative of the Hesiodic Eros, determines the 
 character of his philosophy. The desire (ope£is), which in the Ari- 
 stotelian Ethics must precede all moral action, is as essential to the 
 divine as to the human mind, and thus Kama is the being through 
 whom the world is fashioned, when as yet there existed only the one. 8 
 The Wish of Teutonic mythology answers more closely to the 
 Hesiodic Eros than to the Vedic Kama The Homeric poet knew 
 that men always have a need of the gods ; 4 but he was not, like the 
 Hindu, always conscious of the need, always striving to know more 
 of that mysterious power, always yearning for the time when he 
 should no more see through the glass darkly. 
 
 Section II.— VARUNA and MITRA. 
 
 As Dyaus is the god of heaven in its dazzling purity and bright- The solid 
 ness, so is Varuna also the heaven as serving, like the Hellenic Heaven - 
 Ouranos, to veil or cover the earth. It is true that in the Hesiodic 
 theogony Ouranos is united with Gaia, whereas it is not Varuna but 
 
 1 Jt. V. x. 129; Muir, ibid. 553. events, the Arabs are the people in the 
 
 * Ereboswas the name used todenote West of Asia; and Algarve is the 
 
 the dark western land through which Estremadura, the westernmost region, 
 
 the shades of the departed pass on their of the Iberian peninsula. 
 
 way to Hades. There can be little ' Muir, ibid. Max Miiller, Sanskrit 
 
 doubt that the word is not Aryan ; and Literature, 559, et seq. 
 
 it may be traced not improbably to the * irdmcs flewv x<w<(ou<r' ivtpaitoi- 
 
 Assyrian eribu, to descend. At all Od. iii. 48. 
 
152 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Moral 
 aspects of 
 Varuna. 
 
 Dyaus who in the Vedic hymns is mentioned as having Prithivt for 
 the mother of his children. The difference is, perhaps, only in 
 appearance. Gaia is really wedded to Zeus not less than to Ouranos, 
 if Demeter be but Gaia viewed as the mother of all living things. 
 Varuna, then, as the solid heaven, which is spread over the earth, is 
 strictly a creation of mythical speech and is embodied in a visible 
 form. He sits on his throne, clothed in golden armour, and along 
 with Mitra dwells in a palace which, like that of Helios, is supported 
 by a thousand columns, while his messengers stand around to do his 
 bidding. But his mythical characteristics are in the Rig Veda per- 
 petually suggesting the idea of an unseen and almighty Being who 
 has made all things and upholds them by his will. In many of the 
 Vedic hymns we are carried altogether out of the region of mythology, 
 and we see only the man communing directly with his Maker. In 
 these hymns Varuna " dwells in all worlds as sovereign ; indeed, the 
 three worlds are embraced within him. The wind which resounds 
 through the firmament is his breath. He has placed the sun in the 
 heaven, and opened up a boundless path for it to traverse. He has 
 hollowed out the channels of the rivers. It is by his wise contrivance 
 that, though all the rivers pour out their waters into the sea, the sea 
 is never filled. By his ordinance the moon shines in the sky, and 
 the stars which are visible by night disappear on the approach of day- 
 light. Neither the birds flying in the air, nor the rivers in their 
 sleepless flow, can attain a knowledge of his power or his wrath. His 
 spies (or angels) behold both worlds. He himself has a thousand 
 eyes. He knows the flight of birds in the sky, the path of ships on 
 the sea, the course of the far-sweeping wind, and perceives all the 
 hidden things that have been or shall be done." * 
 
 All these are phrases which may be suggested directly by the 
 phenomena of the heaven ; but the chariot in which Varuna is borne 
 over the earth, 2 is, like the eye of Zeus, lost in the purely spiritual 
 thought of One who has no body and no passions, who, as seeing all 
 things, sees also that which is evil, and who, as having nothing that 
 is evil in himself, must punish and finally destroy it in the sinner. In 
 
 1 Muir,, Principal Deities of R. V., 
 558. In a passage from the Alharva 
 Veda, quoted by Dr. Muir, ibid., and 
 Professor Max Miiller, Chips, i. 42, the 
 same thought is worked out in language 
 which is piecisely reproduced in the 
 139th Psalm, and which also carries 
 us to expressions and sentences in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, and in other 
 parts of the New Testament. The 
 
 parallelism between the expressions of 
 Aryan and Semitic monotheism is further 
 traced out by M. Maury, Croyances ct 
 Ligendcs de V Afitiquite" : — ' ' La Religion 
 des Aryas." 
 
 2 This chariot " shines with a golden 
 radiance at the break of day, and at 
 sunset assumes the colour of iron." — 
 Muir, ibid. 557. 
 
VARUNA THE ALL-SEEING. 153 
 
 some hymns, however, the two lines of thought seem to be blended chap. 
 
 strangely together; in other words, we see in them the prpcess by — — ^ 
 
 which men rose from the lower conception to the higher. That 
 sense of sin, which, as distinguished from the transgression of a posi- 
 tive law, can scarcely be said to have been present to the Greek 
 mind, weighs heavy on the spirit of the Hindu, even while his con- 
 ception of the Deity whom he addresses may be almost coarse in its 
 familiarity. Varuna has received in the sacrifice the choice portions 
 which please him most, and the worshipper may fairly demand that 
 the question between them may be discussed reasonably as between 
 friends. 1 But whatever may be said of the theory of the nature of 
 sin, a pure monotheistic conviction is pre-eminently seen in the 
 following prayer. 
 
 " Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay ; have 
 mercy, almighty, have mercy. 
 
 " If I go along trembling like a cloud driven by the wind, have 
 mercy, almighty, have mercy. 
 
 " Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I 
 gone to the wrong shore : have mercy, almighty, have mercy. 
 
 "Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the 
 midst of the waters : have mercy, almighty, have mercy. 
 
 " Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the 
 heavenly host, whenever we break thy law through thoughtlessness, 
 have mercy, almighty, have mercy." 2 
 
 If the singular purity and unselfishness of the Hesiodic morality, Aryan mo- 
 as compared with that of the poems to which we give the name of 
 Homer, suffice of themselves to prove the essential distinction be- 
 tween mythology and religion, these simple utterances of the Vedic 
 poets show even more forcibly that the genuine belief in one almighty 
 Being who is at once our Father, our Teacher, and our Judge, had 
 its home first in the ancient Aryan land. It was a conviction to 
 which they were guided by all that they saw or could apprehend of 
 outward phenomena as well as by the irrepressible yearnings which 
 stirred their hearts. For such yearnings and for such a conscious- 
 ness in the Hebrew tribes we look in vain, before the Babylonish 
 captivity. Among them we have at best only the warnings of a few 
 isolated teachers, who saw things hidden from other eyes, and whose 
 words, although they sounded in the ears of their countrymen like 
 
 1 Max Muller, History of Sanskrit which runs through many of the Hebrew 
 
 Literature, 537. It is scarcely necessary Psalms. 
 
 to compare this language with the * Max Muller, History of Sanskrit 
 
 similar tone of familiar expostulation Literature, 540. 
 
iS4 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Aditi A and 
 the Adi- 
 tyas. 
 
 parables; would have conveyed a familiar meaning to the Aryans of 
 northern India 1 It matters little then whether Varuna be in these 
 hymns mentioned almost invariably in conjunction with Mitra and 
 sometimes with other gods. Like these, he is Aditya, Kronion, if 
 Aditi be time; but the mythical notion thus introduced sate so 
 loosely on those who held it, that their language ceased to show 
 any sign of its influence in times of real anguish and sorrow. 2 It 
 was enough that they could realise at once the righteousness of God, 
 and His readiness to forgive those who disobeyed His laws so soon 
 as they repented them of their sin. 8 
 
 The process which converted the physical Varuna into a spiritual 
 God is carried to its extreme results in the conception of Aditi, " the 
 unbound, the unbounded," or even, as being expressed by the nega- 
 tion of diti, a bond, " the Absolute." This indefinite term was 
 naturally used to denote the source from which all life, even the life 
 of the gods, springs ; and thus Aditi, the Infinite, became the mother 
 
 1 These words were written before 
 the appearance of Professor Max 
 Miiller's article on Semitic Monotheism 
 in his volumes of collected essays. Few 
 probably will read that paper without 
 feeling that on the main question very 
 little room is left for doubt. Polytheism 
 is to be found in both the Semitic and 
 the Aryan races, but it was more in- 
 grained in the former. The very inter- 
 changeableness of the attributes of the 
 Vedic gods was, to a. certain extent, a 
 safeguard against any conscious and 
 systematic polytheism. So long as this 
 state of thought continued, Dyaus, 
 Varuna, Indra, Vishnu, would be but 
 many names for one and the same 
 Being ; but of course " every new name 
 threatened," to use Professor Miiller's 
 words, "to obscure more and more the 
 primitive intuition of God." — Chips, ii. 
 358. With the Jews the names under 
 which they worshipped a multitude of 
 gods were manifestly mere appellatives 
 which never underwent any phonetic 
 corruption, and thus the tendency to 
 polytheism became the more inveterate. 
 It is, however, scarcely necessary to say 
 more than that "if there had been in 
 the Semitic race a truly monotheistic 
 instinct, the history of those nations 
 would become perfectly unintelligible." 
 — Ibid. 365. See further, the Hibbert 
 Lectures, 1878, Lecture vi. 
 
 2 "Every god is conceived as supreme, 
 or at least as inferior to no other god, 
 at the time that he is praised or invoked 
 i)y the Vedic poets ; and the feeling 
 
 that the various deities are but different 
 names, different conceptions of that in- 
 comprehensible Being which no thought 
 can reach and no language express, is 
 not yet quite extinct in the minds of 
 some of the more thoughtful Rishis." — 
 Max Muller, Lectures on Language, 
 second series, 412. It might be added 
 that the interpretations of later theolo- 
 gians cannot be accounted for except by 
 the fact that this conviction never be- 
 came totally extinct. Even when the 
 whole Hindu Pantheon has attained its 
 final dimensions, the myths are so 
 treated as to leave little doubt of the 
 real meaning in the writer's mind. The 
 outward respect paid to the popular 
 legends thinly disguises that monothe- 
 istic (or henotheistic) conviction, which 
 accounts for much that would otherwise 
 be perplexing in the writings of Roman 
 Catholic and other theologians. 
 
 3 The distinction between the old 
 Vedic theory of sin and the forms of 
 belief still prevalent on the subject can- 
 not always be very broadly drawn. 
 
 " I ask, O Varuna, wishing to know 
 this my sin. I go to ask the wise. The 
 Sages all tell me the same. Varuna it 
 is who is angry with me. 
 
 ' ' Was it an old sin, O Varuna, that 
 thou wishest to destroy thy friend, who 
 always praises thee? Tell me, thou 
 unconquerable lord, and I will quickly 
 turn to thee with praise freed from sin. 
 
 "Absolve us from the sins of our 
 fathers and from those which we com- 
 mitted with our own bodies." 
 
THE SPIRITUAL VARUNA. 155 
 
 of all the gods. The fact is startling; but, in Professor Miiller's CHAP. 
 
 words, "the thoughts of primitive humanity were not onlj» different 
 from our thoughts, but different also from what we think their 
 thoughts ought to have been. The poets of the Veda indulged freely 
 in theogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradic- 
 tions. They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of 
 Agni as the god of gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all ; 
 but they were by no means startled at the idea, that their Indra had 
 a mother, or that their Agni was born like a babe from the friction of 
 two fire-sticks, or that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in 
 the lap of Aditi." Hence Aditi was contrasted with Diti, the un- 
 bounded with the definite, while it became more and more a name 
 for the distant east from which all the bright gods seem to come, and 
 for the boundless space beyond the east, drawing a sharp distinction 
 between " what is yonder, and what is here." x But the process could 
 not be stopped at this point. The gods had been called dakshapitar, 
 the fathers of strength, the mighty ; and the same equivocation which 
 made Odysseus spring from Autolykos converted the epithet Daksha 
 into the father of the gods. It followed that Aditi was sprung from 
 Daksha, or Daksha from Aditi, who also owed his existence to Bhu, 
 being, and the conclusion was reached that " Not-being and Being 
 are in the higher heaven, in the birth-place of Daksha, in the lap of 
 Aditi." But more especially Aditi became the mother of the bright 
 gods, of Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, and, in fact, of the seven Adityas, 
 although their names are not definitely given in the hymns of the Rig 
 Veda. 2 On the one side, then, Diti was growing into " a definite 
 
 1 In his lectures on the Origin and of the lunar month as a possible proto- 
 Growth of Religion, Professor Max type of the Adityas," adding that " this 
 Miiller contends that the name Aditi might even A explain the destruction of 
 belongs to the oldest age of Vedic the eighth Aditya, considering that the 
 thought, being found in invocations eighth day of each parvan, owing to its 
 together with Dyaus, Prithivl, Sindhu, uncertainty, might be represented as 
 and other really primitive deities, all of exposed to decay and destruction." — 
 whom, and not the Adityas only, are Rig Veda Sanhita, i. 241. The eighth 
 said to be her children, pp. 227-229. Aditya is named Martanda, a being 
 He regards jt therefore as one of the destitute of any modifications of shape, 
 oldest names of the dawn, "or, more i.e. without hands or legs — in short, a 
 correctly, of that portion of the sky mere lump. The name means probably 
 from whence every morning the light the egg of death (mritya). Martanda 
 and life of the world flashed forth." differs from his brothers, the seven 
 
 2 Why the Adityas should be seven Adityas, in his form, or lack of form, 
 or eight in number, is a question of and in his mortality. He is, there- 
 which Professor Max Miiller, whom fore, a mere circle, the golden egg of 
 here I have simply to follow, admits the the heaven, the sun which sets (dies) 
 difficulty. The number seven, though daily; and is therefore said to be 
 a sacred number, is not more sacred than "thrown out by Aditi from the corn- 
 other numbers in the Rig Veda, and he pany of the gods and the splendours 
 contents himself with suggesting "the of the invisible world into the inferior, 
 seven days or tithis of the four parvanas visible, and material world, to live and 
 
1 5 6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The phy- 
 sical and 
 spiritual 
 Varuna. 
 
 person, one of the daughters of Daksha, the wife of Kasyapa, the 
 mother of the enemies of the gods, the Daityas" (such, Professor 
 Miiller remarks, being "the growth of legend, mythology, and reli- 
 gion "), while on the other, Aditi herself was fast becoming " one of 
 those deities, who would best remove the bonds of sin or misery.'' 
 Thus the poet prays to Agni, — 
 
 " Whatever, O youthful god, we have committed against thee, 
 men as we are, whatever sin through thoughtlessness, make us guilt- 
 less of Aditi, loosen the sins on all sides." 
 
 All this, however, simply reproduces the Hesiodic theogony, in 
 which Eros precedes Ouranos, to be represented again in Himeros. 
 
 Some light is thrown on the relations of Varuna with Mitra by 
 the Hesiodic description of Ouranos as the lover of the earth over 
 which he broods each night ; * and thus Varuna, like Ouranos, is 
 specially the veiling heaven whose presence is most felt at nightfall, 
 when the sky seems to descend nearest to the earth, while Mitra, like 
 Dyu and Zeus, represents the firmament glistening with the splendour 
 of noon-day. But although the same root which furnished the 
 names of Varuna and Ouranos yielded a name also for the evil 
 power, first of physical, and afterwards of moral darkness, still the 
 idea of Varuna has nothing in common with that of Vritra. His 
 destructive nooses are prepared for the wicked only. They ensnare 
 the man who speaks lies and pass by the man who speaks truth. 2 
 Like the Greek Poseidon Pylaochos, he holds the unrighteous fast in 
 prison : but it is as the punisher of iniquity which cannot be hidden 
 from his piercing eye, 8 and not as the gloomy and inflexible Hades of 
 the nether world. He is the omniscient Asura or spirit who props 
 up the sky, 4 and this epithet may almost suffice to identify him with 
 the Zendic Ahura who appears commonly in conjunction with 
 Mithras, as Varuna is linked with Mitra. 6 From the simple germ 
 
 die daily in the sight of men.'' Mar- 
 tanda thus answers to the Egyptian 
 golden ape, which has neither hands 
 nor feet. — Brown, Religion of Zoroaster, 
 §28. 
 
 1 Theog. 176. 
 
 2 Atharva Veda, iv. 16, 6. Muir, 
 Principal Deities of R. V., 558. 
 
 3 ' ' King Varuna perceives all that 
 is within and all that is beyond heaven 
 and earth. The winkings of men's eyes 
 are numbered by him." Cf. "the very 
 hairs of your head are all numbered : " 
 
 irdvra. iSitv Atbs otptiaAuhs Kal Ttavra. 
 voricas' — Hes. Op. et Dies, 265. 
 "The eyes of the Lord are in every 
 place, beholding the evil and the good. 
 
 4 R. V. viii. 42, 1. Muir, Sanskrit 
 Texts, part iv. chap. ii. sect. 2. The 
 name Asura belongs to the same root 
 with that of the Teutonic M&ir. , 
 
 6 The reasons urged in support of 
 this conclusion are given by Dr. Muir, 
 Principal Deities of R. V., 556, as fol- 
 lows : ( 1 ) the name Asura, etymologi- 
 cally identical with Ahura, is a common 
 epithet of Varuna; a (2) the class of 
 Indian gods called Adityas, of whom 
 Varuna is the highest, bears a certain 
 analogy to the Zendic Amshaspands, of 
 whom Ahura-Mazdao is the highest ; 
 (3) a close connexion exists between 
 Varuna and Mitra, just as Ahura and 
 Mithra are frequently associated in the 
 
VARUNA AND INDRA. 1 57 
 
 thus afforded by mythical phrases which described the various CHAP. 
 
 changes of the heaven, sprung the metaphysical refinements of later — —- ^ > 
 
 Hindu philosophers, and the wild and cumbrous developements of 
 later Hindu mythology. The true greatness of Varuna belongs to 
 the earliest phase of Hindu thought. He is eclipsed first by Indra, 
 and at length is overthrown by Krishna beneath the waters of the 
 
 Section III.— INDRA. 
 
 If Dyaus and Varuna were alike doomed to lose their ancient The pri- 
 ma] esty, a brighter lot was in store for Indra; and the picture which ^p^onof 
 the oldest Vedic hymns present to us of this god has a special value Indr * 
 as enabling us to determine the measure in which religion and mytho- physical, 
 logy affected each other. That a moral or spiritual element may be 
 discerned in some of the characteristics of this deity, is beyond ques- 
 tion : that the whole idea of the god can be traced to the religious 
 instinct of mankind, the boldest champions of the theory which 
 ascribes the growth of all mythology to the direct action of religious 
 impulse or revelation will scarcely venture to affirm. The true 
 religious instinct must point to the absolute rule of one righteous 
 God, and cannot itself originate the idea of many independent 
 centres of action. If this instinct furnished the true germ of all 
 mythology, then the mythology of the Iliad and Odyssey is far older 
 than that of the Veda; in other words, the crystallised granite 
 is older than the ingredients of which it is composed In our 
 Homeric poems, in the midst of abundant signs indicating the later 
 growth of the notion, we have an acknowledged King of heaven, 
 from whom all the Olympian gods derive their power, or whose will 
 they are at least bound to perform, and who alone retains unimpaired 
 his full characteristics as lord of the bright heaven. Although Phoibos 
 
 Zendavesta, though the position of the six with Ormuzd himself make up 
 
 two has otherwise become altered, and the mystic number of seven spirits of 
 
 Mithra, who is not even reckoned holiness and purity. It has been well 
 
 among the Amshaspands, is placed said that we have here "a striking 
 
 between the two powers of good and instance of the intense monotheism of 
 
 evil. "Zwischen Ormuzd (Licht) und the system of Zarathustra, for they are 
 
 Ariman (Finsterniss) steht Mithras not distinct divinities in origin, but, 
 
 mitten inne, heisst darum Mittler, as their names show, merely phases of 
 
 u€<riT7)r, Plut. de Is."— Nork, Real the beneficent action and perfect cha- 
 
 Worterbuch, s. v. Mithrascult. The racter of the Supreme." Mr. Brown, 
 
 Amshaspands, or Immortal Benefactors, Religion of Zoroaster, § 14, adds that a. 
 
 are the six spirits created by Ahura- like number of counsellors were in later 
 
 Mazdao, the spirit known as the Good times invented for the evil Ahriman. 
 
 Mind (Vohumano, Bahman) ; the spirit But these beings belong only to the 
 
 of Truth ; of Good Government ; of domain of artificial mythology. 
 Wisdom ;' of Wealth ; of Health ; of * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. ch.. 
 
 Immortal Happiness, Ameretad. These ii. sect. 5. 
 
153 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Action of 
 the Vedic 
 and 
 
 Achaian 
 deities. 
 
 still bears his unerring weapons, yet his arrows lie within the quiver 
 ■ until some wickedness of man compels him to draw them forth. 
 The superhuman action of the Iliad and Odyssey, in short, has 
 reference strictly to the deeds and fortunes of men ; the age of con- 
 flicts between the gods has almost passed away. The conspiracy 
 of Here, Poseidon, and Athene to bind Zeus, is amongst the latest of 
 those struggles which had culminated in the wars of the Titans, for 
 when in the last great battle of Achilleus the gods turn against each 
 other in the fray, there is still no thought of assailing the great King 
 who sits in his serene ether far above the turmoil raging beneath 
 him. 1 
 
 The true mythical action of the Achaian deities is thus intermit- 
 tent. In the hymns of the Rig Veda it is continuous, and their action 
 is but remotely concerned with human interests. Like the Hesiodic 
 Zeus, they love the savour of burnt-offerings, and hasten to receive 
 their share of the sacrifice : but as soon as the rites are over, they 
 return to their own proper work as wielding the forces which are 
 manifested in the changing heavens. The Vedic gods are thus, pre- 
 eminently, transparent Instead of one acknowledged king, each is 
 lord in his own domain; each is addressed as the maker of all 
 visible things, while their features and characteristics are in almost all 
 cases interchangeable. Dyaus and Indra, Varuna and Agni are each 
 in his turn spoken of as knowing no superior, and the objects of their 
 chief care are not the children of men, but the winds, the storms, the 
 clouds, and the thunder, which are constantly rising in rebellion 
 against them. No sooner is one conflict ended than another is 
 begun, or rather the same conflict is repeated as the days and seasons 
 come round. Whenever the rain is shut up in the clouds, the dark 
 power is in reyolt against Dyaus and lndra. In the rumblings of the 
 thunder, while the drought still sucks out the life of the earth, are 
 heard the mutterings of their hateful enemy. In the lightning flashes 
 which precede the outburst of the pent-up waters are seen the irre- 
 sistible spears of the god, who is attacking the throttling serpent in his 
 •den ; and in the serene heaven which shone out when the deluging 
 
 1 " L'Olympe, dans Homere, ressem- 
 ble a une monarchie etablie de longue 
 date, oil chaque personnage a, par droit 
 de naissance, son emploi, ses titles in- 
 variables, et son rang dont il ne songe 
 pas a se departir. Dans cette sorte de 
 cour que les dieux tiennent autour de 
 Jupiter, ils se sont depouilles de leur 
 caractere propre et de leur originality 
 native . . . Comme ces dignitaires des 
 anciennes monarchies qui continuent a 
 
 porter des titres depuis longtemps vides 
 de sens, ils ont des surnoms dont ils 
 semblent ignorer la valeur." — Breal, 
 Hercule et Cams, 81. The very fact 
 that the mythical attributes of these 
 gods become less and less denned, 
 while their subordination to Zeus be- 
 comes more and more marked, is the 
 strongest evidence of the mythological 
 origin of the whole. 
 
INDRA. A GOD OF THE HEAVENS. 159 
 
 clouds had passed away, men beheld the face of the mighty deity CHAP. 
 
 who was their friend. So completely does the older mythology of • : ■ 
 
 the Veda carry us away from the one idea which musf be first 
 awakened by the genuine religious instinct of mankind. 
 
 No stronger evidence than that which is furnished by this con- The Greek 
 trast could be adduced to show that in no single feature is the ™ y t b ° r ° gy 
 mythology of our Homeric poems borrowed from the people who rowed 
 betook themselves to the banks of the Indus and the Ganges. The Vedic. 
 Vedic Dyaus may in all essential features be reproduced in the 
 Hellenic Zeus. Like Phoibos Chrysaor, Indra may bear a lance or 
 an arrow, which can never miss its mark : but in the one case we 
 have a mere sketch, in the other a finished picture ; and the differ- 
 ences in the character of the detail preclude all idea that for either 
 Zeus or Hermes, Helen or Paris, Erinys or Achilleus, the Achaian 
 poets were indebted to the Vedic Dyaus or Sarameya, to Pani or 
 Saram^l, to Saranyu or Aharyu. To one common source they do 
 indeed point; and the several stages of developement which mark 
 the early mythologies of India and Hellas leave us in no doubt of 
 the nature of the germ from which they spring. 
 
 At once, then, we turn away from the cumbrous and complicated Indra, a 
 mythology of the later Vedic literature, 1 as from the uncouth out- bright 
 growths of the Orphic theogony we turn to the earlier phases in heaven - 
 which the Greek epic and lyric poets exhibit their ancestral deities. 
 We are not concerned with the later conflicts of Indra, which end in 
 his being bound by Indragit, 2 while we have before us a series of 
 songs which speak of him simply as the invincible god of the bright 
 heaven. Yet, although there still remains a large difference between 
 Indra and Apollon, too great stress can scarcely be laid on the fact 
 that as we trace the Vedic gods as far back as the Veda itself will 
 carry us, the essential likeness between the Hindu and the Hellenic 
 deities becomes more and more striking. If further we find that, 
 when thus examined, their functions become, if the expression may 
 be used, more and more atmospheric, — if they become the powers 
 which produce the sights of the changing sky, — if their great wars are 
 waged in regions far above the abodes of men, the last blow is given 
 to the theory which by the most arbitrary of assumptions finds the 
 root of all mythology in the religious instincts of mankind. 
 
 In the Vedic Indra there is this further peculiarity, that, although Meaning 
 his name ceased, like that of Dyaus, to be chiefly a name for the sky, ' 
 
 of the 
 name. 
 
 1 See the remarks quoted by Pro- ! A summary of the story of Indra 
 
 fessor Max MUller from Professor Roth and Indragit is given by Dr. Muir, 
 (Sanskrit Literature, 60). Sanskrit Texts, iv. p. 422. 
 
l6o MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and although the struggle in which he is constantly engaged has in- 
 
 ■ definitely affected the faith of Christendom, yet the deity himself has 
 
 but little of a purely moral or spiritual element in his character. It 
 
 is true that he is sometimes invoked as witnessing all the deeds of 
 
 men and thus as taking cognisance of their sins ; but the warfare 
 
 which he has to wage is purely a physical conflict, and it is chiefly in 
 
 the phrases by which his adversary is described, that we find the 
 
 germs of the dualistic creed which bears the name of Zoroaster. 
 
 Nowhere then, in the oldest monuments of Hindu thought, is the 
 
 real character of Indra lost sight of. His home is in the bright 
 
 heaven ; but, as his name denotes, 1 he is specially the bringer of the 
 
 most precious of all boons to a thirsty and gaping land. He is the 
 
 giver of the rain which falls on the earth when the tyranny of the 
 
 scorching wind is overpast. 
 
 The might In vain is Indra assailed in his career by the same enemies which 
 
 festyof" see k to destroy tne infant Herakles. The Rakshasa fares no better 
 
 indra. t h an the snakes. 
 
 "Vyansa, exulting and striking hard blows, smote thee, Mag- 
 havan, upon the jaw; whereupon, being so smitten, thou provedst the 
 stronger and didst crush the head of the slave with the thunderbolt." a 
 
 Like Herakles and Phoibos again, he has to go in search of lost 
 or stolen cattle. With the conveying Maruts, " the traversers of 
 places difficult of access," he discovers the cows hidden in their 
 caves. 
 
 " Great is thy prowess, Indra, we are thine. Satisfy, Maghavan, 
 the desires of thy worshipper. The vast heaven has acknowledged 
 thy might ; this earth has been bowed down through thy vigour. 
 
 "Thou, thunderer, hast shattered with thy bolt the broad and 
 massive cloud into fragments, and hast sent down the waters that 
 were confined in it, to flow at will : verily thou alone possessest all 
 power." 8 
 
 So, again, addressing Indra as Parjanya the rain-bringer, the 
 poet says, 
 
 " The winds blow strong, the lightnings flash, the plants spring up, 
 the firmament dissolves; earth becomes fit for all creatures, when 
 Parjanya fertilises the soil with showers." * 
 
 " Master of tawny steeds, the remotest regions are not remote for 
 thee." 6 
 
 1 " Indra, a name peculiar to India, Lectures on Language, second series, 430. 
 admits of but one etymology, i.e. it 2 Rig Veda Sanhita, H. H. Wilson, 
 
 must be derived from the same root, vol. iii. p. 156. 
 whatever that may be, which in Sanskrit ' lb. i. 154, * lb. ii. 373. 
 
 yielded indu, drop, sap."— Max Muller, 5 lb. iii. 37. 
 
INDRA AND THE HARITS. 1 6 1, 
 
 "At the birth of thee who art resplendent, trembled the heaven cn.\r. 
 
 and trembled the earth through fear of thy wrath : the mighty clouds — — : • 
 
 were confined : they destroyed (the distress of drought), spreading 
 the waters over the dry places." 1 Lastly, as the solar god, he is the 
 Wanderer, like the Teutonic Wegtam, like Odysseus, Sigurd, Diony- 
 sos, Phoibos, Theseus, Bellerophon, Oidipous, Herakles, and Savitar. 
 
 " Wonderful Indra, wanderer at times, thou art verily the granter 
 of our desires." 2 
 
 Indra then is the lord of the heaven, omnipotent and all-seeing : India the 
 but so had been, or rather was, his father Dyu ; and thus some ™inger. 
 epithets which in the west are reserved for Zeus are in the east trans- 
 ferred to Indra, and the Jupiter Stator of the Latins reappears as the 
 Indra sthatar of the Hindu. 8 The rain-bringer must be younger than 
 the sky in which the clouds have their birthplace ; but however 
 sharply his personality may be defined, the meaning of the name is 
 never forgotten. As the Maruts, or winds, are said sometimes to 
 course through Dyaus (the heaven), so the clouds sometimes move 
 in Indra (the sky). In all the phrases which describe this god, the 
 local colouring arising from the climate of northern India may be 
 plainly discerned. Although the Delian Phoibos soon belts his 
 golden sword to his side, yet for some time after his birth he lies in 
 the white and spotless robe in which the nymphs had wrapped him. 
 The Vedic Indra awakes sooner to the consciousness of his power, 
 and as soon as he is born, the slayer of Vritra asks his mother, " Who 
 are they that are renowned as fierce warriors ? " * Like the Hellenic 
 Apollon, he has golden locks and a quiver of irresistible arrows ; but 
 the arrows have a hundred points and are winged with a thousand 
 feathers. In his hand he holds the golden whip which Phoibos gives 
 to Hermes as the guardian of his cattle ; and like Helios, he is borne 
 across the heavens in a flaming chariot drawn by the tawny or glisten- 
 ing steeds called the Harits, whose name and whose brightness alone 
 reappear in the Charites of the Hellenic land, but who still retain the 
 form most familiar to the Hindu in the Xanthos and Balios who are 
 yoked to the car of Achilleus. Like the streaming locks from the 
 head of Phoibos, so the beard of Indra flashes like lightning, as he 
 
 1 Cf. Judges v. 4. qui signifie, celui qui se tient debout sur 
 
 2 H. V. Sanhita, H. H. Wilson, son char, sur ses coursiers. Quel est ce 
 vol. iii. p. 187. char? On ne peut douter qu'il ne soit 
 
 3 The Latins, it would seem, mis- question du soleil, qui est souvent re- 
 understood the name, Livy, i. 12. presente dans les Vedas comme une 
 "Le mot sthatar est ordinairement roue d'or roulant dans le firmament." 
 complete en Sanscrit par un genitif, tel — Breal, Hercule et Cams, 103. 
 
 que rathasya, hartn&m, ce qui deter- 4 Muir, Principal Deities of R. V., 
 
 mine le veritable sens de cette epithete, 560. 
 
1 62 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Physical 
 conflict 
 between 
 light and 
 darkness. 
 
 speeds on his journey through the heaven. As looking down on the 
 • wide earth spread beneath, he is possessed, like Apollon, of an 
 inscrutable wisdom. Like him also, he chases the Dawn, DahanS. or 
 Daphn6, of whom he is said to be sometimes the father, sometimes 
 the son, and sometimes the husband ; and as Phoibos causes the 
 death of DaphnS, so Indra is said to shatter the chariot of Dahanl 1 
 
 The prayers addressed to this god show that the chief idea 
 associated with him was that of an irresistible material power. The 
 Hindu, as he comes before the deity to whom he looks for his yearly 
 harvest, assumes unconsciously the attitude of the Baal-worshipper of 
 Syria. 2 But the real prayer of the heart is addressed to Varuna, as 
 the Greek in his hour of need prays always to Zeus. The cry for 
 mercy from those who through thoughtlessness have broken the law 
 of God is never sent up to Indra, although, like HeraklSs, "he 
 engages in many conflicts for the good of man with overwhelming 
 power." 8 It was impossible that it should be so, while the great 
 work for which Indra might be said to exist was the battle for life 
 or death with the hateful monster who imprisons the rain-clouds in 
 his dungeons. This battle is brought before us under a thousand 
 forms. His great enemy Vritra, the hiding thief, is also Ahi, the 
 strangling snake, or Pani the marauder. 
 
 " Ahi has been prostrated beneath the feet of the waters which 
 the Vritra by his might had obstructed." i 
 
 He appears again as Atri, a name which may perhaps be the 
 
 1 In this myth Dahana is regarded 
 as hostile to Indra and as meditating 
 mischief, a thought which might easily 
 be suggested by the legends of Are- 
 thousa and Daphne. Her shattered car 
 reposes, however, on the banks of the 
 Vipar (river or water), an incident 
 wbich recalls the disappearance of Are- 
 thousa or Daphne in the waters from 
 which Aphrodite 1 rises. — H. H. Wijson, 
 R, V. Sanhita, vol. ii. p. 178.' 
 
 2 The power of Indra is the one 
 theme of the praise accorded to him in 
 R. V. vii. 32. The worshipper calls on 
 him who holds the thunderbolt with 
 his arm, whom no one can check if he 
 wishes to give, who makes mortal men 
 obtain spoil in fighting, who is the 
 benefactor of every one, whatever battles 
 there be, who is the rich. of old and to 
 be called in every battle. — Max Miiller, 
 Sanskrit Literature, 543. 
 
 " This contest with the clouds," says 
 Professor H. H. Wilson (Introduction 
 toR. V. Sanhita, xxx.), " seems to have 
 suggested to the authors of the Suktas 
 
 the martial character of Indra on other 
 occasions, and he is especially described 
 as the god of battles, the giver of victony 
 to his worshippers, the destroyer of the 
 enemies of religious rites, the subverter 
 of the cities of the Asuras." 
 
 The stanza known as the Hansavati 
 Rich is noteworthy as exhibiting the 
 germs of more than one myth. Indra 
 "is Hansa (the sun) dwelling in light: 
 Vasu (the wind) dwelling in the firma- 
 ment : the invoker of the gods (Agni) 
 dwelling on the altar : the guest (of the 
 worshipper) dwelling in the house (as 
 the culinary fire) : the dweller amongst 
 men (as consciousness) : the dweller in 
 the most excellent (orb, the sun) : the 
 dweller in truth, the dweller in the sky 
 (the air), born in the waters, in the 
 rays of light, in the verity (of manifes- 
 tation), in the (Eastern) mountain, the 
 truth (itself)." -H. H. Wilson, R. V. 
 Sanhita, iii. 199. 
 
 s H. H. Wilson, R. V. Sanhita, i. 
 151. 
 
 * lb. i. 87. 
 
INDRA AND HIS ENEMIES. 1 63 
 
 same as the Atli of the Volsung tale and the Etzel of the Nibelung chap. 
 song. • -1 . ' 
 
 " Thou, Indra, hast opened the cloud for the Angirasas : thou 
 hast shown the way to Atri who vexes his adversaries by a hundred 
 doors." 1 
 
 He is also Namuki (the Greek Amykos), and Sambara. 
 
 "Thou, Indra, with thy bolt didst slay afar off the deceiver 
 Namuki." a 
 
 " Thou hast slain Sambara by thy resolute self." 8 
 
 "Verily thou hast made me, Indra, thy associate, when grind- 
 ing the head of the slave Namuki like a sounding and rolling 
 cloud." * 
 
 In the same way Indra is the slayer of Bala, of Chumuri, Dhuni, 
 Pipon, Sushna, and many others," and against him the strength of 
 the Rakshasas is concentrated in vain, for Indra scatters them "with 
 his friend |he thunderbolt." On the issue of this conflict depends, it 
 is true, the welfare of all human creatures. The victory of Indra 
 brings with it wealth of corn and wine and oil, but the struggle and 
 its issue are alike external to the human spirit. In other words, the 
 religious instinct found little scope in the phrases which described 
 the offices of Indra, and most assuredly had nothing to do with sug- 
 gesting them. It was not on the soil of Hindustan that the 
 momentous physical struggle between Indra and his enemy was to 
 become a spiritual struggle of still more fearful proportions. 
 
 The wife of Indra is Indrani, who alone of the goddesses who The ^^ 
 bear the names of the gods is associated with her husband. Like of Indra - 
 the rest, she has but a vague and shadowy personality. But although 
 the goddesses who are not thus simply developed from the names of 
 their consorts are far more prominent, yet even these are spoken of 
 in terms little resembling the language addressed to the supreme god 
 under his many names. Ahana is a daughter of Dyaus, and her 
 might is great, but Indra is mightier still. Ushas is hard to van- 
 quish ; but Indra shatters her chariot, while Saranyu, the Harits, and 
 the Rohits are rather beings who do his will than deities possessed of 
 any independent power. In this respect a vast gulf separates the 
 later from the early mythology of the Hindus ; and although Maha.- 
 deva retains a nominal supremacy, yet the popular mind dwells less 
 on the god than on the awful terrors of his wife, whether known as 
 Uma, Durga, or Kali. 6 In an inquiry designed chiefly to bring out 
 
 1 H. H. Wilson, R. V. Sankiia, i. 4 lb. i. 279. s lb. ii. 418, 419. 
 
 j,5 6 Muir, Principal Deities of R. V. t 
 
 i lb. i. 147. 3 lb. i. 148. 577- 
 
164 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 the points of resemblance and difference between cognate mytho- 
 ■ logical systems, we are not called upon to enter the unwholesome 
 labyrinth in which a morbid philosophy has bewildered and oppressed 
 a race once more simple and perhaps more truthful in their faith 
 than the forefathers of the Hellenic and even of the Teutonic nations. 
 The more modern Hindu traditions may have an interest for the 
 theologian or the philosopher, while the ingenious symbolical inter- 
 pretations which make anything mean anything may be as note- 
 worthy in the pages of Brahmanic commentators as in those of 
 Chrysostom, Gregory, or Augustine. But they lead us away into a 
 world of their own, where it becomes scarcely worth while to trace 
 the faint vestiges of early thought which may be here and there dis- 
 cerned in the rank crop of cumbrous and repulsive fancies. Nor is 
 there much profit in lists even of earlier deities in whom we have 
 little more than a name or an epithet If the earth is called Nishtigri, 
 we have only another word denoting Prithivi the wife of J)yaus. In 
 Sarasvati, the watery, we have, first, a name given to the river which 
 with the Indus and the waters of the Penjab made up the seven 
 streams of the ancient Hindu home, and then to a goddess who, as 
 inspiring the hymns composed in her honour, became identified with 
 Vach, 1 Voice, and was invoked as the muse of eloquence. As such, 
 she is produced on the mountain-top, as Athene Akria springs from 
 the forehead of Zeus. 2 Much in the same way, Nirriti, 8 the western 
 land, to which Yama had first crossed the rapid waters, became first 
 the land of death, and afterwards a personification of evil. In 
 Sraddha we have nothing more than a name for religious faith. 4 
 
 Place of 
 Brahma 
 in the 
 Hindu 
 iheogcny. 
 
 Section IV.— BRAHMA. 
 
 If an examination of the Vedic theology tends to prove that it 
 was wholly one of words and names, the impression is not weakened 
 as we survey the ponderous fancies of later times. The fabric of 
 Brahmanic sacerdotalism may have reached gigantic proportions, and 
 may exhibit a wonderful ingenuity in the piecing together of its 
 several parts, but it cannot be regarded as the result of a logical 
 system. The properties of Vishnu are those of Agni, Vayu, and 
 Surya ; and as Agni is all the deities, so also is Vishnu. The cha- 
 
 1 Gr. eiros, cfrreiy, aitoi/ei?, Latin 
 vox, vocare. 
 
 * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. 
 p. 360, note. 
 
 * Max Miiller, Lectures on Lan- 
 guage, second series, 515. Is the name 
 Nirriti connected with that of the 
 
 Ithakan Neritos and the Leukadian 
 Nerikos ? 
 
 * "The Latin word credo, 'I be- 
 lieve,' is the same as the Sanskrit 
 Sraddha." — Max Miiller, Chips, i. 42. 
 Sayce, Lntroduction to the Science of 
 Language, ii. 28. 
 
FLEXIBLE CHARACTER OF BRAHMA. l65 
 
 racter of Brahma is not less flexible. At first the word is but a name CHAP. 
 
 for the self-existent principle, and the various mythical acts recorded : ' 
 
 of him are not only susceptible of a spiritual or metaphysical inter- 
 pretation, but are actually so interpreted in. all the Hindu comments 
 on the sacred literature of the country. As in the Orphic theogony, 
 the generation of Brahma begins sometimes with the great mundane 
 egg; but it is Brahma who therein produces himself. The self- 
 existent lord, "desiring to produce various creatures from his own 
 body, first, with a thought, created the waters, and deposited in them 
 a seed. This seed became a golden egg, resplendent as the sun, in 
 which he himself was born as Brahnid, the progenitor of all worlds." 1 
 He is the first god of a later Indian Trimurtti ; but the threefold 
 deity of Yaska is Agni, Vayu, and Surya, and thus Dr. Muir con- 
 cludes that the conjunction of Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra (? Siva) 
 was unknown to that ancient commentator. 2 Even in the Maha- 
 bharata, Brahma is both created and uncreated. In that poem Maha- 
 deva (piyas 0eos, the great god) is the creator of Brahma, Vishnu, 
 and Indra. " From his right side he produced Brahma, the origi- 
 nator of the worlds, and from his left side Vishnu, for the preserva- 
 tion of the universe, and when the end of the age had arrived, the 
 mighty god created Rudra." 3 But Mahadeva is identified by the 
 poets of the Mahabharata with Rudra, Siva, Agni, Surya, Varuna, 
 the Asvins, and a host of other deities, and, as the originator of all 
 life, even assumes the forms and functions of the Hellenic Priapos. 4 
 Mahadeva, again, is himself also the destroyer Siva, and like Vishnu 
 he wields a dreadful bow made by Visvakarman. These bows are 
 used by the two gods in a terrible battle, the result being that the 
 bow of Mahadeva is relaxed and Vishnu is esteemed the superior. 
 
 1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. 134-6. To the objection that the 
 p. 27. Puranic mythology, of which the Tri- 
 
 2 The three names given by Yaska murtti of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva is a 
 are with him mere names for one object. part, might have grown up along with 
 "These deities," he says, "receive the Vedic, Dr. Muir answers that "if 
 many designations in consequence of Yaska had been cognisant of any other 
 their greatness, or from the diversity of than the Vedic mythology (at least, if 
 their functions, as (the appellations of) he had attached any authority to any 
 hotri, adhvaryu, brahman, and udgatri other), he would not have failed to 
 are applied to one and the same make some reference to the latter, and 
 person." The functions connected with would have endeavoured to blend and 
 these names carry us back to the old reconcile it with the former. As we 
 mythical phrases. " Indra 's function find no attempt of the kind in his work, 
 is to bestow moisture, to slay Vritra ; we must conclude either that the 
 and all exertions of force are the A work l'uranic mythology had no existence in 
 of Indra." "The function of Aditya his day, or that he regarded it as un- 
 (the sun) is to draw up moisture and to deserving of any attention." — lb. 137. 
 retain it by his rays : and whatever is * lb. pp. 156, 162. 4 lb. 160. 
 mysterious is the work of Aditya."— s lb. 146, 147. 
 
 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. pp. 
 
1 66 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II, 
 
 Prajapati. 
 
 Visva- 
 karman. 
 
 Elsewhere it is said that Brahma and Mahadeva are both sprung 
 from Krishna, the one from the lotus issuing from his navel, the 
 other from his forehead, like Dahana and Athene from the head of 
 Dyaus or Zeus. 1 
 
 As Praj&pati, Brahma offers violence to his own daughter ; and 
 from this myth of Indra and Ahalya a story is produced much 
 resembling that of the Hellenic Erichthonios. s He is also a wor- 
 shipper of the Linga, and acts as the charioteer of Mahadeva or of 
 Rudra, who springs from his forehead (as he does also from that of 
 Krishna), glorious as the noon-day sun. 3 
 
 Like Brahma, Visvakarman, the Creator, is one of the many 
 names which may be applied to almost any of the gods at the will of 
 the worshipper. Wise and mighty in act, Visvakarman orders all 
 things, and men desire the attainment of good in the world where 
 "he, the One Being, dwells beyond the seven Rishis." 4 He is the 
 maker of the region Sutala, where by his will, as in the Greek Elysion, 
 "neither mental nor bodily pains, nor fatigue, nor weariness, nor 
 discomfiture, nor diseases afflict the inhabitants." 6 He is also the 
 son of Bhuvana, the first of all beings who sprang into existence from 
 the earth. 6 
 
 Section V.— ZEUS. 
 T he „- . In the conception of the poets known to us by the name of 
 
 dwelling of . 
 
 Zeus in Homer, the earth on which we tread is covered with a gross and 
 thick air, through which course the clouds, and in which the winds 
 work their will. Above this air rises the serene Aither or Ether, the 
 abode of Zeus, never sullied by mists or vexed with storms. Here 
 he dwells, surrounded by the gods of Olympos ; but while these can 
 
 1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, p. 193. 
 
 2 lb. 39. Gubernatis, Zoological 
 Mythology, ii. 280. 
 
 3 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, p. 190. 
 AthenS in like manner springs fully 
 armed from the head of Zeus ; but in 
 the story of the Vishnu Purana (Muir, 
 id. 331), Rudra is both sun and moon, 
 as dividing his body into two parts, 
 male and female, like the Greek 
 Hermaphroditos. The portions into 
 which his male form is further divided 
 seem to point to the month of the 
 year which is represented by Rudra 
 himself, as by Aditi. 
 
 4 lb. 7. 5 lb. 129. 
 
 G The name Bhuvana itself is from 
 the same root with the Greek <J>ucris and 
 our own words Be and Being. It has 
 
 been urged with at least some plausi- 
 bility that the Latin Consus is a name 
 of the same kind, and that it is not to 
 be referred to the verb Consulere. It 
 is by no means likely that even the title 
 of the Dii Consentes can be taken as 
 indicating a divine council : and there 
 may possibly be a connexion between 
 the Latin Consus and the Hindu Ganesa. 
 Hence perhaps it is that when Romulus 
 is in need of women for his new city, 
 it is to Consus that he makes his vows 
 and prayers. The Consualia would 1 
 thus precisely correspond with the Eleu- 
 sinian festival of Dimeter. For Ganesa 
 see Max Mliller, Selected Essays, i. 129, 
 ii. 449. Gubernatis, Zoological Mytho- 
 logy, ii. 68. 
 
THE DWELLING OF ZEUS. I&7 
 
 visit the earth and take part in the quarrels of mortal men, Zeus CHAP. 
 
 alone may not descend for this purpose from the clear heaven whence • — -^ 
 
 he looks down on all that is being done beneath him. It is true 
 that there are on the earth some whom he loves, and others whom he 
 hates ; and when his son Sarpedon is smitten by the spear of Patro- 
 klos, the tears of Zeus fall in large rain-drops from the sky. But 
 that which he wills must be done by others, and in their toils he can 
 have no share. So when the hour for the battle between Achilleus 
 and Hektor is come, Zeus tells the gods, the streams, and the nymphs, 
 who sit around his throne, that they may go down and choose each 
 his side, while for himself, though he cares for the mortals whose 
 death-struggle is at hand, the sight of all that is done on the plains 
 of Ilion will none the less gladden his eyes as he looks down from 
 Olympos. When, after the conflict of Achilleus with the burning 
 river, the gods turn their weapons on each other, the mind of Zeus 
 remains unruffled, and he listens in silence to the charge brought 
 against Here by Leto, as she lays before his feet the arrows of her 
 child Artemis. 1 
 
 Thus for the poets of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Zeus, though The un- 
 he might be called the gatherer of the dark clouds, 3 was pre-eminently ught. 
 the lord of the bright heaven, and the thought most closely asso- 
 ciated with the name was that of a serene and unchangeable splen- 
 dour. As the heavy masses of vapour were cloven by the rays of 
 the sun, the blue heaven was seen smiling on the havoc wrought by 
 storms and tempest, itself undimmed by the years which devoured 
 the generations of men. From the face of this heaven the morning 
 sprang to scatter the shades of night. Beneath it the lightning 
 flashed, the rain fell, the winds blew ; but above them all shone still 
 the light which can know no change. 
 
 Without referring, therefore, to the legends of other nations, we The idea 
 are brought at once by the language even of our Homeric poets to suggested 
 that earliest form of thought in which words now used to denote b .y P nv - 
 spiritual conceptions conveyed only the impression left on the human nomena. 
 mind by the phenomena of the outward world. As man awoke 
 
 1 II. xxi. 388. alyioxo* efalit le dieu qui envoie la tem- 
 
 2 Zeis Aiyioxos- "Le verbe grec p£te (il faut entendre ex» dans son sens 
 aiaau, qui signifie s'elancer, a fait d'une primitif who) -. plus tard, on traduisit le 
 part le substantif aJ£, chevre (a cause de dieu qui forte I'egide. Homere semble 
 la nature bondissante de l'animal), et de se souvenir de la premiere signification, 
 l'autre les mots KaT&it,, Karaiyts, tem- quand il nous montre, au seul mouve- 
 pete. De la une nouvelle serie d'images ment du bouclier, le tonnerre qui eclate, 
 et de fables ou la chevre joue le role l'lda qui se couvre de nuages, et les 
 principal. L'egide, avant d'etre un hommes frappes de terreur." — Breal, 
 bouclier fait en peau de chevre, etait Hercule et Cacus, 116. 
 
 le ciel au moment de l'orage; Jupiter 
 
1 68 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK gradually to a conscious perception of the things around him, the 
 
 ■ ^i — • sensation most comforting in the alternations of a day and night 
 
 alike uncomprehended would be that of the pure and bright heaven 
 which broods over the earth as the sun speeds on his journey across 
 the sky. If, then, in the names which were afterwards used to denote 
 the supreme God we have words which in all Aryan dialects convey 
 this primary idea of brightness, a clear light is at once shed on the 
 first stages in the mental and moral education of mankind. The 
 profound splendour of the unclouded heaven must mark the abode 
 of the Being who made and sustains all things ; and thus names 
 denoting at first only the sky became in the West as in the East 
 names of God, the Zeus Pater (the Father) of the Greeks correspond- 
 ing to the Dyauspitar of the Hindu. If even in the Vedic hymns 
 the most prominent deity is Indra, still Indra was himself worshipped 
 as the god of the bright sky, and as the son of the brilliant Dyu. 
 As in the Hellenic land Kronos was displaced by Zeus, so in the 
 country of the seven rivers Dyu gave way to the lord of the wealth- 
 bringing rain-clouds. The process (even if we assign a very late 
 origin to the mythical Kronos) was in both cases the same. The 
 epithet could not become or be long retained as a personal name 
 until its original meaning had been obscured or forgotten. The 
 Greek had his A£r, his AitMr, and his Ouranos to express the visible 
 heavens, and Zeus became to him more and more the personal God 
 whose hand is seen in his works. In India the name Dyaus retained, 
 as we have seen, its appellative force, and as a designation for the 
 supreme God, was supplanted by the less significant Indra. 
 The Latin But in the West, as in the East, the original character of the god 
 Jupiter. - g j n c j ose accordance with the etymology of the word. The Athe- 
 nians called on Zeus to rain on their land ; the Latin poet spoke of 
 the glistening heaven which by all is named Jove, while the phrases 
 "sub dio vivere," "sub Jove frigido," and even "malus Jupiter'' 
 remained common expressions in every-day speech. 1 But although 
 between the Latin Jupiter and the Greek Zeus Pater there is as close 
 an affinity of names as between the latter and the Dyaus Pitar of 
 the Rig Veda, the mythology of the Latin tribes introduces us prac- 
 tically into almost a new world. We are, indeed, apt to confuse 
 under the term two wholly distinct things. We read in the yEneid 
 of Virgil, for instance, a story which may be regarded as a pendant 
 
 1 laov, S> <pl\e Ztv, Kara ttjs apoipas The word &/Bioj has the same trans- 
 
 ray 'Aflrji/afax. parent meaning. — Max Miiller, Lectures 
 
 Asplce hoc sublime candens "iuem on Language, second series, 434. Ihnc, 
 
 invocant omnes Jovem. History of Home, i. 118. 
 
LATIN MYTHOLOGY. 1 69 
 
 to the Iliad. We find Jupiter, Juno, Venus, and other deities de- chap. 
 
 scribed much as Zeus, Here, and AphroditS would be described by • 
 Greek poets, and in the Odes of Horace we have expressions of 
 thought and feeling such as the idea of these gods would naturally 
 evoke in the minds of the Hellenic worshippers. We also come 
 across notices of strange beings, as for instance Consus, Anna 
 Perenna, Muttunus, Mana, Semo Sancus, which for us at least are 
 associated with no very definite images ; and we include these beings 
 along with the deities spoken of by Virgil or Horace under the one 
 head of Latin gods, and treat what is said about them as Latin 
 mythology. No two things could well be more entirely distinct. 
 The great poets of the Augustan age simply borrowed at will from 
 the vast storehouse of Greek tradition, and set before their country- 
 men a mythology towards which they had no natural attraction and 
 for which they never acquired any genuine liking. The gods of the 
 country population, which had at one time been the only gods wor- 
 shipped by the Latin tribes, were practically nothing more than 
 natural powers and processes called by the names which naturally 
 expressed them. The seed-time, the harvest, the changes of the 
 seasons, the periods of human and other life, the garnering and , 
 grinding of grain, all these, with other incidents in the history of the 
 revolving year, were marked by a particular name; and this name 
 passed for that of the god by whom these processes were supposed to 
 be wrought. But so thin was the disguise that the growth of a Latin 
 mythology, strictly so called, became impossible. We might as well 
 imagine the growth of the infinitely complex mythology of the 
 Greeks, if their minds had had to work only on such beings as 
 Helios, Selene, Astraios, Eos, Herse, and others of a like transparent 
 sort. For the Latins their gods, although their name was legion, 
 remained mysterious beings without human forms, feelings, or 
 passions ; and they influenced human affairs without sharing or 
 having any sympathy with human hopes, fears, or joys. Neither had 
 they, like the Greek deities, any society among themselves. There 
 was for them no Olympos, where they might gather and take 
 counsel with the father of gods and men. They had no parentage, 
 no marriage, no offspring. They thus became a mere multitude 
 of oppressive beings, living beyond the circle of human interests, 
 yet constantly interfering within it; and their worship was thus as 
 terrible a bondage as any under which the world has yet suffered. 
 Not being associated with any definite bodily shapes, they could not, 
 like the beautiful creations of the Greek mind, promote the growth 
 of the highest art of the sculptor, the painter, and the poet Thus 
 
170 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Zeus Ou- 
 ranion. 
 
 The my- 
 thical and 
 spiritual 
 Zeus. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 between them and their worshippers there was no real and direct 
 connexion. Of the Eupatrid families among the Greeks the greater 
 number, perhaps, traced their descent from Zeus himself or from 
 some other god : no Roman patrician ever thought of proclaiming 
 himself as the offspring of the cold and colourless beings who in 
 solitary state presided over the processes and working of the visible 
 world. Nay, even in Rome itself the Greek deities remained only a 
 fashion, and were honoured with an exotic worship. The true Roman 
 ritual was that which had for its object the worshipping of the 
 household gods ; and these were practically the spirits of the founder 
 of the house and of those who had followed him in true hereditary 
 succession. The religion of Roman life was influenced by the 
 worship, not of the bright and joyous Phoibos, or of the virgin 
 daughter of Zeus, but of the Lares and the Penates before that altar 
 of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, which was the common heritage 
 of the whole Aryan race. But in the literature of Rome the genuine 
 deities of the country are so strangely confused or even jumbled 
 up with the importations from the East, that it becomes difficult 
 sometimes to assign each portion of material to its proper place. 
 In some cases the characteristics of a Greek god have been fitted on 
 to a Latin god with whose character they are inconsistent ; but 
 it is probable that even in the days of Ovid or Horace this con- 
 fusion never troubled the country folk of Samnium or Calabria. 
 
 The idea of brightness was, however, not the only one suggested 
 by the sight of the clear heaven. If the sky beams with light, it is 
 also spread as a covering over the earth which lies beneath it, and 
 Zeus was thus Ouranion who spread his veil over his bride; but 
 before he came to be spoken of as son of Kronos, the attribute had 
 suggested the idea of a person, and the Western Ouranos corre- 
 sponded with the Vedic Varuna. In this case the name remained 
 more transparent in the West than in the East. The Vedic Varuna 
 becomes the moral ruler of the universe, and the Father and friend 
 of man ; but in the Hellenic land the starry Ouranos is the son to 
 whom Gaia gives birth in order that he may cover everything and be 
 a steadfast seat for the blessed gods, 1 and we look in vain for the 
 spiritual attributes which belong to Varuna in the hymns of the Rig 
 Veda 
 
 But the developement of a personal Zeus was followed necessarily 
 
 by two results, which long continued astonishingly distinct the one 
 
 from the other. The thought of Zeus as the one God and Father 
 
 gave birth to a religion. The many names employed to denote the 
 
 1 Hcsiod, Theog. 128. 
 
WORDS AND MYTHS. 17 1 
 
 varying phases of the sky became each the germ of a myth, and chap. 
 
 every one of these myths, when translated into the conditions of : ■ 
 
 human life, tended to degrade the idea of the god as much 'as the 
 idea of his changeless perfection, rising more and more in the mind, 
 tended to raise it. According to the latter, he would be the righteous 
 Judge, seen by none, yet beholding all, looking down from heaven 
 on the children of men to see if they will understand and seek after 
 God, appointing to them a life of labour for their highest good, and 
 finally recompensing to all men after their works. By the other 
 process he would become all that names applied to outward pheno- 
 mena must denote when used to signify the actions of a personal 
 and conscious being. As in every land the dews of heaven fertilise 
 the earth, Zeus must be the husband of many brides, the father of 
 countless children in every country. As looking down on the havoc 
 caused by drought or pestilence, storm or war, he would be a god of 
 merciless indifference and disinterested cruelty. He must smile 
 alike over the wealth of a teeming harvest or the withered fruits of 
 a sun-scorched land. But the blighting of a spring-tide fair in its 
 promise is his work, and he would thus become capricious as well 
 as treacherous, while the interchangeable characteristics of the earliest 
 gods would heighten still more the repulsive features of the anthropo- 
 morphised Zeus. If the old hymn had praised Aditi as "mother, 
 father, and son," Zeus must become at once the brother and the 
 husband, and his own daughters through many generations would 
 become the mothers of his children. The transference of these 
 phrases to the relations of human life has its necessary result in the 
 fearful horrors of the tale of Oidipous and IokastS. 
 
 That the two streams of religion and mythology ran on side by influence 
 side, or rather that the same words are used to express two wholly ? f mvtho - 
 different lines of thought, is abundantly proved by Greek not less religion:, 
 than by Hindu literature. The result was that the same man might 
 seem to speak two languages, and perhaps delude himself into the 
 notion that under the name of Zeus he spoke of one person, and of 
 one person only. This would be the case especially with the classes, 
 which, although familiar, or because they were familiar, with the 
 complicated mythical lore of their country, might not care to analyse 
 their own thoughts, or fairly to face the difficulties involved in many 
 or most of these ancient stories. But there would be a lower class 
 who, as being perhaps practically ignorant of these narratives, would 
 be saved in great measure from this traditional influence. 1 However 
 
 1 "What," asks Professor Max know of the intricate Olympian theo- 
 Muller, "did the swineherd Eumaios gony? Had he ever heard the name 
 
172 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK imperfect his conceptions may have been, it is certain that the swine- 
 n ' herd Eumaios did not derive his religious convictions from mythical 
 phrases, when he told Odysseus that God gives and withholds ac- 
 cording to his pleasure and in the plenitude of his power. Nor can 
 too great a stress be laid on the fact that, as the mythology grew 
 more complicated and more repulsive, ideas of morality and religion 
 became more reasonable and more pure. Nowhere is this conclusion 
 so clearly forced upon us as in the Hesiodic Works and Days. In 
 this poem the teacher who bids hi" friend to deal with all men after 
 the rule of righteousness which comes from Zeus, 1 who tells him 
 that justice and truth shall in the end prevail, 2 and that they who do 
 •2vil to others inflict evil on themselves, 8 who is sure that the eyes 
 of God are in every place, that the way of evil is broad and smooth, 
 and the path of good rough and narrow at the first, tells us also 
 how Zeus bade the gods to make Pandora fair to look upon but all 
 evil within, and laughed at the thought of the miseries which should 
 overtake mankind when all the evils should be let loose from her 
 box, while, to crush them utterly, hope should remain a prisoner 
 within it So conscious apparently is the poet that the Zeus who 
 thus cheats mankind is not the Zeus who commands them to do 
 justice and mercy, that he can use the same name without a thought 
 that he is dishonouring the just and holy God whom he reverences. 
 It seems impossible to ignore a distinction without which the 
 Hesiodic poem becomes unintelligible. With our Homeric poets 
 the contrast is not so marked, simply because their thoughts were 
 not so earnest and their hearts were not so wakened by the sterner 
 experiences of human life. With these moral indifference would 
 naturally find expression in confusion of language, and they might 
 lead others to think, as they themselves may have fancied, that the 
 Zeus to whom they prayed in moments of real anguish was the Zeus 
 who laughed at the wretchedness and the ruin of mankind. 
 The Zeus But if it be true generally that the Greek, especially in the 
 
 Tragtc prehistoric ages, " was not aware that there were different tributaries 
 poets. which entered from different points into the central idea of Zeus," l it 
 was far otherwise with the few to whom a belief in the righteousness 
 of God was no empty phrase but a profound and practical conviction. 
 
 of the Charites or the Harpyias ? Could gods, * who hate cruel deeds, but honour 
 
 he have told who was the father of justice and the righteous works of 
 
 Aphrodite, who were her husbands and men.'"— Lectures on Language, second 
 
 her children ? I doubt it ; and when scries, 453. 
 
 Homer introduces him to us, speaking » 35. 2 215. 
 
 of this life and the higher powers that * 263. • 442! 
 
 rule it, Eumaios knows only of just 
 
MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION. 173 
 
 The fact that national and political institutions were intertwined CHAP. 
 
 inextricably with the old mythology, if they were not actually based ■ 
 
 upon it, only brought out its repulsive features more prominently 
 before all who could not bring themselves to believe that the righteous 
 God could issue to men immoral commands or himself do the things 
 which he condemned in them. Whether the difficulties thus in- 
 volved in the traditional creed should lead them to covert opposition 
 or to open antagonism, would depend much on the temper and the 
 circumstances of those who felt them. There are some who, like 
 Sophokles, are well content if they can express their own convictions 
 without assailing popular ideas ; there are others who, like Euripides, 
 cannot rest until they bring others to see inconsistencies which to 
 themselves are palpable and glaring. Yet it cannot be denied that 
 the thoughts of Sophokles are as true and high as those of the 
 younger poet There is nothing in the latter more outspoken than 
 the words in which Sophokles tells us that the laws of righteousness 
 are established in heaven and that in them God is great and cannot 
 grow old. But where there is an earnest yearning for truth, this 
 happy condition of mind will not probably last long. The thought 
 of the mischief which the popular creeds inflict on ordinary minds 
 will lead them openly to condemn a system which they might other- 
 wise treat with indifference or contempt ; and to this sense we may 
 ascribe the protests of Xenophanes and Protagoras, of Anaxagoras 
 and Herakleitos, of Pindar and of Plato. The controversy was 
 brought to an issue, when Euripides said plainly that if the gods are 
 righteous, the stories of the poets are wretched falsehoods, and that 
 if they do the things which the poets ascribe to them, then they are 
 not gods at all : and this issue was anticipated by the conviction of 
 ^Eschylos that Zeus was a mere name, one of many names, for the 
 One true God, which might serve to convey some faint notion and 
 inadequate idea of his goodness and his greatness. 1 
 
 Hindu and Greek, then, alike worshipped the same God, of whom The name 
 they also spoke sometimes under other names. But these names Zeus - 
 were in no case borrowed the one from the other. The analysis of 
 language has proved that in some instances Greeks, Latins, or 
 Lithuanians have preserved older forms than any which are exhibited 
 in Sanskrit, while the variations in the incidents and local colouring 
 of the myths carry us back to one common source for all in the home 
 of the yet undivided Aryan tribes. The seed, however, could not 
 germinate while as yet there was no failure of memory ; and if, when 
 the meaning of words was in part or wholly forgotten, expressions 
 
 ' On this subject see further, Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 41. 
 
174 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book not less graceful once than true became coarse and mischievous, we 
 
 "• — - may learn to curb our indignation when we find that both the process 
 
 and the result were alike inevitable, 
 its trans- But the name Zeus is not confined to Greeks and Hindus. The 
 
 formations. Zeus -p^fa f tne former and the Dyaus-pitar of the latter represent 
 the Jupiter of the Latins, and the Tuisco, Zio, Tyr and Tiw of the 
 German nations. The etymological changes of the word are indeed 
 almost numberless. The brightness of the heaven reappears in the 
 Latin dies, the Sanskrit dyu, and our day : and from the same root 
 spring the Greek Theos, the Latin Deus, and the Lithuanian Diewas. 
 These changes have been fully traced by Professor Max Miiller ; * but 
 we must here note that the Greek Zen, Zenos answers to the Latin 
 Janus, Januspater ; that Janus again, resolved into Dianus and Diana, 
 carries us to the Greek digammated forms Aios, At Fa, and appears 
 again in the word divine. With these may be taken the forms con- 
 nected with Zeus by the transition of dy (Dyaus) into j (Jupiter, 
 Janus, Juno), or dj, as in the Djovis of Oscan inscriptions and the 
 old Italian deity Vedjovis (Vejovis). Akin to all these is the 
 Sanskrit deva, a word which like Dyaus denoted only splendour, but 
 was afterwards used as a name for the gods ; but although it had thus 
 acquired the general notion of deity, it was never applied to any but 
 the bright gods who were the companions of Indra. The evil powers 
 of night or darkness are Adeva, atheists, or enemies of the devas ; 
 and thus even on Indian soil we find the germ of that moral and 
 spiritual meaning which was imported into a myth purely physical in 
 its origin. While the adeva grew, like Asmodeus, 3 into malignant 
 demons, Vritra the cloud enemy of Indra was gradually passing into 
 the evil god of Iranian theology. If the Diabolos of the New 
 Testament, a word not found in the Septuagint, is to be referred 
 to forms like Dyavan and Diovis, the name deva had lost in the West 
 the meaning of brightness which it retained in the East, 3 though the 
 evil spirit was still regarded as the prince of the powers of the air. 
 The Teutonic devil is thus traced to that Iranian source from which 
 the Jews derived their later complicated demonology. That the 
 term Diabolos, as applied to Satan, should be regarded as identical 
 with the Greek word denoting a slanderer, is a confusion precisely 
 similar to that which turned LyMon and his sons into wolves and the 
 seven arkshas or shiners into bears. 
 
 1 Lectures on Language, second s Eshem-dev, a&hma-daeva, " le 
 
 series, 453. For Mr. Peile's remarks demon de la concupiscence." — Breal, 
 
 on the connexion of Theos and Deus Hercule et Cacus, 135. 
 
 see note p. 149. s Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939. 
 
LOCAL TRADITIONS. 175 
 
 If from the Greek conceptions of Zeus we separate all those CHAP. 
 
 which, springing from the idea of his relations to men as a Father, -. ' ■ 
 
 grew up into a moral and religious faith, the rest may all be traced of ]ocal 
 to mythical phrases which describe the varying appearances of the traditions. 
 heavens and the manifold influence of the atmosphere on the earth 
 and its fruits. Of the countless names thus employed the most 
 transparent would remain as attributes, while the greater number 
 would be localised either as places or as persons. Hence would 
 spring up distinctions between the Zeus of Arkadia, Dodona, Olympos 
 and Crete, distinctions arising wholly from a forgetfulness of the 
 original meaning of words, but fixed irrevocably by the real or 
 apparent identity of the mythical epithets with any mythical names 
 which had become geographical. 1 The sun as Endymion plunges 
 into Latmos, the land of sleep ; but the presence of the Latmian hill 
 was a conclusive answer to any who might dare to call in question 
 the veracity of the local legend. The old mythical speech had its 
 Phaiakian or cloudland geography. It had its Arkadia and Delos, 
 the birthplace of the light, its Phoinikia and Ortygia, the purple land 
 of the quail and the dawn, its bright Lykian regions with its golden 
 stream of Xanthos, its Ida or earth on which rest the rays of the 
 newly risen sun, its Graian or Hesperian lands where the light dies 
 out in the evening. Carrying with them the treasures of their 
 common inheritance, the Aryan tribes could not fail to give to the 
 hills and streams of their new homes the names which had once 
 described only the morning, the heaven, or the sun. The lord of 
 day sinks to sleep in the glowing west : and the tomb of Endymion 
 could therefore be only in Elis, on the western, not on the eastern, 
 shore of the Peloponnesos. The god of the blue ether is throned 
 in light : so also must the seat of the anthropomorphised Zeus be on 
 some hill whose name, like the Delos of Apollon and the Athens 
 of his virgin sister, expresses the one idea of splendour ; and thus 
 he was made to dwell on the summit of the Arkadian Lykaios and 
 the Olympian heights of Mysia and Thessaly. As the veil of night 
 is slowly withdrawn, the clear heaven is first seen in the east, and 
 thus Zeus must be born in Lyktos or in Dikte ; but the Cretan who 
 could point to a Diktaian cave in his own land clung tenaciously 
 to the notion that the child who was there nourished by Amaltheia 
 was not the Zeus of Arkadia and Olympos. 
 
 The story of his birth and exploits is to be gathered not so much The birth 
 from the Iliad and Odyssey as from the Hesiodic or Orphic theo- of Zeus ' 
 gonies; but unless we find manifest contradictions between the 
 1 Sec Book i. ch. x. 
 
176 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The ini- 
 quities of 
 ICronos. 
 
 accounts which they set before us, it is unsafe to infer that the poets 
 * whom we style Homeric were unacquainted with details or incidents 
 about which they are silent, even if it be assumed that their poems 
 in their present shape are more ancient than those which bear the 
 names of Hesiod or Orpheus. That the theogony of the former was 
 far less complicated and retrospective than that of the latter, there can 
 scarcely be a doubt. The prison to which they assign Kronos is proof 
 that they looked on Zeus as one who had not always been supreme 
 in power ; but the names with which their theogony begins are not 
 those of Chaos and-Gaia, but those of Tethys and Okeanos. 1 The 
 struggle between Zeus and the Titans may be inferred from the fact 
 that Here" and Hephaistos speak of them as thrust away under 
 Tartaros ; a but the Polyphemos of the Odyssey who feeds his flocks 
 in broad pastures has nothing but his size and his one eye in 
 common with the Hesiodic Kyklopes who forge the thunderbolts 
 of Zeus. 3 
 
 The lateness of many at least among the Hesiodic ideas seems 
 to be manifested not so much in the allegorical elements introduced,* 
 as in the transparent meaning of the names. Zeus and Hades, 
 Phoibos and Leto already denoted the conflicting powers of light 
 and darkness, of day and night ; but these words had in great part 
 lost their original force, and the poet who wished to frame a systematic 
 theogony felt constrained to speak of Aither (ether) and He"mera as 
 children of Nyx and Erebos. In some important points the story ot 
 , Ouranos is told over again in the myths of Kronos and Zeus. From 
 Ouranos and Gaia, according to the Hesiodic theogony, spring 
 Koios and Krios, Hyperion and Iapetos, the Kyklopes and other 
 monstrous beings, together with Rhea the mother of Zeus. All these 
 
 1 //. xiv. 201. " Ibid. 279. 
 
 ' In the Gaelic story of Osgar, the 
 son of Oisein, the monster appears with 
 two eyes ; but he is blinded, as in all 
 other forms of the myth, and for the 
 same reason. — Campbell, Tales of the 
 West Highlands, iii. 297. Still, it is 
 significant that "not a bit of him was 
 to be seen but his eyes with blue-green 
 scales of hardening upon him," the 
 livid garment of storm-cloud. But in 
 another legend we have the genuine 
 Kyklops. 
 
 "'There was seen nearing us 
 A big man upon one foot, 
 "With his black, dusky black-skin 
 
 mantle, 
 "With his hammering tools and his steel 
 lathe. 
 
 "One shaggy eye in his forehead ; . . . 
 
 He set off like the wind of the spring- 
 time 
 
 Out to the dark mountains of the high 
 grounds. 
 
 He would take but a single leap 
 
 O'er each single cold glen of the 
 desert." — Campbell, ib. 392. 
 
 All this explains itself. The hammer- 
 ing tools and steel lathe are the thunder 
 and lightning; and the thundercloud 
 strides across whole valleys at each step, 
 and clings to the high grounds and the 
 mountain sides. 
 
 4 It is, in Professor Max Midler's 
 belief, manifest allegory when the "long 
 hills," "the pleasant dwellings of the 
 gods," are reckoned among the children 
 of Gaia. — Chips, ii. 66. 
 
THE VORACITY OF KRONOS. *77 
 
 Ouranos hid away in the secret places of Gaia who called on Kronos CHAP. 
 
 to avenge her wrongs and his own. From the blood of the mutilated • '■ ' 
 
 Ouranos which fell on the broad sea was born the laughter-loving 
 Aphrodite. 1 Thus the goddess of love and beauty is, like the 
 Kyklopes, older than the Father of gods and men ; nor can anything 
 show more clearly how thoroughly the mythology of the Aryan world 
 was in conflict with its religion. Kronos and Rhea, then, became 
 the parents of Hestia, Demeter, Here, and Hades ; but these are all 
 swallowed by Kronos, who knows that some day he will be dethroned 
 by some child of his own. In grief of heart, Rhea, shortly before 
 the birth of Zeus, betakes herself to Ouranos and Gaia, who send her 
 to the Cretan Lyktos, and there Zeus, like Mithras and Krishna, was 
 born in a cave which Apollodoros calls the cave of Dikte. A stone 
 wrapped in swaddling-clothes was presented to Kronos, who, taking 
 it for the new-born babe, swallowed it as he had swallowed the others. 
 Deceived at length by Gaia, Kronos disgorged them all, the stone 
 first and the living children afterwards. 2 The stone was set up by 
 Zeus for a memorial in Pytho. But Zeus, when he became the husband 
 of Metis, felt the same strange desire which had led Ouranos and 
 Kronos to consume their children ; and thus, by the advice again of 
 Ouranos and Gaia, he swallowed MStis before she became the mother 
 of Athene. In these exaggerations of a late age we trace the same 
 thought which made the Vedic poet speak of the Dawn as making 
 men old, yet as ever young herself. The light of the heaven calls all 
 things into life ; but the heaven retains its unchangeable beauty while 
 generations spring up on the earth and pass away. The children 
 swallowed are thus produced again ; and so the Heaven or the Dawn 
 
 1 This is probably the only meaning the week, and actually swallows six. 
 
 which the word 4>iXow«iSi|s conveyed to The seventh, the youngest, escapes by 
 
 the poets of the Iliad and Odyssey. But hiding herself in the clockcase ; in other 
 
 the whole mythology of Aphrodite' ren- words, the week is not quite run out, 
 
 ders it far more likely that we have and before it comes to an end the mother 
 
 here a confusion similar to that which of the goats unrips the wolfs stomach 
 
 turned Lyka6n into a wolf, and that the and places stones in it in place of the 
 
 epithet was originally <pi\ownHs, not little goats who come trooping out, as 
 
 perhaps, as in the line (200) marked as the days of the week begin again to run 
 
 spurious in the Hesiodic Theogony, Sti their course. I may mention that this 
 
 M7|SeW i(i<padv6-n, but from the attri- explanation, whatever it may be worth, 
 
 butes which made her the vehement was published some time before the 
 
 lover of Adonis. With this epithet we appearance of the first edition of Mr. 
 
 may compare that of Pallas (the Phallic) Tylor's Primitive Culture. Mr. Tylor 
 
 Athene 1 . adopts this explanation (i. 308) without 
 
 1 With this myth Grimm's story of referring to this fact. It is not the only 
 
 the Wolf and the Seven Little Goats instance in which an acknowledgement 
 
 presents a striking parallel. The wolf of priority would have been at least 
 
 is here the night or the darkness which graceful, 
 ines to swallow up the seven days of 
 
 N 
 
178 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK might be spoken of as relentless and cruel, and as rightly punished 
 u - - by their injured children. 1 
 The war of A har(i fight now awaited Zeus, who, by delivering the children 
 ln5 ' of Ouranos, had been armed for the struggle with thunder and 
 lightning. 2 On his side against the Titans and the offspring of 
 Kronos were ranged Kottos, Gyas, and Briareos, who cast the Titans 
 into Tartaros and there left them chained. The struggle itself is 
 described in language which shows how little the poet cared about 
 the subject. Thunders, lightning, and earthquake attest the majesty 
 of Zeus, by whose thunderbolts land and ocean are wrapped in 
 seething fire ; the din of the conflict is as though the earth and the 
 solid heavens were crashing together; and nine days would pass 
 before a brazen anvil (Akmon) let down from the earth could fathom 
 the depths of Tartaros. 3 Above this gloomy prison-house are the 
 roots of the earth and the barren sea, and there within walls and 
 gates built by Poseidon dwell the three sons of Ouranos who be- 
 friended Zeus in his hour of need, 
 other Yet this struggle which, like that between Zeus and Typhoeus 
 
 forms of t h e latest-born child of Gaia and Tartaros, is related with so much 
 struggle, pomp of high-sounding but empty words, is the conflict which runs 
 through all mythology and which, in its more human forms, has 
 a singular and unfailing interest. It is the battle of Phoibos with 
 the Pythian monster, of Indra with the throttling snake Vritra, of 
 Sigurd with the dragon of the Glistening Heath, of Oidipous with 
 
 1 The opinion that Kronos himself Wisdom : but as the older myth spoke 
 is indeed simply produced from the of the dawn as springing from the fore- 
 epithet Kronides as applied to Zeus in a head of the sky, there was no help .for 
 sense corresponding to the Hebrew the later mythopceists but to make Zeus 
 phrase "Ancient of Days," must, pro- swallow Mgtis. 
 bably, be given up. It is, of course, 2 Hesiod, Theog. 504. 
 possible that when the word was re- s This is indubitably the hammer of 
 garded as meaning " son of Kronos," it Thor, which is sunk eight rasks beneath 
 became necessary to assign Kronos a the surface of the earth and which takes 
 place in the Theogony and provide him nine months to rise again to Asgard. 
 with a wife and children.— Max Miiller, In fact the Greek word translated by 
 Chips, ii. 152. In Mr. Brown's eyes " anvil " is etymologically identical with 
 Zeus Kronides is the same personage as the Teutonic "hammer." "Professor 
 Zeus Meilichios, both names being Curtius," says Mr. Peile, " seems to be 
 adaptations of Greek sounds to Semitic right in combining the O. H. G. hamaf, 
 names. He therefore regards Kronos our hammer, with the Lithuanian akman 
 as the equivajent of Karnos, Karneios, and the Sk. acman, each of which 
 the horned god, the fire-breathing, flesh- means ' a stone, and the latter also ' a 
 devouring Moloch. — Great Dionysiak thunderbolt;' and with the Greek 
 Myth, ii. 128, et seq,\ ii. 127. The &Kp.uv which commonly means an anvil, 
 name Metis is closely connected with but which in Hesiod, Theog. 722, where 
 Medeia, and denotes the wisdom which he speaks of the x«^k« of &Knay oipdv6div 
 stands out with special clearness in the nvrlav, can mean nothing but the thun- 
 Latin Minerva. Thus the phrase would derbolt." — Introduction to Creek and 
 run that the Dawn was the daughter of Latin Etymology, 37. 
 
THE TITANS AND THEIR KINSFOLK. 179 
 
 the Sphinx, and in the earlier phase of the legend, of Achilleus chap. 
 and Agamemnon with Paris. • ■ : 
 
 Having related the story of Typhoeus, the Hesiodic Theogony The loves 
 recounts the loves of Zeus with Metis, Themis, Eurynome, Demeter, ° 
 Mnemosyne, Leto, and with Here, who in this scheme is the latest 
 of his brides and has fallen far below the majesty with which she 
 is invested in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Of these names some are 
 the growth of a comparatively late age. The dawn-goddess of the 
 far east is described as waking all men and receiving praise from 
 every thinker, and the character here faintly attributed to her is 
 brought out more clearly in the Hellenic Athene, and finds its utmost 
 developement in the Latin Minerva. Athene, then, as the goddess of 
 the morning, must have a mother with qualities corresponding to her 
 own, and this parent was found in the Wisdom which is wedded 
 to Zeus. To this class of invented names belong those of the Horai, 
 or Hours, and their mother Themis ; but the name of Eurynomg, the 
 mother of the Charites, is more true to the original character of these 
 beautiful maidens. The broad spreading light is the parent of the 
 glistening beings who in the form of horses draw the chariot of Indra, 
 and in the west are the maidens who attend on Aphrodite. But 
 as the dawn may be regarded as springing from the face of the sky, 
 so in another and an earlier myth Athene springs armed from the 
 forehead of Zeus, and the dark powers of night at once retreat before 
 her. The same idea rendered it necessary to assign to Here some 
 offspring of her own unaided power whether in the person of 
 Typhoeus, 1 or, as the Hesiodic theogony relates, of Hephaistos also. 
 
 Thus the number of the kinsfolk and the children of Zeus is The twelve 
 already large ; but of the class of deities specially known at Athens de'ities"'" 1 
 in the days of Thucydides as the twelve Olympian gods neither our 
 Homeric poems nor the Hesiodic theogony know anything. In the 
 latter, Zeus and Poseidon are the shakers of the earth and sea, while 
 Hades dwells in the regions under the earth; but of a threefold 
 partition of the Kosmos between the three Kronid brothers we have 
 no formal mention. Of Poseidon the Theogony tells us only that he 
 built the walls within which Briareos guards the Titans : nor is there 
 any difference of rank between Ares and his sisters H£be and 
 Eileithyia, or again between Demeter and Eurynom£. From the 
 number of the so-called twelve, Hades is excluded; but in thejliad 
 
 1 " Typhdeus, the whirlwind or Ty- He belches fire, that is, lightnings issue 
 
 phoon, has a hundred dragon or serpent from the clouds, and his roaring is like 
 
 heads, the long writhing striae of vapour the howling of wild dogs." — S. B. 
 
 which run before the hurricane-cloud. Gould, The Were Wolf, p. 174. 
 
r8o 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 The 
 
 Arkadian 
 and Cre- 
 tan Zeus. 
 
 and Odyssey he appears at will in the Olympian home of Zeus, and 
 moves as an equal among the gods who are there assembled. 
 
 The myth as related by Apollodoros has received some ampli- 
 fications. The child Zeus in the Diktaian cave is nourished by the 
 nymphs Adrasteia and Ida with the milk of Amaltheia, and the 
 armed Kouretes clash their shields and spears lest the cry of the babe 
 should reach the ear of his father Kronos. In the war with the 
 Titans the Kyklopes give to Zeus their thunder and lightning, to 
 Hades the helmet which in the Iliad renders the wearer invisible, 
 and to Poseidon a trident. The struggle is followed by the casting 
 of lots between the three Kronid brothers for the partition of the 
 heaven above, of the earth beneath, and of the hidden regions under 
 the earth. There was no need of any such method. The old 
 mythical phrase rendered it impossible that any but Zeus could be 
 the lord of the bright heaven. In other points also the account of 
 the mythographer is at variance with that of the Hesiodic poet. 
 According to the latter Aphrodite is the offspring of Ouranos ; the 
 former represents her as the child of Zeus and Dione, and makes 
 the scheme of things begin with Ouranos himself instead of Chaos. 
 
 That Zeus should be nursed by Ida is an incident for which we 
 are at once prepared when in the Eastern myth we find that Ida is a 
 name of the earth, and that she is assigned as a wife to Dyaus. That 
 he should have a sanctuary specially sacred on the Lykaian heights 
 in Arkadia was, as we have seen, as indispensable as the birth of 
 Phoibos in Delos. But the Arkadian legend is noteworthy as show- 
 ing the fantastic forms which spring up in rank luxuriance from 
 mythical phrases when either wholly or partially misunderstood. 
 The blue heaven is seen first in the morning against the highest 
 mountain tops, and on these the rays of the sun rest before they light 
 up the regions beneath ; and as it had been said that Zeus dwelt on 
 high Olympos and that his palace was the first building which the 
 sun ever saw, so in strict fidelity to the old phrases the Arkadians 
 insisted that their own Lykosoura was the most ancient of all cities, 
 and the first which Helios had ever beheld, and that Zeus had been 
 nourished by the nymphs Theisoa, Neda, and Hagno on the Lykaian 
 hill hard by the temple of our Lady (Despoina). Nay, as Pausanias 
 tells us, 1 the hill was also called Olympos, and in it there was a spot 
 named Kretea, and hence, as some would have it, here Zeus was 
 born, and not in Crete, the island of the Egean sea. Cretans and 
 Arkadians were doubtless alike sincere in their convictions ; but, had 
 they remembered the meaning of the words which they used, they 
 
 1 viii. 38, 1. 
 
THE SHADOWLESS SANCTUARY. l8l 
 
 would have known that Zeus had his Olympian and Lykaian hills, chap. 
 
 his Crete, his Dikte, his Arkadia, his Phoinikian home wherever the • • 
 
 sun sent forth his long train of light 1 across the sky. But in the 
 minds of Achaians and Hellenes the old phrase had associated with 
 the abode of Zeus the idea of an ineffable splendour ; and the tena- 
 city with which they clung to this idea is singularly exhibited in the 
 strange superstition which made the Lykaian sanctuary an object of 
 wondering dread. As the Hebrew of old said that none might look 
 on the face of God and live, so the Aryan held that the doom of 
 death was on the man who dared to look on the unveiled splendour 
 of Zeus. The Arkadian localised this faith in his Lykaian Temenos, 
 and averred not only that all living things which might enter it would 
 die within the year, but that not a single object within it ever cast a 
 shadow. The idea, being once suggested, ran out into the wildest 
 fancies, and the huntsman, who drew back at the inclosure when a 
 hunted beast entered it, failed not to see that its body no longer cast 
 a shadow after it had entered the charmed circle. The science of the 
 geographer does but heighten his faith in the local tradition. When 
 the sun is in the sign of the Crab, he knows that at the Ethiopian 
 Syene there are no shadows at midday ; but the marvel was that in 
 this Arkadian sanctuary there was never any shadow the whole year 
 round. Pausanias admitted the fact as readily as the Royal Society 
 set to work, it is said, to explain why a vessel of water with a fish in 
 it was no heavier than it would have been without the fish : but he 
 could not know that in the real Lykosoura there could be no shade, 
 although this Lykosoura was not to be sought in Peloponnesos or in 
 any land of human habitation. In the bright heaven, through which 
 travels the unclouded sun, there can be no darkness at all. 2 
 
 But the word which supplied the name of the shadowless Lykaian Lykosoura 
 sanctuary was confused in their mind with the name of the wolf, so £a6n 
 called for the same reason which led the German to speak of the 
 bear as Goldfuss : and at once it became necessary to show how the 
 idea of wolves was linked with the fortunes of Lykaon. This son of 
 Pelasgos was the builder of Lykosoura, and he called Zeus Lykaios; 3 
 after his own name, instituting in his honour the Lykaian festival 
 which answered to the Dawn festival in the city of the Athenians. 
 But his wisdom, as Pausanias testifies, was not equal to that of his 
 contemporary Kekrops, who felt that no living thing should be offered 
 
 1 AvieAtrovpa. Emile Buonouf, La of the golden race, he was simply saying 
 
 Legende Athenienne, 116. that it was built, as it must necessarily 
 
 1 When Pausanias, v. 7, 4, says that be, by Lykians or men of light, 
 the Olympian temple was built by men 3 Paus. viii. 2, I. 
 
V 
 
 1 82 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book up to the Zeus whom he reverenced as the most high. The zeal of 
 - n - Lykaon was more vehement, and the blood of an infant, or, as some 
 said, of his own child, flowed on the altar of sacrifice. At once the 
 human form of Lykaon was changed into that of a wolf. It was the 
 just recompense of his iniquity in a time when men were linked in a 
 close intercourse with the gods ; but to the grief of Pausanias the 
 increasing wickedness of mankind had put an end to the age of 
 miracles, and the true story of Lykaon had been overlaid by miser- 
 able falsehoods, which affirmed that men turned into wolves at the 
 Lykaian sacrifice were restored to their old shape after ten years, if 
 they abstained from human flesh, but that, if they tasted it, then 
 they remained wolves for ever. 
 Lykan- We have here more than the germ of mediaeval Lykanthropy, 
 
 thropy " and little more is needed to bring before us the Were-wolf or Vampire 
 superstition in its full deformity. That superstition has been amongst 
 the most fearful scourges of mankind ; but here, as elsewhere, it is 
 something to learn that a confusion between two words identical in 
 sound, and springing from the same root, laid the foundations of this 
 frightful delusion. The myth of Lykaon is in this incident nothing 
 more than a repetition of the story of Tantalos. His name is but 
 one of a thousand epithets for the sun, who in times of drought offers 
 up on the altar of Zeus (the heaven) the scorched and withered fruits 
 which owed their life to his own vivifying heat ; and for him, as for 
 the Phrygian king, the sin and its punishment inevitably followed the 
 translation of mythical phrases into the conditions of human life. 
 The Dodo- Like the god of Arkadia, the Zeus of Dodona is nourished by 
 Olympian nymphs, who in this instance are called Hyades, the bringers of 
 Zeus. moisture from the blue heights of heaven. That the Cretan story is 
 
 but another version of the Arkadian, the identity of names alone 
 sufficiently proves. The Lykaian hill had its Crete, and the Eleu- 
 therai, to which unintentional trespassers into the Temenos of Zeus 
 were conveyed, reappears in the mythical geography of the Egean 
 island. 1 But although Zeus must be wherever there is an Olympian 
 city, yet the greatness of the Eleian Zeus overshadowed the majesty 
 of the Zeus who abode in Crete, Lykosoura, or Dodona, when his 
 temple at Olympia became the sanctuary of the great Panhellenic 
 festival. But here, too, the local legend gives names with which the 
 Cretan and Arkadian myths have already made us familiar. Here, 
 too, it was said that Rhea entrusted the infant Zeus to the care of 
 the Idaian Daktyloi. 2 If the name given to these mysterious beings 
 be akin to the Dikte and Lyktos of the Cretan tale, to Artemis Dik- 
 1 Hesiod, Thcog. 54. s Paus. v. 7, 4. 
 
THE. POWER OF ZEUS. 1 83 
 
 tynna and Diktys of Seriphos, we have in it only a general designa- CHAP, 
 tion which applies to each of the Daktyloi, Herakles, Paionios, Iasios, « ... ■ . ' . - 
 and Idas. This Idas is but the counterpart of the nymph Ida, the 
 companion of Adrasteia ; and Ida, as we have seen, is but the earth, 
 which may be regarded as either the nurse, or, as in the Vedic 
 hymns, the bride of Zeus. The name of Herakles, like that of Here, 
 indicates simply the splendour of the risen sun, and in Iasios, as in 
 Iasion, Iamos, IolS and others, we have the violet tint with which the 
 heaven is flushed in early morning. The olive branch, which Hera- 
 kles made the prize of victory, itself came from the Hyperboreans, 
 whence Achaia, the mother of the Zeus-born Achaians, journeyed to 
 Delos. 
 
 That the relations of Zeus to other mythical beings were very Limits to- 
 variously described, a comparison of our Hesiodic and Homeric nar- o/zeus. r 
 ratives has already shown us. In the latter, he is the father not only 
 of Aphrodite, who in the former is his sister, but of Ares and He- 
 phaistos, who, according to another legend, were like Typhoeus the 
 children of Here only. In one story he is the father also of Phoibos, 
 who in another is the son of Athene. The power with which he is 
 invested varies in like manner according to the point of view from 
 which he is regarded. The Zeus who is the father of all living things,. 
 knows neither weakness, change, nor passion ; the Zeus who is the 
 growth of mythical phrases, is beneficent or treacherous, just or capri- 
 cious, pure or lustful, according to the character of the phenomena 
 to be described. By himself he is styled all-powerful : but Here too,, 
 as the sovereign queen of heaven, can know no higher authority, and 
 thus they are represented as acting sometimes with and sometimes 
 against each other. Nay, even Athene, the maiden who stands by 
 his side to do his will, is sometimes an accomplice with Here and 
 Poseidon in plots to circumscribe his power. But although he can 
 do much, he cannot arrest the course of the sun, he cannot lighten 
 his toils for beings meaner than himself, he cannot avert the early 
 doom which awaits him when his short career across the heaven is 
 °nded. Hence he can but bring up to Olympos from the dead the 
 beautiful Memnon for whom the tears of Eos fall in dewdrops from 
 the sky ; he can but rescue the body of the brave Sarpedon, and give 
 it to Phoibos to bathe in Simoeis, and to the powers of sleep and 
 death to bear it to the glistening home which they cannot reach until 
 the morning. 1 Herakles may toil for Eurystheus and have no profit 
 
 1 In some other respects the Homeric the latter cannot turn aside, and who 
 Zeus is greater than the Zeus of his- broods over a house until the penalty 
 torical Hellas. The awful Ate 1 whom for the shedding of innocent blood has 
 
1 84 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The mes- 
 sengers of 
 Zeus. 
 
 at all of his labour ; but Zeus can only look down on his brave son 
 • until the flames ascend to heaven from his funeral pile on Oita. 
 There is, in short, no one phrase which might be said to describe the 
 varying aspects of the sky, which is not petrified into some myth 
 characteristic of the Kronid Zeus ; and the smile of the blue heaven, 
 when all the brightness of day bursts upon it, becomes the rapture 
 of Zeus when Here comes to him armed with the kestos (cestus) of 
 AphroditS, and the lulling spells of Hypnos. 1 Thus also the serene 
 height in which Zeus dwells, and from which he cannot descend, ex- 
 plains his indifference and seeming immorality in the great conflict 
 at Ilion. At the prayer of Thetis he may be induced to help the 
 Trojans until Agamemnon has repaired the wrong done to Achilleus, 
 or his inaction may be secured by the devices of Here ; but with 
 Here herself there can be no such uncertainty or vacillation. Her 
 name is but one of many names applied to the sun, and she must 
 take part steadily with the Argives and Danaans, the children of the 
 Dawn. To her Paris, the seducer of the fair Helen, is strictly the evil 
 Pani who tempts SaramS. to betray the trust reposed in her by Indra ; 
 and hence she may employ without scruple the power of her beauty, 
 aided by the magic girdle of Aphrodite, to turn the scale in favour of 
 Agamemnon and his Achaian warriors. 
 
 But if Zeus cannot himself descend to the regions of the murky 
 air, he has messengers who do his bidding. Foremost among these 
 is Hermes, the god who flies on the breezes and the storm ; but Iris 
 of the flashing feet is more truly the minister who joins the ether to 
 the lower atmosphere of the earth. Whatever be the origin of the 
 name Iris, the word was used by the poets of the Iliad to denote not 
 only the divine messenger, but the rainbow itself. Thus the dragons 
 on the breastplate of Agamemnon are likened to the Irises which Zeus 
 has set in the heavens as a marvel to mortal men ; a and more plainly 
 Iris is the purple arch or bow which Zeus stretches from one end of 
 heaven to the other, to give warning of war or deadly drought. 3 She 
 is a daughter of Thaumas and Elektra, the wonderful amber tints, 
 and a sister of the Harpyiai, the rent and ragged clouds against which 
 those tints are seen ; and she would be the golden-winged messenger, 
 not only because the rainbow can come and vanish with the speed 
 
 been fully paid is in the Iliad only the 
 spirit of mischievous folly. So too, the 
 Moirai, who, like AtS, had been only 
 his ministers, become possessed, like the 
 Norns, of an irresponsible authority, 
 while finally the force of destiny attains 
 its most overpowering proportions in the 
 
 Ananke whom, according to the theo- 
 gony of Euripides, not even the father of 
 gods and men is able to withstand or 
 control. 
 
 1 11. xiv. 210, &c. 
 
 2 lb. xi. 27. 
 
 8 lb. xviii. 549. 
 
THE TRIBUNAL OF ZEUS. 185 
 
 of lightning, but because its arch seems to join the heaven and the CHAP. 
 
 earth, as a ladder by which the angels may descend and rise jip again : ■ 
 
 into their home above. Hence the phrase was that the rainbow 
 spread its glorious path across the sky, whenever the gods wished to 
 send their messenger to do their bidding. In this office Iris carries 
 out the behests sometimes of Zeus, sometimes of Here or of Phoibos, 
 while sometimes she comes of her own free act. She is, in short, the 
 counterpart of Hermes, whose staff she bears in her hand. 1 If, again, 
 in some myths she may be spoken of as always a maiden, it may not 
 less truly be said that the winds love her exquisite tints, while the 
 earth lies enraptured at her feet ; and this accordingly is the tale 
 which makes her the bride of Zephyros and the mother of Eros, the 
 darling of the gods. But the name of this lovely being soon became 
 a mere general title of messengers or errand-carriers, and reappears in 
 Iros the beggar of the Odyssey, who resembles her in no other way. 
 
 Lastly, as seeing from his throne in heaven all that is done on Zeus the 
 earth, Zeus must be the punisher of all iniquity. But the judgments J udge " 
 of a god, whose characteristics depend on half-forgotten mythical 
 phrases, or on words wholly misunderstood, will not be always 
 equitable. The sentences passed will have reference often to his 
 mythical rights, while they may be designed generally to redress 
 wrongs between man and man. The punishments of Tantalos and 
 Ixion, of Lykaon and Sisyphos, are involved in the very idea of these 
 beings. The sun, who woos the dawn, yet drives her from him as he 
 rises in the sky. He loves the dew which his rays burn up; and 
 if he shine on the earth too fiercely, its harvests must be withered. 
 If his face approaches the stream too closely, the water-courses will 
 soon be beds of gaping slime. The penalty paid by Tantalos is bound 
 up with the phrases which described the action of the sun, while 
 that of Lykaon sprung, as we have seen, from a confusion between 
 two words derived from the same source. If, again, the sun, as 
 rising into the dizzy heights of heaven, might be said to gaze too 
 boldly on the bride of Zeus, his downward course is not less certain 
 than his ascent, and at midday he must revolve like Ixion on his 
 blazing wheel; while the stone which Sisyphos has with huge toil 
 rolled to the mountain summit (the zenith) must slip from his grasp 
 and dash down again into the valley below. Still more must Zeus 
 punish the insults done to him as lord of the fire-laden thunder- 
 clouds ; and Prometheus, as teaching men how to kindle a flame 
 and cheat the gods with offerings of fat and bone, is an offender 
 less easily pardoned than chiefs who sacrifice their children on his 
 
 1 " Der weibliche Hermes." — Preller, Griechische Mythologie, i. 390. 
 
1 86 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK altars. In this Promethean legend alone we seem to have a glimpse 
 • of that future twilight of the gods which is so prominent a charac- 
 teristic of Northern mythology. But the fact that Odin and Zeus are 
 alike described as sentenced to the same doom, sufficiently proves 
 the common origin of Greek and Teutonic mythology. The greater 
 prominence of this catastrophe in the northern traditions may be due 
 to the deeper gloom of the northern climate ; but the result was 
 rendered inevitable by the human character imparted to the gods. 
 No one has surveyed the whole field of popular tradition with the 
 accuracy of Grimm : and Grimm lays it down that all nations have 
 clothed their gods in human shape, and only by way of exception in 
 those of animals. On this fact, he asserts, are founded their incar- 
 nations, or appearances to men, their twofold sex, their intermarrying 
 with mankind, and also the deification of certain men. The gods 
 of the whole Aryan world eat, drink, and sleep ; but beings who eat, 
 drink, and sleep must die. The northern mythology kept this notion 
 before the people with startling clearness ; the southern disguised it 
 and practically put it out of sight, but it was there nevertheless. The 
 Olympian gods ' feast on ambrosia and are refreshed by nectar, as 
 Indra and Agni are invigorated by the Soma juice ; but they can be 
 wounded and suffer pain, they may hunger and thirst ; and to the 
 Norse mind the inference was oppressively plain. The beautiful 
 Baldur has his yearly death and resurrection ; but the time will come 
 when the great enemy of the gods will be let loose and Asgard shall 
 be desolate. This enemy is Loki, the fire-god, whose release just 
 before the coming on of the twilight of the gods is in close agreement 
 with the release of the chained Prometheus, by whom the sway 
 of Zeus is to be brought to an end. The writhings of the fettered 
 Loki make the earth quake just as it is shaken in the case of 
 Prometheus; but while the Greek Titan excites our deepest sym- 
 pathy, the Edda presents Loki as a hateful monster. For the reason 
 of this we need go no further than the use to which fire is put 
 in the Greek myth. The northern Odin is the all-father, from 
 whom men may expect substantial justice; in the Promethean 
 tradition Zeus is an arbitrary tyrant, with a special hatred for man- 
 kind The latter are in a state of abject misery until they receive 
 the boon of fire. The giver of it thus becomes their friend; and his 
 deliverance is associated with the triumph of righteousness over 
 wrong. But it would perhaps be difficult to determine how far the 
 purely spiritual colouring thrown over the myth is not due to the 
 mighty genius of ^Eschylus. Nor is it a hard task to imagine a 
 Prometheus in whom we should see simply a counterpart of the 
 
LIFE OF THE TEUTONIC GODS. *&7 
 
 mischievous and malignant northern god. Nay, even among the chap. 
 
 Teutonic people there linger to this day conceptions which represent : ■ 
 
 Loki by turns as beneficent and hateful, as sun, fire, giant, and devil. 
 
 Section VI.— ODIN, WODEN, WUOTAN. 
 
 The Teutonic belief in the twilight or final extinction of the gods character- 
 is of itself evidence that the mythology of the German and Scandina- Teutonic 
 vian nations belongs to a form of thought differing widely from that mytho- 
 of the Hindu or the Greek. Even the myth of Prometheus does but 
 say that Zeus should be put down, and a more righteous ruler set up 
 in his place. But in the Teutonic legends Odin himself falls and 
 Thor dies, and the body of the beautiful Baldur is consumed in the 
 flames. In other words, these deities answer less to the Olympian 
 gods than to the mortal Herakles or Perseus or Asklepios. But 
 the links which connect the belief of the one race with that of the 
 others may be traced readily enough. The Vedic gods, like the 
 Hellenic, live for ever. Thus the Soma draught becomes in northern 
 Europe the cup of honey mingled with the blood of Qvasir, the wisest 
 of all beings, who during his life had gone about the world doing the 
 work of Prometheus for the wretched children of men. 1 His wisdom, . 
 however, could not save him from the dwarfs Fialar and Galar, who, 
 mingling his blood with honey, made a costly mead, the taste of 
 which imparted the eloquence of the bard and the wisdom of the 
 sage. 2 In other respects the Teutonic deities exhibit the closest 
 likeness to the Greek. The rapidly acquired strength and might 
 of Zeus, Phoibos, and Hermes simply express the brief period needed 
 to fill the heaven with light, to give to the sun its scorching heat, 
 to the wind its irresistible force; and the same idea is expressed 
 by the myth of Vali, the son of Wuotan and Rind, who, when only 
 a night old, comes with his hair untouched by a comb, like Phoibos 
 Akersekomes, to take vengeance on Hodr for the death of Baldur, 
 and again in the story of Magni, the son of Iarnsaxa, who, when three 
 days old, rescued his father Thor as he lay crushed beneath the foot 
 of the gigantic Hrungnir. 3 There is the same agreement in the size 
 of their bodies and in the^power of their voices. The roaring of the 
 waves and the crash of the thunder are louder than any din of mortal 
 warfare or the cries of any earthly monsters ; and thus at once we 
 have the gigantic size of Ares, and the roar of Poseidon louder than 
 the noise of a myriad warriors in close conflict. Thus, also, as Here 
 lays one hand on the earth and the other on the sea, so Thor drinks 
 1 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 295. 2 Ibid. 855. 3 Ibid. 298. 
 
i88 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Teutonic 
 theogo- 
 
 :iies. 
 
 up no small part of the ocean with his horn which reaches from 
 - heaven to its surface — a ponderous image for the clouds or the rays 
 of the sun as they drink from the sea. But neither the Greek nor 
 the Teutonic deities have the monstrous forms of the four-armed 
 Vishnu or the four-headed Brahma— these fearful combinations being 
 confined to beings like Briareos and Geryon and the giants of 
 northern mythology, unless an exception is to be made of the three- 
 handed Hekate, who, however, can scarcely be reckoned among the 
 Olympian gods, and the four-armed Lakedaimonian Apollon. 1 The 
 two-headed Janus is a Latin deity. But if the Teutonic gods are 
 never monstrous, they are sometimes maimed ; and in the one-eyed 
 Odin we have the idea which called the Hellenic Kyklops into 
 existence ; while in the one-handed Tyr 2 we see Indra Savitar ; and in 
 the limping Loki, the lame Hephaistos. But whatever may be their 
 office, these are all bright and radiant deities ; Hel alone, like the 
 rugged king of Hellenic mythology, has a dark and repulsive aspect' 
 The very expressions used in speaking of them are transparent. The 
 flowing locks of the Wish-god and of Baldur are those of Zeus and 
 Phoibos; the fair-haired Demeter of the Greek becomes the fair- 
 haired Lif of the Teuton. 4 The power of Zeus is seen again in that 
 of Thor, and the golden glory which surrounded the head of Phoibos 
 or Asklepios, and became the aureole of Christian saints, is not less 
 a mark of the German deities, and appears on the head of Thor as a 
 circlet of stars.' 
 
 But when we turn to the theogony set forth in the Voluspa Saga, 
 we can as little doubt that it marks a comparatively late stage of 
 thought, as we can suppose that the Hesiodic theogony is older than 
 the simple and transparent myths which tell us of Prokris or Tithonos 
 or Endymion. The myth of Baldur, at least in its cruder forms, 
 must be far more ancient than any classification resembling that 
 
 1 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 298. 
 
 2 Tyr loses his hand in the mouth 
 of the wolf Fenris, who refuses to be 
 bound with the cord woven by the 
 dwarfs of Schwarz Alfheim unless he 
 has the hand in his mouth as a gauge 
 of their good faith. See also Tylor, 
 Primitive Culture, i. 316. 
 
 3 Hel, the daughter of Loki, and 
 sister of the wolf Fenris and the horrible 
 worm or serpent, is half black and half 
 human in appearance. Her dwelling is 
 in Niflheim, far down in the depths of the 
 earth, beneath the roots of Yggdrasil. — 
 Grimm, D. M. 289. She is the hungry 
 and insatiable goddess, the greedy 
 
 Polydektes and Polydegm&n of Greek 
 myths (Grimm, ib. 291), the black Kail 
 of modern Hindu theogony. 
 
 * Grimm, ib. 534. 
 
 s Ib. 300. We are bound to mark 
 the emphasis with which Grimm, writing 
 half a century ago, insisted on the close 
 affinity between the Teutonic and the 
 Greek mythology, ' ' an affinity for which, 
 as in the relations of the Greek and the 
 Teutonic languages, there is no question 
 of borrowing or choice, nothing but un- 
 conscious affinity, allowing room (and 
 that inevitably) for considerable diver- 
 gences. " 
 
ODIN'S RUNE SONG. l8 9 
 
 of the Hesiodic ages. Such a classification we find in the re- chap. 
 lations of the Jotun or giants, who are conquered by Odm as the • 
 Titans are overthrown by Zeus; and this sequence forms part of 
 a theogony which, like that of Hesiod, begins with chaos. From 
 this chaos the earth emerged, made by the gods out of the blood and 
 bones of the giant Ymir, whose name denotes the dead and barren 
 sea. This being is sprung from the contact of the frozen with the 
 heated waters, the former coming from Niflheim, the region of deadly 
 cold at the northern end of the chaotic world, the latter from 
 Muspelheim, the domain of the devouring fire. The Kosmos so 
 brought into existence is called the "Bearer of God" — a phrase 
 which finds its explanation in the world-tree Yggdrasil, on which 
 Odin himself hangs, like the Helene Dendritis of the Cretan 
 legend : — 
 
 I know that I hung On a wind-rocked tree 
 
 Nine whole nights, With a spear wounded, 
 
 And to Odin offered, Myself to myself, 
 
 On that tree, Of which no one knows 
 
 From what root it springs. 1 
 
 This mighty tree, which in Odin's Rune Song becomes a veritable 
 tree of knowledge, and whose roots are undermined by Hel or death 
 and by the Hrimthursen or frost-giants, rises into Asgard, the highest 
 heavens where the gods dwell, while men have their abode in Mid- 
 gard, the middle garden or earth, embraced by its branches. 
 
 The giant Ymir was nourished by the four streams which flowed Genealogy 
 from the treasure of moisture, the cow Audhumla, 2 which belongs to ° 
 Zoroastrian not less than to Teutonic mythology, and is there found 
 with the meaning both of cow and earth. 8 This earth afforded salt, 
 without which no life can be vigorous, and from Audhumla, as she 
 fed on the salt of the blocks of ice, there came forth a perfect man, 
 Buri, the fashioner of the world, whose son, Bor, 4 had as his wife 
 Besla, or Bettla, 6 the daughter of the giant Bolthorn, the root or 
 kernel of the earth. From Buri 6 proceeded apparently Odin him- 
 
 1 "Odin's Rime Song," Thorpe's the active and passive meanings of the 
 
 Translation of Ssmund's Edda, p. 340. Greek <popos in compound words. 
 We may compare with the "Bearer of 4 Bunsen thinks that the original 
 
 God," the names Atlas and Christo- form of this name was Beidsla, a word 
 
 phoros. perhaps denoting desire or longing, and 
 
 1 This is the cow beneath whose thus answering to the Kama of Vedic 
 
 udder the Dawn maiden hides herself and the Eros of the Hesiodic theogony, 
 
 in the Norse story of the Two Step- while it is reflected also in the Teutonic 
 
 Sisters. — Dasent. Gubernatis, Zoolo- Wunsch or Wish. 
 gical Mythology, i. 224. " The children of Buri educe order 
 
 3 Bunsen, God in History, ii. 483. out of Chaos, and at the four ends of 
 
 * The two names would answer to the world thus brought into shape they 
 
190 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK self, and also the race of the gods or JEsh, the self-existent beings, 1 
 ■ n - . ■ w ho dwell in Asgard or Aith£r, while the middle air, between the 
 upper and under worlds, the ar/p of the Greeks on which Zeus looks 
 down, is Vanaheim, the home of the Vanir, or spirits of the 
 breathing wind. 2 To this race belong Freyr and Freya, the deities 
 of beauty and love, "the children of Mordur, the sea-god who 
 dwells in the sea-city (Noatun), and whose spouse, Skadi (Elster ?) 
 is the daughter of the giant Thiassi, for he is indeed himself the 
 
 shore." 3 
 Odin as The idea of the composite nature of man must have preceded 
 
 of\fan at ° r tne rise of the myth which assigns the creation of the soul to Odin, 
 of the mind to Hahnir, of the blood and outward complexion to 
 Lodur. This Hahnir is probably the same word as hahn, the cock, 
 "in its wider import the bird, the animal belonging to the air;" 1 
 and thus possibly the framers of this theogony may have intended to 
 set forth their belief that a Trinity, consisting of Ether, Air, and Fire, 
 was concerned in the creation of man, Lodur being certainly fire, 
 and in fact only another form of Loki, the shining god. But we 
 approach the regions of pure mythology when we read that when 
 Odur sets forth on his wanderings, his bride, the beautiful Freya, 6 
 sheds gold-gleaming tears — " an image of the bright gleams shooting 
 across the rugged morning sky," 6 From these parents springs 
 Hnossa, the jewel, the world under the aspect of beauty, while 
 Frigga, as the wife of Odin, doubtless only another form of Odur, is 
 the mother of Jord, the earth, in the character of the nourishing 
 DSm£ter. 
 The end of But all this visible Kosmos is doomed to undergo a catastrophe, 
 the vEsir. ^ e results of which will be not its destruction but its renovation. 
 The whole world will be consumed by fire, kindled by Lodur {der 
 Lodernde, the glowing god), the Loki who brought about the death 
 
 place the four dwarfs — Nordri, Sudri, world of the light elves ; Mannaheim, 
 
 Austri, Vestri. These are probably a name for Midgard, the world of man; 
 
 the growth of an artificial system like and belowthe earth plain, Svartalfaheim, 
 
 that which assigned twelve labours to the land of the dark elves, and Hel- 
 
 Herakl£s. For an excellent summary heim, the abode of Hel. Below all 
 
 of Norse mythology see Brown, Re- lies Niflheim, the dwelling of the 
 
 ligion and Mythology of the Aryans of serpent Nidhogr, who gnaws the world- 
 
 Northem Europt, § II. tree Yggdrasil, Jotunheim lying beyond 
 
 1 From the root as, to be ; the word the ocean-stream which surrounds Mid- 
 is thus simply another form of Wesen. gard. 
 
 2 The original form of the word 3 Bunsen, God in History, ii. 487. 
 jEsir connects it immediately with 4 Ibid. 
 
 Atman as a name of Brahman, and the s For the several changes through 
 
 Latin animus, &c. — Bunsen, God in which the names Freyr and Freya have 
 
 History, ii. 486. Besides Asgard and passed, see Grimm, D. M. 276, &c. 
 Vanaheim, we have Ljosalfaheim, the • Bunsen, God in History, ii. 491. 
 
IDEAS OF THE DIVINE WILL. l 9 l 
 
 of Baldur. The life or the reign of the JEsh themselves will come chap. 
 to an end, but a new earth rising from this second chaos will resemble ' 
 
 that of the golden age in the Hesiodic tradition. Of this Teutonic 
 theogony we may say without the least misgiving that it exhibits no 
 sign of any Christian influence. It would be almost as reasonable 
 to trace such an influence in the Hesiodic poems, where, if we could 
 get over the insurmountable difficulties of chronology, such an 
 attempt might be made with far greater plausibility. Nor can we 
 charge Bunsen with speaking too strongly, when he says that we 
 must be brought to this negative conclusion, unless " we are to set 
 above facts a preconceived opinion, taken up at random on the 
 slightest grounds, or indolently to decline scrutiny of those facts, or 
 profound reflexions on what they indicate." l 
 
 The idea which the Aryans of India sought to express under the The name 
 names Brahman and Atman, the Aryans of Europe strove to signify Wuotan - 
 by the name Wuotan. That idea centred in the conception of Will 
 as a power which brought all things into being and preserves them 
 in it, of a will which followed man wherever he could go and from 
 which there was no escape, which was present alike in the heavens 
 above and in the depths beneath, an energy incessantly operating 
 and making itself felt in the multiplication as well as in the sustain- 
 ing of life. Obviously there was no one thing in the physical world 
 which more vividly answered to such a conception than the wind, 
 as the breath of the great Ether, the moving power which purifies 
 the air. Thus the Hindu Brahman denoted originally the active 
 and propulsive force in creation, and this conception was still more 
 strictly set forth under the name Atman, the breath or spirit which 
 becomes the atmosphere of the Greeks and the athem of the Ger- 
 mans. Atman is thus the breathing, in other words, the self-existent 
 being, — the actual self of the universe ; and the meaning thus as- 
 signed to the word was so impressed upon the minds of the Aryans 
 of India that no mythology ever grew up round it. In Professor 
 Miiller's words " the idea of the Atman or self, like a pure crystal, 
 was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed down to 
 philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it 
 as the medium through which all is seen and in which all is reflected 
 and known." 2 The conception of the Teutonic Wuotan was at first 
 not less exalted. Like Brahman and Atman, it is the moving 
 strength and power of creation, and the word in Grimm's belief 
 carries us to the Latin vad-ere, to go or move, the Bavarian wueteln, 
 
 1 Cod in History, ii. 409. 
 
 2 Chips, &=c, i. 71. 
 
I g2 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK to stir or grow. Thus Grimm remarks that of Wuotan it may be 
 ■ — ?i ■ said as Lucan says of Jupiter — 
 
 Est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris, 
 
 the pure spiritual deity. The word itself is therefore a participle of 
 the old verb watan, whose cognate forms vata, 6d, account for the 
 dialectical variations which converted it into the Saxon Wuodan, 
 Wodan, Woden, Odin, the Frisian Weda, the Norse OSinn. But 
 the ideas thus expressed by the name were necessarily lost when the 
 Christian missionaries taught the people to look on Wuotan or Odin 
 as the archfiend ruling over troops of malignant demons ; nor is it 
 improbable that the process may have begun at an earlier period. 
 The name is connected closely with the German wnth, in which the 
 notion of energy has been exaggerated into that of impulse uncon- 
 trolled by will. Such a limitation of meaning was quite in harmony 
 with the tendency of all the German tribes to identify energy with 
 vehement strife, and thus Wuotan became essentially the armed 
 deity, the god of war and of battles, the father of victory. 1 As such, 
 he looks down on the earth from his heavenly home through a 
 window, sitting on his throne with Freya by his side, as Here sits by 
 Zeus in Olympos. In the strange story which is to account for the 
 change which converted the Winili into the Lombards, this attribute 
 of Wuotan is connected with the rising of the sun, the great eye of 
 day. As the giver of victory, the greatest of all blessings in Teutonic 
 eyes, he was necessarily the giver of all other good things, like the 
 Hermes of the Greeks with whose name his own is identical in 
 meaning. 2 As such, he is Osci, Oski, the power of Wish or Will, 
 so often exhibited in the mythology of northern Europe, the Wunsch 
 to whom the poets of the thirteenth century 8 assign hands, eyes, 
 knowledge, blood, with all the appetites and passions of humanity. 
 This power of Wuotan is seen in the oska-stein, or wishing stone, 4 
 
 1 Sigfadr, Siegfater, Grimm, ib. 122. * The instruments of Wish generally 
 
 Hence the phrases, Zu OSinn fahren, run in triplets, as in the story of King 
 
 Ofcinnsheim suchen, denoted simply Putraka (pp. 89, 93). In that of Cin- 
 
 death. With the conversion to Christi- derella, they are three nuts, containing 
 
 anity these expressions which spoke each a splendid robe. In the story of 
 
 of men as going home to Odin became The Pink, Wish assumes the Protean 
 
 maledictions, consigning them to per- power of transformation ; in that of 
 
 dition. Brother Lustig, it is a bag in which the 
 
 1 This attribute of Wuotan, which possessor may see anything that he 
 
 Grimm discovers in the titles Gibicho, wishes to shut up in it, and by means 
 
 Kipicho, makes him S&rup iduv, i.e. of which he contrives, like the Master 
 
 Hermes, whose name denotes simply the Smith, to find his way into heaven. In 
 
 motion of the air. the tale of the Poor Man and the Rich 
 
 ' For a long series of passages in Man, the three wishes which bring 
 
 which Wunsch is clearly both a power happiness here and hereafter to the 
 
 and a person, see Grimm, D.M. 126-8. former, bring only "vexation, troubling, 
 
WISH. 
 
 193 
 
 which the Irish localise in Blarney and which Grimm connects with CHAP. 
 
 the wishing-rod or staff of Hermes, 1 in the Oskmeyjar* or Wish- • : ■ 
 
 maidens or Valkyries who guide to Valhalla all heroes slain in battle, 
 and who are the wish or choice children of Wuotan, and more 
 especially in the Oska-byrr, or Wish-wind, in which we recognise 
 both in name and in the thing the iKfievos ovpos of our Iliad. 3 It 
 is this power doubtless which is denoted by the Sanskrit Kama, as 
 the force which first brought the visible Kosmos into being, 8 and 
 by the Eros of the Hesiodic theogony. 
 
 The single eye of Odin points beyond all doubt to the sun, the The one- 
 one eye which all day long looks down from heaven upon the earth. ^ d Wu0 " 
 But when he was figured as an old man with a broad hood and a O d >n. 
 wide-flowing robe, the myth necessarily sprung up that he had lost 
 an eye, a story which answers precisely to the myth of Indra Savitar, 
 while it also throws further light, if any such were needed, on that 
 of the KyklSpes. 4 But as the sun is his eye, so his mantle is the 
 vapour which like the cloud-gathering Zeus Odin wraps around him- 
 self, and thus becomes Hakolberend, the wearer of the veil, or 
 Harbard, the bearded god. In his hand he bears the marvellous 
 spear Gungnir, in which we see the lance of Phoibos or Artemis. 
 
 scolding, and the loss of a horse " upon 
 the latter. In the story of the Faithful 
 Beasts, it is a wonderful stone (the orb 
 of the sun) which a fat old frog (the 
 Frog Prince or Fish Sun) brings up 
 from the waters. In the tale of the 
 Donkey Cabbages it is a wishing-cloak, 
 and thus we are brought back to 
 Solomon's carpet, which in the story of 
 the Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn, 
 "appears as a cloth, capable, like the 
 Sangreal, of providing unlimited supplies 
 of food and drink, and as a beautiful 
 carpet in the story of the Three Feathers. 
 In that of the Drummer, it is a ring in 
 the hand of the Dawn Maiden, who 
 becomes his bride. The three posses- 
 sions of King Putraka are the three 
 wishes which assume many forms in 
 folk-lore." Compare the story of the 
 Best Wish with the wishes of the Master 
 Smith in the Norse Tales. Dasent. 
 1 Grimm, D. M. 131. 
 
 * There is really nothing to support 
 the explanation which refers tn/terns to 
 mviojim. The word stands to Oski, or 
 wish, precisely in the relation of ix a t0 
 f<rx»i or tyvphs to lax"p6s. 
 
 * A translation of the very remark- 
 able hymn in which this word occurs 
 is given in Professor Max Miiller's 
 History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 561. 
 
 The first sentence shows the train of 
 thought in the mind of the poet : 
 
 " Darkness there was : and all at first 
 
 was veiled 
 In gloom profound, an ocean without 
 
 light : 
 The germ that still lay covered in the 
 
 husk 
 Burst forth, one nature from the fervent 
 
 heart ; 
 Then first came love upon it." 
 
 On this passage Professor H. H. 
 Wilson remarks, "The term ' love ' here 
 appears to us to convey a notion too 
 transcendental to have had a place in 
 the conception of the original author. 
 The word is Kama, which scarcely in- 
 dicates love in the sense in which it may 
 here be understood, although not abso- 
 lutely indefensible : but Kama means 
 desire, wish, and it expresses here the 
 wish, synonymous with the will, of the 
 sole-existing Being to create." — Edin- 
 burgh Review, Oct. i860, p. 384. 
 
 * Thus in Saxo he is "grandsevus 
 altero orbus oculo," and again " Armi- 
 potens uno semper contentus ocello." 
 Thetreason assigned by the myth is that 
 he was obliged to leave one eye in 
 pledge when he wished to drink at the 
 well of Mimir. 
 
194 
 
 MYTHOLOGV OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Odin the 
 raingiver. 
 
 Odin the 
 AUfather, 
 
 Tyr and 
 Odin. 
 
 By his side are the two wolves Gari and Freki, with whom he hunts 
 - down his victims, wolves like the Myrmidons whom Achilleus lets 
 loose upon the Trojans, wolves like those from which Phoibos was 
 supposed to derive his name Lykeios. On his shoulders sit the two 
 ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who whisper into his ears all that they 
 see or hear, as the serpents by their mysterious whisperings impart 
 more than human wisdom to the infant Iamos. 1 They are the ravens 
 who bring to Apollon the tidings of the faithlessness of Koronis, as 
 in the shape of a raven Aristeas tells the Metapontines that he 
 followed Phoibos when he came to their country. 2 
 
 As the bearded god, Odin becomes the giver of the rain, the 
 Zeus Ombrios of the Greeks, the Jupiter Pluvius or flowing Jupiter 
 of the Latins, as well as their Neptunus or cloud-deity. As such, he 
 is Hnikar, the Anglo-Saxon Nicor or water-god, whose offspring are 
 the Nixies or water-sprites, as the Hellenic Naiads are the children 
 of Zeus. 8 In this character he is the Biblindi, or drinker (the Latin 
 bib-ere) of the Eddas. Like Phoibos again, or Asklepios, he is the 
 healer, who alone can restore strength and vigour to the maimed 
 horses of Baldur ; and as the Muses are the daughters of Zeus, so is 
 Saga the daughter of Wuotan, the source of all poetry, the inspirer 
 of all bards. In his hunts he rides the eight-footed horse Sleipnir, 
 the white steed which bears him also through the thick of battle, 
 like the rudderless and oarless ships which carry the Phaiakians 
 across the blue seas of heaven. 
 
 Wuotan, the AUfather 1 and the Psychompompos, who takes all 
 souls to himself when their earthly journey is done, has become for 
 the nations of northern Europe a mere name ; but the mark of his 
 name he has impressed on many places. If our Wednesdays remind 
 us of him, he has also left his relics in Onslew, 6 in the island Odinse, 
 in Odinfors, Odenskalla and Wednesbury. 
 
 The close connexion of the name Tyr with the several forms 
 developed from the root dyu, to shine, would of itself lead us to 
 expect that the word would remain practically a mere appellative for 
 gods whose names might again betray a relation to the same root 
 
 1 Grimm, D. M. 134, traces the 
 names to hugr, thought, and munr, 
 mind, as in Minerva, &c. 
 
 2 Herod, iv. 15. 
 
 * So Poseidon becomes St. Nicholas. 
 All these names come from the same 
 root with the Sanskrit sna, the Greek 
 vhxw, the Latin nare, to float or swim. 
 With them we must link the common 
 term "Old Nick," as a name for the 
 
 devil. 
 
 4 Professor Max Miiller seems in- 
 clined to trace Christian influence in 
 the description of Odin AUfadir as 
 given, for instance, in the dialogue 
 called Gylfi's Mocking. 
 
 5 Othanslef, Othini reliquise. 
 Grimm, D. M, 144, adds many other 
 instances. 
 
ODIN AND THOR. 195 
 
 Accordingly we meet with Sigtyr, the victorious god, as a. name for CHAP. 
 Wuotan, and Reidartyr or Reidityr, the riding or driving Tyr, as a ■ " ■ ■ ' 
 
 name for Thor. Nor can it be said that any real mythology has 
 gathered round this word, for the Stauros which is specially con- 
 nected with his name belongs rather to the region of symbolism than 
 of mythology, although the conjunction of this emblem with the circle 
 (the kestos of AphroditS and the necklace of Harmonia and Eriphyle) 
 is in itself a subject of some interest. Hence we should further be 
 led to expect that the special emblem under which Tyr would be 
 worshipped would be the sword : and to this fact Grimm traces the 
 names, not only of the Saxons, but of the Cherusci as pointing to 
 the old Cheru, Heru— a sword 
 
 Section VII— THUNDER, DONAR, THOR. 
 
 Englishmen may not unnaturally be tempted to think that our The name 
 word Thunder is the older and more genuine form of the name given Donar - 
 to the god who wields the lightnings, and that this name was chosen 
 to express the loud crash which echoes across the heaven. Yet the 
 word in its first meaning has no reference to noise and din. The root 
 denotes simply extension as applied whether to sound or to any other 
 objects, and from it we have the Greek and Latin words tciVcu and tendo, 
 to stretch, rovos, tone, i.e. the stretching and vibration of chords, 
 tonitru, thunder, as well as tener and tenuis, the Sanskrit tanu, 
 answering to our tender and thin. Hence the dental letter which has 
 led to the popular misconception of the word is found to be no 
 essential part of it ; and the same process which presents the English 
 tender and the French tendre as an equivalent for the Latin tener, has 
 with us substituted thunder for the Latin tonitru} Thus the several 
 forms Donar, Thunor, and perhaps Thor are really earlier than the 
 shape which the word has assumed in our English dialect 
 
 As the lord of the lightning, the thunder, and the rain, Donar is Thor the 
 as closely allied, and, indeed, as easily identified with Wuotan, as A1Ifather ' 
 Vishnu with Indra, or Indra with Agni. But although most of their 
 characteristics are as interchangeable as those of the Vedic gods 
 generally, each has some features peculiar to himself. Thus, although 
 Thor is sometimes said to move in a chariot like other deities, yet he 
 is never represented as riding like Odin. He is essentially, like 
 
 1 Professor Miiller, having traced the if the original conception of thunder had 
 
 connexion between these words, adds, been its rumbling noise." — Lectures on 
 
 " The relations betvnxt tender, thin, and Language, first series, 350. 
 thunder would be hard to be established, 
 
196 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Vishnu, the walking or striding god, who moves amidst the lightnings 
 • . ... . '; . .. • like Hephaistos in his workshop of subterraneous fires. But in his 
 power of penetrating and piercing the heavens or the earth, and in 
 his ceaseless and irresistible energy, he is simply Wuotan in another 
 form, and the conception of the deity has varied but little among the 
 Aryan nations. The name itself is found in the name of the Gallic 
 thunder-god Taranis, preserved to us by Lucan, and more nearly in 
 its other form Tanarus, while the idea is expressed in the Jupiter 
 Tonans of the Latins, and the Zeus Kerauneios of the Greeks. He is, 
 in short, the great lord of heaven in his most awful manifestation, but 
 he is, nevertheless, the maker and the father of mankind. Hence, 
 like Odin, he is the Allfather, a title which Procopius tells us that the 
 Slavonic nations gave only to the creator of the lightnings. 1 The 
 deity thus worshipped was named Perkunas or Pehrkons by the 
 Lithuanian tribes, and by the Slaves Perun, Piorun, and Peraun, a 
 form which Grimm is inclined to connect with the Greek /ccpawos," 
 and more confidently with the Sanskrit Parjanya, a name of Indra as 
 the bringer of the fertilising rain. 3 If, again, Sophokles speaks of 
 G§ or Gaia as the mother of Zeus, 4 so is the earth the parent of 
 Donar ; and as Zeus and Wuotan are severally enthroned on Olympos 
 and Wuotan sberg, so has Thor or Donar his Donersperch, Thunres- 
 berg or Donnersberg, and Donnerskaute, while the oak, the special 
 tree of the Thundering Jupiter of the Latins, is not less sacred to the 
 Teutonic deity. Like Dyaus or Jupiter, Thor is bearded, but his 
 beard is fiery red, like the lightnings which flash across the heaven. 6 
 His triple But his appearance varied with his functions, which were con- 
 
 cerned with three things — the lightning flash, the thunderclap, and 
 the thunderbolt. As using the first, he always walks or strides ; as 
 producing the thunderpeal, he is borne along in his chariot; as 
 wielding the bolts, he is, like Wuotan, the armed god who hurls his 
 irresistible weapons. These are sometimes called his spears and 
 arrows; but more especially the thunderbolt is his hammer, the 
 
 1 Grimm, D. M. 156. English folk-lore. In the Platt-Deutsch 
 
 8 By a change analogous to that of Prussia it appears as Pakkels=Puckle 
 
 which makes the Latin sequor and and Pickle : and thus he appears as a 
 
 equus answer to the Greek firofiat and demon in the phrase "pretty Pickle." 
 
 'l-mros. Russians still say, when the thunder 
 
 * The connexion of the Slavonic rolls, Perkunagromena. — Ralston, Songs 
 
 Perkunas, the thunder-god, with the of the Russian People, 86, &c. j Russian 
 
 Greek <p6pnvs, <p6picvi>os, seems scarcely Folk Tales, 337. 
 less obvious, and the Hellenic deity has * Philokt. 389. 
 
 as much to do with water as the Vedic 5 " Rothbiirtig, was auf die feurige 
 
 Parjanya. The name of the god Luftevscheinung des Blitzes bezogen 
 
 Pikollos, who is associated with Per- werden muss."— Grimm, D. M. 161. ] 
 kunas, has assumed a strange form in 
 
 functions. 
 
thor's hammer. 
 
 197 
 
 mighty club which, when hurled from his hand, comes back to him 
 again after doing its deadly errand. As wielding this weapon, he is > 
 Miolnir or Tydeus, the pounder and crusher, the father of the Aloadai 
 and the Molionids ; * but the word hamar meant not only a mallet, 
 but a rock, and thus carries us to the weapons employed by the giants 
 and the Titans. 2 When this hammer is stolen, Loki, in the Lay of 
 Thrym, asks Freyja if she will lend him her feather-garment, that he 
 may go and find it. With this dress Loki, as the god of light, flies to 
 the abode of Thrym the giant, who has hidden the weapon in the 
 depths of the earth, and will not give it up unless, like Hades, he has 
 the maiden as his wife. When Loki returns to Asgard with this 
 message, Freyja refuses to go. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 1. 
 
 Then said Heimdall 
 He well foresaw, 
 " Let us clothe Thor 
 Let him have the famed 
 
 "Let by his side 
 And woman's weeds 
 But on his heart 
 And a neat coif 
 
 Of .(Esir brightest, 
 Like other Vanir, 
 With bridal raiment, 
 Brisinga necklace. 
 
 Keys jingle, 
 Fall down his knees ; 
 Place precious stones, 
 Set on his head." 
 
 He is now Dionysos, Achilleus, or Theseus in their womanly 
 forms ; and like Theseus, he speedily avenges himself on those who 
 take liberties with him. Having come to Jotunheim, he astonishes 
 Thrym by devouring an ox and eight salmon, but the serving-maid 
 lulls his fears. 
 
 Then said Thrym, The Thursar's lord, 
 
 " Bring the hammer in, The Bride to consecrate : 
 
 Lay Miolnir On the maiden's knee, 
 
 Unite us with each other By the hand of Vbr." 
 
 1 This club is found in the hands 
 of the Slavonic Perun, or Perkunas. 
 "White-Russian traditions, says Afana- 
 siaf, describe Perun as tall and well- 
 shaped, with black hair and a long 
 golden beard. He rides on a flaming 
 car, grasping in his left hand a quiver 
 full of arrows, and in his right a fiery 
 bow. Sometimes he flies abroad on a 
 great millstone, which is supported by 
 the mountain-spirits, who are in sub- 
 jection to him, and who by their flight 
 give rise to storms. Perun, in many 
 respects, corresponds with Thor, and 
 one of the points of similarity is the 
 mace which he bears, answering to 
 Thor's hammer, Mjblnir, the name of 
 which may be compared with the 
 Russian words for hammer and for 
 lightning, moist and molniye. " — Ralston, 
 Songs of the Russian People, 73. 
 
 2 This hammer is said to have been 
 stolen by a giant who hid it eight miles 
 beneath the surface of the earth. In 
 as many years it ascended into heaven 
 again, accomplishing one mile in each 
 year ; and thus it was restored to Thor 
 by Thrym, which however is only an- 
 other name for thunder, and answers to 
 Thrumketill, the proper name, as Thor- 
 ketyll, Thurketil, answers to Thor. It 
 is scarcely necessary to say that the 
 thunder god has given his name to a 
 vast number of places, the forms Don- 
 nersberg, Thorrsberg, and Torslunde 
 representing the three varieties under 
 which they may be classed. Our Thurs- 
 day is an abbreviation of Thunresdag ; 
 but we have to remember the identity 
 of Thunor, Donar, and Thor. A long 
 list of such names is given by Grimm. 
 D. M. 169. 
 
198 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Laughed Hlorridi's 
 When the fiercehearted 
 He first slew Thrym 
 And the Jotuns ran 
 And so got Odin's son 
 
 Soul in her breast, 
 
 His hammer recognised. 
 
 The Thursar's lord, 
 
 All crushed, 
 
 His hammer back. 1 
 
 Relations 
 of Fro to 
 
 Freya. 
 
 Section VIII. —FRO. 
 
 In the oldest Teutonic mythology we find a god Fro or Friuja, 2 
 which is worshipped as the lord of all created things. If we may 
 judge from the name, the conception of this deity was probably far 
 above the ideas formed of any of the Vedic or Olympian gods. If 
 the word is connected with the modern German froh, it expresses an 
 idea which is the very opposite of the Hebrew tendency to worship 
 mere strength and power. For Fro is no harsh taskmaster, but the 
 merciful and eternal God. He is, in short, the beneficence and long- 
 suffering of nature. Fro is thus the power which imparts to human 
 life all its strength and sweetness, and which consecrates all righteous 
 efforts and sanctions all righteous motives. Nor can we doubt that 
 Freya stands to Fro in precisely the relation of Liber and Libera in 
 the cultus of Ceres, the connexion between these deities being 
 precisely that of Fro and Freya with the goddess whom Tacitus call 
 Nerthus, the Teutonic Niordr. In this aspect Freya is the bringer 
 of rain and sunshine for the fruits of the earth, while the worship of 
 Fro runs parallel with that of Priapos. To this deity belongs the 
 wonderful ship Skidbladnir, which can be folded up like a cloth, — in 
 fact, a vessel much like the magic barks of the Phaiakians. But 
 though this ship could carry all the ^Esir, yet these beings do not 
 belong to their exalted race. They are Vanir, whose abode is in 
 Vanaheim, as the Alfar or Elves live in Alfheim or Elfland and the 
 Jotnar in Jotunheim. 
 
 The Lord 
 of Himin.- 
 biorg. 
 
 Section IX.— HEIMDALL, BRAGI, and OEGIR. 
 
 The Hellenic Iris is represented by Heimdall in the mythology 
 of northern Europe. This deity, who like Baldur is a white or light- 
 giving god, is the guardian of the bridge 3 which joins heaven and 
 
 1 Lay of Thrym, 16, 17, 31, 32. 
 Thorpe's Translation of StzmumFs 
 Edda. 
 
 2 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 
 Stallybrass, i. 300. The Slavonic 
 counterpart of Freya is Lada, the god- 
 dess of the spring and of love, Lado 
 answering to Fro. — Ralston, Songs of 
 the Russian People, 105. 
 
 In the Teutonic mythology no 
 moral significance seems to be attached 
 to this bridge. In the Zoroastrian 
 system it becomes the Bridge of the 
 Judge, which the righteous only can 
 cross by the aid of a beautiful maiden, 
 in whom is embodied the holiness after 
 which they had been striving in life, 
 and who in answer to their question 
 
TEUTONIC GODS OF THE LIGHT. 199 
 
 earth (bif-rost, the waving resting-place), 1 and his abode is in Himin- CHAP. 
 
 biorg, the hill of heaven, the Latin Mons Coelius, the first syllable of : • 
 
 his name being, like himin, only another form of himmel. In other 
 respects he resembles Argos Panoptes. Like him, he needs less 
 sleep than a bird ; by night as by day he can see a hundred miles, 
 and so keen are his senses that he can hear the corn growing on the 
 earth and the wool lengthening on the sheep's back. 3 As the watcher 
 and warder of the gods, he carries a horn, the point of which sticks in 
 Niflheim at the root of Yggdrasil ; and it was easy to add that he 
 rode a horse with a golden mane and that his own teeth were of gold. 
 He speaks of himself as the son of nine mothers, a phrase which in 
 Bunsen's opinion has nothing to do with the watches of the night, 
 and must be referred to the nine mythological worlds of the Voluspa 
 Saga, of which Niflheim is the ninth and the lowest ; and thus the 
 myth would mean that "the sun-light is the common divine child 
 of all these worlds." 8 
 
 Another god of the gleaming heaven is Bragi, the brilliant, while, Bragi, the 
 like Donar or Baldur, he is a son of Odin. As the god of poetry Jjj" 1 of 
 and eloquence, he is the guardian and patron of bards and orators, 
 .and his name, like that of Vach or Saga, passes from the signification 
 of light to that of fluent and honied speech. Thus bragr Karla was 
 simply an eloquent man, and a further step degraded the name of 
 dsa bragr, the chief among the gods, and left it as an epithet of vain 
 boasters. 
 
 The name of the god Oegir, with whom Bragi is sometimes asso- Oegir, the. 
 ciated in the Edda, has shared a similar fate. Used first as a name sea -s od - 
 for the sea, it has come to denote the Ogres with which nurses 
 frighten children. If, as Grimm supposes, the word belongs to the 
 same root with the Gothic agas and 6g, the Anglo-Saxon ege, egesa, 
 Old High German aki, eki, fear, dread, horror, the later meaning is 
 quite in accordance with its original form. But however this may be, 
 the word Oegir as a name for the sea carries us to the Greek stream 
 
 asking who she is, says, " I am thy these, one has to keep a bandage over 
 
 good thoughts, good words, good his eyes, for his sight is so keen that 
 
 deeds." — Brown, Religion of Zoroaster, whatever he looks at splits in two ; 
 
 § 13. another can see all round the world ; 
 
 1 Bebende Ristatte, Bunsen, God in and a third can hear everything, even 
 
 History, ii. 412. In Slavonic mytho- to the growing of the grass. These 
 
 logy this bridge seems to stand at the ministers of the solar hero are again 
 
 end of the Milky Way, where four monks seen in Grimm's story, How Six 
 
 guard the sacred road and cut to pieces travelled through the World, and in 
 
 all who attempt to traverse it.— Ralston, the Gaelic tale of The King of Lochlin's 
 
 Songs of the Russian People, 109. Three Daughters.— Campbell, Tales of 
 
 > These qualities reappear in the the West Highlands, i. 238, 250. 
 story of the Six Servants, Grimm. Of * God in History, ii. 412, 490. 
 
200 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK which surrounds the earth. The phrase Sol gengr 1 oeginn simply 
 
 *— i • spoke of the sun going down into the sea, as Helios sinks into the 
 
 ocean. The other forms Ogen, Ogyges, approach still more closely 
 to the Teutonic Oegir. We find the idea of fear as attached to the 
 name more fully developed when we come to the Oegishialm, or 
 helmet of dread, which the dragon Fafnir wears as he lies on the 
 golden treasures, to strike terror into those who may dare to gaze on 
 him, and again in the Eckesax or Uokesahs, the fearful sword 
 tempered by the dwarfs in the Vilkina Saga, 1 weapons which, although 
 there may perhaps be no affinity between the names, must remind 
 us of the Aigis of Athene and the helmet of Hades. Oegir's wife 
 Ran is the mother of nine children, who become the eponymoi of 
 fountains and streams. 
 
 1 In the Dietrich story it is the sword with which the hero slays the gigantic 
 Ecke. 
 
( 201 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LIGHT. 
 
 Section I.— SURYA and SAVITRI. 
 
 Neither Dyaus nor Varuna, Indra nor Agni, occupies that precise chap. 
 place which is filled by Helios in Greek mythology as the dweller in H - 
 the globe of the sun, or by Nereus as the actual inhabitant of the sea. S g^ a jj the 
 This place in the Veda is reserved for Sfirya l or Savitri, the former irresistible 
 name being etymologically identical with that of Helios or Here. mar y- 
 Like Helios and Heimdall, Surya sees all things and hears all things, 
 noting the good and evil deeds of men. Like Indra and Agni, he is 
 sometimes independent, sometimes the servant of others ; but he is 
 never, like Dyaus, without a parent His light is his own, and yet it 
 has been given to him by Indra or by Soma, who is often spoken of 
 as his father. He is the husband of the Dawn, but the Dawn is also 
 his mother, as Iokaste 1 is both mother and wife of Oidipous. In all 
 such phrases it was impossible to lose sight of his real character. He 
 is the most active of all the active gods, he is the third in the earlier 
 trimurtti in which he is associated with Agni and Vayu, he has 
 measured the worlds with their undecaying supports, he is the divine 
 leader of all the gods ; but as such, he is still " the pervading irre- 
 sistible luminary." a His chariot is drawn by seven mares, and he 
 " comes with them self-harnessed." Like Ixion, Tantalos, and Sisy- 
 phos, he is the " lord of all treasures." 8 He is the eye of Mitra, 
 Varuna, and Agni.* Sometimes again he is " without steeds, without 
 stay; borne swift-moving and loud-sounding, he travels ascending 
 
 1 The name remains in the Russian Ouranos. — Songs of the Russian People, 
 
 Swarog, of whom Mr. Ralston speaks 85. 
 
 as having been- originally the supreme 8 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. 
 
 deity of the Slavonic tribes, and as p. 96. R. V. viii. 90, 12. 
 having been displaced by Perun, as 3 R. H. Wilson, R. V, i. 1S9. 
 
 amongst the Greeks Zeus displaced * lb. i. 304. 
 
202 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The one- 
 handed 
 Savitar. 
 
 Tlie power 
 of Savitar. 
 
 higher and higher, 1 and when his daily course is run, he sinks, like 
 Endymion or Kephalos, into the waters. 
 
 " I have beheld the permanent orb of the sun, your dwelling- 
 place, concealed by water where (the hymns of the pious) liberate his 
 steeds." 2 
 
 Savitar, the inspirer, from the root su, to drive or stimulate, is 
 especially the glistening or golden god. He is golden-eyed, golden- 
 tongued, and golden-handed ; and in the later Brahmanic mythology 
 such epithets might furnish a groundwork for strange and uncouth 
 fancies. Thus the story (which probably started as the myth of 
 Midas and ended with the ass which poured out gold from its mouth 
 on hearing the word Bricklebrit) went that once when Savitar cut off 
 his hand at a sacrifice, the priests gave him instead a hand of gold ; 
 and in the same spirit the commentators interpreted the epithet as 
 denoting not the splendour of the sun but the gold which he carried 
 in his hand to lavish on his worshippers. 8 The Teutonic god Tyr is 
 also said to have lost one hand ; but the German story ran that Tyr 
 placed his hand as a pledge in the mouth of the wolf and that the 
 wolf bit it off. 4 In the latter tale we have an instance of that con- 
 fusion of homonyms which converted Lyk&on into a wolf, Kallisto 
 into a bear, and the Seven Arkshas into seven sages. 
 
 The power and strength of Savitar are naturally represented as 
 irresistible. Not even Indra, or Varuna, or any other being can 
 resist his will ; and the verse which is regarded as the holiest in the 
 Veda is addressed to Savitar. 6 He is a Tithonos who waxes not old 
 
 " Shining forth, he rises from the lap of the Dawn, praised by 
 singers ; he, my god Savitar, stepped forth, who never misses the 
 same place. 
 
 "He steps forth, the splendour of the sky, the wide-seeing, the 
 far-shining, the shining wanderer; surely, enlivened by the sun, do 
 men go to their tasks and do their work." 6 
 
 1 H. H. Wilson, R. V. ii. 91. 
 
 2 Cf. Eurip. AIL 591, a/upl ae\iov 
 Ki/eQaiav brn6oT0,triv. 
 
 3 Professor Max Miiller, speaking of 
 this myth, compares it with the German 
 proverb, " Morgenstunde hat Gold im 
 Munde," as enforcing the same moral 
 with the prosaic English adage which 
 promises health, wealth, and wisdom to 
 those who go to sleep early and rise 
 early. Lectures, second series, 378. 
 There was another version of the myth 
 of Savitar, which made him lose both his 
 hands. H. H. Wilson, R. V. i. $1. 
 
 4 Compare the story of Nuad of the 
 Silver Hand (Fergusson, Irish before the 
 Conquest) and Grimm's tale of the 
 Handless Maiden, for whom the king, 
 when he takes her as his wife, orders 
 silver hands to be made. Gubernatis, 
 Zoological Mythology, ii. 31. But she is 
 taken from him, like Urvasi from Purfl- 
 ravas, and when, after grievous suffer- 
 ings, she is restored to him, her hands 
 have grown again as beautiful as ever. 
 
 8 Muir, Principal Deities of R. V., 
 P- 5°7- 
 
 8 R. V. vii. 63. 
 
THE VIVIFYING SOMA. 2 °3 
 
 May the golden-eyed Savitri come hither. CHAP. 
 
 "May the golden-handed, life-bestowing well-guarding fc exhila 
 rating and affluent Savitri be present at the sacrifice." 
 
 These phrases, which seem to have no reference to the later myth, 
 carry us to the myth of the one-eyed Odin, who, like Savitar, is also 
 Wegtam, or the wanderer, the broad heaven looking down on the 
 earth with its one gleaming eye, the sun. 1 Like Indra, Varuna, and 
 Vishnu, he is Skambha, the supporter. 
 
 " Savitri has established the earth by supports ; Savitri has fixed 
 the sky in unsupported space ; a he has milked the atmosphere, rest- 
 less (or noisy) as a horse ; Savitri, the son of the waters, knows the 
 place where the ocean, supported, issued forth." " 
 
 Section II.— SOMA. 
 The ninth book of the Rig Veda consists wholly of hymns written The phy- 
 
 sical and 
 
 in praise of Soma, who is lauded as the source of life and vigour, of spiritual 
 mental power and bodily strength both to gods and men, the gene- Soma - 
 rator or parent of Agni, Surya, Indra, and Vishnu. Of the phrases 
 employed in describing the nature and functions of Soma, many 
 relate exclusively to the juice of the Soma plant, and to the process 
 by which that juice is converted into an intoxicating drink. These 
 phrases are often curiously blended with expressions which speak of 
 a god exalted higher even than Varuna or Indra, while others show 
 clearly that, like almost all other names of Hindu mythology, Soma 
 was a word which might be applied alike to the gladdening power of 
 wine and to the life-giving force from which the sky and sun derive 
 their strength and brilliancy. In the latter sense, Soma imparts to 
 Indra the power which enables him to overcome Vritra, and, like 
 
 1 H. H.Wilson, R. V. Sanhita, i. 99. power, then why may not the same 
 5 Dr. Muir points out the inconsiS- power be supposed to exist in the first 
 tency of this phrase with the later my- — that is, in the earth ? " Dr. Muir 
 thology, which spoke of the earth as adds that AryyaBhatta, one of the most 
 resting on the head of the serpent ancient of Indian scientific astronomers, 
 S'esha, or on other supports, and re- even maintained that the alternation of 
 marks that the Siddhantas, or scientific day and night is produced by the rota- 
 astronomical works of India, maintain tion of the earth on its own axis. Sans- 
 that the earth is unsupported. In these krit Texts, part iv. p. 97. It is remark- 
 it is said plainly that, " if the earth were able that the Copernican system should 
 supported by any material substance or thus have been anticipated in the East, 
 living creature, then that would require as by Aristarchos of Samos in the West, 
 a second supporter, and for that second without making any impression on the 
 a third would be required. Here we thought of the age. 
 have the absurdity of an interminable 3 K. V. x. 149, 1 ; Muir, Sanskrit 
 series. It" the last of the series be sup- Texts, part iv. p. 97. 
 posed to remain from its own inherent 
 
204 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Indra, is the conqueror of demons and the destroyer of cities. All 
 
 •— > — ^ things are in his hand, for Soma rules over gods and men, and, like 
 
 the other deities known as Skambha, supports the heaven and earth 
 in his hands. In short, there are no powers attributed to Varuna, 
 Indra, or Vishnu, which are not, if it be possible, exceeded by those 
 which are inherent in Soma The sun, again, is said to have the 
 nature of Agni, the moon of Soma, for the simple reason that the 
 moon is the queen of night, which is especially the time of moisture. 
 Yet Soma is also the drink of the gods, the Olympian nectar, the 
 beverage which gives immortality. Soma is Indu, the sap which 
 flows from Indra — the stream which is purity itself, and the cleanser 
 of all defilement. In the symbolical interpretations of later times 
 Soma is a mere name, which may denote physical, moral, or spiritual 
 life, a name strictly of the one everlasting God. 
 
 " Soma purifies, [he who is] the generator of hymns, the generator 
 of the sky, the generator of the earth, the generator of Agni, the 
 generator of Surya, the generator of Indra, and the generator of 
 Vishnu." 1 
 
 Soma is the Beatific Vision to which the pilgrims of this earth 
 aspire. 
 
 "Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is 
 placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O Soma. . . . 
 
 " Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the 
 worlds are radiant, there make me immortal. . . . 
 
 " Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure 
 reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me 
 immortal." 2 
 
 In some hymns of the Rig Veda, all creatures are said to spring 
 from the divine seed of Soma. All things are under his control, and 
 he is, like Varuna and other deities, the divine sustainer (Skambha) 
 of the world. He is an omniscient ocean, and his are the stars and 
 the sun. He too, like Indra, is the slayer of Vritra. 
 
 " This divine Soma, with Indra for its ally, crushed, as soon as 
 
 1 The explanation of this verse given those solar rays whose function it is to 
 
 in the Nirukta-parisishta shows that the appropriate ; of Indra, i.e. of those 
 
 commentator was perfectly aware of the solar rays whose function is sovereignty ; 
 
 real nature of the myth. " Soma," he of Vishnu, i.e. of those solar rays whose 
 
 says, "is the generator of hymns (or function is diffusion." — Muir, Sanskrit 
 
 thought), i.e. of those solar rays whose Texts, partiv. p. 81. In these comments 
 
 function it is to reveal ; of the sky, i.e. all the deities disappear together, leaving 
 
 of those solar rays whose function it is Soma as the representative of the one 
 
 to shine ; of the earth, i.e. of those solar great Cause of all things, 
 
 rays whose function it is to spread; of 2 R. V. ix. 113, 7; Max Miiller, 
 
 Agni, i.e. of those solar rays whose Chips, i. 47. 
 function it is to move ; of SCirya, i.e. of 
 
VARIOUS POWERS AND MEANINGS OF SOMA. 205 
 
 generated, Pani by force : thou, Soma, didst baffle the devices and CHAP, 
 weapons of the malignant secreter of the (stolen) wealth (the cattle)." l ■ ^— - 
 
 But at once the poet recurs to metaphors suggested by the process 
 of preparing the Soma juice. 
 
 "In the filter, which is the support of the world, thou, pure 
 Soma, art purified for the gods. The Usijas first gathered thee. In 
 thee all these worlds are contained." a 
 
 " The Soma flowed into the vessel for Indra, for Vishnu ; may it 
 be honied for Vayu." 8 
 
 " Pouring forth streams, the Soma hastens to Indra, Vayu, Varuna, 
 the Maruts, and to Vishnu." i 
 
 " Indu, do thou flow sweet to Indra, to Vishnu. Preserve from 
 sin the men who praise thee." 6 
 
 "Soma, Indu, purified, thou exhilaratest Varuna, thou exhila- 
 ratest Mitra, thou exhilaratest Indra, thou exhilaratest Vishnu, thou 
 exhilaratest the troop of the Maruts, thou exhilaratest the gods and 
 the great Indra that they may be merry." 6 
 
 When in the later mythology, Mahadeva had thrown the older 
 deities into the shade, Vishnu, Soma, and Agni became different 
 parts of his bow and arrow ; " for all the world," we are told, " is 
 formed of Agni and Soma, and is said to be composed of Vishnu, 
 and Vishnu is the soul of Mahadeva of boundless power."' So with 
 Uma, as divine knowledge, Soma, as the supreme spirit, falls into 
 the ranks of correlative deities." 8 
 
 With the change which came over later Hindu thought the Powers of 
 popularity of Soma passed away ; but the hymns of the Rig Veda oma ' 
 suffice to show how great a charm the Soma drink had possessed for 
 the people. It was to them life in health, strength in weakness, 
 medicine in sickness, the restoration of youth in old age ; and the 
 vigour which it imparted to human beings was imparted with un- 
 stinting lavishness to the gods. The exultation of Indra is the 
 
 1 H. H. Wilson, R. V. S. iii. 461. Uma, see Muir, ib. p. 357, et seq. Of 
 
 * R. V. ix. 86 ; Muir, Sanskrit genuine mythology the story of Uma, :f 
 Texts, part iv. p. 99. it can be called a story, exhibits very 
 
 3 R. V. ix. 63, 3 j Muir, Sanskrit little. It has been drawn out to suit an 
 
 Texts, part iv. p. 80. idea, but the idea has not been suggested 
 
 * R. V. ix. 65, 20 ; Muir, Sanskrit by the myth. " Uma is divine know- 
 Texts, part iv. p. 80. ledge ; thou who existest with her, O 
 
 5 R. V. ix. 56, 4; Muir, Sanskrit Soma, supreme spirit, &c." Hence her 
 
 Texts, part iv. p. 80. attributes are plastic enough, and thus 
 
 * R. V. ix. 90, 5 ; Muir, Sanskrit she becomes identified with Ambika, 
 Texts, part iv. p. 80. the sister of Rudra, a being not much 
 
 7 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. more clearly defined than Uma herself. 
 189. Uma is also the wife of Mahadeva, * Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, 
 
 ib. 227. For further details respecting second series, 486. 
 
206 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOfC exultation of Polyphemos when he has drunk the wine given to him 
 • by Odysseus. 
 
 Comple- 
 mentary 
 deities. 
 
 The dual- 
 ism of 
 Nature. 
 
 Functions 
 of the 
 Asvins. 
 
 Section III.— CORRELATIVE DEITIES. 
 
 A very slight acquaintance with the language of the Vedic hymns 
 will suffice to show that the idea of any one deity rarely failed to 
 suggest to the mind of the worshipper the idea of another god, whose 
 attributes answered to, or were contrasted with, his own. The 
 thought of Dyaus, the sky, was bound up with that of Prithiv!, the 
 earth, who was his bride ; and their very names, blended into one 
 word Dyava-prithivi, denoted their inseparable union. The idea 
 of Varuna, the veiling heaven, brought up that of Mitra, the light- 
 illumined sky. 
 
 The connexion was forced upon them by the phenomena of the 
 outward world. We cannot sever in our minds the thought of day 
 from that of night, of morning from evening, of light from darkness ; 
 and " this palpable dualism of nature " * has left its most marked 
 impression on the mythology of the Veda The dawn and the 
 gloaming, the summer and the winter may, it is obvious, be described 
 as twins or as sisters, standing side by side or dwelling in the same 
 house. Thus, not only are Dyava-prithivi, heaven and earth, de- 
 scribed as twins, but Indra and Agni are spoken of in the dual as 
 the two Indras, Indragni, not only ushasanakta, the dawn and the 
 night, but ushasau, the two dawns," and the two Varunas. Like 
 Indragni again, the twin Asvins, or horsemen, are called Vritrahana, 
 destroyers of Vritra. 3 
 
 These Asvins have been made the subject of a perhaps unneces- 
 sarily lengthened controversy. Their features are not very definite, 
 but in the oldest hymns they are worshipped with a peculiar rever- 
 ence, as able not merely to heal sicknesses but to restore the aged 
 to youth. Their relations to each other and to their worshippers 
 are placed in a clearer light by a reference to Greek mythical phrase- 
 ology. Speaking of these beings, the commentator Yaska says that 
 their sphere is the heaven, and remarks that some regard them as 
 heaven and earth, as day and night, or as sun and moon, while they 
 who anticipated the method of Euemeros affirmed that they were 
 
 1 Max Muller, Lectures on Language, 
 second series, 486. 
 
 * 7,5.487,495. 
 
 * This dualism seems to reach its 
 acme in the phrase which speaks of 
 Osiris as "the Lion of the double lions." 
 •" These two lions, two brothers, the 
 
 two lion-gods, are two solar phases, as 
 diurnal and nocturnal, Har and Let, 
 Shu and Tafnut ; and as there is but one 
 solar orb, so he is ' the Lion of the 
 double lions.'" — Brown, The Unicotn, 
 80. 
 
THE TWIN DEITIES. 207 
 
 two deified kings. But when he adds that their time is after mid- CHAP. 
 
 night, whilst the break of day is yet delayed, all room for doubt • '■ — - 
 
 seems taken away. 1 The two Ahans, or Dawns, Day and Night, are 
 born, it is said, when the Asvins yoke their horses to their car. The 
 twins are born " when the Night leaves her sister, the Dawn, when 
 the dark one gives way to the bright" After them comes Ushas, 
 the Greek Eos, who is followed first by Surya, a feminine, or sister 
 of Surya, the sun, then by Vrishakapayi, then by Saranyu, 2 and lastly by 
 Savitar. They are ihehajate, born here and there, either as appearing 
 in the East and in the West, or as springing up on the earth and in 
 the air ; and this epithet may explain the alternate manifestations of 
 the Dioskouroi, who stand to Helen in the same relation which the 
 Asvins bear to Sarama or Ushas. 
 
 The Asvins are thus the conquerors of darkness, the lords of Parentage 
 light : ever youthful, swift as thought, and possessed, like Indra, ^J^ 
 Agni, and Phoibos, of a profound wisdom. If the poet needs to 
 give them a father, he must assign them a parent in the clear heaven, 
 or say that they are the children of Prajapati, Tvashtar, or Savitar, 
 names for the Creator. Their mother must be the East or West, 
 from which they spring, regarded not as a place, but as the being who 
 imparts to them their mysterious life. 3 As ushering in the healthful 
 light of the sun, they are, like Asklepios and his children, healers 
 and physicians, and their power of restoring the aged to youth re- 
 appears in Medeia, the daughter of the Sun. They are adored at 
 morning and evening tide as Rudrau, the terrible lords of wealth, and 
 are thus identified or connected with another deity who became of 
 supreme importance in the later Hindu mythology. 4 Like the Kou- 
 rStes and Telchines, like Proteus, Thetis, and the other fish-gods, 
 they have the power of changing their shape at will. 
 
 " The twin pair adopt various forms ; one of them shines brightly, 
 the other is black; twin sisters are they, the one black, the other 
 white," 6 — phrases which bring before us the rivalry not only of the 
 Dioskouroi, but of the Theban Eteokles and Polyneikes, and perhaps 
 the black and white eagles in the Agamemnon of ^schylos. 6 Like 
 Phoibos the healer, and like Asklepios and his sons Podaleirios and 
 MacMon, the Asvins are "physicians conversant with all medica- 
 ments." 7 In the Norse tale of Dapplegrim we have the Asvins in 
 their original form as horses ; for when the lad, who, having won on 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 314. * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. ch. 
 
 * Max MUller, Lectures on Language, iii. sect. I, p. 265. 
 
 second series, 498. 5 H. H. Wilson, R. V. S. iii. 97. 
 
 * lb. 492. ' ' tt. 103. » lb. 101. 
 
2o8 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK his wonderful steed the victories of Indra, Herakles, and Bellerophon, 
 - IL ■ i s told that he must produce its match or die, complains to the 
 horse that the task is not easy, "for your match is not to be found 
 in the wide world," the steed replies that he has a match, although 
 it is hard to get at him, for he abides in HelL 
 TheTwins. In Indra and in Agni, Mitra and Varuna, and in the Asvins we 
 have three sets of twins, Yaman, Gemini, each being spoken of as 
 Yama or Yami, the twin brother or the twin sister. These Yaman 
 are the children of Vivasvat, who is wedded both to the morning 
 and to the evening ; and their sister, the night, prays her brother to 
 become her husband. In this Yama we have probably the Hindu 
 god of the dead, whose two dogs with four eyes and wide nostrils 
 go about among men as his messengers. As both are children of 
 Vivasvat, Professor Max Miiller thinks it unnecessary to assume 
 that two Vivasvats were each the father of Yama. The twin who 
 represented the evening would naturally become the lord or judge 
 or guide of the departed. As from the East came all life, so in the 
 West lay the land of the dead, the Elysian fields, the region of 
 Sutala; and thither the sun hastens as he sinks down from the 
 heights of heaven. Thus " Yama is said to have crossed the rapid 
 waters,, to have shown the way to many, to have first known the path 
 on which our fathers crossed over " ; x and the gulf is not wide which 
 separates the functions of the Psychopompos from those of Hades, 
 Like Varuna, Yama has his nooses, and he sends a bird as a token 
 to those who are about to die. But although a darker side is not 
 wanting to his character, Yama remains in the Veda chiefly the god 
 of the blessed in the paradise where he dwells with Varuna. This 
 Yama reappears in the Yima of the Avesta, his father Vivasvat being 
 reproduced as Vivanghvat ; 2 and in Yima we have an embodiment 
 of the Hesiodic golden age free from heat and cold, from sickness 
 and death, an image of the happy region to which Krishna consigns 
 his conquered enemy. In a grotesque myth of the later Yamen, 
 the death of men in youth as well as in old age is accounted for by 
 a mistake made by the herald of Yamen after the latter had been 
 restored to life by Siva who had put him to death. While Yamen 
 lay dead, mankind multiplied so that the earth could scarcely contain 
 them. Yamen on returning to life sent his herald to summon at 
 once all the old men, for none others had ever been called away 
 before. The herald, getting drunk, proclaimed instead that hence- 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Lectures, second 2 Max Miiller, Lectures, second 
 
 series, 515 ; Muir, Principal Deities of series, 522. 
 K- V- 575- 
 
EROS AND ANTEROS. 209 
 
 forth all leaves, fruits, and flowers, should fall to the ground, and chap. 
 
 thus men of all ages began to yield to the power of death.. ■ — - 
 
 The connexion of Soma with Uma has been already noticed. Soma and 
 Another couplet of deities is found in Soma and Surya, the daughter Sflrya " 
 of Surya the Sun ; and here the twin Asvins stand by the side of 
 Soma as the friends of the bridegroom. A later version, which says 
 that, although Savitar had destined his daughter Surya to be the wife 
 of Soma, she was nevertheless won by the Asvins, 1 repeats the story 
 of Pelops and Hippodameia, which represents the maiden as be- 
 coming the prize of the hero who can overtake her in a foot race. So 
 again Arjuna, the Argennos of the myth of Agamemnon, stands to 
 Krishna, who is represented as declaring him to be his own half, in 
 that dual relation which links Phaethon with Helios, Patroklos with 
 Achilleus, Theseus with Peirithoos, Telemachos with Odysseus, and 
 which is seen again in the stories of Pelias and Neleus, Romulus and 
 Remus, Prometheus and Epimetheus, Hengest and Horsa, and in the 
 Teutonic tales of the Two Brothers and of the Faithful John who 
 guards his prince as carefully as the Luxman of Hindu folk-lore 
 guards Rama. This dualism we find again in the Hellenic Eros and 
 Anteros, and still more plainly in the myth of Hermaphrodites. 3 The 
 tale which describes Arjuna as receiving from Mahadeva the Pasupata 
 (or sceptre which guides the cows) under a strict charge not to use it 
 rashly as it might destroy the whole world, 8 carries us to the ill-omened 
 gifts which brought destruction to Phaethon and Patroklos. In the 
 same way Rama is linked with his brother Laxmana, and one myth 
 which regards Rama as a mortal hero speaks of both as wounded and 
 rendered senseless by a cloud of serpents transformed into arrows. 4 
 
 Section IV.— THE DAWN. 
 
 To the poets of all ages and countries the phenomena of morning The lonely 
 and evening are full of pathos and sadness. The course of the day wanderer - 
 itself is but brief, and the career of the bright being who bears it 
 across the heaven may be little more than a series of struggles with 
 the vapours which strive to dim his splendours. All his life long 
 he must toil for the benefit of the mean thing called man, and look 
 
 1 Muir, Contributions to a Knowledge rejects her love, until the nymph lays 
 
 of Vedic Theogony, 3. hands on him as Aphrodite does on 
 
 * This story is after all only a coun- Adonis, 
 terpart of the legends of Echo and 3 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iv. 196, 225. 
 
 Selene 1 , whose part is here played by the * lb. 384. The modern version of 
 
 nymph of the well, Salmakis. Like the story has been already given, book i. 
 
 Endymion and Narkissos, the youth ch. viii. 
 
2IO 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 on clear streams and luscious fruits without daring to quench his 
 ■thirst or appease his, hunger. He may be armed - with invincible 
 weapons ; he may be the conqueror of all his enemies : but the doom 
 is upon him ; he must die in the flower of his age. Still there is for 
 him a grief yet more bitter than this. Throughout almost the whole of 
 his long journey he must go alone. The beautiful being who cheered 
 him when his heart beat high and his limbs were fresh was parted 
 from him almost as soon as he had found her, and there remains of 
 her grace and loveliness only a consoling memory. He has hard toils 
 before him, and there are grievous perils to be encountered Still for 
 him, as for the sons of men, 
 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
 Than never to have loved at all. 
 
 Develope- 
 ment of 
 the myth. 
 
 But although he cannot go back to the bright land where he saw his 
 early love, she may yet be restored to him when the hour of his death 
 has come. The sight of that beautiful form, the tender glance of 
 that loving countenance, will be more than a compensation for his 
 long toil and his early death. He will die looking on her face. But 
 in the meanwhile his heart is filled with an irrepressible yearning. He 
 must hasten on until his eye has seen its desire, even though the 
 shadow of death must immediately fall upon him. He may have 
 been early severed from her; but she is his bride, pure and incor- 
 ruptible, though the mightiest of the land seek to taint her faith and 
 lead her aside into a new love. Her dwelling is his home, and to it 
 he must hasten across the blue seas of heaven, although monsters 
 may seek to scare him and beautiful beings may beseech him to tarry 
 awhile with them in their luxurious chambers. 
 
 Under this thin disguise we see at once the story of Odysseus and 
 Penelope 1 ; but this is, after all, one only of almost a thousand forms 
 which the legends of Phoibos and Dionysos, of Perseus and Bellero- 
 phontes, may assume. The doom of the Dawn is as woful as that 
 of the Sun who has loved her. The glance of both is fatal. The Sun 
 looks upon the tender dew, and under his rays the sparkling drops 
 vanish away. The evening turns to gaze upon the setting sun, and 
 the being on whom her life depends is snatched from her sight. 
 They can remain together only on the condition that the one shall 
 not see the form and face of the other ; and so when, after the rising 
 of the sun, the violet hues of morning faded from the sky, the 
 phrase would run that Indra, or Phoibos, or Orpheus had fixed their 
 eyes on Dahana, or Daphnd, or Eurydike, and their love had passed 
 away from them like the fleeting colours of a dream. But the myth 
 
DISGUISED HEROES. 
 
 rn 
 
 itself might be developed in many ways. The disappearance or death CHAP. 
 
 of Daphne, or Prokris, or Arethousa would mark the moment of the : — 
 
 great catastrophe; but the disaster was only the interruption of a 
 union which had been continued during the long hours of the night, 
 and at once we have in this fact the suggestion of disguise. If the 
 being whose glance scorched even the object of his love could keep 
 her near him without doing her hurt, this could only be because he had 
 shrouded his splendour in darkness, or because he had assumed some 
 other form. Either he might hide his limbs behind the skin of a lion, 
 as in Greek stories, or of a fox or a jackal in Hindu folk-lore, or he 
 might himself assume their form. Such an idea would prompt the 
 tale that the beautiful Dawn had been given by her father in marriage 
 to a hideous monster ; or that she, the youngest and loveliest of his 
 daughters, had been frightened by her gloomy sisters, the earlier 
 hours of the night, into the belief that she was wedded to a loathsome 
 being. The natural growth of the story would frame the more minute 
 details, that before this terrible union the mother of the Dawn was 
 dead ; that the beautiful maiden was sacrificed by a new bride, who 
 took part with her elder sisters ; and that, as she sought to verify their 
 words, she discovered the beauty and majesty of her husband only to 
 see it vanish from her sight. Then over the heart of the forsaken 
 Dawn would come that irrepressible yearning which filled the soul of 
 Odysseus. For her life would now have nothing worth living for but. 
 the hope that one day she should be reunited to him whom she had. 
 lost ; and until she should so recover him, she could know no rest or 
 peace. She must follow him through all lands, she must seek him, 
 at all costs and at every sacrifice. To the uttermost bounds of 
 the earth, and far beyond the clouds which veil the distant moun- 
 tains, beyond the mists which brood on the restless sea, she must 
 journey on, buoyed up by the ever undying longing to see his face 
 once more. There are fearful dangers to be encountered and over- 
 coma She is surrounded by awful shapes, who blot out all bright- 
 ness from the sky ; but the powers of light are on her side. The 
 beautiful clouds which sail on the pure ether will bear her up above 
 the murky vapours, and carry her, as on swan's wings, across the 
 mysterious vaults of heaven. Her heart is full of sadness ; but the 
 tenderness of her beauty is not lessened, and as she moves on her 
 weary way, helpless creatures feel her kindness, and declare that their 
 gratitude shall not end in words. She may be doomed to scale a 
 mountain of ice, or to remove heaps of enormous stones ; but the winds 
 are content to be her ministers, and their warm breath melts the ice,, 
 and drives away the massy storm-clouds. Still the malignant in- 
 
212 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The story 
 of Urvasi. 
 
 fluence of one powerful enemy rests upon her, the influence of that 
 - witching sorceress who seeks to win for herself the love which 
 Odysseus bears to Penelope. But the tasks imposed upon her by 
 her unpitying rival are at last accomplished ; and as the clouds break 
 away from the heaven, the Dawn, or the Eos, who closes the day in 
 our Homeric poems, sees before her the form of him whom she has 
 sought with undaunted and untiring devotion. 
 
 In these simple phrases relating to a drama acted before us every 
 day, we have the framework of a vast number of stories, some of 
 which have furnished subjects for epic poems, while others have 
 assumed strange and grotesque forms in the homely lore of popular 
 tradition. One of the simplest versions of the myth is found in the 
 story of Urvasi, 1 although even here the artificial influence of a 
 growing ceremonial system is manifest. The personification of Urvasi 
 herself is as thin as that of Eos or SelenS. Her name is often found 
 in the Veda as a mere name for the morning, and in the plural 
 number it is used to denote the dawns which passing over men bring 
 them to old age and death. Urvasi is the bright flush of light over- 
 spreading the heaven before the sun rises, and is but another form of 
 the many mythical beings of Greek mythology whose names take us 
 back to the same idea or the same root. As the dawn in the Vedic 
 hymns is called Uriiki, the far-going (Telephassa, Telephos), so is she 
 also Uruasi, the wide-existing or wide-spreading ; as are Europe, 
 Euryanassa, Euryphassa, and many more of the sisters of Athene and 
 Aphrodite\ As such she is the mother of Vasishtha, the bright being, 
 as Oidipous is the son of Iokaste ; and although Vasishtha, like 
 Oidipous, has become a mortal bard or sage, he is still the son of 
 Mitra and Varuna, of night and day. Her lover, Pururavas, is the 
 counterpart of the Hellenic Polydeukes ; a but the continuance of her 
 union with him depends on the condition that she never sees him 
 unclothed. But the Gandharvas, impatient of her long sojourn 
 among mortal men, resolved to bring her back to their bright home ; 
 and Pururavas is thus led unwittingly to disregard her warning. A ewe 
 with two lambs was tied to her couch, and the Gandharvas stole one 
 of them. " Urvasi said, ' They take away my darling, as if I lived in 
 a land where there is no hero and no man.' They stole the second, 
 and she upbraided. her husband again. Then Pururavas looked and 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Chips, Gfc, ii. 99, et 
 ieq. 
 
 2 " Though rava is generally used 
 of sound, yet the root rn, which means 
 originally to cry, is also applied to 
 colour in the sense of a loud or crying 
 colour. Besides, Pururavas calls him- 
 
 self Vasishtha, which, as we know, is 
 a name of the sun ; and if he is called 
 Aii/a, the son of Ida, the same name is 
 elsewhere [X. V. iii. 29, 3) given to 
 Agni, the Fire." — Max Miiller, ib. 101. 
 This son of Ida reappears perhaps as 
 Idas, the father of Kleopatra. 
 
PURURAVAS AND THE GANDHARVAS. 21; 
 
 said, ' How can that be a land without heroes or men where I am ? ' CHAP. 
 
 • n 
 And naked he sprang up ; he thought it was too long to put on his ■ '■ — 
 
 dress. Then the Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, and Urvasi saw 
 
 her husband naked as by daylight. Then she vanished. 1 ' I come 
 
 back,' she said, and went. Then he bewailed his vanished love in bitter 
 
 grief." Her promise to return was fulfilled, but for a moment only, 
 
 at the Lotos-lake, and Pururavas in vain beseeches her to tarry longer. 
 
 " What shall I do with thy speech ? " is the answer of Urvasi. " I am 
 
 gone like the first of the dawns. Pururavas, go home again. I am 
 
 hard to be caught like the winds." Her lover is in utter despair; 
 
 but when he lies down to die, the heart of Urvasi was melted, and she 
 
 bids him come to her on the last night of the year. For that night 
 
 only he might be with her ; but a son should be born to him. 2 On 
 
 that day he went up to the golden seats, and there Urvasi told him 
 
 that the Gandharvas would grant him one wish, and that he must 
 
 make his choice. " Choose thou for me," he said ; and she answered, 
 
 "Say to them, Let me be one of you." So the Gandharvas initiated 
 
 Pururavas into their mysteries, and he became one of the Gandharvas. 
 
 In the story thus related in the Brahmana of the Yagur-Veda we Germs of 
 
 have a maiden wedded to a being on whose form her eyes may not ofVene^ 
 
 rest, although she dwells in his house , and the terms of the compact lo P & 
 
 are broken practically by herself, for although it is Pururavas who 
 
 springs up, still it is Urvasi who provokes him to do so. Finally, 
 
 she is impelled so to tempt him by beings who wish to obtain her 
 
 treasures ; and thus the element of jealousy enters into the legend. 
 
 These leading ideas, of a broken pledge or violated secret, of beings 
 
 jealous of her purity and happiness, and of immediate separation to 
 
 be followed by reunion in the end, furnish the groundwork of a large 
 
 group of stories belonging chiefly to the common lore of the people. 
 
 They resolve themselves into the yet more simple notion of brief 
 
 union broken by an early parting and a long absence, and this notion 
 
 1 Compare the story of Ivan and " Go and be happy with the prince, my 
 his frog-bride. — Gubernatis, Zoological friend : 
 
 Mythology, ii. 377. But when he views the son that thou 
 
 2 This child may be the first sun of shalt bear him, 
 
 the new year ; but whether the myth be. Then hitherward direct thy prompt 
 taken of that or any other sunrise, it return. 
 
 is equally true that the mother must The fated term expires, and to con- 
 vanish soon after her child has been sole 
 
 born. Hence in the play of Kalidasa, His father for my loss, he is restored, 
 
 after Urvas! has been reunited to her I may no longer tarry." 
 lover, she tells him, 
 
 When^your love I gladly left the f^^*™***?^ 
 
 Of heaven, the monarch thus declared lo Sy>" C/ ">' "■ ,2(5 - 
 his will, 
 
214 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK is the germ of the Odyssey. In the very spring-time of their joy the 
 
 ?i — ■ chieftain of Ithaka is parted from his bride. While he is away, she 
 
 has to undergo hard trial at the hands of men who seek rather her 
 riches than herself; and even when the twenty years are over, and 
 Odysseus sees Penelope 1 once more, the poet still speaks of a time 
 soon coming when they must again be parted. Here also the myth 
 of Pururavas is in close agreement with that of Odysseus, for he too 
 must be again parted from his love. She who, ever young, yet 
 making men old, knows neither age nor change, cannot avert the 
 doom which falls alike on Phaethon, Memnon, and Sarpedon, on 
 Achilleus, Baldur, and Sigurd. But all have the same work to do; 
 and if the dawn cannot save them from death, she can restore them 
 to life, and thus through her they become immortal Thus Puru- 
 ravas, who was created especially to do battle with and to conquer 
 the powers of darkness, addresses Urvasi as the immortal among 
 the mortals ; and says of himself that he, as the brightest sun, holds 
 her who spreads the sky and fills the air with light. The very rite 
 for the sake of which the Brahmans converted the simple myth into 
 an institutional legend points to the true nature of Pururavas. He 
 can become immortal only by devising the mode of kindling fire 
 by friction ; and thus like Bhuranyu and Phoroneus, Hermes and 
 Prometheus, he falls into the ranks of those who are the first to 
 bestow the boon of fire on man. Nor is it without significance that 
 in the play of Kalidasa PurQravas, when first he rescues Urvasi from 
 the beings who have carried her away, has already a wife, who, seeing 
 her husband wasting away with love for another, makes a vow to 
 treat with kindness the object of his love, whoever she may be. 
 Pururavas has not indeed for his first wife the love which Kephalos 
 is said to bear to Prokris ; but here Urvasi, who hesitates not to take 
 her rival's place, is so far the exact counterpart of Eos, while in the 
 first wife we have all the self-devotion which marks the beautiful 
 daughter of Herse. 
 The Dawn In most of these legends the meeting and the severance of these 
 Waters. lovers take place by the side of the stream or the water from which 
 Aphrodite" rises, and in which the nymphs bathe the newly-born 
 Apollon. It is on the river's bank that Eurydike is bitten by the 
 fatal snake, and Orpheus is doomed to the same weary search as 
 Pururavas, for the love which has been lost On the heights which 
 overhang Peneios, Phoibos sees and chases the beautiful Daphng, 
 and into the blue stream the maiden plunges when she almost feels 
 the breath of her pursuer. So again Arethousa commits herself to 
 the waters as she flies from the huntsman Alpheios, who wins her 
 
THE FROG-SUN. 
 
 215 
 
 love only when they meet again upon the shoie of Ortygia, the dawn- 
 land. The Greek river is but the Teutonic Elbe, the runfcing stream, • 
 and in the huntsman of Mainalos we see only an image of the sun 
 as he rests on the waters in the morning or the evening, in other 
 words, the Frog-prince of the German legend. 1 In the Sanskrit story 
 Bheki, the frog, is a maiden who consents to marry a king on con- 
 dition that he never shows 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." a As in the story of Urvasi 
 the husband is the actual delinquent, but he is hurried into the fatal 
 act by the words of his wife. If instead of the promise not to show 
 her water we substitute a pledge that the lover shall not look upon 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 II. 
 
 1 In the mythology of Assyria, 
 BhekS, or the frog-sun, is represented by 
 the fish-sun, who, as Berosus says, rose 
 up from the sea each morning, and 
 plunged into it every evening. Mr. 
 Gould remarks {Curious Myths, second 
 series, 231) that "his semipiscine form 
 was an expression of the idea, that half 
 his time was spent above ground, and 
 half below the waves. " This fish-god 
 is, like the Aryan Proteus, or Helios, 
 the possessor of a mysterious wisdom of 
 which, under certain conditions, he will 
 make human beings partakers. As 
 Oannes, or Dag-on, the fish On, he is 
 the great teacher of the Babylonians, 
 and his name is seen in the Hebrew 
 Bethaon (Bethaven), which is translated 
 by Bethshemesh, the house of the Sun. 
 He is horned, as Mr. Gould remarks, 
 like all other sun and moon deities, the 
 moon goddess of the Syrians "being 
 Derketo, Atergatis, the mother of 
 Semiramis, in whose story again we 
 have the elements of many Aryan myths. 
 Like Cyrus and Romulus, Semiramis 
 is brought up by a shepherd, and her 
 beauty attracts the attention of a 
 general, whose name is, of course, 
 Onnes. But she is wooed also by 
 Ninos, and thereupon Onnes slays him- 
 self. After a life full of marvels she 
 wings her way to heaven in the form 
 of a dove, as Romulus vanishes in the 
 storm-cloud, and Aineias disappears in 
 the waters of the Numician stream. 
 
 2 Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 248. This 
 is the germ of the beautiful story of 
 Undine, as told by Fouque. She, like 
 Daphng, is the daughter of the stream ; 
 and the condition imposed upon her 
 husband is, that he is never to speak 
 angrily to her when on or near any 
 water. " If you should, my kinsfolk 
 
 would regain their right over me. They 
 would tear me from you in their fury, 
 because they would conceive that one of 
 their race was injured ; and I should be 
 compelled, as long as I lived, to dwell 
 below in the crystal palaces and never 
 dare ascend to you again ; or should 
 they send me up to you, that would be 
 far worse still. If he is false to her, 
 she can reappear only to kiss him to 
 death. Selene can look upon Endymi6n 
 only when he is just plunging into his 
 dreamless sleep. The tale so exquisitely 
 told by Fouque was derived by him from 
 the Treatise of Elemental Spirits by 
 Theophrastus Paracelsus. The leading 
 feature of his story is the acquisition of 
 a human soul by Undine on her marriage 
 with the knight Huldbrand. Mr. Gould 
 cites a Canadian story of an Ottawa 
 chief, who, whilst sitting by the water- 
 side, sees arising from the flood a beauti- 
 ful woman, who prays him to suffer her 
 to live on earth, as she sought to win a 
 human soul, and could do this only by 
 marriage with a mortal. ' ' He consented 
 and took her to his own house, where 
 she was to him as a daughter. Seven 
 years after, an Andirondak youth be- 
 held and loved her. He took her to 
 wife, and she obtained that which she 
 had desired, a human soul." — Curious 
 Myths, second series, 238. It is possible 
 that this story may be an importation 
 from Europe ; but we may ask for some 
 conclusive evidence of the fact, when we 
 find the legend of Pandora's box among 
 the Indians of Labrador. Jesuit mis- 
 sionaries may have imparted much to 
 their converts, but it is not likely that 
 they instructed their hearers in the 
 mythical fancies of pagan Greeks. — 
 Hinds, Explorations in Labrador, i. 61. 
 
2l6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Er6s and 
 PsychS. 
 
 his bride while she is bathing, the myth remains essentially the same ; 
 ■ and in this form we see at once the germ of the story of Melusina, 
 who is found by Count Raymund, as Daphne is found by Apollon, 
 near running water, and who, like Bheki or Urvasi, readily consents 
 to marry her human lover on the condition that he shall never 
 attempt to see her on one day of each week. When at length the 
 promise is broken, Raymund sees his beautiful wife in the water, the 
 lower portion of her body being now in the form of a fish. But 
 Melusina did not know that her husband had thus seen her, and, as 
 in Fouque"'s story of Undine, the catastrophe comes only when 
 Raymund calls her a serpent and bids her depart from his house. 1 
 
 The idea, common to all these tales, of beings who though united 
 in the closest love may not look upon each other, is but little 
 modified in the story of Eros and Psyche. The version given by 
 Appuleius is commonly spoken of as an allegory. It deserves the 
 name as much and as little as the Odyssey. Here, as in the tales 
 already referred to, no liquid must come near the mysterious being 
 to whom the love of the mortal husband or wife is given. The old 
 phrase that the sun must die at the sight of water, 2 has retained its 
 hold on the story-tellers of all the Aryan nations ; but the version of 
 Appuleius assigns reasons where the earlier Sanskrit myth is content 
 to relate incidents. If like Urvasi Psyche brings about her own 
 punishment, she does so because she is under a doom laid on her by 
 Venus. But Venus is Aphrodite Anadyomene, the mother, the wife, 
 or the child of the sun ; and the notion that the love of the sun for 
 
 1 For other versions and variations 
 of this story see Gould, Curious Myths, 
 " Melusina." The same myth is intro- 
 duced by Sir Walter Scott in his ro- 
 mance of Anne of Geierslcin (ch. xi. ), 
 whose mother's life depends on a bril- 
 liant opal which must not be touched 
 with water. This gem, like many 
 others, is sympathetic. It is, in short, 
 the fatal brand of Meleagros. See also 
 Scott, Border Minstrelsy, introduction 
 to Ballad of Tamlane. 
 
 The idea of ugliness or unseemliness 
 would naturally come to be connected 
 with Bheki or the Frog. Hence the 
 king's daughter in the German story of 
 the Frog Prince shows no special fancy 
 for the little creature which brings up 
 for her the golden ball (the sun's orb) 
 from the bottom of the well. The ugli- 
 ness of Bheki serves to give point to the' 
 beautiful Gaelic legend of Nighean Righ 
 Fo Thuinn, Campbell, Tales of the West 
 Highlands, iii. 404. The maiden (Aph- 
 
 rodite) is not, indeed, here described as 
 a frog; but she is a "strange-looking 
 ugly creature " with her hair down to 
 her heels, who in vain entreats Fionn 
 and Oisean (Finn and Ossian) to let 
 her come to their fire. Diarmaid, who 
 scruples not to say how hideous he 
 thinks her, is more merciful ; but the 
 Loathly Lady (for it is the same myth) 
 becomes as exacting as the little Frog 
 in Grimm's story. She has not been 
 long at the fire when she insists on 
 coming under Diarmaid's plaid. He 
 turns a fold of it between them ; and 
 presently he finds by his side "the most 
 beautiful woman that man ever saw." 
 She is the Dawn-maiden, and she raises 
 for his dwelling that palace of the sun 
 which the Arabian story-teller delights 
 to describe in the tale of Allah-ud-deen. 
 The same being appears as the "foul 
 wight " in Chaucer s tale of the Wife of 
 Bath, Keightley, Fairy Mythology, 323. 
 2 Max Mtiller, Chip, ii. 248. 
 
er6s and psyche. 217 
 
 another must excite her jealousy and anger was one which must chap. 
 
 sooner or later be imported into the myth. With its introfluction the 
 framework of the story was completed; and so the tale ran that 
 Venus charged her son to fill Psyche with the madness which made 
 Titania fall in love with the enchanted Bottom. But Psyche, the 
 dawn with its soft breath, is so beautiful that Eros (Amor, Cupido) 
 falls in love with her himself, and taking her to a secret cave (the 
 cave of Dikte or of Lyktos), visits her as Pururavas comes to Urvasi. 
 Stirred up by Venus, her sisters tell Psyche that she is wedded to a 
 hideous monster, and at length her curiosity is so roused that, taking 
 a lamp, she gazes upon her lover and beholds before her the per- 
 fection of beauty. But a drop of oil falls from her lamp on the 
 sleeping god, and the brief happiness" of Psyche is ended. She is 
 left desolate like Pururavas, and like him she must go in search of 
 her lost love. Eos has looked on Helios, and he has plunged 
 beneath the sea. If she seek him, it must be through the weary 
 hours of the night, amidst many perils and at the cost of vast labour. 
 In every temple Psyche looks for her lover until at last she reaches 
 the dwelling of Venus, under whose spell he lies like Odysseus in the 
 home of Kirke or Kalypso. At her bidding she accomplishes some 
 hard and degrading tasks, under which she must have died but for 
 the love of Eros, who, though invisible, still consoled and cheered 
 her. By his aid she at last made her peace with Venus, and becom- 
 ing immortal, was united with her lover for ever. Of all these 
 incidents not one has been invented by Appuleius ; and all that can 
 be said is that he has weakened rather than strengthened the beauty 
 of the myth by adapting it to the taste of a thoroughly artificial age. 
 Having taken up a story which had not yet been brought within the 
 charmed circle of epic or lyric poetry, he has received credit for an 
 originality to which the familiar tale of Beauty and the Beast, with 
 which it is substantially identical, may lay an equal claim. 1 
 
 1 In Hindu folk-lore this is the story The hypothesis is scarcely necessary, 
 
 of Gandharba-sena. Of this being Cap- unless it is to be maintained that the 
 
 tain Burton (Tales of Indian Devilry, whole folk-lore of Greece, Germany, 
 
 preface xiii.) says that he "is a quasi- Scandinavia, and other countries has 
 
 historical personage who lived a century been bodily imported from India. The 
 
 preceding the Christian era." Even story of Gandharba-sena is, however, 
 
 granting the fact, we have here only a the story of Midas, of the Irish Lavra 
 
 name belonging to the same class with Loingsech, and of the Little Ass in 
 
 Roland, Arthur, Dietrich of Bern, or Grimm's collection ; and it may be 
 
 others for whom an historical existence noted that the being transformed into 
 
 has been claimed. The name clearly an ass in the romance of Appuleius is 
 
 suggests a comparison with Gandharva Lucius of Corinth (Phoibos Lykeios). 
 
 Pururavas. The story of Gandharba- The story of Psyche is also told in the 
 
 sena Captain Burton regards as the ori- Gaelic Tale of the Daughter of the 
 
 ginal of the Golden Ass of Appuleius. Skies. 
 
 II. 
 
2l8 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 The idea which underlies these tales runs through a large class of 
 legends, which carry us into almost every Aryan land and make the 
 hypothesis of conscious borrowing or importation as perilous as we 
 have seen it to be in the story of the Master Thief. In almost all 
 these legends the youngest and most beautiful of three (sometimes 
 of twelve) daughters is married or given up to some unsightly being 
 or monster, or to some one whom she is led to suppose hideous or 
 repulsive. In some instances, as in the common English nursery 
 tale, the enchantment is ended when the maiden confesses her love 
 for the disguised being in his unsightly shape : l in the version which 
 Appuleius followed, the maiden has a lover who is marvellously 
 beautiful, but whose beauty she has never seen. In all cases, how- 
 ever, there are jealous sisters or a jealous mother who insist that the 
 lover is hideous, and incite her to look upon him while he is asleep. 
 Thus goaded on, she disregards the warnings in each case given that 
 such curiosity cannot be indulged without causing grievous disaster, 
 and in each case the sleeping lover is awakened by a drop of oil or 
 tallow from the torch or lamp in the maiden's hand, and instantly 
 vanishes or is transformed, generally into a bird which tells her that 
 she must wander in search of him through many weary years, and do 
 the bidding of some harsh mistress into whose power her fatal curi- 
 osity has brought her. In some versions, as in that of Appuleius, 
 this mistress is the mother of the lost lover. 2 Then follow the years 
 of wandering and toil, which can be brought to an end only by the 
 achievement of tasks, generally three in number, each utterly beyond 
 human powers. In these tasks the maiden is aided by brute creatures 
 whom she has befriended in their moment of need, and who perform 
 for her that which she could not possibly accomplish herself. The 
 completion of the ordeal is followed by the happy union of the 
 maiden with her lover. 
 The Search It is scarcely necessary to say that there is perhaps no one feature 
 for'the 3 "" m these stories which does not reappear in the tales told of Boots, or 
 Dawn. the youngest son, in his search for the enchanted princess who has 
 
 1 The converse of this incident is are seen again in the story of Hansel 
 found in the legend of the Loathly Lady. and Grethel. These two come in the 
 See also Fouque's Sintram. end to a pond (Hellespontos) ; but the 
 
 2 In Grimm's Story of the Twelve maiden who represents Helle is more 
 Brothers she is the mother of the king fortunate than the daughter of Athamas. 
 who marries the dawn-maiden, i.e. she In the Gaelic story of The Chest, Camp- 
 is Venus. She reappears as his second bell, ii. 4, she disguises herself as a 
 wife in the tales of The Little Brother gillie in order to search for her lost 
 and Sister, of the Six Swans, who fly lover. This story contains also the 
 away like the children of Nephele, and myth of the judgment of Portia in the 
 of Little Snow White. The Little Merchant of Venice, ib. 6,13. 
 Brother and Sister (Phrixos and Helle) 
 
THE MINISTERS OF ER6S AND PSYCHE. 219 
 
 been torn away from him, or whom after a long toil he is to win as CHAP, 
 his bride. It could not be otherwise, 'when the stories tvfrn in the — — : — • 
 one case on the search of the dawn for the sun, in the other on 
 the search of the sun for the dawn. As we might expect in popular 
 tales, the images drawn from myths of the day and night are mingled 
 with notions supplied by myths of summer and winter. The search 
 is always in comparative gloom or in darkness. 1 Either it is Odysseus 
 journeying homeward among grievous perils, clad in beggar's raiment, 
 or it is Orpheus seeking Eurydike in the awful regions of Hades. 
 The toil or the battle which precedes the victory is common to all 
 the traditions, whether epical or popular ; but in the wildest forms of 
 Aryan folk-lore the machinery of the most complicated tales can be 
 broken up into its original parts. In northern countries especially, 
 the powers of frost, snow, and cold, must be conquered before Phoibos 
 can really win Daphne, or Psyche recover Eros. Hence there are 
 mountains of glass (glaciers) to be scaled, huge castles of ice to be 
 thrown down, or myriads of icebergs or boulders to be removed. In 
 these tasks the youth or the maiden is aided by bears, wolves, or 
 foxes, by ducks, swans, eagles, or by ants, the Myrmidons of 
 Achilleus ; but all these are names under which the old mythical 
 language spoke of the clouds or the winds, or of the light which 
 conquers the darkness. The bear appears in the myth of the seven 
 shiners as well as in that of Arkas and Kallisto, the wolf in the stories 
 of Phoibos Lykeios, of Lykaon, and the Myrmidons. The clouds 
 assume the forms of eagles and swans alike in Eastern or Western 
 traditions. The eagles bear Surya Bai on their wings through the 
 heaven, and the swans, or white cirri clouds, are seen in all the 
 stories which tell of Swan maidens and the knights who woo and win 
 them. These creatures, who are as devoted to the youth or the 
 maiden as the Myrmidons are to Achilleus, speedily remove the 
 mighty heaps of grain, stones, or ice, and leave the battle-ground 
 clear for their joyous meeting. In the German story of the White 
 Snake, the flesh of which, like the serpents of Iamos and- the heart 
 of Hogni in the Volsung tale, imparts to him who eats it a knowledge 
 of the language of birds, the labour falls on the lover, while the 
 
 1 This search is well described in to the maiden whom he rescues in the 
 
 the Caelic story of Nighean Righ Fo Realm Underwaves (where Herakles 
 
 Thuinn, where the hero Diarmaid loses regains Alkestis), and thus he leaves 
 
 his wife, as Raymund of Toulouse is her to go to his own home. After all it 
 
 separated from Melusina, because he is but Orpheus, who here abandons 
 
 breaks the compact made with her. Eurydike 1 , instead of Eurydike fading 
 
 The search goes as in the other stories, from the eyes of Orpheus. The one 
 
 but an odd turn is given to it at the myth is as forcible and true as the other, 
 
 end by making Diarmaid take a dislike — Campbell, iii. 419. 
 
220 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK maiden plays the part of Aphrodite' in the legend of Psyche; The 
 
 ■ ^ — • animals here befriended by the trusty servant, who is Eros, or Boots, 
 
 or Odysseus, or a thousand others, are fishes, ants, and ravens — 
 names which carry us to the fish or frog sun, to the Myrmidons and 
 the clouds ; and the tasks are the recovery of a ring, 1 the picking-up 
 of some bags of millet seed, and the finding of the apple of life (the 
 sun's orb). The first is accomplished by the fishes, one of which, as 
 in the story of Polykrates, brings the ring in its mouth, the second 
 by the ants, and the third by the ravens. 
 Origin of That these tales, of which the most familiar type for English chil- 
 
 myths. dren is that of Beauty and the Beast, have been borrowed directly 
 from the apologue of Appuleius, no one probably will venture to 
 maintain. With as little likelihood can it be said that they were 
 suggested by the Vedic myth of Urvasi and Pururavas. Their 
 relationship to the latter is precisely that of the Latin and Greek 
 dialects to the ancient Sanskrit ; and thus they must be placed in 
 the class of organic myths. They spring up on all soils from the seed 
 which the Aryan tribes carried away with them when they left their 
 common home, and every variation may therefore be noted as ex- 
 hibiting the power of growth inherent in the old mythical ideas. In 
 few cases is there even a plausible ground for saying that any one 
 tale is copied or consciously adopted from another ; in none is there 
 any necessity for the assumption. The Teutonic nurse was as little 
 conscious that the Frog Prince and Boots were one and the same 
 person, as the grandams of the Punjab were that Bheki was but 
 another form of Urvasi. As an example of the measure in which the 
 myth, retaining still the essential idea, may become modified, we 
 may take the tale of the Soaring Lark. 2 . In this story, the maiden 
 knows that the being who, like Herakles with the lion's skin on his 
 back, is during the day a lion is at night a man, but no ray of light 
 must fall upon him while he is in his human shape. At her entreaty, 
 however, he goes to the bridal feast of the elder sister, where a 
 single ray of light streams in upon him through a chink in a door 
 made of unseasoned wood, and the maiden entering the room finds 
 a dove, which says that for seven years he must fly about in the 
 world, but that at every seventh mile he will let fall a drop of blood 
 
 1 Compare also the Gaelic story of woman at Benares, and published in the 
 Mac Iain Direach, Campbell, Tales of Asiatic Journal. See also the tales in 
 the West Highlands, ii. 359. the Pentameron of Basil, 15, 19, 44; 
 
 2 Grimm. With these legends may and Hahn's Greek and Albanian Tales. 
 be compared the story of Tulisa (a tale A complete analysis of the fable of 
 which in Professor Benfey's opinion is Appuleius is given in Friedlaiiter's Sit- 
 very ancient), obtained from a washer- tengeschichte Horns. 
 
THE DAWN AND HER LOVER. 221 
 
 and a feather, to guide her in her quest of him. 1 At last this guid- chap. 
 
 ance fails her, and she asks the sun and moon to tell her whither the ■ : 
 
 dove had gone. As in the tale of Demfiter and PersephonS, they 
 are unable to say : but they give her a casket and an egg which may 
 one day be of use. She then asks aid of the North Wind, who bears 
 her over the world until she rescues her lover, who has resumed his 
 lion's shape, from a caterpillar who is an enchanted princess. But 
 the latter, when disenchanted, seizes on the maiden's lover, and 
 bears him away. The maiden follows to the place in which she 
 hears that the wedding is to be celebrated, and then opening the 
 casket, finds a dress which glistens like the sun and which the 
 princess seeks to buy. But it can be given only for flesh and blood, 
 and the maiden demands access to the bridegroom's chamber as her 
 recompense. During the first night her lover sleeps by force of a 
 potion, but her voice sounds in his ears like the murmuring of the 
 wind through the fir-trees. On the next day, learning the trick, he 
 refuses the draught, and the maiden, availing herself of the gift 
 bestowed by the moon, is reunited to him at last. 2 
 
 The Norse tale " East of the Sun and West of the Moon," ap- ■■ East of 
 proaches more nearly to the form of Beauty and the Beast. A white *£ West 
 bear (we are at once reminded of the process which converted the of the 
 seven shiners into seven bears) taps at a poor man's window on a °° n * 
 cold winter night, and promises him boundless wealth, on condition 
 that he receives his daughter as his wife. The man is willing, but 
 the maiden flatly says nay, until, overcome by the thought of her 
 father's poverty, she agrees to live with the beast. The bear takes 
 her to a palace in which the rooms gleam with silver and gold ; but 
 the being who comes to her at night is a beautiful youth who never 
 allows her to see him. The woman who acts the part of Venus in 
 this tale is the mother, not of the lover, but of the maiden ; and as 
 she could scarcely be represented as jealous of her daughter's happi- 
 ness, we are told that, while suggesting the same doubts which 
 brought Psyche to her trouble, she warned her child not to let a 
 drop of oil fall on her husband while she stooped to look upon him. 
 The sequel of the story presents no features materially different from 
 
 1 Frere, Deccan Tales, 221. prince is imprisoned. In the tale of 
 
 2 In the German story of the Iron Strong Hans (Grimm), it is Psyche who 
 Stove (Grimm), the part of Er6s is is rescued from a tower or well in which 
 played by a king's son, who is compelled she is confined like the Argive Danae. 
 by a witch to sit in a great iron stove In the legends of the True Bride and of 
 which stood in a wood. This is mar.i- the Drummer the maiden recovers her 
 festly a reversing of the myth of Bryn- lover as in the story of the Soaring 
 hild, in which the flame surrounding Lark. See also ch. viii. sect. 2 of this 
 the maiden on the Glistening Heath book. 
 
 -answers to the fiery stove in which the 
 
222 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK that of the Soaring Lark, except that the oil dropped from the 
 
 • h^ — • maiden's lamp is made to bring about the catastrophe. The prince 
 
 is, of course, under the power of the sorceress, who wishes to marry 
 him, like Odysseus in the house of Kirke or the cave of Kalypso ; 
 but when on the wedding morning he displays a fine shirt with three 
 drops of tallow on it, and declares that he will marry only the woman 
 who can wash them out, the Trolls, vainly attempting the task, see 
 the prize snatched from their hand by the maiden whom they had 
 despised as a stranger and a beggar. 1 
 The Wan- The myth passed into other forms. In every case the bonds of 
 the' e Forest. true * ove were severe ^ ', but the persons thus separated were some- 
 times brothers and sisters, sometimes parents and children. In the 
 German story of the Twelve Brothers, the sister goes forth to search 
 for the lost children in that great forest which reappears in almost all 
 tales of Teutonic folk-lore, the forest of the night or the winter, in 
 which the huntsman or the king's daughter, or the two babes, or 
 Tanhaiiser or True Thomas, the prince, the tailor, or the soldier, 
 lose their way, to fall in every instance into the hands of witches, or 
 robbers, or magicians, sometimes malignant, sometimes merciful and 
 almost genial. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that under this 
 type of solar legend (for, as turning on the presence or the absence of 
 light and warmth, these are all solar legends), four-fifths of the folk- 
 lore of northern Europe may be ranged. The inhabitants of this 
 dark forest are the Panis, by whom the wanderers are sometimes 
 welcomed, sometimes slain. These wanderers, or stolen youths or 
 maidens, can be recovered only through much suffering on the part 
 of those who seek them. In the tales of the Twelve Brothers and 
 the Six Swans, the sister must not utter a word for seven or for six 
 years, an incident which, in the story of the Woodcutter's Child, is 
 changed into loss of voice, inflicted as a punishment by the angel 
 who has charged her not to look into the thirteenth door of the 
 palace in the land of Happiness, or in other words, into the treasure- 
 house of Ixion or Tantalos. But the appetite for mythical narratives 
 was easily gratified. Incidents repeated a thousand times, with 
 different names and slight differences in their sequence or arrange- 
 ment, never palled upon it. If Psyche has hard tasks to perform 
 
 1 In the German story of Bearskin, to be the victim, saying that a promise 
 
 the soldier is not turned into a beast, which has been made must be kept, 
 
 but is under compact with the evil one The transformation is more complete in 
 
 not to comb his hair or wash his face the story of Hans the Hedgehog, whose 
 
 for seven years, but to wear a bear sark enchantment is brought to an end" by 
 
 or cloak. In this disguise he compels burning his skin, as in the Deccan story 
 
 the king to give him one of his daughters of the enchanted rajah, 
 in marriage, and the youngest consents 
 
THE SPELL OF THE MOON-GODDESS. 223 
 
 before recovering; Eros, the Greek was as well content to listen to the CHAP. 
 
 fM 11 
 story of the same tasks as they are performed by Eros before he can ■ ^ — - 
 
 recover Psyche. Thus the part of the latter in the legend of Appu- 
 leius is played by the former in the German stories of the White 
 Snake and the Golden Bird, the Queen Bee, Strong Hans, the Drum- 
 mer, and many others. 1 
 
 The common element of all these stories is the separation of two The spell 
 lovers by the intervention of a third person, who is represented some- {jgJJJ. 000 " 
 times as the mother, more often as another lover of the youth whose 
 heart is given to the maiden from whom he is to be parted. In the 
 latter case, her great object is to prolong the separation for her own 
 benefit ; and we have at once the framework of the tales which relate 
 the sojourn of Odysseus in the abodes of Kirke and Kalypso. Pene- 
 lope, like Psyche, is far away, and though Odysseus has not forgotten 
 her and longs to be with her, still he cannot escape from his irksome 
 bondage. While the time of slumber lasts, he must tarry with the 
 beautiful women who seek to wean him from his early love. The 
 myth is but the fruit of phrases which spoke of the sun as sojourning 
 in the land of sleep, freed from all woes and cares, 2 and but dimly 
 remembering the beautiful hues of morning under the magic charm 
 of night. Thus in Kirke 1 and Kalypso alike we have the moon- 
 goddess beneath whose spell the sun may be said to slumber, and in 
 the palace of the one and* the flashing cave of the other we see the 
 wonderful home of Tara Bai, the Star-maiden, the Ursula or Selene 
 of the modern Indian tale. Girt with her zone of stars, the beautiful 
 being who can neither grow old nor die sings the lulling song whose 
 witching power no mortal may withstand. If she seeks for sensuous 
 enjoyment, still her desire is not for the brutal pleasures which turn 
 men into swine ; 3 but to see before her the wise chief whose glory is 
 in all lands is a happiness for which she is ready to sacrifice all her 
 
 1 This myth reappears in a very thin voured, and the youngest goat in 
 
 disguise in the ballad of Erlinton, Scott's Grimm's story of the Wolf and the 
 
 Border Minstrelsy. Here we have the Seven Little Goats escapes the fate of 
 
 forest, the maiden and her lover, while the six others. 
 
 the robbers are a troop of knights 2 " Tm>' otitivas aSa^s Siree 8' li\y4u>i/. 
 
 headed by an old and grey-haired Soph. Phil. 827. 
 
 warrior, Winter himself. The knight, 3 The turning of the companions of 
 
 of course, fights with and slays all, ex- Odysseus into swine is only another 
 
 cept the grey-haired chief, who is suf- form of the more common transforma- 
 
 fered to go home to tell the tale ; in tion into birds which, the witches of 
 
 other words, the mortal Medousa is Teutonic and Arabian folk-lore keep 
 
 slain, but the power of cold itself (her hung up in cages round their walls. 
 
 immortal sisters) cannot be destroyed. Compare the story of Jorinde and 
 
 With this we may compare the deaths Joringel (Grimm) with that of Punchkin 
 
 of Helle 1 and Sarpedon, while Phrixos in the Deccan Tales, and of the Two 
 
 and Glaukos live on. So, too, the Sisters in the Arabian Nights. 
 youngest child of Kronos is not de- 
 
224 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK wealth and splendour. Still her abode is full of a strange mystery. 
 - Its magnificence is not the magnificence of the open sunshine, its 
 
 pleasures are not the wholesome pleasures of the outer air. If then 
 the sun tarries in her chambers, it is because he is under a spell, 
 because Selene has cast her deep sleep upon Endymion, and Zeus 
 has not yet sent Hermes to bid Kalypso let Odysseus go. Thus in 
 these Greek myths we have the germ and the groundwork of all those 
 countless stories which speak of mortal men carried away from their 
 homes to dwell with unseen beings beneath the earth. These beings 
 are in each story headed by a beautiful queen, whose will it is impos- 
 sible to resist. This power is prominent in the myth which tells us 
 that Thomas the Rimer was carried off in his youth to Fairyland, 
 where he became possessed of vast and mysterious knowledge. At 
 the end of seven years he was suffered to go back to the upper earth 
 on condition of obeying the summons to return to Elfland whenever 
 it might be given. The bidding came while Thomas was making 
 merry with some friends in the Tower of Ercildoune. A hart and a 
 hind, it was said, had come from the neighbouring forest and were 
 slowly moving up the street of the village. Thomas immediately 
 rose, left the house, and following the animals to the wood was never 
 seen again. 1 The story of Thomas is substantially identical with 
 Chaucer's Rime of Sir Thopas, in whom the beauty of the Fairy 
 Queen excites the same desire which the sight of Helen awakened in 
 the Athenian Peirithoos. 2 This fairy queen sometimes assumes the 
 
 1 Scott, Border Minstrelsy, iv. 114. such fictions. "In one of Plutarch's 
 
 Mr. Gould, in his chapter on the Moun- tracts, De Defect. Orac. 21, a certain 
 
 tain of Venus, notices among other Cleombrotus entertains the company 
 
 stories that of the Norse Helgi, Thorir's with an account of an Eastern traveller 
 
 son, who is invited by Ingebjorg the whose character and fortunes are still 
 
 Troll queen to come and live with her. more remarkable than those of the 
 
 His absence, however, is confined to Scottish seer. Of this man we are told 
 
 three days, at the end of which he re- that he only appeared among his fellow 
 
 turns home laden with treasure. His mortals once a year. The rest of his 
 
 second visit was extended over many time was spent in the society of nymphs 
 
 years, and from this he returned blind. and demons who had granted him an 
 
 The story told by Gervase of Tilbury, unusual share of personal beauty, had 
 
 the scene of which is the mountain of rendered him proof against disease, and 
 
 Cavargum in Catalonia, is cited by Sir supplied him with a fruit which was to 
 
 Walter Scott in his introduction to the satisfy his hunger, and of which he 
 
 Ballad of Tamlane, Border Minstrelsy. partook only once a month. He was, 
 
 » Mr. Price (introduction to War- moreover, endowed with a miraculous 
 
 ton s History of English Poetry, 49) gift of tongues ; his conversation resem- 
 
 ■compares the journey of Thomas to Elf- bled a continuous flow of verse ; his 
 
 land, in the Scottish ballad, with ^Elian's knowledge was universal, and an un- 
 
 story (Var. Hist. iii. 18) respecting usual visitation of prophetic fervour 
 
 Anostos "the bourne from which no enabled him to unfold the hidden secrets 
 
 traveller returns," and remarks that the of futurity." This is practically the 
 
 prophetic power acquired by the Rimer story of the Thrakian Zalmoxis, which 
 
 during his sojourn with the Fairy Queen Herodotos refuses to believe iv on 
 is no novel feature in the history of ' 
 
HORSELEERG AND ERCILDOUNE. 22 5 
 
 form of the Echidna who for a time made Herakles sojourn in her chap. 
 
 dwelling : but the Tailor's son of Basle in the mediaeval story had the ^ — • 
 
 courage neither of Herakles nor of Sir Gawain, and he was so 
 terrified by the writhing of her tail that in spite of the beauty of her 
 face he fled after giving her only two of the three kisses which she 
 had bargained for. 1 Such a myth as this, it is obvious, would, if 
 subjected to Christian influence, exhibit the fairy queen as a malig- 
 nant demon who takes delight in corrupting the faith of true believers 
 by plunging them into a horrible sensuality. Thus modified, the 
 myth of Odysseus and Kalypso appears as the story of Tanhaiiser, 
 whom Venus entices into her magic cave, within the Horselberg 
 (Ercildoune) or mountain of Ursula. After a time the sensuous 
 enjoyment of the place palls upon him as upon Odysseus, and he 
 makes his escape to the earth with a weary load of sin upon his 
 heart, for which he vainly seeks to obtain absolution. 2 At last he 
 comes before pope Urban IV., who tells him that his pastoral staff 
 will put forth leaves and blossoms sooner than God should pardon 
 him. Tanhaiiser has scarcely departed when the staff is seen to 
 bloom ; but it is too late. The minnesinger cannot be found, and 
 he re-enters the Horselberg in despair, never to leave it again. 
 Another modification, not less obvious and more in accordance with 
 the spirit of the mediaeval myth, would be that of mere sleep, and 
 Endymion would thus become the type of other slumberers to whom 
 a century was but as a day. Among such is Epimenides, who while 
 tending sheep fell asleep one day in a cave, and did not wake until 
 more than fifty years had passed away. But Epimenides was one of 
 the Seven Sages, who reappear in the Seven Manes of Leinster, 8 and 
 in the Seven Champions of Christendom ; and thus the idea of seven 
 sleepers was at once suggested. This idea finds expression in the 
 remarkable legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus ; and the 
 number seven may be traced through other mediaeval stories. So 
 Barbarossa changes his position every seven years, and at the end of 
 every seventh year Charlemagne starts in his chair, and Olger Dansk 
 
 1 Gould, Curious Myths, &*c, Ogier the Dane, who is Tithonos re- 
 second series, 223. stored to a youth, which, like that of 
 
 3 The same story is presented in the Meleagros, is to last as long as a brand 
 
 romance of Sir Launfal and the Fay which the fairy gives him remains un- 
 
 Tryamour, who bestows on him the consumed. — Keightley, Fairy Mytho- 
 
 never-failing purse, and in the tale of logy, 34, et seq. For the legend of 
 
 Oberon and Huon of Bordeaux. This Ogier, or Olger the Dane, see Popular 
 
 Oberon is the dwarf king Elberich of Romances' of the Middle Ages, and In- 
 
 the Heldenbuch, who performs to Otnit traduction to Comparative Mythology, 
 
 the service discharged by Oberon to 302. 
 
 Huon. The story of Tanhaiiser, again, 3 Fergusson, The Irish before the 
 
 is only another form of the legend of Conquest. 
 
226 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book stamps' his iron mace on the floor. To the number of these sleepers 
 
 : — ■ must be added Arthur who slumbers in Avallon, waiting for the time 
 
 when he shall wake up to free Britain once more; Sebastian of 
 Portugal ; the three Tells of Riitli ; the priest of the Church of 
 Hagia Sophia, who bides the day when the Turk shall be driven 
 from Constantinople ; and Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings of 
 Spain, who lies spell-bound within the hill of the Alhambra in a 
 slumber broken only on the eve of St. John, 1 who himself slumbers 
 at Ephesus. 
 The Seven The same mystic number is found in the seven Rishis of ancient 
 Rfoins. Hindu tradition. These Rishis are the media or instruments 
 through which the divine Veda was imparted to mankind. In its 
 widest meaning the word was taken to denote the priestly bards who 
 conducted the worship of the gods ; but they are spoken of some- 
 times as the poets who compose the songs and present them to the 
 deities whom they celebrate, and sometimes as the mere mouthpieces 
 of these gods. They are mortal, and yet they are united with immor- 
 tals, and are rivals of the gods. But although the idea most pro- 
 minently associated with them is that of wisdom, they are sometimes 
 mentioned in language which carries us back to the etymological 
 meaning of the name. With their true hymns, we are told, they 
 caused the dawn to arise and the sun to shine for the afflicted Vayu 
 and Manu. a The names of the Rishis are variously given, Manu with 
 Bhrigu, Angiras and others, being sometimes reckoned among them : 
 but of the whole number seven attained a pre-eminent dignity. With 
 Manu, according to one version, they entered into the ark while the 
 earth lay beneath the waters of the flood, and therein abode with 
 him until the vessel rested on the peak called Naubandhana from 
 the binding of the ship. In the account of this flood the Brahmana 
 story introduces a fish which guides the ark as the Delphian Apollon 
 guides the vessel of the Cretan mariners to Krisa. 3 
 The Ark- The main story connected with the Rishis has already been 
 
 noticed as the result of an equivocal word. 4 The notion of making 
 bright conveyed also the idea of gladdening and cheering, and hence 
 arkshah became a name not only for the sun, but for a hymn or song 
 of praise, and the makers or singers of these hymns were naturally 
 termed Rishis or gladdeners. It was not less natural that, as the 
 
 1 Washington Irving, Tales of the said that Vishnu thrice measured the 
 
 Alhambra, "Legend of the Two Dis- mundane regions for Manu. R. V. vi. 
 
 creet Statues." 49, 13 ; Muir, ib. part iv. p. 71. 
 
 ' P. V. viii. 76, 4, and 91, 1 ; Muir, * Max Miiller, Sanskrit Literature, 
 
 Sanskrit Texts, part iii. p. 119. During 526. 
 
 this time of oppression and sorrow, it is • * Book i. ch. iii 
 
 shas or 
 Shiners. 
 
LIGHT AND WISDOM. 227 
 
 Rishis or sages took a stronger hold on the imagination of the chap. 
 people, the seven arkshas or stars should be converted into rishis, -— — ^ — • 
 and that the rishis should be said to have their abode in them. 
 Among the Western Aryans, as lykos, the glistening, denoted the 
 wolf, arktos became a name for the bear, 1 and stood to the Sanskrit 
 riksha in the relation of the Greek tcktuv, a carpenter, to takshan, 
 ' and the Latin pectus, a breast, to vakshas ; 2 and then the seven stars 
 were necessarily converted into seven bears, while the sages whom 
 the Hindu placed in those shining orbs survived as the seven wise 
 men of Hellas, to reappear under different forms, as we have already 
 seen, elsewhere. 
 
 In the name of Manu, the friend of the Rishis, we have simply The Rishis 
 and strictly man, as the measurer or the thinker. The same root has anu ' 
 
 also yielded names for the moon and the month, 3 while in Europe, as 
 in Asia, there arose the idea of a man of whom they spoke as the 
 son of heaven and earth. In India he was known as Manu 
 Svayambhuva, the child of Svayambhu, the self-existent, or, like the 
 Hellenic Minos, the son of Europe, the dawn, as Vaivasti, the wor- 
 shipper or child of Vivasvat, the sun, whose wife Saranyu, having 
 borne the twin Asvins, the steeds or horsemen, left in her place 
 another like herself, Savarna, who became the mother of Manu. 4 
 But Manu is also not unfrequently called the son of Dyaus or of 
 Brahma, just as the German tribes spoke of their ancestor Mann as 
 the son of Tiw or Tuisco. 
 
 Section V.— DAWN GODDESSES. 
 
 The name Ushas reappears in the Greek Eos, and Ushas, like Eos, Ushas and 
 is the goddess of the dawn or morning. 6 The language addressed E6s ' 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 263. suitors before the great vengeance of 
 
 s Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, Odysseus, is naturally said to assume 
 
 second series, 361. the likeness of Mentor. 
 
 3 Greek, i^v, n^vri : Latin, mensis. 5 The rcot US, to burn, appears as 
 
 4 Professor Max MUUer, Lectures on USH in Sanskrit. From this Ushas is 
 Language, second series, 482, 5°9> formed without any vowel modification, 
 thinks that Manu may have been called " The Gneco-Italian people raised the 
 Savarni, as meaning the Manu of all vowel by regular process to au, and 
 colours, i.e. of all tribes or castes, while formed ausos, which received no further 
 Savarna, the second wife of the sun, is increase in Greek, but in Latin a 
 simply the twilight in which he dies, secondary noun was formed from the 
 just as the myth that Saranyu had left primary one, that is ausosa. Now both 
 her twin behind, meant only that the • Greeks and Italians, as is well known, 
 Dawn had disappeared. The root man disliked the sound s between two vowels! 
 is taken also to denote " backward the Greeks generally dropped it, and so 
 thought, remembering and admonishing; got ab(<r)6s : the Latins changed it to r, 
 whence the proper name Mentor, the and made aurora : the verb appears as 
 adviser." With this may be compared uro." — Peile, Introduction to Greek and 
 the name Juno Moneta : and thus Latin Etymology, xii. The Lithuanian 
 Athene, when she appears among the form of the word is Ausera. 
 
228 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK to her betokens a more distinct personality than that even of Varuna 
 
 • ^ — ■ and Indra, because the worshipper in addressing her speaks always 
 
 from the heart, and his words are the manifest utterances of love. 
 She is the daughter of the heaven, who brings with her light and life 
 and joy; she drives away pain and anguish; she is the image of 
 undying youth, for day by day she appears in unfading beauty, 
 although they who look upon her grow daily older and at last die. 1 
 
 "Ushas, nourishing all, comes daily like a matron, conducting 
 all transient (creatures) to decay." 2 
 
 " The divine and ancient Ushas, born again and again and bright 
 with unchanging hues, wastes away the life of a mortal, like the wife 
 of a hunter cutting up the birds." 3 
 
 " How long is it that the dawns have risen ? How long will 
 they rise ? 
 
 "Those mortals who beheld the pristine Ushas dawning have 
 passed away : to us she is now visible, and they approach who will 
 behold her in after times." * 
 
 Like the Greek Athene, she is pare and unsullied, the image 
 of truth and wisdom. 
 
 " Ushas, endowed with truth, who art the sister of Bhava, the 
 sister of Varuna, be thou hymned first of the gods." 
 
 "Unimpeding divine rites, although wearing away the ages of 
 mankind, the Dawn shines the likeness of the mornings that have 
 passed, or that are to be for ever, the first of those that are to 
 come." 5 
 
 In all this, although it determines the source of later myths beyond 
 all possibility of question, there is little or no mythology ; and we 
 have advanced scarcely more than half-way on the road to a full- 
 formed myth even when we read that "the night, her sister, prepares 
 a birthplace for her elder sister (the day), and having made it known 
 to her departs; that the night and dawn "of various complexions, 
 repeatedly born but ever youthful, have traversed in their revolutions 
 alternately from a remote period earth and heaven — night with her 
 dark, dawn with her luminous limbs," 7 or that " of all the sisters who 
 have gone before a successor daily follows the one that has pre- 
 ceded." 8 It is this very transparency of meaning which imparts 
 
 1 Hence the decrepitude of some of but the Jew must wander on until the 
 
 the mythical beings beloved by the evening of the world is come. 
 Dawn. This is the idea of the myth of 2 H. H. Wilson, R. V. Sanhita, i. 
 
 Erts and Tithonos, and it seems to be 129. 
 
 united with that of Odin, Savitri, or * lb. i. 274. * lb. i. 298. 
 
 Odysseus the wanderers, in the story of * /*. ii. 8, 10. ■ lb. ii. 12. 
 
 the Wandering Jew. The myth is here, 7 lb. i. 169. 
 
 •■js we might expect, strangely distorted : 8 lb. ii. 12. The idea of Ushas as 
 
THE DAWN LIGHT. 229 
 
 value to almost every expression of praise in the hymns addressed CHAf. 
 to her. • '— ' 
 
 "She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living 
 being to go to his work. The fire had to be kindled by men : she 
 brought light by striking down darkness. 
 
 " She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving towards every 
 one she grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The 
 mother of the cows, the leader of the dogs, she shone gold-coloured, 
 lovely to behold. 
 
 "She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the god, who leads 
 the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was seen revealed 
 by her rays, with brilliant treasures she follows every one. 
 
 "Thou, who art a blessing when thou art near, drive far away 
 the unfriendly ; make the pastures wide, give us safety. Remove the 
 haters, bring treasures. Raise up wealth to the worshipper, thou 
 mighty Dawn. 
 
 "Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who 
 lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us food, who 
 givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots." 1 
 
 The hymns speak especially of the broad-spreading light of Ushas ; Ushas the 
 and this flush of dawn suddenly passing across the heaven takes us spreading, 
 at once to the many names of like meaning which belong to the 
 Hellenic solar beings. She " shines wide " (Urvasi), like Euryphassa 
 and Eurydike, like Euryganeia, Eurynomg, and Europe. As the 
 daughter of Dyaus, who chases away the darkness of the night, she 
 goes before Indra, Savitar, and Surya. She reveals mysteries and 
 opens the ends of heaven, where the Panis had hidden away the 
 cows of which she is the mother. She tells the Angiras where they are 
 to be found, and as she lightens the sky she is said to drive her own 
 herds to their pastures. She is sent especially to awaken men ; but 
 she is charged to let the Panis (the dark powers) sleep. She is the 
 beloved of all men and the darling of the god of love, Aniruddha, 
 the resistless, 2 who thus receives the name Ushapati, lord of the 
 dawn ; and finally, we have in Ushas the germ of the idea which 
 found its most graceful expression in the Hellenic Athene, and its 
 most majestic developement in the Latin Minerva. The Sanskrit 
 budh means both to wake and to know, and vayuna has the double 
 meaning of light and knowledge, just as the notions of knowledge 
 
 bringing to an end the days which king is accused of being a murderess 
 
 spring from her is closely allied to the who destroys her own children, 
 myth of Kronos, and seems to lie at the ' R. V. vii. 77. 
 
 root of the many popular German and * eowr oWkote n&x av - — Soph. Ant. 
 
 Norse stories, in which the bride of the 781. 
 
230 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Ahana. 
 
 and of creative power are both expressed by the root jan and the 
 ' English can and ken. Hence Ushas is said to enable men to cross 
 the frontier of darkness, and, as the seer, to give light far and wide. 
 " Waking every mortal to walk about, she receives praise from every 
 thinker." Thus, as the Day, she is the mother of the Divine Night, 
 who reveals all her splendour after she has driven away her sister 
 the Twilight 1 Of the birth of AthenS fully armed from the head 
 of Zeus, when cloven by the axe of Hephaistos, the poets of the 
 Iliad and Odyssey say nothing ; but the presence of the story in 
 the Hesiodic Theogony is a conclusive argument against any infer- 
 ence which might be drawn from their silence, even if Ushas were 
 not, as she actually is, spoken of in the Veda as sprung from the 
 forehead of Dyaus, the sky. 2 
 
 But Ushas is only one of many names for the light of early 
 morning. As Ahani, she plays the part as well as bears the name 
 of Athene and of Daphne. The word expresses the idea of burning 
 light; and although it occurs only once in the Rig Veda, 3 the 
 flexibility of the old mythology justifies us in attributing to Ahana all 
 that is told us of Ushas or of Sarama. 4 If then we apply to Dahana 
 the phrases which spoke of Ushas as pursued by the Sun, who slays 
 though he loves her, or as dying in his arms, we see at once an 
 offshoot from the parent stem which in the West yielded the myths 
 of Daphne and of Prokris. Daphne" too is loved by Phoibos, and, 
 like Ahana, she flies from his face until she takes refuge in the 
 Peneian stream. But in some passages of the Veda the idea of 
 her might remains too prominent to allow much room for that 
 of love. 
 
 " This strong and manly deed also thou hast performed, O Indra, 
 that thou struckest the daughter of Dyaus, a woman difficult to 
 vanquish. 
 
 " Yes, even the daughter of Dyaus, the magnified, the Dawn, 
 thou, O Indra, a great hero, hast ground to pieces. 
 
 1 The benignant aspect of night must 
 be carefully borne in mind, as the germ 
 of the myths of Asteria, Asterodia, 
 Kalypsd, and other Fairy Queens. 
 Under all these forms we have the ki/£ 
 (piAiu /xeyd\av K6(rfiuv KTedreipa of 
 ..Eschylos, Agam. 356. As such, Night 
 is invoked in the Veda to " drive away 
 the wolf and the thief, and carry her 
 worshippers safely across " (to the light). 
 — A'. V. x. 127 ; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 
 part iv. p. 123. 
 
 5 Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, 
 
 second series, 503. 
 
 3 ' ' Ahana comes near to every houses 
 she who makes every day to be known. 
 
 "Dyotana (the dawn), the active 
 maiden, comes back for evermore ; she 
 enjoys always the first of all goods." — 
 R. V. i. 123, 4- 
 
 * "Athene 1 , as far as letters go, would 
 correspond to a Sanskrit AhanS, which 
 is but a slightly differing variety of 
 Ahana." — Max Miiller, Lectures, second 
 series, 503. 
 
THE CHARIOT OF THE DAWN. 23 1 
 
 " The Dawn rushed off from her crushed car, fearing that Indra, Chap. 
 ' the bull, might strike her. « ■ — ■ 
 
 " This her car lay there, well ground to pieces. She went far 
 away." 1 
 
 More commonly, however, she is beloved by all the gods, and 
 the Asvins bear her away triumphant in her chariot. 
 
 But it is to the phrases which speak of the dawn under the name Sarama. 
 of Sarama, that we must look for the germ of the great epics of the 
 western Aryans. It is indeed only the germ, and no fancy can be 
 more thoroughly groundless than that which would regard the 
 Hellenic representative of SaramS. as derived from the dawn-goddess 
 of the Hindu. Identity of names and of attributes can prove nothing 
 more than the affinity of legends, which, as differing not only in local 
 colour but also in the form of thought, must point to some common 
 source in a past yet more remote. Whatever may be the precise 
 meaning of the name, whether SaramS. or Saranyu be taken to denote 
 the storm-cloud or the morning, there is no doubt that the root of 
 the word is sar, to creep or go, which we find in serpent as well as 
 in the Greek Erinys and Sarpedon. In the Rig Veda, Sarama is 
 especially the guardian of the cows of Indra, and as his messenger 
 she goes to the Panis, who have stolen them away. She, too, like 
 Ushas, is said to be the first to spy out the cleft in the rock where 
 the Panis, like Cacus, had hidden the plundered cattle, and, like 
 Herakles, she is the first to hear their lowings. Like Ushas also, 
 she walks in a straight path : but when she comes to the stronghold 
 of the Panis, a conference follows in which we see unmistakably the 
 dawn peering about through the sky in search of the bright clouds, 
 and restoring them in all their brilliance and beauty to the broad 
 pastures of the heaven. 
 
 "The Panis said, 'With what intention did Sarama reach this 
 place ? for the way is far, and leads tortuously away. What was your 
 wish with us ? How was the night ? How did you cross the waters 
 of the Rasa?' 
 
 " The Panis : 'What kind of man is Indra, O Sarama, what is 
 his look, he as whose messenger thou comest from afar? Let him 
 come hither, and we will make friends with him, and then he may be 
 the cowherd of our cows.' 
 
 " Saramd : ' I do not know that he is to be subdued, for it is he 
 himself that subdues, he as whose messenger I came hither from afar. 
 Deep streams do not overwhelm him ; you, Panis, will lie prostrate, 
 killed by Indra/ 
 
 ' S. V. iv. 30. 
 
232 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The cows 
 cf Indra. 
 
 " The Panis : ' Those cows, O Sarama, which thou desirest, fly 
 - about the ends of the sky, O darling. Who would give them up to 
 thee without fighting ? for our weapons too are sharp.' 
 
 " Sarama : ' Though your words, O Panis, be unconquerable, 
 though your wretched bodies be arrowproof, though the way to you 
 be hard to go, Brihaspati will not bless you for either.' 
 
 " The Panis: 'That store, O Sarama, is fastened to the rock, 
 furnished with cows, horses, and treasures. Panis watch it who are 
 good watchers ; thou art come in vain to this bright place.' 
 
 " Sarama : ' Let the Rishis come here fired with Soma, Ahasya 
 (Indra), and the ninefold Angiras ■ they will divide the stable of 
 cows ; then the Panis will vomit out this speech.' 
 
 " The Panis : ' Even thus, O Sarama, thou art come hither 
 driven by the violence of the gods; let us make thee our sister, 
 do not go away again ; we will give thee part of the cows, O darling.' 
 
 " Sarama : ' I know nothing of brotherhood or sisterhood : 
 Indra knows it, and the awful Angiras. They seemed to me anxious 
 for their cows when I came : therefore get away from here, O Panis, 
 far away. 
 
 " ' Go far away, Panis, far away ; let the cows come out straight, 
 the cows which Brihaspati found hid away, Soma, the stones, and the 
 wise Rishis.' " 1 
 
 This hymn, seemingly so transparent in its meaning, becomes 
 unintelligible if interpreted of any other being than the Dawn in her 
 struggle with the powers of darkness : and hence it seems a super- 
 fluous task to show that all the essential features of Ushas reappear 
 in SaramS. ; that like Ushas Sarama is followed by Indra, and that 
 walking first she reveals the treasures which had been hidden away ; 
 that both alike go to the uttermost ends of heaven ; that both break 
 the strongholds of the Panis ; both are the mothers and deliverers of 
 the cows ; both drive forth their cattle to the pastures ; both walk in 
 the right path and bestow wealth and blessings upon men. Every 
 phrase tells us of some change in the heaven from the time when 
 the sun sinks to sleep in the west to the moment when his face is 
 first seen again in the east. As the light of evening dies away, the 
 power of the darkness is restored, and the Panis extinguish the 
 bright-coloured clouds which have looked down on the death of the 
 Sun, or in other words they steal the cows of Indra, the cattle which 
 Phaethousa and Lampetie feed in the rich pastures of Helios. 
 During the weary hours of night they are shut up in the demon's 
 prison-house; but at length the messenger of the day comes to 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, second series, 465. 
 
THE DEFEAT OF THE PANIS. 233 
 
 reclaim her children. With a faint flush she starts slowly from the chap. 
 
 doors of the east. Her light, creeping along the dark fkce of the : — ■ 
 
 sky, seems to ebb and flow like the sea-tide ; and so might Sarama 
 be said to hold parley with the Panis who refuse to yield up their 
 plunder. But the Dawn is only the messenger of one far mightier 
 than herself, and if they will not yield to her, they shall feel the 
 force of the arm of Indra ; and the conference with the Panis, which 
 answers to the spreading of the Dawn, ends in their overthrow, as 
 soon as Indra appears in his chariot — in other words, when the Sun 
 is risen. 
 
 In the Rig Veda, Sarama steadily refuses the bribes offered to The 
 her by the Panis. Another turn was given to the tale when the S aram(L 
 faithfulness of Sarama was represented as not invincible. Sarama, 
 we are told in the Anukramanika, was sent as the dog of the gods to 
 seek for the strayed or stolen herds, and when she espied them in 
 the town of Vala, the Panis strove to make her an accomplice in 
 their theft. But although she refused to divide the booty, she yet 
 drank a cup of milk which they gave her, and returning to Indra 
 denied that she had seen the cows. On this Indra kicked her, and 
 the milk which she vomited up gave the lie to her words. Here, 
 then, we have in its germ the faithlessness of the Spartan Helen, 
 who in name as in her act is Sarama, and who was supposed to 
 speak of herself as the dog-eyed or dog-faced, although by none else 
 was the name applied to her. 1 Thus the Greek carried away with 
 him the root of the great Trojan epic from the time when he parted 
 from his ancient kinsfolk, he to find his way to his bright Hellenic 
 home, they to take up their abode in the land of the seven streams. 
 For him, Helen and Paris, Briseis and Achilleus, were already in 
 existence. For him Phoibos already dwelt in Delos, and Sarpedon 
 ruled in the land of the golden river. So, again, it makes but little 
 difference whether the Sarameya, sometimes but rarely mentioned in 
 the Rig Veda, be definitely the son of Sarama, or whether the word 
 remained a mere epithet for any one of the gods who might denote 
 the morning. The name itself is etymologically identical with that 
 of Hermes ; and the fact that he is addressed as the watchdog of the 
 house a may have led to the notion which made him in later times 
 
 1 The first word in the compound house, a kind of Lar, is called Sarameya, 
 Kvvawis is the same as in Kynosarges, and is certainly addressed as the watch- 
 Kynossema, Kynosoura, none of these dog of the house ; and he adds that this 
 having any reference to dogs. — Bour- deity would thus denote the "peep of 
 nouf, La Legende Athenienne. day conceived as a person, watching 
 
 2 Professor Miiller notices that in a unseen at the doors of heaven during 
 hymn of the seventh book of the Rig the night and giving his first bark in 
 Veda, Vastoshpati, the lord of the the morning." The features of the deity ' 
 
234 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Saranyu. 
 
 Erinys. 
 
 the hound which served as the messenger of the gods, and which in 
 the story Of Prokris reappears at the feet of Artemis. 1 
 
 Another name from the same root which has furnished those of 
 Sarama, Helen, Hermes, and Sarpedon, is found in Saranyu (a femi- 
 nine of Saranyu), in whom some discern the dark and impetuous 
 storm-cloud. 2 The phrases employed when the poet addresses her 
 all seem to point in another direction. Like Ushas, she is spoken of 
 as the mare, and as the mother of a twin. The male Saranyu is in 
 like manner called a horse, and the goddess herself is the mother of 
 the twins Yama and Yami, and again of Nasatya and Dasra, the twin 
 Asvins or steeds, 8 who represent the Dioskouroi? The persons with 
 whom this dualism connects her indicate at once her real nature, 
 and with Saranyu she takes her place by the side of the two Ahans or 
 Dawns, of Indra, the two Indras, of Dyava, the double Dyaus, of 
 Ushasau, the two mornings, of Agnl, the two Agnis, of VarunS, the 
 two Varunas. 
 
 But as Sarama is Helen, so Saranyu is Erinys ; and here too the 
 seed, which in the East sprang up only to wither away, shot up in the 
 West to a portentous growth. It was certainly no euphemism which 
 spoke of the Erinyes as the gentle beings or Eumenides, and there 
 was no incongruity in giving the name to the Dawn-mother Demeter. 1 
 Hence in spite of all the failure of memory, and of the fearful 
 
 thus conceived are brought out with 
 sufficient clearness in the following 
 verses : 
 
 " When thou, bright Sarameya, openest 
 thy teeth, O red one, spears seem 
 to glisten on thy jaws as thou 
 swallowest. Sleep, sleep. 
 
 *' Bark at the thief, Sarameya, or at the 
 robber, O restless one. Now thou 
 barkest at the worshippers of Indra. 
 Why dost thou distress us ? Sleep, 
 sleep." — Lectures on Language, 
 second series, 473. 
 
 1 This dog of the morning is promi- 
 nent in the Norse tale of Bushy Bride. 
 While the hero lies in a pit full of 
 snakes (Helios in the land of the 
 throttling serpent), a lovely lady (Ushas 
 or Sarama) comes into the palace 
 kitchen — the connexion, as with Boots 
 or Cinderella among the ashes, lying in 
 the fire of the earth or oven — and asks 
 the kitchen-maid for a brush. "Then 
 she brushed her hair, and as she brushed 
 down dropped gold. A little dog was at 
 her heel, and to him she said, ' Run out, 
 little Flo, and see if it will soon be day.' 
 This she said three times, and the third 
 
 time that she sent the dog it was just 
 about the time the dawn begins to peep. " 
 The old myth could not be retained with 
 greater fidelity. 
 
 2 Roth, quoted by Professor Max 
 Muller, ib. 404. The name itself, as in 
 Hermes, Sarama, and 6pfi.ii, may express 
 any motion, slow or rapid. 
 
 3 TheVedic hymn-makers tell us dis- 
 tinctly that the horses of these Asvins 
 are the rays of the sun. When they do 
 this, it seems as difficult to deny that 
 they made this comparison as to call 
 in question the interpretation which the 
 witch herself gives in one of the Russian 
 stories of Afanasieff. The girl in this 
 tale sees, as night comes on, a black 
 horseman who disappears underground, 
 at dawn a white horseman on a white 
 horse, and, as the sun rises, a red horse- 
 man on a red horse. She is told by no 
 less an authority than the witch that the 
 black horseman is the dark night, the 
 white horseman the clear dawn-light, 
 and the red horseman the young red sun. 
 
 4 Professor Max Miiller seems to 
 see in Demeter, not the earth, but the 
 dawn-mother, Dyava Malar, correspond- 
 ing to Dyauspitar. — Ib. 517. 
 
ERINYS AND SARANYfr. 235 
 
 character which Erinys had assumed, the poet who tells the terrible chap. 
 
 tale ,pf Oidipous could not but make him die in the sacred, grove of : — - 
 
 beings who, however awful to others, were always benignant to him — 
 in groves which to the storm-tossed wanderer were the Hyperborean 
 gardens into which grief, and fear, and anguish could never enter. 
 The change which converted the beautiful Saranyu into the avenging 
 furies of ./Eschylos has excited the wonder of some who hesitate on 
 this account to believe that Erinys and Saranyu can come to us from 
 a common source. It is more than probable that their scepticism 
 arises from the notion that comparative mythologists derive the 
 Greek from the Sanskrit deity. It is enough to say that they 
 do not. 
 
 The change itself is one which could scarcely fail to be brought The 
 about. The Harpies, who in our Homeric poems are the beautiful 
 daughters of Thaumas and Elektra, appear in the ^Eneid of Virgil as 
 foul monsters, who do the work of vultures. The Ara, or prayer of 
 the longing heart, 1 became more and more the curse which the weak 
 uttered against their tyrants. Indra and Phoibos, who, as the sun- 
 gods, see and hear all things, become almost more dreaded for their 
 destructive power, than loved for their beneficence. As representing 
 the day with its searching light, Varuna and Indra are the avengers 
 of all iniquity ; and in this sense it could not fail to be said of evil- 
 doers that Saranyu would find them out. The old phrase survives 
 with its clearness scarcely dimmed in the Hesiodic Theogony. 
 Night there is the mother of Strife (Eris), and of all the evils that 
 come of Strife ; a but she is also the mother of righteous recompense 
 (Nemesis), In other words, the evil deeds done in the night will 
 receive their reward when brought to light in the day; and thus, 
 according to ^Eschylos, the Erinyes also are daughters of the Night, 
 who, like the Drukhs, the Vedic Ate, track out the sins of men. It 
 was in truth impossible that, the germ once given, its developements 
 should fail tp be modified by time and place, by power of imagination 
 and failure of memory. The AtS of the Iliad is the spirit merely of 
 mischievous folly, and as such, she is hurled by Zeus from Olympos, 
 for postponing the birth of Herakles to that of Eurystheus ; the Ate 
 of ^Eschylos is the sleepless doom which broods over a house until 
 the vengeance for the shedding of innocent blood has been exacted 
 to the uttermost farthing. There is nothing wonderful therefore in the 
 process which changed the lovely Saranyu of the Veda into the awful 
 goddesses s of Athens ; and if the Erinys of the Iliad is called hateful, 
 
 1 opV liroifoav irafia yevetrBat. — * Hes. Theog. 226. 
 
 Herod, vi. 63. * aenvaL flcaf. 
 
236 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK yet she wanders in the air and hears the summons addressed to her 
 • — Ji — ■ from the land of darkness. 1 In the fact that at Athens there were 
 statues only of two Erinyes, we have perhaps a memory of that 
 early dualism which is so marked a feature in the mythology of 
 the Veda. 
 Arjuni. But if Eos and Zeus remained to the Greeks what Ushas and 
 
 Dyaus were to the Hindu, there were other names which seem to 
 have been transplanted to Hellenic soil only to die. Among these 
 is Argennos in whose honour Agamemnon is said to have built 
 a temple to Aphrodite' Argynnis on the banks of Kephisos. The 
 name in the West had no meaning : but in the Vedic Arjuni we 
 have simply an epithet denoting the brilliance of the dawn, while in 
 the later Hindu mythology, Arjuna comes before us as standing to 
 Krishna in the relation of Luxman to Rama, of Phaethon to Helios, 
 or of Patroklos to Achilleus. 
 The cows The analysis of all these myths proves convincingly that for 
 
 of the°Smi- human thought in its earliest stages the danger lay not in the poverty 
 gods. f language, but in its superabundant wealth. The heaven, the sun, 
 
 the dawn, the clouds, might be described by a thousand names, all 
 truthfully and vividly denoting the thing spoken of in one of its 
 countless aspects. But the characteristic features so marked were 
 found in more than one object If the sun shone brightly or moved 
 rapidly, so did the horse. If the clouds gave nourishment to the 
 thirsty earth, so did the cows bestow a gift scarcely less necessary for 
 man. The words which told of the one would serve also to designate 
 the other ; and so in fact we find that they did. The cow received 
 its name as the moving animal ; the horse was named from its speed, 
 asvan, or from its colour, harit, the glistening — rohit, the brown : and 
 all these names were of necessity applied to the sun, the dawn, and 
 the sky, first in their strictly etymological sense, but insensibly, 
 and by an inevitable result, in the meaning to which usage gradually 
 confined each word. Thus, when the name asvan was reserved 
 especially for the horse, the sun, who had been hitherto called asvan 
 simply as speeding through the sky, now himself became the steed 
 who hurries across the broad heaven. 2 The impulse once given 
 issued in an almost incredible wealth of metaphor. The horse as 
 the bearer of burdens was called vahni ; s but the flames also bore 
 their burdens into the air, and the rays of the sun brought his light 
 
 * //. x. 571. a The root is found in the Latin 
 
 2 The process is completely analysed vehere, the Greek ?x e! ", and in com- 
 
 by Professor Max Miiller, "Comparative pound words as cervix, the neck as 
 
 Mythology," Chips, &>c, ii. 132, &c. carrying the head. 
 
EROS AND ARUSHA. 237 
 
 to man. Thus the flame of fire and the solar rays, being* both alike chap. 
 
 vahni, became vehement and fiery horses. So, too, the morning and ■ : — ■ 
 
 the evening, the gloaming and the dawn, became, as we have seen, 
 twin steeds — the Asvins — joined together in a mysterious bond which 
 made it impossible to draw a line between the approach of the one 
 and the vanishing of the other. But this step taken rendered 
 another step necessary. The glorious being whose light wakes a 
 sleeping world to life must be enthroned in a burning chariot, of 
 which the rays that stream across the heaven must be the gleaming 
 steeds ; and thus the sun who had himself been Hari, the flashing, 
 now became Indra, or Surya, or Savitar, whose car was drawn by the 
 glistening Harits. Where we say that " the sun is rising," or that 
 " he is high in the heaven," they said, " the sun has yoked his steeds 
 for his journey," or that "his horses have borne his chariot to the 
 house of Dyaus.'' But how little the name Harit had lost its 
 original meaning, is clear from the many terms which are used in 
 describing them. The Vedic poet knew well the differences of mean- 
 ing in the words which he uttered when he spoke of them as Harits, 
 or Rohits, or Arushis ; yet under each of these names was growing 
 up a distinct personality, and thus the Harits, whose number is given 
 sometimes as seven, sometimes as ten, become sisters who fly on 
 beautiful wings. 1 But while even in India the idea of loveliness 
 was beginning to predominate over that of mere animal strength, 
 among the Western Aryans the glistening Harits became the lovely 
 Charites whom the Latins called the Gratis and we the Graces. Yet 
 by the side of these fair creations of human thought, the root which 
 yielded these names was discharging a more homely function : and 
 the grease with which our wheels are rubbed is but another form of 
 the names of Charis in the Iliad, and the Graces of Canova. 
 
 Arush!, however, is only the feminine form of arvan, a horse ; Arushi 
 and the masculine arusha is a common Vedic epithet for the sun. 
 But this name is applied to him only at his rising. He is arusha, 
 when " Night goes away from her sister the dawn, and the dark one 
 opens the path for the bright god." But arusha is also a child. 
 "The seven sisters have nursed him, the joyful, the white one, as he 
 was born, the Arusha with great might ; as horses go to the foal that 
 is born, so did the gods bring up his son when he was born." 2 He 
 has the eyes of a man, and he is also Saparnas, with beautiful wings. 
 More evidence can scarcely be needed to show that in this picture 
 we have the Hellenic god of love, the bright and winged Er6s. But 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Chips, &>c, ii. 131. Muses nursing the infant Phoibos in the 
 ' This is precisely the picture of the Homeric hymn. Max Miiller, ib. 136. 
 
238 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 II. 
 
 Snakes 
 
 and 
 
 dragons. 
 
 further, as Professor Max Muller has noted in his exhaustive analysis 
 • of this myth, Arusha is called the young child of Dyaus, the child of 
 heaven, the sun of strength. He is the first of the gods, as coming 
 at the point of the days ; and of his two daughters (the Snow-White 
 and Rose-Red of German folk-lore), the one is clad in stars, the 
 other is the wife of Svar, the sun. He moves swift as thought, long- 
 ing for victory : he is the love or desire, Kama, of all men ; and as 
 irresistible in his strength, he is Ushapati, lord of the dawn. With 
 all these phrases the mythology of the Greeks is in thorough har- 
 mony. Although, according to later poets, Eros is a son of Zeus and 
 of Gaia, or Aphrodite, or Artemis, we may fairly assert that in the 
 Hesiodic theogony, as in the Veda, he is " the first of the gods," for 
 with Chaos, Gaia, and Tartaros, he makes up the number of self- 
 existent deities. Still, although appearing thus in the awful silence 
 of a formless universe, he is the most beautiful of all the gods, and 
 he conquers the mind and will both of gods and of men. The 
 transition was easy to the thought of Eros, ever bright and fair as 
 (like Yavishtha or Hephaistos) the youngest of the gods, as the 
 companion of the Charites, as the child of the Charis Aphrodite 1 : 
 and this association of Eros and Charis brings us back to Arusha and 
 the glistening Harits, who bear him across the wide seas of heaven. 1 
 The brilliant steeds reappear in the myth of Medeia as the 
 dragons who bear her mysterious chariot through the air. The name 
 dragon, indeed, denotes simply any keen-sighted thing, and in its 
 other form, Dorkas, is applied to a gazelle. We shall presently see 
 that a sharp distinction is drawn between the serpent as an object of 
 love and affection, and the snake which is regarded (whether as Ahi, 
 Vritra, or Ahriman) with profound hatred. But the serpent-worship 
 of the East and West is founded on the emblem of the Linga, 2 and 
 belongs to a class of ideas altogether different from those which were 
 awakened by the struggle of darkness against the light and the sun. 
 This darkness is everywhere described as a snake or serpent : but 
 the names applied to Ahi and Vritra do not imply keenness of sight, 
 and the enemy of Indra and Phoibos becomes on Hellenic soil a 
 dragon, only because the beast had there received this as its special 
 name. The tradition, however, survived that the steeds of the sun 
 were also Drakontes or keen-eyed things, and thus they not only 
 
 1 In his notes on the Rig Veda San- 
 hita, vol. i. p. 1 1, Professor Max Muller, 
 noting the objections made to some of 
 his interpretations of passages in which 
 the word Arusha occurs, on the ground 
 that in them the word is an epithet of 
 Agni, Indra, or SCirya, remarks that this 
 
 objection would apply "to many other 
 names originally intended for these con- 
 ceptions, but which, nevertheless, in the 
 course of . time, become independent 
 names of independent deities." 
 
 * See Section XII. of this chapter. 
 
MEDEIA AND GLAUK& 239 
 
 draw the chariot of Medeia, but reveal to Iamos the kaowledge of chap. 
 
 things to come. These snakes who nurse the infant prophet on the • : 
 
 violet beds are the flashing-eyed messengers of morning, not the 
 devouring serpents of darkness who seek to slay the new-born 
 Herakles in his cradle. 
 
 As possessing this gift of the dragon-chariot bestowed on her by sorcery 
 Helios, Medeia is emphatically the wise woman ; and in this myth c"^' 10 ' 1 " 
 we have probably the groundwork of those notions which were finally 
 developed into the system of sorcery and witchcraft. The know- 
 ledge of Medeia came to her from the same superhuman source with 
 the inspiration of the Pythian priestess of Delphoi ; the Latin witch 
 derived her power from a secret compact with Hekate. Christianity 
 converted Phoibos and his sister into demons, and at once the 
 Canidias of the empire were regarded as trafficking with devils for 
 the acquisition of unlawful powers. In the transition from the idea 
 of a wisdom which, although not naturally attainable, might be con- 
 ferred on some by the bright being whose eye pierces all space, to 
 the notion of compacts made between witches and the devil we have 
 a developement or corruption in close analogy with that confusion 
 between Leukos, bright, as a general epithet, and the same word 
 Lukos, as a special name for the wolf, from which sprung first the 
 myth of the transformation of Lykaon, and then probably the wide- 
 spread superstition of Lykanthropy. 
 
 As the wise woman, Mede;a is the child of the ocean nymph The story 
 Idyia, or, in another version, of Hekate" (the female correlative of of Medeia - 
 Hekatos or Phoibos), who is herself the daughter of Asteria, the star- 
 lit night. Her father is Aietes, the Kolchian king, but he is a son of 
 Helios who leaves to him and his descendants the magic wreath and 
 robe by which Medeia revenges herself on Glauke. 1 This robe is, 
 indeed, only another form of the golden fleece, the mantle of 
 burnished cloud seen at sunrise and sunset As such, it eats into 
 the flesh not only of Glauke, the fair daughter of the Corinthian 
 Kreon, but of Herakles himself, when his toils come to an end on 
 mount Oita. Of her share in the victory of Iason at Aia, it is enough 
 here to say that in the taming of the fire-breathing bulls, and in the 
 discomfiture of the men sprung from the dragon's teeth, she plays 
 the part of Ariadne and receives Ariadne's reward Whether faith- 
 ful or treacherous, the sun can never remain with his first love, and 
 even- Odysseus, whose one longing is to return to his home^ is parted 
 from Penelope, during the weary hours which pass between sunset 
 and sunset But before the time of her great sorrow comes, Medeia 
 
 1 Emip. Med. 957. 
 
240 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The myth 
 of Prokris. 
 
 avenges the wrongs done to Iason long ago at Iolkos. During her 
 - sojourn there in the house of Pelias, she persuaded his daughters to 
 cut up his body and boil his limbs in a cauldron, in the belief that 
 he would thus be restored to youth. 1 Medeia purposely failed to 
 pronounce the spell at the right time, and the limbs of Pelias were 
 consumed by the fire. Then follows her escape with Iason in her 
 dragon chariot to Corinth, where his love is transferred to Glaiike, 
 after whose death Medeia, like Gudrun in the Volsung story, slays 
 her own children — a crime closely resembling the slaughter of Pelops 
 by Tantalos. Such are the chief features of the myth of Medeia, to 
 which some added that she became the wife of Aigeus, the Athenian 
 king, or of the Corinthian Sisyphos. Some, again, made her return 
 with Iason to Kolchis, while others took her to Italy, and described her 
 as acquiring the name Anguitia from her power of fascinating serpents. 
 Finally, she is said to have been wedded to Achilleus in Elysion. 
 
 The involuntary departure of the sun from the dawn or his 
 capricious desertion of her is exhibited in the myths of a long series 
 of maidens wooed and forsaken, whether by Phoibos himself or by 
 heroes on whose head rests his light and majesty. With the story of 
 Koronis the mother of Asklepios the myth of Prokris is in close 
 accordance. Her birthplace is Athens, the city of the Dawn, and 
 her mother is Herse, the Dew, while her own name denotes also 
 simply the sparkling drops. 2 We are thus prepared for the myth 
 which tells us that Kephalos, a Phokian chief, coming to Athens, won 
 her love and plighted his faith to her. But Kephalos was loved also 
 by Eos, who sought to weaken his love for Prokris with a purpose so 
 persistent that at last she induced him to make trial of her affection. 
 He therefore deserts Prokris, to whom after a time he returns in dis- 
 guise. When in this shape he has won her love, he reveals himself, 
 and Prokris in an agony of grief and shame flies to Crete, where she 
 obtains from Artemis the gift of a spear which shall never miss its 
 mark and of a hound which can never fail to seize its prey. 3 With 
 
 1 With this may be compared the 
 Norse story of the Master Smith, in 
 whom we see another form of Hephais- 
 tos or Wayland. The incident of the 
 cutting up of the body of Pelias occurs 
 also in the German story of Brother 
 Lustig. Medeia herself appears in 
 benignant guise in the legend of the 
 Goose-girl at the Well (the Dawn- 
 maiden with her snow-white clouds). 
 
 * Professor Max Miiller refers Pro- 
 kris to the Sanskrit prush and prish, 
 to sprinkle, used chiefly of raindrops. 
 The same root in the Teutonic 
 
 languages has taken the sense of 
 ' frost,' and Bopp identifies prush with 
 the O. H. G. frus, frigere. In Greek 
 we must refer to the same root irp<L(, 
 ■xpaKis, a dewdrop, and also Prokris, 
 the dew. Thus the wife of Kephalos is 
 only a repetition of Herse', her mother — 
 Herse, dew, being derived from Sanskrit 
 prish, to sprinkle." — "Comparative 
 Mythology,'*' Chips, eVf., ii. 87. 
 
 _ 3 In the myth of Ikaros, or Ikarios, 
 this dog appears under the name Maira 
 (the glistening), who helps Erigone the 
 daughter of Ikarios in her search for 
 
PROKRIS AND EfiS. 2 4* 
 
 these gifts she returns to Kephalos, who after seeing he* success in 
 
 the chase longs to possess them. But they can be yielded only in ■ 
 
 return for his love, and thus Prokris brings home to him the wrong 
 
 done to herself, and Eos is for the time discomfited. But Prokris 
 
 still fears the jealousy of Eos and watches Kephalos as he goes forth 
 
 to hunt, until, as one day she lurked among the thick bushes, the 
 
 unerring dart of Artemis hurled by Kephalos brings the life of the 
 
 gentle Prokris to an end. This myth explains itself. Kephalos is 
 
 the head of the sun, and Kephalos loves Prokris, — in other words, 
 
 the sun loves the dew. But Eos also loves Kephalos, i.e. the dawn 
 
 loves the sun, and thus at once we have the groundwork for her 
 
 envy of Prokris. So again when we are told that, though Prokris 
 
 breaks her faith, yet her love is still given to the same Kephalos, 
 
 different though he may appear, we have here only a myth formed 
 
 from phrases which told how the dew seems to reflect many suns 
 
 which are yet the same sun. The gifts of Artemis are the rays which 
 
 flash from each dewdrop, and which Prokris is described as being 
 
 obliged to yield up to Kephalos, who slays her as unwittingly as 
 
 Phoibos causes the death of Daphne or Alpheios that of Arethousa. 
 
 The spot where she dies is a thicket, in which the last dewdrops 
 
 would linger before the approach of the midday heats. 
 
 The various incidents belonging to the life of Eos are so trans- E6s and 
 parent that the legend can scarcely be said to be a myth at all. Her Tlth6nos - 
 name is, as we have seen, that of the Vedic dawn-goddess Ushas, and 
 she is a daughter of Hyperion (the soaring sun) and of Euryphassa 
 (the broad shining), and a sister of the sun and moon (Helios and 
 Selene). If Ovid calls her a child of Pallas, this is only saying again 
 that she is the offspring of the dawn. Like Phoibos and Herakles, 
 she has many loves ; but from all she is daily parted. Every morn- 
 ing she leaves the couch of Tith6nos, 1 and drawn by the gleaming 
 steeds Lampos and Phaethon, rises into heaven to announce to the 
 gods and to mortal men the coming of the sun. In the Odyssey she 
 closes, as she began, the day. Her love, which is given to Tithonos 
 and Kephalos, is granted also to Orion 2 (the sun in his character as 
 the hunting and far-shooting god), whom according to one version 
 she conveys to Delos, the bright land, but who in another is slain by 
 the arrow of Artemis. She also carries to the home of the gods the 
 
 the body of her father, who has been of Helene 1 Dendritis. Ikaros, the son of 
 
 slain by the peasants and thrown into Daidalos, is only a reflexion of Phaeth6n. 
 the well Anygros (the parched). Her ' The lot of Tith6nos is simply the 
 
 grief leads her to hang herself on a tree reverse of that of Endymi6n. 
 under which he was buried, a myth a Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, ii. 
 
 which suggests a comparison with that 275. 
 
 ' R 
 
242 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Hebe and 
 
 Ganv- 
 
 medes. 
 
 The story 
 of Dido 
 and Anna. 
 
 beautiful Kleitos. Her children are born in many lands. As united 
 with Astraios, the starry, she is the mother of Zephyros, Boreas, and 
 Notos, the breezes or winds of morning, and of Heosphoros, the 
 light-bringer. Another son of Eos is Phaethon, of whom mytho- 
 graphers spoke as the luckless son of Helios, but who is really the 
 same being with his father. Finally, she is the mother of Memnon, 
 the chieftain from the glistening land of the Aithiopians (Ethiopians), 
 who falls by the spear of Antilochos, and on whose death she weeps 
 tears of morning dew, and obtains from Zeus the boon that he shall 
 rise again to renewed and endless life. 
 
 Another form of Eos is the beautiful Hebe, ever young, on whom 
 is bestowed without any drawback the youthfulness of the maimed 
 Hephaistos. She is the daughter necessarily of Zeus and Here\ 
 Like the Vedic Ahana or Ushas she can make the old young again, 
 and she ministers to the gods the life-giving nectar and ambrosia. 
 But Hebe, though the bride of the deified Herakles, or the mother 
 of his children Alexiares and Aniketos, the invincible deliverers, re- 
 mains little more than a name. She is Ganymede, the brilliant ; and 
 thus what Iris is to Hermes, that is H6be to Ganymedes, the lovely 
 Trojan youth who is borne away on the eagle's wing to the Olympian 
 heaven, where he also became the immortal cup-bearer of the gods. 
 Thus in both alike we see the morning light carried up into heaven 
 on the wings of the sunlit cloud. 1 
 
 The same story of unrequited love which has been embodied in 
 the myths of Ariadne: and Medeia, of Selene and Echo, meets us 
 again in the legends which the Latin poets modified to suit their own 
 traditions, or their prejudices and fancies. But although Virgil has 
 chosen to mix up the story of Dido with that of ^Eneas (Aineias), he 
 has introduced into it little or nothing which is not found in the myth 
 as related by Justin. In fact, the story of Aphrodite or Daphne is 
 twice told in the life of Dido, for the Sichaeus or Acerbas whose 
 death she bewails is the Adonis who, like Sichaeus, is slain by the 
 dark being or power of night. As the Panis look greedily on the 
 cattle of Indra, Pygmalion 2 covets the vast treasures which Sichaeus 
 possesses with Tantalos, Sisyphos, Helen and Brynhild, or Ixion ; and 
 thus is the husband of Dido murdered, her first and, according to 
 the version of Justin, her only love, and his wealth is in the hands of 
 his destroyer. But the idea of dwelling with Pygmalion is as hateful 
 
 1 For Slavonic versions of this myth 
 see Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 
 171. 
 
 2 The antagonism between Pygma- 
 lion and Sichaeus answers to that of 
 
 Sat-Osiris and Typhon. " The one who 
 is slain signifies the pure, ' Zakkai,' 
 and Pohem Elyon, ' the murderer of the 
 Most High.'"— Brown, Great Dionysiak 
 Myth, ii. 289. 
 
DIDO AND ANNA. 243 
 
 to her as Paris became to the Helen whom he had stolen with her CHAP. 
 
 treasures. As faithful to the memory of her lost love as is Sarama to ■ '• — 
 
 Indra, Dido pretends to listen to. the traitor, while she makes ready 
 for flight. In her new home another suitor appears in the Libyan 
 Hiarbas, who repeats the importunities of the Ithakan suitors, until 
 Dido, wearied out, promises to do as he wishes ; but having made a 
 huge pile for the offering of a hecatomb, she slays herself upon it, 
 declaring that now she is going, as her people and the Libyans 
 desired it, to her husband. The version of Virgil differs from this 
 in little more than a name. yEneas is only another form of the 
 bright being with whom Dido would willingly have dwelt for ever ; 
 but he is the sun-god who cannot pause to bestow on her his love, 
 or who must hasten away after a brief mockery of gladness. In the 
 former case, the myth answers to the legends of Adonis, Endymion, 
 or Narkissos ; in the latter the desertion of Dido is but the desertion 
 of Prokris, Ariadne, or Koronis; and the Tyrian Elissa dies, like 
 HeraklSs, amid the flames of a fiery sunset. The same story is 
 repeated yet again in the myth of Anna, the sister of Dido, whom 
 Latin tradition identified with the goddess Anna Perenna. 1 After 
 her sister's death Anna follows ^Eneas to Italy, where, though she is 
 kindly received by him, she finds in Lavinia a Prokris, whom she, 
 like Eos, must regard with deadly jealousy. But her arms are turned 
 not upon her rival but upon herself; and the second woman who has 
 lavished her affections on vEneas casts herself into the same Numician 
 stream in which ^Eneas afterwards disappears from the sight of men. 
 The same repetitions mark the story of ^Eneas, who, although fight- 
 ing (reluctantly, as some versions have it) on the side of the thief 
 who steals Helen, is yet a being like the Lykian Sarpedon or the 
 Aithiopian Memnon. Like them, he is the child not of a mortal 
 mother, but of the brilliant goddess of the dawn, and in the Trojan 
 army he plays the part of Achilleus in the Achaian host. Like the 
 son of Thetis, he is the possessor of immortal horses, and like him 
 
 1 This name was naturally referred to head: She gives subsistence; she is 
 
 the words annus and perennis by a people bent by the weight of her full breasts, 
 
 ■who had retained the mere name with- all good is united in her. " In short, 
 
 out its meaning. Hence the goddess she is a deity who, in Colebrooke's 
 
 became to the Latins the bestower of words, " fills with food, and is very 
 
 fruitful seasons ; but the false etymology similar to Lakshmi, or the goddess of 
 
 of the prayer, " ut annare perennareque abundance, although not the same 
 
 commode liceat," happened to corre- deity." The title Apna, in which we 
 
 spond with the original force of the see the root ap (aqua), points to nourish- 
 
 name, if Anna Perenna be the San- ment by water, while the name Purna 
 
 skrit Apnapurna, who is described comes apparently from the same stem 
 
 as "of ruddy complexion, her robe of with the Latin pario, to produce. — 
 
 various colours, a crescent on her fore- Nork, Real- Wortarbuch, i. 89. 
 
244 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK he is at feud with the king, for Priam fails to do him honour, as 
 
 • : — • Agamemnon heaps disgrace on Achilleus. From the flames of the 
 
 ruined Ilion he escapes bearing on. his shoulders his father Anchises, 
 the aged man who, while yet he had the youth and beauty of 
 Tithonos, had been the darling of Aphroditd. His wife Creusa 
 (Kreiousa, a name answering to that of Euryanassa, the wide-ruling, 
 and being simply the feminine form of Kreon or Kreion) comes 
 behind him like the twilight following the sun who is hastening on 
 into the land of night. But the twilight must vanish before the sun 
 can be seen again, and Creusa dies or disappears, like Helle, — the 
 converse of the myth of Hero and Leiandros (Leander). But ./Eneas, 
 like Herakles, has other loves before him ; and the fortunes of Dido 
 and Anna are brought before us again in the legend of the Italian 
 Lavinia. She too is the bright Helen for whom kings and nations 
 are ready to fight and die ; but although ^Eneas wins her, there re- 
 main yet other dangers and other enemies, and in the final strife with 
 the Rutulians the dawn-child vanishes in the stream of Numicius, as 
 Arethousa and Daphne 1 plunge into the waters from which Ana- 
 dyomene comes up in the morning. The true feeling of the people 
 who recounted this myth is shown in the title which they accorded 
 to him. Henceforth he is Jupiter Indiges, the father from whom 
 they spring, and who bestows upon them all that makes life worth 
 living for. 
 H&6 and The same story of disastrous love is presented under other names 
 
 in the legend of Leiandros (Leander), a myth which exhibits the 
 sun as plunging through the waters to reach the beautiful morning, 
 who holds out her gleaming light in the east ; for Hero (whose name 
 is identical with that of Here) is the priestess of the dawn-goddess 
 Aphrodite, and the road which separates her lover from herself is 
 the Hellespontos, the Lykabas or path of light, the track of Helle 
 the dawn-maiden. Hero, again, dwells in the eastern Lesbos, while 
 Leiandros has his home in Abydos. He is thus the Phoibos Del- 
 phinios, the fish or frog-sun, who dies in the furious storm ; and 
 through grief for her lost love Hero casts herself into the waters, like 
 Kephalos from the Leukadian cliff after the death of Prokris. 
 
 irftte Sun? Not less sad than that of Prokris or of Dido is the lot of Iole, 
 Iokaste, Aithra, Auge, Danae, or Ariadne. Tn the first two of these 
 forsaken wives or desolate mothers we see the violet tints of morning, 
 which reappear in Iamos, Iolaos, and Ias6n. From Herakles, Iole 
 is parted almost at the moment when she meets him. Her beautiful 
 form is seen near his funeral pile, as the violet-tinted clouds may be 
 seen among the flaming vapours lit up in a blood-red sunset ; and as 
 
DESERTED WIVES AND MAIDENS. 245 
 
 the blaze of the fire which consumes the body of Herakles rises to the CHAP. 
 
 heavens, she is left alone in her sorrow to vanish before trfe cheerless ■ ^ — 
 
 gloaming. The fate of Iokaste had for the Greeks of the age of 
 Perikles a more terrible significance. She is not only the mother of 
 Oidipous, but his wife. As his mother, she had been tortured by 
 seeing her child torn from her arms, to be cast away on Mount 
 Kithairon ; and the shame of finding herself his wife after his victory 
 over the Sphinx drives her to end her misery with her own hands. 1 
 According to the version of Hyginus, the life of Aithra (the pure 
 air), the mother of Theseus, had the same end. Long ago she had 
 been loved by Bellerophon ; but when he was driven from Corinth, 
 she became the wife of the Athenian Aigeus, who left her with the 
 infant Theseus at Troizen, having, like the father of Sigurd, placed 
 his invincible weapons under a large stone, that his son might become 
 possessed of them only when he had reached his full strength. 
 Later still, the Dioskouroi, it is said, carried her away to Sparta, 
 where she became the slave of Helen, and whence with Helen she 
 was taken to Troy, to be brought back again through the prayers of 
 her grandson Demophon. By the same hard fate, Auge, the (brilliant) 
 daughter of Neaira, who, as the early morning, reappears as the 
 mother of the nymphs Phaethousa and Lampetie in the Odyssey, no 
 sooner becomes the mother of Telephos (the being who shines from 
 far) than she is deprived of her child, who is exposed on Mount 
 Parthenion. The story of Ariadne exhibits much the same outlines. 
 She is the daughter of Minos, the son of Zeus, and the all-brilliant 
 PasiphaS, who is the mother of the Minotauros, as the bright Here 
 is the mother of Typhaoa In the slaughter of this monster she has 
 a share corresponding to that of Medeia in the conquest of the bulls 
 and the dragon-sprung men ; like Medeia, she accompanies the con- 
 queror, and like her she is deserted by him. Ariadne then either 
 slays herself, like Iokaste and Auge, Dido or Anna, or becomes the 
 wife of Dionysos, who places her among the stars. In substance 
 this is also the story of the Argive Danae, who is shut up by her 
 father Akrisios in a brazen dungeon, 2 which Zeus enters in the form 
 of a golden shower, as the light of morning pierces the dark chambers 
 of the night. She thus becomes the mother of Perseus ; but, as in 
 the case of Oidipous, the oracle had foretold that if she had a son, 
 he would become the slayer of her father Akrisios, and Akrisios, 
 
 1 Iokaste" is the wife of the gloomy night. 
 Laios : in other words, the dawn from 2 The Iron Stove of the German 
 
 which the sun is born may be regarded story. (Grimm.) 
 as the wife of the dark and cheerless 
 
246 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK anxious like Laios to preserve his own life, placed Danae and her 
 H- child in a chest, as according to one version Oidipous also was 
 placed and borne away to Brasiai. The story of her sojourn in the 
 house of Polydekt£s at Seriphos, of his persecutions and the more 
 benignant treatment of his brother Diktys, of her rescue on the return 
 of her son, and her restoration to her native land, belongs rather 
 to the mythical history of Perseus. The myth of Andromeda, the 
 beautiful daughter of the Aithiopian king Kepheus, is less gloomy ; 
 but although her woes seem to end with her deliverance from the 
 dragon, she had up to that time had her full share of sorrow. Her 
 mother Kassiopeia had, like Niobe, boasted that her child was more 
 beautiful even than the daughters of Nereus, who prayed to Poseidon 
 to avenge the insult, as Leto called on Phoibos to requite the wrong 
 done to her by Niobd. Poseidon accordingly brought the waters of 
 the sea over the land, and with them a sea-monster who, like the 
 Sphinx or the Minotauros, can be satisfied only with human blood 
 The former fills the streets of Thebes with corpses ; the latter exacts 
 the yearly tribute of the dawn-children. But the solitary Andromeda, 
 abandoned to the huge sea-dragon, takes a firmer hold on the popu- 
 lar imagination, and is reproduced in a thousand forms, from the 
 women rescued by Oidipous and Theseus down to Una and her Red 
 Cross Knight. All these deliverers are men unknown to fame ; but 
 they are all endowed with powers for which they who see them give 
 them no credit, and they all exhibit the manly type of generous 
 chivalry which finds its consummation in the pure Sir Galahad. 
 The Arka- The same idea is the groundwork of the myth of the Arkadian 
 dian AugS. Auge, the clear atmosphere of the land of light. Hence the local 
 myth necessarily related that Heraldes came to her whenever he 
 visited Tegea, and thus she becomes the mother of one of the fatal 
 children whose life begins and ends in disaster. No sooner is her 
 son born than her father Aleos decrees her death and the exposure 
 of the child. But Auge is saved to become the wife of the Mysian 
 Teuthras, or, according to another version, to escape narrowly the 
 fate of the Theban Iokaste, and in the end to be brought back to Tegea 
 by her son Telephos, as Perseus brings his mother back to Argos. 
 Eurdpe The story of Europe brings before us the dawn, not as fleeing 
 
 Bui." 16 f rom t ^ e P ursu i t °f tne sun J but as borne across the heaven by the 
 lord of the pure ether. Zeus here, like Indra, himself assumes the 
 form of a bull, and takes away the child as she plays with her 
 brother in her Phenician home. 1 Almost every name in the myth 
 
 1 This bull reappears in the Norse endowed with the powers of Wish. In 
 tale of Katie Wooden-cloak (Dasent), its left ear is a cloth which, when spread 
 
THE BURNING BRAND. 247 
 
 tells its own tale, although we may perhaps have to put aside the chap. 
 
 names of Agenor and Kadmos as merely Hellenised forms of the ■ i — • 
 
 Semitic Kedem and Chnas. Europe herself, the splendour of morn- 
 ing, seen first in the Phoinikian or purple land, is the child of Tele- 
 phassa, the being whose light streams from afar ; l and in her first 
 loveliness she is lost to those who delight in her, when she is snatched 
 away to her western exile. Then follows the long journey of Kad- 
 mos and Telephassa, the weary search of the sun through the 
 livelong day for his early lost sister or bride. There were obviously 
 a thousand ways of treating the myth. They might recover her in 
 the end, as Alpheios is reunited to Arethousa and Perseus comes 
 again to Danae" ; but as it might be said that they might behold her 
 like hereafter, so the tale might run that the being who had delighted 
 them with her beauty should be seen herself again no more. The 
 myth of Europe sets forth the latter notion. Telephassa sinks down 
 and dies far in the west on the plains of Thessaly, and Kadmos, 
 journeying westward still, learns at Delphoi that he is to seek his 
 sister no longer. 
 
 The myth of Althaia sets forth the dawn or morning as the Althaia 
 mother of a child whose life is bound up with a burning brand. As burning- 
 soon as the brand is burnt out her son will die, according to the brand -° 
 .inexorable doom pronounced by the Moirai. This brand is the 
 torch of day, which is extinguished when the sun sinks beneath the 
 western horizon. From this conception of the sun's course sprung 
 the idea that his mother kept him alive by snatching the log from 
 the fire. But although Meleagros is, like Phoibos and Achilleus, 
 invincible and invulnerable, the words of the Moirai must be accom- 
 plished ; and as the mother of the sun may be either the dark night 
 or the nourishing dawn (Althaia), so the wife of Oineus has her kins- 
 folk among the dark beings ; and when these are slain by Meleagros, 
 she thrusts the brand again into the fire, and the life of her brilliant 
 child smoulders away. But his death brings with it the death alike 
 of his mother and his bride, for the tints of the dawn or the gloaming 
 cannot linger long after the sun is down. The names introduced 
 
 out, furnishes abundant banquets for through fearful conflicts with the Trolls, 
 
 the dawn-maiden, who has been thrust before the happy end is brought about 
 
 out of her father's house ; but when the by means of a golden slipper as in the 
 
 stepmother says that she cannot rest stories of Cinderella and Sodewa Bai. 
 until she has eaten the Dun Bull's flesh, ' Pindar (Pyth. iv. ) speaks of EuropS 
 
 the beast, hearing her, tells the dawn- as a daughter of Tityos, a gigantic being, 
 
 maiden that, if she wills, he will carry who is slain by the swift arrow of 
 
 her away. The pursuit of Katie on her Artemis, and condemned to a like 
 
 bull is the chase of Iason by the angry penalty with Ixlfin, Sisyphos, Tantalos, 
 
 Aiet^s, not the loving search of Kadmos and Prometheus, 
 and Telephassa ; and the bull has to go 
 
248 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 into this myth are found for the most part in a host of other stories. 
 She is the daughter of Eurythemis, a reflexion of Europe' or Eury- 
 ganeia, and a sister of Leda, the mother of the brilliant Dioskouroi ; 
 and among her own children is Deianeira, whose union with Herakles 
 is fatal to the hero. 1 Of Kleopatra, the beautiful wife of Meleagros, 
 there is little more to say than that she is, like DaphnS and Arethousa, 
 a child of the waters, the Eudnos being her father, and that, like 
 Oinone and Brynhild, she dies of grief when the chequered life of the 
 being whom she loves has been brought to an end. 
 
 Section VI.— ATHENE. 
 
 The ori- 
 ginal idea 
 of AthenS 
 purely 
 physical. 
 
 AthenS 
 
 Tritoge- 
 
 neia. 
 
 The name Athene is practically a transliteration of the Vedic 
 Ahana, the morning, which in a cognate form appears as Dahana, the 
 Greek Daphne. 2 The myths which have clustered round this greatest 
 of Hellenic dawn-goddesses differ indefinitely in detail ; but all may 
 manifestly be traced back to the same source, and resolved into the 
 same mythical phrases. She is pre-eminently the child of the waters, 
 she springs from the forehead of the sky, and remains fresh, pure, 
 and undefiled for ever. In her origin the virgin deity of the Athenian 
 Akropolis was strictly physical; but the notion of the being who 
 wakes up the world after the darkness of night might soon pass into 
 that of wisdom, the connexion between light and knowledge (the 
 <£c3s and yvwo-is of the Fourth Gospel) being of the closest kind. 
 Thus, in one of the Vedic hymns we have already had the phrase 
 that the dawn as waking every mortal to walk about receives praise 
 from every thinker. But as being sprung from the forehead of the 
 sky, she may be expected to know the secrets of heaven ; and thus 
 we have in Athene a being who, like Phoibos, is filled with all the 
 wisdom of Zeus. In the earlier form of the myth neither the Vedic 
 Ahana nor the Hellenic Athen£ has any mother. In the Rig Veda, 
 " Ushas, the dawn, sprang from the head of Dyu, the murddhadivah, 
 the East, the forehead of the sky." s 
 
 But if AthenS is Zeus-born, the poet, when he tells us this, speaks 
 of her as Tritogeneia, the child of Tritos. 4 It is strange that this 
 
 1 Deianeira is the last of the many 
 brides of Herakles, and belongs, in truth, 
 rather to the darkness than the light, 
 and as sending to him the fatal garment, 
 may be regarded as rather the colleague 
 or bride of the enemy of the day : and 
 thus her name is Dasyanari, the wife of 
 the fiend. — Chips, iW., ii. 89, 234. 
 
 2 See note 4, p. 230. 
 
 3 Max Miiller, ii, " Homer knows 
 of no mother of Athene", nor does the 
 Veda mention a name for the mother of 
 the dawn, though her parents are spoken 
 of in the dual." 
 
 * Hes. Theog. 924. 
 
athen! 
 
 249 
 
 god, whose name differs so slightly from that of the water-god Triton, 
 should have so far disappeared from the memory of the Greeks as to • 
 leave them at a loss to account for the epithet except by connecting 
 it with places bearing a similar name, as among others the Libyan 
 lake Tritonis, and the Boiotian stream Triton, on whose banks, as on 
 those of the Attic stream, towns sprung up called Athenai and 
 Eleusis. 1 In short, every stream so named became a birthplace for 
 Athene, although the meaning of the old phrase was not lost, until 
 an attempt was made, by referring the myth to the alleged Eolic word 
 for a head, to resolve it into the story of her springing from the head 
 of Zeus. But the fact that in the Veda Trita rules over the water 
 and the air, establishes the identity of Trito or Tritos, the father of 
 Athene, not only with that deity, but with Triton, Amphitrite, and 
 the Tritopatores or lords of the winds. 2 The theory which, from the 
 supposed Libyan birthplace of Athgne, infers a relation between 
 Egyptian and Hellenic mythology need not be considered here. 
 
 1 This connexion of the dawn with 
 water runs through almost every legend 
 which turns on the phenomena of morn- 
 ing. Thus in the Norse tale of Katie 
 Wooden-c.loak, the dawn-maiden, while 
 working humbly like Cinderella in the 
 kitchen, asks permission to take up 
 water for the prince, who will receive 
 no service from one so mean-looking. 
 Next day she appears at the palace on 
 a splendid steed, and to his question 
 whence she comes, her reply is, " I'm 
 from Bath ; " the next day she is from 
 Towel-land, the third day from Comb- 
 land, the comb being that with which 
 the dawn-maidens always comb their 
 golden locks by the water-side. 
 
 2 M. Breal, who traces this identity, 
 Hercule et Cacus, 1 7, cites the words of 
 Suidas, '* TpiToirdTopes' Atj/jluv kv t?7 
 'AtBLSi tblJiTiy avefiovs eival robs TpiToird- 
 Topas." It is said of Indra that, " ani- 
 mated by the sacrificial food, he broke 
 through the defences of Vala, as did 
 Trita through the coverings of the well. " 
 — H. H. Wilson, R.V.S, vol. i. p. 141. 
 Professor Wilson here remarks that 
 "Ekata, Dwita, and Trita [the first, 
 second, and third] were three men pro- 
 duced in water, by Agni, for the purpose 
 of removing or rubbing off the reliques 
 of an oblation of clarified butter. The 
 Scholiast . . . says that Agni threw the 
 cinders of the burn^-offering into the 
 water, whence successively arose Ekata, 
 Dwita, and Trita, who, as elsewhere 
 appears, were therefore called Aptyas or 
 
 sons of water.'' Noticing Dr. Roth's 
 opinion that Trita is the same name as 
 Thraetana (Feridun), he says that the 
 identity of Trita and Traitana remains 
 to be established. It is, at the least, 
 not disproved by the story which he 
 cites as setting it aside. This story is 
 that " the slaves of Dirghotamas, when 
 he was old and blind, became insub- 
 ordinate, and attempted to destroy him, 
 first by throwing him into the fire, 
 whence he was saved by the Asvins, 
 then into water, whence he was extri- 
 cated by the same divinities ; upon which 
 Traitana, one of the slaves, wounded him 
 on the head, breast, and arms, and then 
 inflicted like injuries on himself, of 
 which he perished. " This story becomes 
 clear throughout when compared with 
 the myth of E6s, who, like the slaves 
 of Dirghotama, shut up the decrepit 
 Tithonos. In the story of Dirghotamas 
 and Yayatis, Count de Gubernatis dis- 
 cerns King Lear in embryo. Cordelia is 
 here the third son who consents to 
 become old in his father's stead, when 
 his two elder brothers refuse ; or in 
 another version the youngest child, who 
 remains with his parents when these 
 have been driven from their home by 
 the elder children. In Thraetana 
 Athwyana, the son of Thrita Athwya, 
 Professor Th. Benfey recognises the 
 TritOnis Athana of the Greeks. See 
 also Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, 
 i. 24. 
 
250 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Parentage 
 of Athene. 
 
 The Hesiodic Theogony assigns Metis (a name akin to that ot 
 
 the wise Medeia) as a mother to Athene ; but this story is reconciled 
 
 with the other myth by saying, that by the counsel of Ouranos and 
 
 Gaia Zeus swallowed Metis before her child was born. The saying 
 
 of Pindar, that Hephaistos at her birth split the forehead of Zeus 
 
 with a brazen axe, may point to the sudden stream of light shooting 
 
 up in the morning sky, or to the lightning flash which reveals the 
 
 darkened heaven , 1 and in the golden shower which falls at her birth, 
 
 we have a repetition of the mode in which Danae became the 
 
 mother of Perseus. 2 When Apollodoros and others say that the 
 
 forehead of Zeus was cloven by Prometheus or Hermes, we have 
 
 only to remember that these are both spoken of (together with the 
 
 Argive Phoroneus) as the first givers of the boon of fire to mankind* 
 
 As springing from the forehead of Zeus, Athene was known as 
 
 Koryphasia in Messene, as Akria in Argos, while Minerva was called 
 
 Capta (capita) at Rome. 4 But there were also traditions which spoke 
 
 of her as a child not of Zeus, but of the giant Pallas,' who attempts 
 
 to violate her purity, and is therefore slain by her. Here we have 
 
 the dawn regarded as springing from the night, and the night as 
 
 seeking to mar or to destroy his offspring. It is, in short, the myth 
 
 which makes Laios, Akrisios, and Astyages hate their children, who 
 
 are in their turn doomed to slay their sires, as Athene 1 slays the 
 
 monster Pallas. The legend which makes her a daughter of Poseidon 
 
 is merely a statement that the morning is born from the waters. But 
 
 as with the dawn there comes generally the morning breeze (Sara- 
 
 meya, Hermeias, Hermes, the child of Sarama.) with its sweet and 
 
 soothing tones, so when, by the aid of Athene, Perseus has slain the 
 
 dark Gorgon, Athen& is said, like Hermes, to have invented the flute 
 
 in order to imitate the plaintive sounds in which the Gorgon sisters 
 
 mourned the slain Medousa. 6 
 
 But pure and undefiled though the dawn may be, she is yet 
 Ph >t 'h rof f°l' owe d by th e sun > w h° ma y therefore be regarded as her offspring; 
 and Lych- and thus Phoibos Apollon was sometimes called a son of Hephaistos 
 
 Athene 
 
 1 Preller, Grieschische Mythologie, i. 
 151, regards the axe splitting the fore- 
 head of Zeus as the lightning. 
 
 2 Pind. Olymp. vii. 65. The ex- 
 pression applied to Ath6n£, aha\a.\iv 
 !m<iiudi, H Poif, indicates the din of a 
 thunderstorm. 
 
 8 Apollod. i. 3, 5. The myth which 
 makes Hephaistos himself her father 
 speaks only of the burst of flaming light 
 from which the day seems to be born. 
 
 * Max Muller, Lectures on Language, 
 
 second series, 503. 
 
 s This name is manifestly only 
 another form of Phallos. 
 
 Pind. Pyth. xii. 35. The knife with 
 which Perseus slays the Gorgon comes 
 from Athene ; it is the same weapon 
 with which Hermes put out the eyes of 
 Argos. But when the head of the dark 
 Gorgon has been cut off, "the light, 
 veiled for a moment, soon reappears on 
 the Aigis of the dawn-queen." — Brown, 
 The Unicorn, 52. 
 
Athene glauk6pis. 251 
 
 and AthenS, while another version expressed the sarne idea by CHAP. 
 
 making them the parents of Lychnos (the brilliant), another Phae- '• — ■ 
 
 thon. 1 As the dawn-goddess, she can keep men young, or make 
 them old. She rouses them to fresh vigour from healthful sleep, or 
 as the days come round she brings them at last to old age and death. 
 From her come the beauty and strength, the golden locks and 
 piercing glances of Achilleus and Odysseus. But when for the 
 accomplishment of the great work it becomes needful that Odysseus 
 shall enter his own house as a toilwom beggar, it is Athene who 
 dims the brightness of his eye, and wraps him in squalid raiment, 2 
 and again she restores his former majesty when once more he is to 
 meet his son Telemachos. 3 So, again, she preserves to Penelope all 
 the loveliness of her youth, and presents her to Odysseus as beautiful 
 as when he left her twenty years ago, when the Achaian hosts set out 
 for Ilion, while she restores Laertes also to something of his ancient 
 vigour. 4 
 
 Of the vast number of names by which she was known and Epithets of 
 worshipped, the earliest probably, and certainly the most common, 
 denote the light. She is especially the goddess of the grey or gleam- 
 ing face, Glaukopis. She is Optiletis, Oxyderkes, Ophthalmitis, the 
 being of keen eyes and piercing vision. But these epithets might, it 
 is plain, be made to bear a moral or intellectual meaning ; and thus 
 a starting-point would be furnished for the endless series of names 
 which described her as full of wisdom and counsel, as enforcing 
 order and justice, as promoting the tillage of the earth, and as foster- 
 ing all science and all art. Thus the epithets Akria and Akraia, 
 which can be rightly interpreted only after a comparison with her 
 other names, Koryphasia and Capta, might be taken to denote her 
 protection of cities and fortresses, while her name Ageleia, as the 
 driver of the clouds whom Sarama leads forth to their pastures, might 
 be regarded as denoting her care for those who till the soil or keep 
 herds. But her physical character is never kept out of sight. She 
 is the goddess especially of the Athenians, and of the dawn city 
 which received her name after the contest in which she produced the 
 olive against the horse created by Poseidon, for so it was decreed by 
 Zeus that the city should be called after the deity who should confer 
 the greatest boon on man, and the sentence was that the olive, as the 
 
 1 Athene also brings up and nourishes dess forbade it.'' Rather, it was for- 
 
 Erechtheus, and lodges him in her own bidden only by the form which the idea 
 
 temple. On this Mr. Grote, History of of Athtkie assumed in the minds of the 
 
 Greece, i. 75, remarks, "It was alto- Athenians; and the reason is obvious, 
 gether impossible to make Erechtheus - Od. xiii. 430. 
 
 the son of Atheng : the type of the god- « Od. xvi. 172. * lb. xxiv. 368. 
 
252 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK emblem of peace, was better than the horse, whose chief us^s was for 
 
 • '■ — • war. But the city so named after her was emphatically the glistening 
 
 city (\nrapal 'Adrjvai), although the epithet, it seems, was so little 
 applicable to it in its outward aspect that the Athenians of the 
 historical ages prized it with a jealous earnestness, and were ready to 
 grant any prayer made by people who addressed them as citizens of 
 brilliant Athens. 
 Athene the She is, however, the guardian not of Athenians only but of all 
 Ifheroes. the solar neroes ', in ller Bellerophontes, Achilleus, Heraklgs and 
 Perseus, Odysseus and Diomedes, find their unfailing friend and 
 comforter. From her come all wealth and prosperity, and accord- 
 ingly we find the special emblems of wealth and fertility intimately 
 associated with her worship. Her sacred serpent was fed on the 
 Akropolis, and yearly in her great procession the sacred ship, 
 covered with the peplos woven by Athenian maidens, was carried 
 to her shrine. 1 In one of the so-called Orphic hymns, 2 she is said to 
 be both male and female, and thus to remain unwedded. Doubtless 
 the dawn may be regarded as of spotless purity and unfading loveli- 
 ness, and this idea might give rise to images of transcendent holiness 
 and majesty ; but she may be thought of also not only as giving 
 birth to children, but as being sensible to passion, and we are not 
 justified in leaving out of sight those myths which present Athene in 
 this light On the one hand, according to one story, she blinds 
 Teiresias because he had looked upon her unclothed form (a myth 
 closely akin to that of the dazzling treasures of Ixion, which no man 
 might look upon and live), and shrinks with loathing from Hephaistos 
 when he seeks to lay hands upon her. On the other, the myth of 
 Prometheus exhibits her as aiding him in his theft of fire against the 
 will of Zeus, while one version represents her as so acting from 
 feelings not of friendship but of love. In general, however, the 
 harmony between the dawn and the sky from which it springs, in 
 other words, between Zeus and Athene, is undisturbed ; and thus 
 when Zeus is determined to take vengeance for the deceit put upon 
 him by Prometheus, Athene lends herself as a willing accomplice in 
 his scheme. She is to teach Pandora the skilful use of the loom, 
 while Aphrodite' is to adorn her with all the enticements of physical 
 beauty, and Hermes is to give her a crafty and thievish mind and 
 temper. 3 But even in the Iliad where she is generally represented 
 
 1 See section xii. of this chapter. the girdle on Pandora and made her 
 
 2 xxxii. beautiful may be regarded as another 
 8 Hes. Op. et Dies. 6o, ri scq. The version of the myth. It is certainly not 
 
 Statement in line 72 that Athene placed in accordance with line 65. 
 
MINERVA. 253 
 
 as being in perfect accord with the will of Zeus, she engages, chap. 
 
 as we have seen, in an abortive conspiracy to bind Zeus, in which ■ ^— - 
 
 she is the accomplice of Here and Poseidon. 1 
 
 In all her essential attributes, the Hellenic AthenS is represented The Latin 
 by the Latin Minerva, a name which Professor Max Miiller connects • 
 with mens, the Greek /xeVos, and the Sanskrit manas, mind, and com- 
 pares it with mane, the morning, Mania, an old name of the mother of 
 the Lares, and the verb manare as applied especially to the sun, while 
 Matuta and other kindred words denote the dawn. 2 Whatever may be 
 the connexion between Minerva and Matuta, we can scarcely fail to 
 see the affinity of the name with the verb promenervare, used in the 
 Carmen Saliare as an equivalent to the kindred moneo, to admonish. 
 The Latin Minerva, as embodying a purely intellectual idea, is thus 
 a being even more majestic than the Hellenic Athene ; and to so 
 intellectual a conception we should scarcely expect that many fables 
 would attach themselves. Hence the Latin Minerva can scarcely be 
 said to have any mythology. Like Ceres she stands alone in incom- 
 municable sanctity and in unfathomable wisdom. 
 
 Section VII. —APHRODITE. 
 
 The story told in the Hesiodic Theogony is manifestly a com- B; rt h of 
 paratively late form of the legend of Aphrodite. Yet it resolves Aphrodite, 
 itself almost at the first touch into the early mythical phrases. 
 From the blood of the mutilated Ouranos which fell upon the sea 
 sprang the beautiful goddess who made Kythera and Kypros her 
 home, as Phoibos dwelt in Lykia and in Delos. This is but saying 
 in other words that the morning, the child of the heaven, springs up 
 first from the sea, as Athene also is born by the water-side. But as 
 Athene became the special embodiment of the keen wisdom which 
 Phoibos alone shared with her, so on AphroditS, the child of the froth 
 or foam of the sea, was lavished all the wealth of words denoting the 
 loveliness of the morning ; and thus the Hesiodic poet goes on at once 
 to say that the grass sprung up under her feet as she moved, that Eros, 
 Love, walked by her side, and Himeros, Longing, followed after her. 8 
 At her birth she is not only the beautiful Anadyomene of Apelles, as 
 the sun whom Selene comes to greet is Endymion, 4 but she is also 
 
 1 //. i. 400. searches, 136. 
 
 2 Lectures on Language, second 3 Theog. 194-201. 
 
 esries, 505. To the same root, probably, * The words tell each its own story, 
 
 must be referred the epithet moneta, the one denoting uprising from water, 
 
 applied to Juno as the guardian of as the other denotes the down-plunging 
 
 the mint on the Capitoline hill. But into it, the root being found also in the 
 
 see also Isaac Taylor, Etruscan Re- English dive, and the German taufen. 
 
254 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The min- 
 isters of 
 Aphrodite. 
 
 Enalia and Pontia, the deity of the deep sea. 1 In our Iliad and 
 Odyssey the myth is scarcely yet crystallised. In the former poem 
 Aphroditd is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, in whom was seen the 
 mother of Dionysos after her resurrection. In the Odyssey she is the 
 wife of Hephaistos, whose love for Ar£s forms the subject of the lay 
 of Demodokos. Here she is attended by the Charites who wash her 
 and anoint her with oil at Paphos. In the Iliad, however, the wife 
 of Hephaistos is Charis, and thus we are brought back to the old 
 myth in which both Charis and Aphrodite are mere names for the 
 glistening dawn. In Charis we have simply the brilliancy produced 
 by fat or ointment, 3 which is seen again in Liparai Athanai, the 
 gleaming city of the morning. In the Vedic hymns this epithet has 
 already passed from the dawn or the sun to the shining steeds which 
 draw their chariot, and the Haris and Harits are the horses of Indra, 
 the sun, and the dawn, as the Rohits are the horses of Agni, the fire. 8 
 Thus also the single Charis of the Iliad is converted into the 
 Charites of the Odyssey, the graceful beings whose form in Hellenic 
 mythology is always human. 4 
 
 With this origin of the name Charis all the myths which have 
 gathered round the Charites are in the closest agreement ; and 
 they do but resolve themselves, somewhat monotonously, into ex- 
 pressions denoting the birth of the morning from the heavens or the 
 sky, and the sea or the waters. In the Hesiodic Theogony, the 
 Charis who is the wife of Hephaistos is called Aglaia (the shining), 
 
 1 This notion is seen in the strange 
 myth of transformations in which to 
 escape from Typhon in the war between 
 Zeus and the Titans, Aphrodit6, like 
 Phoibos and Onnes, Thetis or Proteus, 
 assumes the form of a fish. Ov. Met. 
 v. 331. With this idea there is pro- 
 bably mingled in this instance the 
 notion of the vesica piscis as the emblem 
 of generation, and denoting the special 
 function of AphroditS. The same em- 
 blematical form is seen in the kestos or 
 cestus of Aphrodite, which answers to 
 the necklace of Harmonia or Eriphyle. 
 This cestus has the magic power of in- 
 spiring love, and is used by Here, when 
 she wishes to prevent Zeus from marring 
 her designs. 
 
 2 Max Muller, Lectures on Language, 
 second series, 369, 375. The Latin 
 Gratia belongs to the same root, which 
 yields — as has been already noticed — our 
 "grease." Objections founded on any 
 supposed degrading association of ideas 
 In this connexion are themselves un- 
 
 worthy and trivial. Professor Muller 
 remarks that " as fat and greasy infants 
 grow into airy fairy Lilians, so do words 
 and ideas, " and that ' ' the Psalmist does 
 not shrink from even bolder metaphors," 
 as in Psalm cxxxiii. That the root 
 which thus supplied a name for Aphro- 
 dite should also be employed to denote 
 gracefulness or charm in general, is 
 strictly natural. Thus the Sanskrit arka 
 is a name not only for the sun, but also 
 for a hymn of praise, while the cognate 
 arkshas denoted the shining stars. 
 
 8 Max Muller, ib. 370. 
 
 * Professor Muller, Led. 372, re- 
 marks that in Greek the name Charis 
 never means a horse, and that " it never 
 passed through that phase in the mind 
 of the Greek poets which is so familiar 
 in the poetry of the Indian bards. " But 
 the Greek notion, he observes, had at 
 the least dawned on the mind of the 
 Vedic poets, for in one hymn the Harits 
 are called the Sisters, and in another 
 are represented with beautiful wings. 
 
THE CHARITES OR GRACES. 255 
 
 whose name is also that of Aigle, Glaukos, and Athene of the bright CHAP. 
 
 face (Glaukopis). In other versions their mother is herself Aigle, ^ — ■ 
 
 who here becomes a wife of Phoibos ; in others again she is Eury- 
 domene, or Eurynome, names denoting with many others the broad 
 flush of the morning light ; or she is Lethe, as Phoibos is also a son 
 of Leto, and the bright Dioskouroi spring from the colourless Leda. 
 So too the two Spartan Charites are, like Phaethousa and Lampetie, 
 Klet§ and Phaenna (the clear and glistening). But beautiful though 
 they all might be, there would yet be room for rivalry or comparison, 
 and thus the story of the judgment of Paris is repeated in the 
 sentence by which Teiresias adjudged the prize of beauty to Kale, 
 the fair. The seer in this case brings on himself a punishment which 
 answers to the ruin caused by the verdict of Paris. 1 
 
 As the goddess of the dawn, Aphrodite is endowed with arrows The 
 irresistible sl, those of Phoibos or Achilleus, the rays which stream A "£^° t C 
 like spears from the flaming sun and are as fatal to the darkness 
 as the arrows of Aphrodite to the giant Polyphemos. Nay, like 
 Ixion himself, she guides the four-spoked wheel, the golden orb at 
 its first rising : but she does not share his punishment, for Aphro- 
 dite is not seen in the blazing noontide. 2 In her brilliant beauty she 
 is Arjuni, a name which appears again in that of Arjuna, the com- 
 panion of Krishna, and the Hellenic Argynnis. 
 
 But the conception of the morning in the form of Aphrodite Her 
 exhibits none of the severity which marks the character of Athene. 
 She is the dawn in all her loveliness and splendour, but the dawn not 
 as unsullied by any breath of passion, but as waking all things into 
 life, as the great mother who preserves and fosters all creatures in 
 whom is the breath of life. She would thus be associated most 
 closely with those forms under which the phenomena of reproduction 
 were universally set forth. She would be a goddess lavish of her 
 smiles and of her love, most benignant to her closest imitators ; and 
 as the vestals of Athens showed forth the purity of the Zeus-born 
 goddess, so the Hierodouloi of Corinth would exhibit the opposite 
 sentiment, and answer to the women who assembled in the temples of 
 the Syrian Mylitta. The former is really Aphrodite Ourania ; the 
 latter the Aphrodite known by the epithet Pandemos. Aphrodite is 
 thus the mother of countless children, not all of them lovely and 
 beautiful like herself, for the dawn may be regarded as sprung from 
 the darkness, and the evening (Eos) as the mother of the darkness 
 again. Hence like Echidna and Typhon, Phobos and Deimos (fear 
 
 1 Sostratos ap. Eustath. ad Horn. and Rom. Biography, s.v. Charis. 
 p. 1665. Smith, Dictionary of Greek 2 Pind. Pyth. iv. 380. 
 
256 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Share of 
 Aphrodite 
 in the 
 Trojan 
 war. 
 
 and dread) are among the offspring whom the bright Paphian god- 
 dess bore to Ares, while Priapos and Bacchos are her children by 
 Dionysos. Nor is her love confined to undying gods. The so-called 
 Homeric hymn tells the story how in the guise of a simple maiden she 
 came to the folds where the Trojan Anchises was tending his flocks, 
 and how Aineias was born, whom the nymphs loved by the Seilenoi 
 and Hermes the Argos-Slayer tended and cherished. 1 
 
 In the Iliad, Aphrodite, as the mother of Aineias, fights on the 
 side of Ilion, not so much because she has any keen wish for the 
 victory of the one side rather than the other, as because she desires to 
 preserve her child and make him a father of many nations. Nowhere 
 in fact do we more clearly see the disintegration of the earliest myths 
 than in the part which the several deities play in the long struggle 
 before the walls of Ilion. That struggle is strictly the desperate strife 
 which is to avenge the wrongs and woes of Helen and to end in her 
 return to her ancient home in the west, — the return of the beautiful 
 dawnlight, whom the powers of darkness had borne away from the 
 western heavens in the evening. It is unnecessary to do more here 
 than to refer to the evidence by which this conclusion may be 
 regarded as proved ; but it follows hence that not only is the faithless 
 Helen the Sarama whom the dark beings vainly try to seduce in the 
 hymns of the Veda, but Paris is Pani, the cheat and the thief, who 
 steals away and shuts up the light in his secret lurking-place. Thus 
 in the early and strict form of the myth, Helen is all light and Paris 
 is all blackness ; and his kinsfolk are the robbers who are associated 
 with the great seducer. Hence we should expect that on the side of 
 the Trojans there would be only the dark and forbidding gods, on the 
 side of the Achaians only those who dwell in the ineffable light of 
 Olympos. The latter is indeed the case : but although Herg, the 
 queen of the pure ether, is the zealous guardian of the Argive hosts, 
 and Athene gives strength to the weapons and wisdom to the hearts 
 of Achilleus and Odysseus, yet Apollon and Aphrodite' are not 
 partakers in their counsels. Throughout, the latter is anxious only 
 for the safety of her child, and Apollon encourages and comforts the 
 noble and self-devoted Hektor. There was in truth nothing in the 
 old mythical phrases which could render this result either impossible 
 or unlikely. The victory of the Achaians might be the victory of the 
 children of the sun over the dark beings who have deprived them of 
 their brilliant treasure ; but there was no reason why on each hero, 
 on either side, there should not rest something of the lustre which 
 surrounds the forms of Phoibos, HeraklSs, Perseus, and Bellerophon. 
 
 1 Hymn to Aphroditt, 258. 
 
HECTOR AND ACHTLLEUS. 257 
 
 There might be a hundred myths inwoven into the history of either chap. 
 
 side, so long as this was done without violating the laws of mythical • : 
 
 credibility. Glaukos must not himself take part in the theft of 
 Helen : but if local tradition made him a Lykian chief not only in a 
 mythical but also in a geographical sense, there was no reason why 
 he should not leave his home to repel the enemies of Priam. Phoibos 
 must not so far turn the course of events as to secure the triumph of 
 Paris : but he might fairly be regarded as the supporter and guide of 
 the generous and self-sacrificing Hektor. Hence when the death day 
 of Hektor has come, Apollon leaves him, reluctantly it may be, but 
 still he abandons him while Athene draws near to Achilleus to nerve 
 him for the final conflict 1 So again, Aphrodite may wrap Aineias in 
 mist and thus withdraw him from the fight which was going against 
 him ; but she must not herself smite his enemy Diomgdes, and the 
 Achaian must be victor even at the cost of the blood which flows 
 within her own veins. But when the vengeance of Achilleus is 
 accomplished, she may again perform her own special work for the 
 fallen Hektor. The dawn is the great preserver, purifier, and restorer ; 
 and hence though the body of Hektor had been tied by the feet to 
 Achilleus' chariot wheels and trailed in the defiling dust, 2 still all that 
 is unseemly is cleansed away and the beauty of death brought back 
 by Aphrodite, who keeps off all dogs and anoints him with the 
 ambrosial oil which makes all decay impossible, while Phoibos 
 shrouds the body in a purple mist, to temper the fierce heat of the 
 midday sun. 3 It is true that this kindly office, by which the bodies 
 of Chundun Raja and Sodewa Bai are preserved in the Hindu 
 fairy tales, is performed for the body of Patroklos by Thetis : but 
 Thetis, like Athene and Aphrodite, is herself the child of the waters, 
 and the mother of a child whose bright career and early doom is, 
 
 1 The importance of the subject war- left for any comparison which may turn 
 rants my repeating that too great a the balance in favour of either warrior, 
 stress cannot be laid on this passage of In neither case are the conditions with 
 the Iliad (xxii. 213). With an unfairness which we are dealing the conditions of 
 which would be astounding if we failed human life, nor can the heroes be 
 to remember that Colonel Mure had an judged by the scales in which mankind 
 hypothesis to maintain which must be must be weighed. Nay, not only does 
 maintained at all costs, the author of Phoibos leave Hektor to his own de- 
 the Critical History of Greek Literature vices, but Athene" cheats him into re- 
 thought fit to glorify Achilleus and sisting Achilleus, when perhaps his own 
 vilify Hektor, on the ground that the sober sense would have led him to 
 latter overcame Patroklos only because retreat within the walls. II, xxii. 231. 
 he was aided by Phoibos, while the 2 //. xxii. 396. Yet it has been 
 former smote down Hektor only in fair gravely asserted that ' ' Homer knows 
 combat and by his own unaided force. nothing of any deliberate insults to the 
 But in point of fact Achilleus cannot body of Hektor, or of any barbarous in- 
 slay his antagonist until Phoibos has dignities practised upon it." 
 deserted him, and no room whatever is 3 //. xxiii. 1S5-191. 
 
 S 
 
258 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II, 
 
 Aphroditfi 
 
 and 
 
 Adonis. 
 
 like that of Meleagros, bound up with the brilliant but short-lived 
 day. 
 
 But the dawn as bringing back the sun and thus recalling to life 
 the slumbering powers of nature is especially the lover of the bright 
 fruits and flowers which gladden her brilliant pathway. In other 
 words, Aphrodite loves Adonis, and would have him for ever with 
 her. The word Adonis is manifestly Semitic, and the influence of 
 Asiatic thought may be readily admitted in the later developements 
 of this myth ; but the myth itself is one which must be suggested to 
 the inhabitants of every country where there is any visible alternation 
 or succession of seasons. There is nothing in the cultus of Tammuz 
 which may not be found in that of Demeter or Baldur, if we except 
 its uncontrolled licentiousness. It is scarcely necessary to go through 
 all the details of the later mythographers, — not one of which, how- 
 ever, presents any real discordance with the oldest forms of the legend. 
 Adonis, as denoting the fruitfulness and the fruits of the earth, must 
 spring from its plants, and so the story ran that he was born from the 
 cloven body of his mother who had been changed into a tree, as 
 AthSne sprang from the cloven head of Zeus. The beautiful babe, 
 anointed by the Naiads with his mother's tears (the dews of spring- 
 time) as the tears of Eos fall for her dead son Memnon, was placed 
 in a chest and put into the hands of Persephone, the queen of the 
 underworld, who, marking his wonderful loveliness, refused to yield 
 up her charge to Aphrodite. 1 It is the seeming refusal of the wintry 
 powers to loosen their clutch and let go their hold of the babe„which 
 cannot thrive until it is released from their grasp. But the Dawn is 
 not thus to be foiled, and she carries her complaint to Zeus, who 
 decides that the child shall remain during four months of each year 
 with PersephonS, and for four he should remain with his mother, 
 while the remaining four were to be at his own disposal. In a climate 
 like that of Greece the myth would as inevitably relate that these 
 four months he spent with Aphrodite, as on the fells of Norway it 
 would run that he was compelled to spend them in Niflheim. Still 
 the doom is upon him. He must beware of all noxious and biting 
 beasts. The fair summer cannot longer survive the deadly bite of 
 winter than Little Surya Bai the piercing of the Raksha's claw, or 
 Baldur withstand the mistletoe of Loki. Like Atys the fair and 
 brave, he is to meet his death in a boar-hunt ; and the bite, which 
 only leaves a life-long mark on the body of Odysseus, brings to an end 
 the dream of AphroditS. In vain she hastens to stanch the wound 
 
 1 In short, Persephone" refuses to 
 give up the treasure which the dragon 
 
 so jealously guards on the Glistening 
 Heath. 
 
VENUS. 259 
 
 The flowers (the last lingering flowers of autumn) spring up from the CHAP. 
 
 nectar which she pours into it, but Adonis the beautiful must die. ^— - 
 
 Once again she carries the tale of her sorrow to Zeus, who grants her 
 some portion of her prayer. Adonis may not, like Memnon or like 
 Sarpedon (for in some versions he also is raised again), dwell always 
 in the halls of Olympos, but for six months in the year he may return 
 to cheer Aphrodite 1 as, in the Eleusinian legend, Persephone is 
 restored to the arms of DemSter. Of the love of Aphrodite for 
 Boutes it is enough to say that Boutes, the shepherd, is a priest of 
 the dawn-goddess Athene, who, as the Argonauts approach within 
 hearing of the Seirens, throws himself into the sea, but is saved by 
 Aphrodite and carried away to Lilybaion. 1 
 
 Lastly, Aphrodite may assume a form as stern and awful as that The armed 
 of Athene herself. As Duhita Divah, the daughter of the sky, is A P hroditS - 
 invincible, so Aphrodite, as the child of Ouranos and Hemera, the 
 heaven and the day, has a power which nothing can resist, and the 
 Spartan worshipped her as a conquering goddess clad in armour and 
 possessing the strength which the Athenian poet ascribes to Eros the 
 invincible in battle. 2 
 
 The Latin "Venus is, in strictness of speech, a mere name, to The Latin 
 which any epithet might be attached according to the conveniences Venus - 
 or the needs of the worshipper. The legends which the later poets 
 applied to her are mere importations from Greek mythology, and 
 seem to be wholly unnoticed in earlier Roman tradition. When the 
 Roman began to trace his genealogy to the grandson of Priam, 
 the introduction of the story of Anchises was followed naturally by- 
 other myths from the same source ; but they found no congenial soil 
 in the genuine belief of the people, for whom a profusion of epithets 
 supplied the place of mythical history. With them it was enough to 
 have a Venus Myrtea (a name of doubtful origin), or Cloacina the 
 purifier, 8 barbata, the bearded, miiitans, equestris, and a host of 
 others, whose personality was too vague to call for any careful dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 The name itself has been, it would seem with good reason, con- Meaning 
 nected with the Sanskrit root van, to desire, love, or favour. Thus, 
 in the Rig Veda, girvanas means loving invocations, and yajnavanas 
 loving sacrifices, while the common Sanskrit preserves vanita in the 
 sense of a beloved woman. To the same root belong the Anglo- 
 
 1 Apollod. i. 9, 25. are mere official names, like Venus 
 
 2 Soph. Ant. 781. Calva, which seemingly has reference 
 
 3 From cluere = K\i( eiv, to wash or to the practice of devoting to her a 
 cleanse. Most of these epithets lie be- lock of the bride's hair on the day of 
 yond the region of mythology. They marriage. 
 
 of the 
 name. 
 
260 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 II. 
 
 Adonis 
 and Dio- 
 nysos. 
 
 Saxon wynn, pleasure, the German wonne, and the English winsome. 
 ' The word Venus, therefore, denotes either love or favour. To the 
 former signification belongs the Latin venustas ; to the latter the verb 
 veneror, to venerate, in other words, to seek the favour of any one, 
 venia being strictly favour or permission. 1 Venus was probably not 
 the oldest, and certainly not the only name for the goddess of love in 
 Italy, as the Oscan deity was named Herentas. 
 
 The myth of Adonis links the legends of Aphrodite with those 
 of Dionysos. Like the Theban wine-god, Adonis is born only on 
 the death of his mother : and the two myths are in one version so 
 far the same that Dionysos like Adonis is placed in a chest, which 
 being cast into the sea is carried to Brasiai, where the body of his 
 mother is buried. But like Memnon and Athamas, the Syrian 
 Tammuz or Adonis, Semele 2 is raised from the underworld and on 
 her assumption receives the name of Dione. 
 
 Myths re- 
 lating to 
 the birth 
 of Her& 
 
 Section VIII. —HERE. 
 
 In the Hellenic mythology Here, in spite of all the majesty with 
 which she is sometimes invested and the power which is sometimes 
 exercised by her, is little more than a being of the same class with 
 Kronos. The same necessity which produced the one evoked the 
 other. Zeus must have a father, and the name of this father was 
 suggested by the epithet Kronides or Kronion, Semitic though 
 these words may be. In like manner he must have a wife, and her 
 name must denote her abode in the pure and brilliant ether. 
 Accordingly the name Here points to the Sanskrit svar, the 
 gleaming heaven, and the Zend hvar, the sun, which in Sanskrit 
 appears in the kindred form Surya, and in Latin as Sol. 3 She is 
 thus strictly the consort of Zeus, with rather the semblance than 
 the reality of any independent powers. In the Iliad she speaks of 
 
 1 I am indebted for this explanation 
 to Professor Aufrecht through the kind- 
 ness of Dr. Muir. 
 
 2 "Semel, the Assyrian Samulti, . . . 
 means image. It is quite possible that 
 Semele may be really an oriental name, 
 to which, as in many other cases, an 
 Hellenic derivation, suitable in itself, 
 has been attached, and may mean ' the 
 image of the sublunary world,' as the 
 neo - Platonist would say." — Brown, 
 Great DionysiakMyth,\. 361. NoGreek 
 derivation has been attached to this 
 name, which certainly cannot be ex- 
 plained by reference to any Greek 
 
 word. 
 
 3 Welcker Griechische Gotierlehre, I 
 363^ regards the name as a cognate form 
 of ipn, earth, and traces it through a 
 large number of words which he sup- 
 poses to be akin to it. Of this and 
 other explanations, Preller, who refers 
 the name to the Sanskrit svar, says 
 briefly, "Die gewbhnlichen Erklarungen 
 von tpa, die Erde, oder von afy>, die 
 Luft, oder "Hpo, d. i. Hera, die Frau, 
 die Herrin schlechtliin, lassen sich 
 weder etymologisch noch dem Sinne 
 nach rechtfertigen."— Griechische My- 
 thologie, i. 124. 
 
UtRt: AND ZEUS. 26l 
 
 herself as the eldest daughter of Kronos, by whom, like the rest CHAP. 
 
 of his progeny, she was swallowed, and as having been g iven by ■ '■ — ■ 
 
 Rheia into the charge of Okeanos and Tethys, who nursed and 
 tended her after Kronos had been dethroned and imprisoned by 
 Zeus beneath the earth an,d sea. 1 This myth passed naturally into 
 many forms, and according to some she was brought up by the 
 daughters of the river Asterion (a phrase which points to the bright 
 blue of heaven coming into sight in the morning over the yet starlit 
 waters), while others gave her as her nurses the beautiful Horai, 2 to 
 whose charge are committed the gates of heaven, the clouds which 
 they scatter from the summit of Olympos and then bring to it again. 8 
 In other words, the revolving seasons all sustain the beauty and the 
 splendour of the bright ether. When she became the bride of Zeus, 
 she presented him with the golden apples, the glistening clouds of 
 the morning, 4 guarded first by the hundred-headed offspring of Typhon 
 and Echidna, and afterwards by Aigle, Erytheia, Hestia, and Are- 
 thousa, the glistening children of Hesperos, whether in Libya or in 
 the Hyperborean gardens of Atlas. 6 
 
 Throughout the Iliad, which makes no mention of this incident, Relatims 
 the will of Here, though compelled to submit, is by no means always and Hire, 
 in harmony with the will of Zeus. The Argives, the children of the 
 bright evening land, are exclusively the objects of her love ; and 
 the story of the judgment of Paris was designed to furnish a 
 reason for this exclusive favour. So the tale went that when the gods 
 were assembled at the marriage board of Thetis and Peleus, Eris 
 flung on the table a golden apple to be given to the fairest of the fair. 
 The trial which follows before the shepherd of Ida is strictly in 
 accordance with the mythical characters of Here and Athene, as well 
 as of AphroditS, to whom, as the embodiment of the mere physical 
 loveliness of the dawn (apart from the ideas of wisdom or power 
 
 underlying the conceptions of Here and Athene), the golden prize is 
 
 awarded Henceforth Aphrodite threw in her weight on the side of 
 the Trojans, while Athene and Here gave their aid to the kinsfolk or 
 the avengers of Helen. But the way was not so clear to Zeus as it 
 seemed to be to Here. Hektor himself was the darling of Apollon, 
 
 1 77. xiv. 201. * Pans. ii. 13, 3. 1'reller, Gr. Myth. 374. 
 
 2 In this case we have the authority 4 This myth, which arose from the 
 of the Iliad itself for an interpretation confusion of the word )a\\ov, an apple, 
 which would otherwise be probably with wKov, a sheep, is really only 
 censured as a violent straining of the another form of the legend which gave 
 text : but the office of the gatekeeper of the story of Phaethousa and Lam- 
 Olympos is expressly stated to be peti6. 
 
 fyKV i.vaKX'iva.i-itvKivbv vifyos r)5' emBewar * Apollod. ii. 5, II. 
 
 v. 751. 
 
262 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Hire and 
 Ixion. 
 
 Hgre 
 Akraia. 
 
 Here the 
 Matron, 
 
 and here alone was a reason why Zeus should not be eager to bring 
 - about the victory of the Achaians ; but among the allies of Priam 
 there were others in whose veins his own blood was running, the 
 Aithiopian Memnon, the child of the morning, Glaukos, the brave 
 chieftain from the land of light, and, dearest of all, Sarpeddn. Here 
 at once there were causes of strife between Zeus and his queen, and 
 in these quarrels Here wins her ends partly by appealing to his policy 
 or his fears, or by obtaining from Aphrodite her girdle of irresistible 
 power. Only once do we hear of any attempt at force, and this 
 instance is furnished by the conspiracy in which she plots with 
 Poseidon and Athene to make Zeus a prisoner. 1 This scheme is 
 defeated by Thetis and Briareos, and perhaps with this may be con- 
 nected the story that Zeus once hung up Here in the heaven with 
 golden handcuffs on her wrists and two heavy anvils suspended from 
 her feet. In the same way she is at enmity with Herakles, and is 
 wounded by his barbed arrows. But where the will of Zeus is not 
 directly thwarted, Here is endowed with the attributes even of Phoibos 
 himself. Thus she imparts to the horse Xanthos the gifts at once of 
 human speech and of prophecy, and sends the unwilling Helios to 
 his ocean bed when Patroklos falls beneath' the spear of Hektor. 
 
 But while Zeus asserts and enforces his own power over her, 
 none other may venture to treat her with insult ; and the proud Ixion 
 himself is fastened to the four-spoked wheel of noon-day, for his pre- 
 sumption in seeking the love of the wife of Zeus. The sun as climb- 
 ing the heights of heaven, and wooing the bright ether, is an arrogant 
 being who must be bound to the fiery cross, or whose flaming orb 
 must be made to descend to the west, like the stone of Sisyphos, just 
 when it has reached the zenith, or summit of the hill. 
 
 Among the many names under which she was known appears the 
 epithet Akraia, which was supposed to describe her as the protectress 
 of cities, but which was applied also to Athene as denoting the bright 
 sky of morning. 2 Thus viewed she is the mother of Hebe, the 
 embodiment of everlasting youth, the cupbearer of Zeus himself. 
 HerS, however, like Athene, has her dark and terrible aspects. From 
 Ouranos, the heaven, spring the gigantic monsters, Thunder and 
 Lightning ; and as the source of like convulsions, Here is the mother 
 of Ares (Mars), the crusher, and Hephaistos, the forger of the' 
 thunderbolts. 
 
 But her relations to marriage are those which were most promi- 
 
 1 Mr. Brown regards the story of 
 this conspiracy as a tradition of the 
 struggles consequent on the attempt to 
 
 introduce the foreign worship of Posei- 
 don into the West. 
 
 2 See Preller, Cr. Myth. i. 125. 
 
IDEA OF NECESSITY. 263 
 
 nently brought out in her worship throughout Hellas. She is the wife CHAP, 
 of Zeus in a sense which could not be applied to any other of the ■ — ^ — ■ 
 Olympian deities ; and, apart from the offspring which she produces 
 by her own unaided powers, she has no children of which Zeus is not 
 the father. Hence she was regarded both as instituting marriage, and 
 punishing those who violate its duties. It is she who sends the 
 Eileithyiai to aid women, when their hour is come ; and thus she has 
 that power of hastening or retarding a birth which is used to give 
 Eurystheus priority over Herakles. 
 
 In these functions she is practically identical with the Latin Juno The Latin 
 (a name closely akin to that of Zeus). 1 But Juno not only presides •' un °' 
 over marriage. She is the special protectress of women from the 
 cradle to the grave, and as such, is Matrona and Virginalis. As 
 Moneta, the guardian of the mint, she bears a name which connects 
 her functions with those of Minerva. 
 
 Section IX.— THE ERINYES. 
 
 In the whole cycle of Greek mythology no idea perhaps is more Doctrine 
 prominent than that of the inevitable doom of toil, sorrow, and suffer- °ity. eceS " 
 ing which is laid without exception on every one of the heroes, and 
 on all the gods, unless it be Zeus himself. For none is there any 
 permanent rest or repose. Phoibos may not tarry in his brilliant 
 birthplace, and his glance must be fatal to the maiden whom he 
 loves. Nay, more, he must fight with, and destroy the Kyklopes, the 
 loathsome giants or storm-clouds ; but these are the children of Zeus, 
 and Phoibos must therefore atone for his deed by a long servitude in 
 the house of Admetos. But on this house there rests the same awful 
 fate. In the midst of all her happiness and wealth Alkestis must die 
 if her husband is to live, and the poet who tells the tale declares in 
 the anguish of his heart that he has searched the heaven above and 
 the earth beneath, and found nothing so mighty, so invincible, as this 
 iron force, which makes gods and men bow beneath her sway. The 
 history of Phoibos is the history of all who are of kin to him. 
 Herakles, with all his strength and spirit, must still be a slave, and 
 the slave of one infinitely weaker and meaner than himself. Perseus 
 must be torn away from his mother Danae, to go and face strange 
 perils and fight with fearful monsters. Yet more, Herakles must even 
 unwittingly do harm to others, and his mischief must end in the dis- 
 order of his own mind, and the loss of power over his own will. He 
 must show certain dispositions, and do certain acts. The sun must 
 
 1 P. 174. 
 
264 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The con- 
 flict be- 
 tween 
 light and 
 darkness. 
 
 rise in the heavens, must seem to woo the queen of the deep blue 
 ether, must rouse the anger of her lord, must be hurled down from 
 his lofty place. Hence, Ixion must writhe on his fiery cross, and 
 Sisyphos must roll the huge stone to the hill-top only to see it dash 
 down again to the plain beneath. There would not be wanting more 
 terrible crimes and more mysterious complications. The Sun must 
 be united again in the evening to the mother from whom he was 
 parted in the morning ; and hence that awful marriage of Oidipous 
 with Iokaste, which filled his house with woe and brought his lineage 
 to an end in blood. Iphigeneia must die that Helen may be brought 
 back, as the evening twilight must vanish away if the light of dawn is 
 to come again. But Iphigeneia has done no wrong. She is the 
 darling of her father's heart, and the memories linked with her image 
 are those only of tenderness and love. Must there not then be 
 vengeance taken for the outpouring of her innocent blood ? And can 
 Ate rest till she has visited on Agamemnon himself the death of his 
 guiltless child ? 
 
 Without going further, we have here the germs, and more than 
 the germs, of doctrines which, from the time that these ideas were 
 awakened in the human mind, have moulded the theology of the 
 world — the doctrines of irresistible force, of the doom which demands 
 blood for blood, of the destiny which shapes a man's life even before 
 he is born. These doctrines necessarily assume at an early age a 
 moral or a spiritual character ; but the ideas which underlie them 
 were evoked by the physical phenomena of nature. The moral con- 
 flict and antagonism between Ormuzd and Ahriman points to the 
 earlier struggle in which Indra fights with and slays the biting snake, 
 the thief, the seducer, who hides away his prey in his dismal cave ; 
 and the battle between spiritual good and evil takes form from the 
 war between the light of the Sun and the darkness of the night. But 
 while these ideas were passing more and more into the region of 
 things spiritual, and were becoming crystallised in theological systems, 
 the growth of a physical mythology was not wholly arrested. The 
 vengeance* for iniquity may belong to the fearful Erinyes ; but the 
 Erinys is still a being who wanders in the air. The wrath of Ate may 
 never slumber, so long as the murderer remains unpunished ; but she 
 is still the tangible being whom Zeus seizes by her long-flowing locks, 
 and hurls from the portals of Olympos. But the impulse to a moral 
 mythology once given could not but call into existence other beings 
 answering to Ate or the Erinyes in their purely spiritual aspects. 
 From the idea of a being who can see all that is done by the children 
 of men would come the notion of three beings, each having as its 
 
THE FATAL SISTERS. 255 
 
 province severally the past, the present, and the future ; while the lot CHAP. 
 
 which is each man's portion, and the doom which he oannot avoid ' ' - — ■ 
 
 would be apportioned to him by beings whose names would denote 
 their functions or the gentler qualities which men ascribed to them in 
 order to deprecate their wrath. 
 
 Of these beings the Erinyes are in the Hellenic mythology among Erinyes 
 the most fearful — so fearful, indeed, that their worshippers, or those menides. 
 who had need to speak of them, called them rather the Eumenides, 
 or merciful beings, to win from them the pity which they were but 
 little supposed to feel. Yet these awful goddesses * are but repre- 
 sentatives of the Vedic Saranyu, the beautiful morning whose soft 
 light steals across the heaven, and of whom it was said that she would 
 find out the evil deeds committed during the night, and punish the 
 wrongdoer. Still, unconscious though the Athenian may have been 
 of the nature of the beings whom he thus dreaded or venerated, they 
 retained some of their ancient characteristics. Terrible as they might 
 be to others, they had only a genial welcome for the toilworn and 
 suffering Oidipous, the being who all his life long had struggled 
 against the doom which had pressed heavily on the Argive Herakles. 
 Close to Athens, the city of the dawn goddess, is their sacred grove ; 
 and under the shadow of its clustering trees the blinded Oidipous 
 will tranquilly wait until it is his time to die. Where else can the 
 weary journey come to an end than amidst the sacred groves in which 
 the Erinyes are seen in the evening, weaving, like Penelope, the magic 
 web which is to be undone again during the night? The threads 
 of this web become in their hands, and in those of the kindred 
 Moirai, the lines of human destiny. Having said thus much of these 
 dreaded beings we have practically said all. Mythographers could 
 not fail to speak of them as children of Gaia, sprung from the blood 
 of the mutilated Ouranos, or as the daughters of the night, or of the 
 earth and darkness — a parentage which will apply with equal truth to 
 Phoibos or the Dioskouroi. When we are told that in cases where 
 their own power seems inadequate they call in the aid of Dike or 
 Justice, we are manifestly on the confines of allegory, which we are 
 not bound to cross. In the conceptions of later poets, they appear, 
 like the Gorgons, with writhing snakes in place of hair, and with 
 blood dripping from their eyes ; and as naturally, when their number 
 was limited to three, they received names which, like Allekto, 
 Megaira, and Tisiphone, imply relentless hatred, jealousy, and revenge. 
 Their domain is thus far wider and more terrible than that of the 
 Moirai, who weave, deal out, and cut short the thread of human life. 
 
 1 (TEyupal fltaf. 
 
266 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 From this point the mythology, which has grown up, such as it 
 is, round the fatal sisters, may be regarded as thoroughly artificial. 
 The division of time into the past, the present, and the future once 
 made, it only remained to assign these divisions severally to one 
 personal being, and to invest this being with attributes suited to the 
 office which it has to perform. It may be instructive to trace the 
 process by which the single Moira of the Iliad and Odyssey suggests 
 the notion of many Moirai, and is represented by the Hesiodic sisters, 
 Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos ; but the process is altogether different 
 from that which, starting with phrases denoting simply the action of 
 wind or air in motion, gives us first the myths of Hermes, Orpheus, 
 Pan, and Amphion, and ends with the folk-lore of the Master Thief 
 and the Shifty Lad. In the latter case, the myth-maker knew little, 
 probably nothing, of the source and the meaning of the story, and 
 worked in unconscious fidelity to traditions which had taken too 
 strong a root to be lightly dislodged or materially changed. In the 
 former we have the work rather of the moralist or the theologian. 
 The course of human existence and of all earthly things is regarded 
 as a long coil of thread, and the gods are the spinners of it Thus 
 this work is specially set apart to Aisa, the spoken word of Zeus, the 
 Fatum of the Latins, or to Moira, the apportioner; for to both alike 
 is this task of weaving or spinning assigned, 1 and Aisa and Moira are 
 alike the ministers of Zeus to do his will, not the despotic and 
 irresponsible powers before whom, as before the Ananke of Euripides, 
 Zeus himself must bow. Nay, even a mortal may have a certain 
 power over them, and Achilleus may choose either a brief career and 
 a brilliant one, or a time of repose after his return home which shall 
 stand him in the stead of glory. 2 The dualism of the ideas of birth 
 and death would lead us to look for two Moirai in some traditions, 
 and accordingly we find the two at Delphoi, of whom Zeus and 
 Apollon are the leaders and guides. 3 The three Hesiodic Moirai, 
 who are sisters of the Erinyes, are also called the Keres, or masters 
 of the destinies of men. 1 Of these three one alone is, by her name 
 Klotho, charged with the task of spinning; but in some later versions 
 this task is performed by all three; nor is the same account always 
 
 1 //. xx. 128 ; xxiv. 209. 
 
 5 //. ix. 411. 
 
 * Pans. x. 24, 4. 
 
 4 These are the irijper TavTjXeye'or 
 Bav&roio — the name belonging to the 
 same root which has yielded the words 
 Kvptos, Koipavos, and the Latin creare 
 (cf. Gr. Kpelu), creator. The name 
 Moira answers to that of the Latin Mors, 
 
 the grinding, crushing power, the iw'pa 
 xparaiii of the Iliad. Yet the etymo- 
 logy was not wholly without reason, 
 which connected the word with fiepos, a 
 share or portion, the idea of pieces or 
 fragments being naturally expressed by 
 the root used to denote the working of 
 the hammer or the millstone. 
 
THE WEIRD SISTERS. 267 
 
 given of their functions with regard to the past, the present, and the chap. 
 
 future. Commonly Klotho spins the threads, while Laffliesis deals ■ 
 
 them out, and Atropos severs them at the moment of death; but 
 sometimes Klotho rules over the present, Atropos over the past, and 
 Lachesis over the future. 1 If, again, they are sometimes represented 
 in comparative youth, they sometimes appear with all the marks of 
 old age; and thus we come to the Teutonic Norns. The Hellenic 
 Moirai, as knowing what was to befall each man, had necessarily the 
 power of prediction, a characteristic which is the most prominent 
 attribute of the fatal sisters of the North. These in the German 
 myths are Vurdh, Verdhandi, and Skuld, names purely arbitrary and 
 artificial, denoting simply that which has been, that which is in process 
 of becoming or is in being, and that which shall be hereafter. 3 Of 
 these names the two last have dropped out of English usage, while 
 Vurdh has supplied the name by which the sisters were known to 
 Shakespeare; and thus we have the weird sisters whom Macbeth 
 encounters on the desolate heath, the weird elves of Warner's Albion, 
 the Weird Lady of the Woods of the Percy Ballads, 3 the Fatal Sustrin 
 of Chaucer. 
 
 These Norns, gifted with the wisdom of the Thriai, 4 lead us The Tea- 
 through all the bounds of space. They are the guardians of the ^™ s 
 great ash-tree Yggdrasil, whose branches embrace the whole world. 
 Under each of its three roots is a marvellous fountain, the one in 
 heaven, the abode of the ^Esir, being the fountain of Vurdh, that of 
 Jotunheim being called by the name of the wise Mimir, while the 
 
 1 Clotho prresentis temporis habet at once explained. — Max Miiller, Chips, 
 curam, quia quod torquetur in digitis, ii. 62 ; Grimm. D. Myth. 377. 
 momenti prsesentis indicat spatia ; Atro- ' Grimm, D. M. 378; Max Miiller, 
 pos pra;teriti fatum est, quia quod in Lectures on Language, second series, 
 fuso perfectum est, pneteriti temporis 563. The Norns are the Three Spin- 
 habet speciem : Lachesis futuri, qu6d sters of the German story in Grimm's 
 etiam illis, quae futura sunt, finem suum collection, who perform the tasks which 
 Deus dederit. — Apuleius, de Mundo, are too hard for the delicate hands of 
 p. 280 ; Grimm, Deutsche Myth. 386. the Dawn-maiden. In the Norse Tales 
 The Hesiodic poet, in his usual didactic (Dasent) they reappear as the Three 
 vein, makes the Moirai strictly moral Aunts, or the three one-eyed hags, who 
 beings who punish the wrong-doing, or help Shortshanks, as the three sisters in 
 transgressions, whether of gods or men. the tale of Farmer Weathersky, and the 
 Jheog. 220. three loathly heads in the story of 
 
 1 Vurdh represents the past tense of Bushy Bride, 
 the word werden. Verdhandi is the 4 Their wisdom is inherited by the 
 
 present participle, werdend, while Skuld bards whose name, Skalds, has been 
 
 is the older form of Schuld, the obliga- traced by Professor Kuhn to the same 
 
 tion to atone for the shedding of blood. root with the Sanskrit VHiandas, metre ; 
 
 Skuld thus represents really the past and /£*handas Professor Max Miiller re-, 
 
 tense skal which means " I have killed, gards as identical with the term Zend. 
 
 and therefore am bound to make com- For the evidence of this see Chips, &c, 
 
 pensation for it." The difference be- i. 84, note, 
 tween our "shall" and "will" is thus 
 
268 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Nemesis 
 and Adras- 
 teia. 
 
 third in Niflheim, or Hades, is the Hvergelmir, or boiling cauldron. 
 - At the first the yEsir and Norns hold their court; at the second 
 Mimir keeps his ceaseless watch, a being whose name has apparently 
 a meaning closely akin to that of the Latin Minerva, 1 and who leaves 
 to Wuotan (Odin) only one eye, having demanded the other as 
 a pledge before he will grant to him a draught from the water which 
 imparts wisdom. Such is the sanctity of this water, which the Norns 
 every morning pour over the branches of the ash-tree, that everything 
 touched by it becomes snow-white, and the dew which falls from the 
 tree is always sweet as honey. On the crown of the tree sits an eagle; 
 under its roots lurks the serpent or dragon Nidhogr; and between 
 these the squirrel, ever running up and down, seeks to sow dissension. 
 This mighty ash-tree in Grimm's belief is only another form of the 
 colossal Irminsul, 3 the pillar which sustains the whole Kosmos, as 
 Atlas bears up the heaven, the three roads which branch from the one 
 representing the three roots of the other. The tree and the pillar are 
 thus alike seen in the columns, whether of Herakles or of Roland ; 
 while the cosmogonic character of the myth is manifest in the legend 
 of the primeval man Askr, the offspring of the ash-tree, of which 
 Virgil, from the characteristic which probably led to its selection, 
 speaks as stretching its roots as far down into earth as its branches 
 soar towards heaven. 8 
 
 The process which multiplied the Norns and defined their func- 
 tions exalted also the character of Ate, who, as we have seen, appears 
 in the Iliad simply as the spirit of mischievous folly, hurled out of 
 Olympos for bringing about the birth of Eurystheus before that of 
 Herakles, but who in the hands of ^Eschylos becomes the righteous 
 but unrelenting avenger of blood. The statement that the Litai are 
 beings who follow closely when a crime is done, and seek to make 
 amends for it, is a mere allegory on the office of prayer ; and what is 
 
 1 Grimm, who traces the word 
 through its many changes, notes also 
 the relation of the Latin mentor with 
 the Greek /iijueo/tai — the mimic being 
 the man who remembers what is done 
 by another ; and thus ' ' mummery " is 
 but another form of "memory." — D. 
 Myth. 353. Mimir is thus the ICentaur 
 Mimas ; and the wisdom of the Ken- 
 taur, it may be noted, became a proverb. 
 In one story Mimir is sent by the ^Esir 
 to the Vanir, who cut off his head and 
 send it back to them. Wuotan utters a 
 charm over it, and the head, which 
 never wastes away, becomes his coun- 
 sellor — a legend which reminds us of 
 
 the myth of Memnon's head with its 
 prophetic powers, localised in Egypt. 
 Compare also the Greek kephalos. 
 
 2 Although the narhe of the German 
 Irmin cannot be identified with the 
 Greek Hermes (Grimm, D. Myth. 328), 
 yet we may compare the Greek ip/ii&iov 
 with the German Irminsul, the pillar or 
 column of Irmin, answering to the busts 
 of Hermes fixed on the Hermai at 
 Athens and elsewhere. Cf. the note 
 of M. Bre"al in Professor Max Muller's 
 Lectures, second series, 474. 
 
 3 See also Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 
 207. 
 
NEMESIS AND TYCHE. . 269 
 
 told us of Nemesis, if less allegorical, is still merely the result of chap. 
 
 moral reflexion. In the world good and evil seem to be Capriciously ' : ' 
 
 distributed, so that on the one side we have the squalid beggar, on 
 the other the man whose prosperity is so unvarying that his friend, 
 foreseeing the issue, sends to renounce all further alliance with him. 
 This inequality it is the business of Nemesis to remedy; and thus she 
 becomes practically an embodiment of righteous indignation at suc- 
 cessful wrong, although she is also regarded as the minister of the 
 gods who are jealous when the well-being of man passes beyond a 
 certain limit. 1 In either aspect she is Adrasteia, the being from 
 whom there is no escape. 
 
 In the meaning commonly attached to the word, TychS denoted Tychs 
 the idea of mere blind chance, scattering her gifts without any regard ira ' a ' 
 to the deserts of those on whom they might fall. But this was not 
 the conception which led some to represent her with a rudder as 
 guiding the affairs of the world, and not only to place her among the 
 Moirai, but to endow her with a power beyond that of the others. 3 
 In her more fickle aspect she carries the ball in her hand, while her 
 wealth and the nature of her gifts are denoted by the horn of Amal- 
 theia at her side, and the boy Eros who accompanies her, or the Good 
 Demons who sometimes surround her. As Akraia, Tyche becomes 
 simply a name of Athene, the wealth-bringer ; with the epithet Agathe,' 
 good, she becomes practically identical with the Agathos Daimon, 
 the nameless benignant deity invoked by cities and individual men. 
 The names Theos and Daimon are often given to those unnamed 
 forces in nature which are more felt in their general influences than 
 in particular acts. 3 Nor is the assertion without warrant that the 
 genuine utterances of the heart were addressed to this incompre- 
 hensible power, of whose goodness generally they felt assured, and 
 not to any mythical deities on whose capricious feelings no trust 
 could be placed. When the swineherd Eumaios talks with Odysseus, 
 we hear nothing of Zeus or Phoibos, but we are told simply that the 
 unnamed God gives and takes away as may seem to him best. Nor 
 can we doubt that even the mass of the people were impressed with 
 the belief in a deity or power different in kind from the mythical 
 deities brought before them by their epic or tragic poets. This deity 
 was simply the good God, or the unknown Being, worshipped ignor- 
 antly, whom St Paul said that he came only to declare to them. 
 
 1 QBovephv rb Sai/idviov—the doctrine Rhamnusian egg of Nemesis belongs to 
 
 which lies at the root of the philosophy the story of Leda and Helen, 
 attributed by Herodotos to Solon, and 2 Paus. vii. 26, 3. 
 
 of the policy of Amasis in his dealings " Preller, Gr. Myth. 1. 421. 
 
 with Polykrates. The myth of the 
 
270. MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Doubtless even this conception underwent many modifications ; and 
 
 11. 
 
 in the end not only each state or city, but each man and woman, 
 from the moment of birth, had a guardian demon or angel who sought 
 to lead them always in the right way. 1 This guardian was invoked on 
 all occasions, in such forms as our " Luck be with you," or the " Quod 
 bonum, felix, faustumque sit " of the Latins." 
 
 Section X.— HELLENIC SUN GODS AND HEROES. 
 
 The Ionian legend, embodied in the so-called Homeric Hymn, 
 The Ionian tells the simple tale that L£to, the mother of the unborn Phoibos, could 
 thTbirth find no place to receive her in her hour of travail until she came to 
 of Phoibos. Delos. To wealthier and more fertile lands she made her prayer in 
 vain ; and when she addressed herself to the little stony island with 
 its rugged cliffs and hills, Delos trembled with joy not unmingled with 
 fear. The unborn child, she knew, would be a being of mighty power, 
 ruling among the undying gods and mortal men ; and she dreaded lest 
 he should despise his sterile birthplace and spurn it with his foot into 
 the sea. It remained only for Leto to make a solemn covenant with 
 Delos, that here should be the sanctuary of her child for ever, and 
 that here his worshippers, coming from all lands to his high festival, 
 should lavish on her inexhaustible wealth of gold and treasures. So 
 the troth was plighted ; but although Dione and Amphitrite with other 
 goddesses were by her side, Here remained far away in the palace of 
 Zeus, and the child of Leto could not be born unless she should suffer 
 Eileithyia to hasten to her relief. Then, as she drew near, Leto cast 
 her arms around a tall palm-tree as she reclined on the bank of Kynthos, 
 and the babe leaped to life and light as the earth smiled around her. 
 The goddesses bathed him in pure water, and wrapping him in a 
 glistening robe, fine and newly wrought, placed a golden band round 
 the body of Chrysaor, while Thetis touched his lips with the drink and 
 food of the gods. But no sooner had the child received this nourish- 
 ment, than he was endowed with an irresistible strength, and his 
 swaddling bands fell off him like flax, as he declared Ivs mission of 
 teaching to men the counsels of Zeus. Then began the journey of 
 the far-shooting god, whose golden hair no razor should ever touch. 
 From land to land he went, delighting his eyes with the beautiful 
 sights of grove-clad hills and waters running to the sea. 
 The This hymn has, indeed, an historical interest, as being manifestly 
 
 Mory. 1,an tne work °f a ^ me when the great Ionian festival at Delos was 
 
 1 awavTi Salfiav avSpl <rvfurapi<TTa.Tai Menander, quoted by Clem. Al. Str. 
 euSusyej/ofiei/Cfifivo-rayioybsTov fitou 5, p. 260. 1'reller, Gr. Myth. i. 422. 
 ayadJs. 2 Pieller, ib. i. 423. 
 
THE DELIAN APOLL6N. 27 1 
 
 celebrated with a magnificence which the Lydian and Bersian con- c Vt AP ' 
 
 quests grievously impaired. To the hymn-writer Delos is the abode ' ' 
 
 dear above all others to the lord of light ; and thither come wor- 
 shippers whose beauty and vigour would seem beyond the touch of 
 sickness, pain, or death. The rest of the hymn is manifestly a 
 different poem, composed by a Delphian when the oracle of that 
 place had reached its highest reputation ; but the blind old bard of 
 the rocky islet of Chios is well aware that, apart from any rivalry of 
 other temples and other festivals, it is impossible for Phoibos always 
 to abide in Delos. For him there is no tranquil sojourn anywhere ; 
 and all that the poet can say on behalf of his beloved Delos is, that 
 the God never fails to return to it with ever-increasing delight, as in 
 the old Vedic hymns the Dawn is said to come back with heightened 
 beauty every morning. In truth, almost every phrase of the hymn is 
 transparent in its meaning. The name Leto is close akin to that of 
 Leda, the dusky mother of the glorious Dioskouroi, and is in fact 
 another form of the L£th§, in which men forget alike their joys and 
 sorrows, the Latmos in which Endymion sinks into his dreamless 
 sleep, and the Ladon, or lurking-dragon, who guards the golden 
 apples of the Hesperides. But for many a weary hour the night 
 travails with the birth of the coming day, and her child cannot be 
 born save in the bright land (Delos) of the Dawn. A toilsome 
 journey lies before her; and the meaning of the old myth is 
 singularly seen in the unconscious impulse which led the hymn- 
 writer to speak of her as going only to lofty crags and high mountain 
 summits. 1 Plains and valleys it would obviously be useless to seek; 
 the light of the sun must rest on the hill-tops long before it reaches 
 the dells beneath. In another version, she is said to have been 
 brought in twelve days from the land of the Hyperboreans to Delos 
 in the form of a she-wolf, 2 Lukos, a phrase which carries us to the 
 story of Lykaon, and to the interpretation given to the name of the 
 Lykeian Apollon. 3 So again in the Phoinix or palm, round which 
 Leto casts her arms, we have that purple hue of dawn which marks 
 the early home of the children of Agenor and Telephassa. 4 But 
 
 1 Hymn. Afoll. 30-45. is necessarily the child of the being who 
 
 2 The myth was regarded as account- sends her light from afar ; and the Con- 
 ine for a supposed fact connected with nexion of the purple hue with the birth 
 the breeding of wolves. — Grote, History and early life of the sun is seen not 
 of Greece i 62 onIv ln the m y th of the blrd known as 
 
 » The Kyneian Apollon must be the Phenix, but in Phoinix, the teacher 
 
 compared with Helene Kyn6pis, Kyno- and guide of Achilleus in his childhood, 
 
 soura, Kynosarges, &c.-Burnouf, La Of the Egyptian Phenix Herodotos 
 
 Le&nde, Athinienne. speaks as a bird in which the Egyptians 
 
 * Eurflpe, the broad spreading dawn, saw the emblem of immortality ; but he 
 
Phoibos. 
 
 1J2 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK there were other traditions about his birth. Any word expressing the 
 ideas of light and splendour might be the name of his birthplace ; 
 and so the tale ran that Apollon and Artemis were both born in 
 Ortygia, the land of the quail, the earliest bird of spring, 1 and thus of 
 the early morning. No mythical incidents were attached to his 
 epithet Lyke*genes ; but this name speaks of him simply as born in 
 that land of light, through which flows the Xanthian or golden 
 stream, and where dwell SarpMon, the creeping flush of morning, 
 and Glaukos the brilliant, his friend. He is the Phanaian* or 
 glistening king, who gave his name to the Chian promontory on 
 which his worshippers assembled to greet him. 
 The infant In the Delian hymns Apollon soon attains his full might and 
 majesty. Still for a time he lies still and helpless, with a golden band 
 around his body which is clad in white swaddling clothes. These 
 white mists which seem to cling to the rising sun are wrapped more 
 tightly round the Theban Oidipous, and the golden band gives place 
 to the nails which pierce his feet when he is exposed on the heights 
 of Kithairon. But in both alike the time of weakness is short 
 Oidipous returns to Thebes, mighty in strength of arm and irre- 
 sistible in wisdom, to slay the terrible Sphinx. In one version 
 Phoibos is only four days old when, hurrying to Parnassos, he slays 
 the dragon which had chased his mother Leto in her wanderings to 
 Delos. The more elaborate legend of the hymn places the slaying 
 of the Python later in his career ; but like the Sphinx, Python s is not 
 only the darkness of night, but the black storm-cloud which shuts up 
 the waters, and thus it guards or blockades the fountain which is to 
 yield water for the Delphian temple. 4 In other respects the later of 
 
 says nothing of the resurrection of the of the many forms of Vritra, Ahi, and 
 Phenix fromhis own ashes ; while others, Cacus, stands to Here, the bright god- 
 instead of saying that a new Phenix dess of the upper air, in the relation of 
 sprung full-grown from the funeral pile the Minotauros to the brilliant Pasiphae', 
 of the old one, spoke of a worm which wife of Minos. 
 
 came out from the dead body and * " In a Slovakian legend the dragon 
 
 gradually grew up into another Phenix. sleeps in a mountain cave through the 
 
 — Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, ii. winter months, but at the equinox 
 
 200. bursts forth. ' In a moment the heaven 
 
 1 Professor Max Muller finds this was darkened, and became black as 
 word in the Latin Vertumnus. — Selected pitch, only illumined by the fire which 
 Essays, i. 565. In its Latin form the flashed from the dragon's jaws and eyes, 
 name belongs to the class of partici- The earth shuddered, the stones rattled 
 pial predicates, e.g. Picumnus, Auc- down the mountain sides into the glens ; 
 tumnus. right and left, left and right, did the 
 
 2 Virg. Georg. ii. 98. dragon lash his tail, overthrowing pines 
 
 3 Python is here called the nurse of and bushes, and snapping them as reeds. 
 TyphaSn, the dragon-child or monster, He evacuated such floods of water that 
 to which Here* gives birth by her own the mountain torrents were full. But, 
 unaided power, as Athene is the after a while, his power was exhausted ; 
 daughter of Zeus alone. Typha6n, one In lashed no more with his tail, ejected 
 
THE FISH-SUN. 273 
 
 the two poems woven together in the Homeric Hymn is as trans- chap. 
 
 parent in meaning as the earlier. In both Phoibos journeys gradually *— — : ' 
 
 westward ; in both riches and glory are promised to those who will 
 receive him. But the bribe is held out in vain to the beautiful 
 fountain Telphoussa, near whose waters Phoibos had begun to lay 
 the foundations of a shrine. By warnings of the din of horses and of 
 cattle brought thither to watering she drove him away, and Phoibos 
 following her counsel betook himself to Parnassos, where Trophonios 
 and Agamedes raised his world-renowned home. It is at this point 
 that the author of the hymn introduces the slaughter of the worm or 
 dragon to account for the name Pytho, as given to the sanctuary from 
 the rotting of its carcase in the sun ; * and thence he takes Apoll6n 
 back to Telphoussa, to wreak his vengeance on the beautiful fountain 
 which had cheated him of a bright home beside her glancing waters. 
 The stream .was choked by a large crag, the crag beetling over 
 Tantalos, which he toppled down upon it, and the glory departed 
 from Telphoussa for ever. 
 
 It now remained to find a body of priests and servants for his Phoibo? 
 Delphian sanctuary, and these were furnished by the crew of a Cretan n -^ '" 
 ship sailing with merchandise to Pylos. In the guise of a dolphin 
 Phoibos urged the vessel through the waters, while the mariners sat 
 still on the deck in terror as the ship moved on without either sail or 
 oar along the whole coast of the island of Pelops. As they entered 
 the Krisaian gulf a strong zephyr carried them eastward, till the ship 
 was lifted on the sands of Krisa. Then Apollon leaped from the 
 vessel like a star, while from him flew sparks of light till their 
 radiance reached the heaven, and hastening to his sanctuary he 
 showed forth his weapons in the flames which he kindled. This 
 done, he hastened with the swiftness of thought back to the ship, now 
 in the form of a beautiful youth, with his golden locks flowing over 
 his shoulders, and asked the seamen who they were and whence they 
 came. In their answer, which says that they had .been brought to 
 Krisa against their will, they address him at once as a god, and 
 
 no more water, and spat no more fire.' form, connecting it in meaning with the 
 
 I think it impossible not to see in this epithets a\e£iKaicoy, &TroTp6iTa.ios, aKecrios, 
 
 description a spring- tide thunderstorm. " and others. This, however, is probably 
 
 Gould, Werewolf, p. 172. as doubtful as the derivation which con- 
 
 1 The word is connected by So- nects Phoibos with <f>a>s, light. By Pro- 
 
 phoklSs not with the rotting of the snake fessor Max Miiller the latter name is 
 
 but with the questions put to the oracle. identified with the Sanskrit Bhava, a 
 
 The latter is the more plausible conjee- word belonging to the same family with 
 
 ture ; but the origin of the word is un- the Greek <pia, the Latin fui, and the 
 
 certam, as is also that of Apollon, of English be. Phoibos is thus the living 
 
 which Welcker ( Criechische GStterkhre. God. 
 i. 460) regards ApellOn as the genuine 
 
274 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Phoibos tells them that they can hope to see their home, their 
 
 • - : — ' wives, and their children again no more. But a higher lot awaits 
 
 them. Their name shall be known throughout the earth as the 
 guardians of Apollon's shrine, and the interpreters of his wilL So 
 they follow him to Pytho, while the god leads the way filling the air 
 with heavenly melodies. But once more they are dismayed as they 
 look on the naked crags and sterile rocks around them, and ask how 
 they are to live in a land thus dry and barren. The answer is that 
 they should have all their hearts' desire, if only they would avoid 
 falsehood in words and violence in deed. 
 The Fisfe Such was the legend devised to account for the name and the 
 
 sun ' founding of the Delphian temple. It is obviously a myth which 
 
 cannot be taken by itself. Phoibos here traverses the sea in the 
 form of a fish, and imparts lessons of wisdom and goodness when he 
 has come forth from the green depths. He can assume, many forms, 
 and appear or vanish as he pleases. All these powers or qualities are 
 shared by Proteus in Hellenic story, as well as by the fish-god, 
 Dagon or Onnes, 1 of Syria ; and the wisdom which these beings 
 possess is that hidden wisdom of Zeus which, in the Homeric hymn, 
 Phoibos cannot impart even to Hermes. So in the Vishnu Purana 
 the demon Sambara casts Pradyumna, the son of Vishnu, into the 
 sea, where he is swallowed by a fish, but he dies not and is born anew 
 from its belly. 2 The story must be taken along with those of the 
 Frog-prince, of Bheki, and of the Fish-rajah in Hindu fairy tales. 3 
 Doubtless it is the same dolphin which appears in the story of Arion, 
 but the fish not less than the harp has lost something of its ancient 
 power. 4 
 Phoibos In this myth Phoibos acts from his own proper force. Here, as 
 
 Hemes m l ^ e hymn to Hermes, he is emphatically the wise and the deep or 
 far-seeing god. The lowest abyss of the sea is not hidden from his 
 eye, but the wind can never stir their stormless depths. His gift of 
 music was not, however, his own from the first. His weapons are 
 
 1 This is the Odak6n of Berosos, Grimm's story of Roland, by the maiden, 
 
 which in Akkadian would be U-duk- who changes her lover into a lake, and 
 
 ana, ' ' The lord who rises high. " herself into a duck ; or who becomes a 
 
 1 Translation of H. H. Wilson, p. lily in a hedge, while Roland plays on 
 
 575 ; Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. his flute a tune which makes the witch, 
 
 305-6. like the Jew on the thorns, dance till 
 
 3 The story of the Frog-prince she drops down dead. The same trans- 
 agrees closely with the Gaelic tale of formations occur in the stories of Fir- 
 the Sick Queen (Campbell, ii. 131), Apple and the Two Kings' Children, in 
 for whom none but the Frog can supply Grimm's collection, and in the Norse 
 the water of life. tales of Dapplegrim and Farmer 
 
 * The power of Phoibos and Pro- Weathersky. 
 teus is shared by Thetis, and again in 
 
SISYPHOS AND IXl6N. 27 = 
 
 'irresistible, and nothing can withstand the splendour of his unveiled chap. 
 
 form ; but he must live in a world of absolute stillness, without mist • '■ — 
 
 and without clouds, until the breath of the wind stirs the stagnant air. 
 Hermes then is the maker of the harp and the true lord of song ; and 
 the , object of the hymn is to account for the harmony existing 
 between himself and Phoibos, from whom he receives charge over the 
 bright and radiant clouds which float across the blue seas of heaven. 
 It is impossible to lay too much stress on this difference of inherent 
 attributes. Hermes may yield up his harp to Phoibos, as the soft 
 breezes of summer may murmur and whisper while leaves and waters 
 tremble in the dazzling sunlight ; but willing though Phoibos may be 
 to grant the prayer of Hermes to the utmost of his power, it is 
 impossible for him to give to the god of the moving air a share in the 
 secret counsels of Zeus. 1 
 
 Essentially, then, there is no distinction betweeen Phoibos and Phoibos 
 Helios. Both are beings of unimaginable brightness ; both have Helios, 
 invulnerable weapons and the power of wakening and destroying life ; 
 both can delight and torment, bring happiness or send scorching 
 plagues and sicknesses ; both have wealth and treasures which can 
 never be exhausted ; both can mar the work which they have made. 
 That each of these qualities might and would furnish groundwork for 
 separate fables, the whole course of Aryan mythology fully shows. 
 Their wisdom would be shown by such words as Sisyphos, Metis, 
 Medeia ; their healing powers by the names Akesios, S6ter, Akestor; 
 and both these faculties might be conceived as exercised in oppo. 
 sition to the will of Zeus. The alternations of beneficence and 
 malignity would mark them as capricious beings, whose wisdom might 
 degenerate into cunning, and whose riches might make them arrogant 
 and overbearing. But for these things there must be punishments ; 
 and thus are furnished the materials for a host of myths, every one of 
 which will be found in strict accordance with the physical phenomena 
 denoted by the phrases of the old mythical or myth-generating speech. 
 The words which spoke of the sun as scorching up the fruits and 
 waters which he loves would give rise to the stories of Tantalos and 
 Lykadn ; the pride of the sun which soars into the highest heaven 
 would be set forth in the legend of Ixion ; the wisdom which is mere 
 wisdom would be seen in the myths of Sisyphos or Medeia. The 
 phrases which described the sun as revolving daily on his four-spoked 
 cross, or as doomed to sink in the sky when his orb had reached the 
 
 1 There is nothing surprising in the building the walls of Troy, as Amphton 
 
 fact, that later versions, as those of built those of Thebes, by playing on his 
 
 Kallimachos and Ovid, describe Apol- harp. 
 Ion as himself inventing the lyre and 
 
2/6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Phoibos 
 
 and 
 
 Daphng. 
 
 zenith, would give rise to the stories of Ixion on his flaming wheel 
 ' and of Sisyphos with his recoiling stone. If again the sun exhibits 
 an irresistible power, he may also be regarded as a being compelled 
 to do his work, though it be against his own will. He must perform 
 his daily journey ; he must slay the darkness which is his mother; he 
 must be parted from the Dawn which cheered him at his birth ; and 
 after a few hours he must sink into the darkness from which he had 
 sprung in the morning. His work again may be benignant ; the 
 earth may laugh beneath his gaze in the wealth of fruits and flowers 
 which he has given her. But these gifts are not for himself; they are 
 lavished on the weak and vile beings called men. These are really 
 his masters, and he must serve them as a bondman until his brief 
 career comes to an end. These ideas lie at the bottom of half the 
 Aryan mythology. They meet us, sometimes again and again, in 
 every legend ; and it is scarcely possible to arrange in strict method 
 either the numberless forms in which these ideas are clothed, or the 
 stories in which we find them. The order of the daily phenomena of 
 day and night may furnish the best clue for threading the mazes of 
 the seemingly endless labyrinth. 
 
 In the myth of Daphne we see the sun as the lover of the Dawn, 
 to whom his embrace is, as it must be, fatal. Whether as the 
 daughter of the Arkadian Ladon or of the Thessalian Peneios, 
 Daphne, 1 or the Dawn, is the child of the earth springing from the 
 waters when the first flush of light trembles across the sky. But as 
 the beautiful tints fade before the deepening splendour of the sun, so 
 Daphne flies from Apollon, as he seeks to win her. The more eager 
 his chase, the more rapid is her flight, until in her despair she prays 
 that the earth or the waters may deliver her from her persecutor; and 
 so the story went that the laurel tree grew up on the spot where she 
 disappeared, or that Daphne herself was changed into the laurel tree, 
 from which Apollon took his incorruptible and glorious wreath. 2 
 
 1 From the roots ah and dak (to 
 burn), which stand to each other in the 
 relation of as and das (to bite), as in 
 the Sanskrit asm and the Greek Sdxpv, 
 a tear, are produced the names Ahana, 
 the Vedic dawn-goddess, and Athene", 
 as well as the Sanskrit Dahana and the 
 Hellenic Daj ihne\ These names denote 
 simply the brightness of morning ; but 
 the laurel, as wood that burns easily, 
 received the same name. ' ' Afterwards 
 the two, as usual, were supposed to be 
 one, or to have some connexion with 
 each other, for how — the people would 
 say — could they have the same name ? " 
 
 And hence the story of the transforma- 
 tion of Daphne". — Max Miiller, Lectures 
 on Language, second series, 502 ; Chips, 
 S-Y., ii. 93. The idea of fury or madness 
 was closely connected with that of fire ; 
 hence the laurel which grew on the 
 tomb of Amykos had the quality of 
 making the crew of a ship quarrel till 
 they threw it overboard. — Plin. H. N. 
 xvi. 89. 
 
 2 The story of the Sicilian Daphnis is 
 simply a weak version of that of Daphne", 
 with some features derived from other 
 myths. Like Telephos, Oidipous, and 
 others, Daphnis is exposed in his .in- 
 
DAPHNE AND BOLINA. 277 
 
 The same fatal pursuit is the burden of the legend of the hunts- CHAP, 
 man Alpheios. Like Daphne" and Aphrodite Anadyomene, he is the — ■ — : — " 
 child of the waters, whether he be described as a son of Okeanos ^Ire- 
 and Thetis, or of Helios himself. He is in short the Elf, or water- thousa. 
 sprite, whose birthplace is the Elbe or flowing stream. But Arethousa 
 must fly from him as Daphne flies from Phoibos,; and Pausanias 
 takes her to the Syracusan Ortygia, where she sinks into a well with 
 which the waters of Alpheios become united. This is but saying, in 
 other words, that she fled to the Dawnland, where Eos closes as she 
 begins the day, and where the sun again greets the love whom he 
 has lost In another version she is aided by Artemis, who, herself 
 also loved by Alpheios, covers her own face and the faces of her 
 companions with mud, and the huntsman departs baffled; or, to recur 
 to old phrases, the sun cannot recognise the dawn on whom he gazes, 
 because her beauty is faded and gone. With these legends are 
 closely connected the stories of Hippodameia, Atalante, and the 
 Italian Camilla, who become the prize only of those who can over- 
 take them in fair field; a myth which reappears in the German story, 
 " How Six travelled through the World," as well as in the . Nibelung 
 legend of Brynhild. It is repeated of Phoibos himself in the myth 
 of Bolina, who, to escape from his pursuit, threw herself into the 
 sea near the mouth of the river Argyros (the silver stream). The 
 name Bolina looks much like a feminine form of Apollon. 1 
 
 The reverse of these stories is obviously presented in the trans- Endymi6n. 
 parent myth of Endymion and the scarcely less transparent story of 
 Narkissos. The former belongs, indeed, to that class of stories which 
 furnish us with an absolutely sure starting-point for the interpreta- 
 tion of myths. When we find a being, described as a son of Zeus 
 and Kalyke (the heaven and the covering night), or of Aethlios (the 
 man of many struggles), or of Protogeneia (the early dawn), married 
 to Selene (the moon), or to Asterodia 2 (the being whose path is among 
 the stars), we at once see the nature of the problem with which we 
 have to deal, and feel a just confidence that other equally transparent 
 
 fancy; and, like Apollfin, whose favour- 1 Pausanias vii. 23, 3. 
 ite he is, he is tended by nymphs, one 2 Some are inclined apparently to 
 of whom (named in one version Lyke, connect Asterodia and Asterie with Ash- 
 the shining) loves him, and tells him taroth and Ishtar. It is quite possible 
 that blindness will be his punishment if that the Greek may have substituted for 
 he is unfaithful to her. This blindness Semitic names the sounds which ap- 
 is the blindness of Oidipous. The proached nearest to those in his own 
 sequel is that of the legends of Prokris language ; but in this instance he lighted 
 or KorSnis, and the blinded Daphnis on a genuine Aryan word, and the word 
 falls from a rock (the Leukadian cliff of chosen leaves us in no doubt as to the 
 Kephalos) and is slain. If the sun meaning which he attached to the name 
 would but remain with the dawn, the and to the story, 
 blindness of night would not follow. 
 
278 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK names in other Greek myths meant originally that which they appear 
 
 " '- ' to mean. Thus, when we find that Prokris is a daughter of Herse, 
 
 we know that whatever Prokris may be, she is the child of the dew, 
 and hence we have solid grounds for connecting her name with the 
 Sanskrit prish, to sprinkle. The myth of Endymion was localised in 
 Elis (where his tomb was shown in the days of Pausanias), doubtless 
 because it was the westernmost region of the Peloponnesos, just as 
 the Leukadian rocks, the most westerly point of northern Hellas, 
 were associated with the name of Kephalos ; and when it was once 
 localised, fresh names and incidents, mostly of little value or signifi- 
 cance, were readily imported into the tale. Thus one version gave 
 him fifty daughters by Selene, to match the fifty sons and daughters 
 of Danaos and Aigyptos; others gave him Neis, Iphianassa, and 
 others as his wives, or made him, under the unconscious influence of 
 the old mythical phrases, the father of Eurydike, the broad flashing 
 dawn, who is the bride of Orpheus, In fact, the myth of Endymion 
 has produced rather an idea than a tale. It has little incident, and 
 scarcely anything which might entitle it to be regarded as epical 
 history, for the few adventures ascribed to him by Pausanias 1 have 
 manifestly no connexion with the original legend. The visit of 
 Selene, followed by an endless sleep, is in substance all that poets or 
 antiquarians tell us of; and even this is related by Pausanias with so 
 many variations as to show that the myth, from its obvious solar 
 character, was too stubborn to be more than thinly disguised. If 
 Endymion heads an army, or dethrones a king, this is the mere 
 arbitrary and pointless fiction of a later age. The real scene of the 
 myth is the land of Latmos, not the Karian hill or cave to which 
 Pausanias made him migrate from Elis, but that western region of 
 the heavens where the wearied sun finds a resting-place a The word 
 itself belongs to the root which has produced the word Lethe, forget- 
 fulness, as well as the names of Leto and Leda, the mothers of 
 Phoibos and the Dioskouroi. The simplest form of the story is 
 perhaps that of Apollodoros, who merely says that Selene loved him 
 and that Zeus left him free to choose anything that he might desire. 
 
 1 viii. I. The billows came slowly around, 
 
 2 An address of " Ossian " to the To behold him of brightest hair, 
 Setting Sun, which Mr. Campbell Timidly raising their heads 
 
 (iv. 150) pronounces to be a close trans- To gaze on thee beauteous asleep, 
 lation of Gaelic, assumed to be older They witless have fled from thy side, 
 
 than 1730, vividly expresses the idea of Take thy sleep within thy cave, 
 
 this myth : O Sun, and come back from sleep re- 
 Hast left the blue distance of heaven ? joicing. 
 
 Sorrowless son of the gold-yellow hair I Here we have not only the Latmian 
 
 Night's doorways are ready for thee, cave, but the idea which grew into the 
 
 Thy pavilion of peace in the West. myths of MemnOn, Adonis, and Baldur. 
 
ENDYMldN AND TITHONOS. 279 
 
 His choice was an everlasting sleep, in which he might remain chap. 
 
 youthful for ever. 1 His choice was wiser than that of Eos (the ' 
 
 morning or evening light), who obtained for the beautiful Tithonos 
 the gift of immortality without asking for eternal youth ; a myth 
 as transparent as that of Endymion, for Eos, like Iokaste, is not only 
 the wife but also the mother of Tithonos, who in one version is a son 
 of Laomedon the Ilian king, in another of Kephalos, who woos and 
 slays Prokris. 2 The hidden chamber in which Eos placed her 
 decrepit husband is the Latmian hill, where the more fortunate 
 Endymion lies in his charmed sleep. Endymion is in short, as his 
 name denotes, simply the sun setting opposite to the rising moon. 
 Looking at the tale by the light which philology and comparative 
 mythology have thus thrown upon it, we may think it incredible that 
 any have held it to be an esoteric method of describing. early astrono- 
 mical researches. It is scarcely less difficult to see in it, as some- 
 have discerned, simply a personification of sleep. In his father 
 Aethlios, we see one who, like Odysseus, has suffered much, the 
 struggling and toiling sun, 3 and his own name expresses simply the 
 downward plunge of the sun into the western waters. 4 The whole idea, 
 of Endymion, who is inseparable from the material sun, is altogether 
 distinct from that of the separate divinity of Phoibos Apollon, to 
 whom he stands in the relation of Gaia to Demeter, or of Nereus to 
 Poseidon. 
 
 Of the story of Narkissos Pausanias 6 gives two versions. The The story 
 former, which describes him as wasting away and dying through love ki s =os 1_ 
 of his own face and form reflected in a fountain, he rejects on ac- 
 count of the utter absurdity of supposing that Narkissos could not 
 distinguish between a man and his shadow. Hence he prefers the 
 other, but less known, legend, that Narkissos loved his own twin 
 sister, and that on her death he found a melancholy comfort in noting 
 the likeness of his own form and countenance to those of his lost 
 love. But the more common tale that Narkissos was deaf to the 
 
 1 i. 7, 5. remarks (Chips, 6-=c, ii. 80), could not 
 
 2 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 312. have arisen ; but as its meaning was 
 
 3 There is no difference of meaning forgotten, the name Endymi6n was 
 between Aethlios and iro\iT\as, the formed in a manner analogous to Hy- 
 stock epithet of Odysseus. peri&n, a name of the high-soaring sun. 
 
 * It can hardly be questioned that 3 ix. 31, 6. He rejects also the 
 4i>Sv/ia yXlov was once the equivalent of notion that the flower was so named 
 r\Xlov 5v<r/iat, and that originally the after Narkissos, the former having 
 sun iveSv nitnov, where in the Iliad certainly existed before his time, inas- 
 and Odyssey we have only the simple much as Persephone, who belongs to an 
 verb. Had Endymion remained a re- earlier period, way cangh: while pluck- 
 cognised name for the sunset, the mvth ing a narcissus fiom its stem, 
 of Endymion, as Professor Max Miiller 
 
280 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK entreaties of the nymph Echo is nearer to the spirit of the old 
 
 . , V' ,- - phrase, which spoke of the sleep of the tired sun. 1 His very name 
 
 denotes the deadly lethargy (Vap/07) which makes the pleadings of 
 
 Selene fall unheeded on the ear of Endymion; and hence it is that 
 
 when Persephone is to be taken at the close of summer to the land 
 
 of darkness, the narcissus is made the instrument of her capture. It 
 
 is the narcotic which plunges Brynhild into her profound slumber on 
 
 the Glistening Heath, and drowns Briar Rose and her fellows in 
 
 a sleep as still as death. 
 
 iamos and From the lot of Endymion, Narkissos, and Tithonos, Apollon is 
 
 Asklepios. free{ j Qn jy b ecause jjg j s regarded not as the visible sun who dies 
 
 when his day's journey is done, but as the living power who kindles 
 his light afresh every morning The one conception is as natural as 
 the other, and we still speak of the tired or the unwearied sun, of his 
 brief career and his everlasting light, without any consciousness of 
 inconsistency. Phoibos is then the ever-bright sun, who can never 
 be touched by age. He is emphatically the Akersekomes, the glory 
 of whose golden locks no razor is ever to mar. He is at once the 
 comforter and healer, the saviour and destroyer, who can slay and 
 make alive at will, and from whose piercing glance no secret can be 
 kept hid. But although these powers are inseparable from the notion 
 of Phoibos Apollon, they are also attributed separately to beings 
 whose united qualities make up his full divinity. Thus his know- 
 ledge of things to come is given to Iamos ; his healing and life-giving 
 powers to Asklepios. 2 The story of the latter brings before us another 
 of the countless instances in which the sun is faithless to his love or 
 his love is faithless to him. In every case there must be the separa- 
 tion ; and the doom of Koronis only reflects the fate which cuts short 
 the life of Daphne and Arethousa, Prokris and Iokaste. 3 The myth 
 
 1 The myth of Echo merely repro- Eilhart, the Russian hero Dobruna 
 duces that of Salmakis, p. 290. Nikitisch, of the Scottish Macduff, of 
 
 2 This name belongs to the class Volsung who yet kissed his mother 
 which cannot be explained by referring before she died, of Signrd, and of Sceaf 
 it to any Greek or Aryan words. Mr. the son of Scild, the child brought in 
 Brown says that Asklgpios was early the mysterious skiff, which needs neither 
 identified with the Phenician Esmun ; sail, rudder,, nor oarsmen. Whence 
 but this leaves the name just where it came the popular belief attested by 
 was. — Great Dionysiak Myth, ii. 258. such a phrase as that which Grimm 
 
 3 The story of the birth of Asklepios quotes from the Chronicle of Peterhouse, 
 agrees substantially with that of Diony- "dentalibusexcisisliterre testanturquod, 
 sos ; and the legends of other Aryan si vita comes fuerit, felices in mundfc 
 tribes tell the same tale of some of their habeantur?" — Deutsche Mythologie, 362. 
 mythical heroes. Of children so born, The Teutonic myths must clearly bf 
 Grimm says generally, " Ungeborne, compared with that of Hlodr (Lodur), 
 d. h. aus dem Mutterleib geschnittne who is born with helmet and sword, and 
 Kinder pflegen Helden zu werden," and this again with the story of Athene', 
 adds that this incident marks the stories who springs fully armed from the fore 
 of the Persian Rustem, the Tristram of head of Zeus. 
 
THE FATAL CHILDREN. 28 1 
 
 is transparent throughout. The mother of Asklepios is a daughter chap. 
 
 of Phlegyas (the flaming), and Apollon woos her on shore's of the ^ — - 
 
 lake Boibeis ; 1 or, if we take another version given by Apollodoros, 
 she is Arsinoe, a daughter of Leukippos (a name in which we see 
 the flashing steeds which draw the car of Indra or Achilleus), and 
 a sister of Hilaeira and Phoibe, the radiant maidens whom the 
 Dioskouroi bore away. 2 When the myth goes on to say that when 
 Apollon had left her Koronis yielded herself to the Arkadian Ischys, 
 we have a story which simply repeats that of Prokris, for as Kephalos 
 returns disguised and wins the love of the child of Herse (the dew), 
 so is Ischys simply the strength or power of the lord of light (Arkas). 
 In each case, the penalty of faithlessness is death ; and the mode in 
 which it is exacted in the myth of Koronis precisely corresponds 
 with the legend of Semele. Like Dionysos, Asklepios is born amidst 
 and rescued from the flames ; in other words, the light and heat of 
 the sun which ripen the fruits of the earth, scorch and consume the 
 clouds and the dew, or banish away the lovely tints of early morning. 8 
 Throughout the myth we have to deal with different versions which, 
 however they may differ from each other, still point to the same 
 fountain-head of mythical speech. In one form the story ran that 
 Koronis herself exposed her child on the slopes of mount Myrtion, as 
 Oidipous was left to die on Kithairon. There he is nourished by a 
 goat and a dog, incidents which are reproduced in the myths of 
 Cyrus and Romulus. When at length the shepherd Aristhanas 
 traced the dog and goat to the spot where the infant lay, he was 
 terrified by the splendour which surrounded the child, like the flame 
 round the head of the infant Servius in the Roman tale, and that of 
 Havelok in the English legend. The wonder, Pausanias adds, was 
 soon noised abroad, and throughout land and sea the tidings were 
 carried that Asklepios healed the sick and raised the dead. 1 The 
 wisdom by which he obtained this power he received from the teach 
 ing of the wise centaur Cheiron ; but we have to mark that Cheiron 
 is the teacher not only of Asklepios but of Iason and Achilleus, who 
 
 1 Pind. Pyth. iii. 14. with the myths of the glass of Agrippa 
 
 2 Apollod. iii. 10, 3. and of the well of Apollon Thyrxis as 
 
 3 The Dawn cannot long survive the related by Pausanias. 
 
 birth of the sun. Hence the mother of 4 ii. 26, 4. To this marvel of the 
 Volsung dies as soon as her child has flame was referred his title Aiglaer, the 
 kissed her. So in Grimm's story of the gleaming, which simply reproduces the 
 Almond Tree, the mother of the sun- Lykian epithet of his father Phoibos. 
 child, who is as white as snow and as The healing powers of Asklepios are 
 red as blood, is so delighted at seeing seen in the German stories of Grand- 
 her babe that she dies. The same lot father Death, Brother Lustig, and the 
 is the portion of the mother in the story Spirit in the Bottle, in which we have 
 of Little Snow-white, the Dawn-maiden also in another form the compact 
 a story w hich suggests a comparison between Phoibos and Hermes. 
 
282 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK also represent the wisdom and brightness or power of Phoibos, and 
 
 II. 
 
 the descent of Cheiron himself connects him with the phenomena of 
 daylight. When Ixion in his boundless pride sought to seize Here 
 the bright queen of the air herself, Zeus placed in his way the mist- 
 maiden NephelS from whom was born the Kentaur, 1 as the sun in the 
 heights of heaven calls forth the clouds which move like horses 
 across the sky. It is difficult not to see in these forms of Hellenic 
 mythology a reflexion of the Vedic Gandharvas. 2 Not only has Indra 
 the Harits (the Greek Charites) as his steeds, but the morning her. 
 self as the bride of the sun is spoken of as a horse, 8 and a hymn 
 addressed to the sun-horse says, "Yama brought the horse, Trita 
 harnessed him, Indra first sat on him, the Gandharva took hold of 
 his rein." 1 It was inevitable that, when the word ceased to be 
 understood in its original sense, the brightness of the clouds which 
 seem to stretch in endless ranks to the furthermost abyss of heaven 
 should suggest the notion of a wisdom which Phoibos receives from 
 Zeus but cannot impart in its fulness to Hermes. What part of the 
 heaven is there to which the cloud may not wander ? what secret is 
 there in nature which Cheiron cannot lay bare ? There were, how- 
 ever, other traditions, one of which asserted that Asklepios wrought 
 his wonderful cures through the blood of Gorgo, while another 
 related of him the story which is assigned elsewhere to Polyidos the 
 son of Koiranos. 6 But like almost all the other beings to whose 
 kindred he belonged, Asklepios must soon die. The doom of Patro 
 klos and Achilleus, Sarpedon and Memnon, was upon him also. 
 
 1 Pind. Pyth. ii. 80. Centaure par excellence, puisqui'l est 
 
 2 M. Breal, in his masterly analysis le pere de cette famille de monstres : il 
 of the myth of Oidipous, has no doubt correspond au Gandharva vedique." 
 
 of their identity. "M. Adalbert Kuhn," s Professor Max Miiller cites the 
 
 he says, "dans un de ses plus ingenieux explanation of Yaska : " Saranyu, the 
 
 travaux, a montre l'identite des Cen- daughter of Tvashtar, had twins from 
 
 taures et des Gandharvas, ces etres Vivasvat, the sun. She placed another 
 
 fantastiques, qui jouent dans la mytho- like her in her place, changed her form 
 
 logie indienne le me'me role que les into that of a horse, and ran off. Vi- 
 
 Centaures chez les Grecs. Us portent vasvat the sun likewise assumed the 
 
 le meme nom : c'est ce que prouve form of a horse, followed her, and 
 
 l'analyse grammaticale des deux mots. embraced her. Hence the two Asvins 
 
 Comme les Centaures, les Gandharvas were born, and the -substitute (Savarna) 
 
 ne forment qu'une seule famille. Us bore Manu." — Lectures on Language, 
 
 sont le fruit de l'union du Gandharva second series, 482. These Asvins are 
 
 avec les Nuees. En examinant les the Dioskouroi. 
 
 passages vediques ou il est question de 4 Max Muller, Lectures, second 
 
 ces divinites, M. Kuhn a demontre que series, 515. 
 
 Gandharva est le nom du soleil, consi- s Apollod. iii. 10, 3, and iii. 3, I. 
 
 dere au moment oil il repose parmi les This story, as we have already seen, is 
 
 nuees et semble celebrer son union avec that of the Snake Leaves, and reappears 
 
 elles, et que les Gandharvas sont les in Hindu as well as in Teutonic fairy 
 
 nuages qui paraissent chevaucher dans tales. See p. 94. 
 le ciel. Ixion chez les Grecs est le 
 
THE WISDOM OF ATLAS. 283 
 
 Either Zeus feared' that men, once possessed of the secret of CHAP. 
 
 Asklepios, might conquer death altogether, or Plouton cdrnplained ■ ^ — - 
 
 that his kingdom would be left desolate ; and the thunderbolt which 
 crushed Phaethon smote down the benignant son of Phoibos, and 
 the sun-god in his vengeance slew the Kyklopes, the fashioners of the 
 fiery lightnings for the lord of heaven. 1 But throughout Hellas 
 ' Asklepios remained the healer and the restorer of life, and accord- 
 ingly the serpent is everywhere his special emblem, as the mythology 
 of the Linga would lead us to expect. 2 
 
 The myth of Ixion exhibits the sun as bound to the four-spoked The stories 
 wheel which is whirled round everlastingly in the sky. 3 In that of an d Atlas. 
 Sisyphos we see the same being condemned to the daily toil of 
 heaving a stone to the summit of a hill from which it immediately 
 rolls down. This idea of tasks unwillingly done, or of natural 
 operations as accomplished by means of punishment, is found also 
 in the myth of Atlas, a name which like that of Tantalos denotes 
 endurance and suffering, and so passes into the notion of arrogance 
 or presumption. But the idea of a being who supported the heaven 
 above the earth, as of a being who guides the horses of the sun, was 
 awakened in the human mind long before the task was regarded 
 as a penalty. Indeed, it can scarcely be said that this idea is clearly 
 expressed in the Odyssey, which says of Atlas that he knows all the 
 depths of the sea and that he holds or guards the lofty pillars which 
 keep the heaven from falling to crush the earth. 4 It is scarcely 
 prominent even when the Hesiodic poet speaks of him as doing 
 his work under a strong necessity, for this is no more than the 
 force which compels Phoibos to leave Delos for Pytho, and carries 
 
 1 Apollod. iii. 10, 4 ; Diod. iv. 71. sequel of the Gaelic tale already men- 
 In the Iliad, Asklepios is simply the tioned represents Grimm's legend of 
 blameless healer, who is the father of the Feather Bird. 
 
 Machaon and Podaleirios, the wise * It can scarcely be doubted that the 
 
 physicians, who accompany the Achaians words a,u<f>ls exoviriv, Od. i. 54, do not 
 
 to Ilion. These are descendants of mean that these columns surround the 
 
 Paieon. earth, for in this case they must be not 
 
 2 See section xii. of this chapter. only many in number, but it would be 
 
 3 rerpiiKvafiOV Seo/tdv. Find. Pyih. obvious to the men of a myth-making 
 ii. 80. This wheel reappears in the and myth-speaking age, that a being 
 Gaelic story of the Widow and her stationed in one spot could not keep up, 
 Daughters (Campbell, ii. 265), and in or hold, or guard, a number of pillars 
 Grimm's German tale of the Iron Stove. surrounding either a square or a circular 
 The treasure-house of Ixion, which earth. It is at the least certain that 
 none may enter without being either this is not the meaning of the Hesiodic 
 destroyed like Hesioneus or betrayed by poet, who gives to Atlas a local habita- 
 marks of gold or blood, reappears in a tion at the utmost bounds of the earth 
 vast number of popular stories, and is near the abode of the Hesperides, and 
 the foundation of the story of Blue- makes him bear the heavens on his 
 beard Compare the Woodcutter's head and hands. The Hellenic Atlas 
 Child' in Grimm's collection. The is simply the Vedic Skambha, p. 204. 
 
2S4 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOCK Kephalos, Bellerophon, and Odysseus to their doom in the far west. 
 
 ?J: • Nor in either of these poems is there anything to warrant the 
 
 inference that the poet regarded Atlas as a mountain. This idea 
 comes up in the myth of Perseus, who sees the old man bowing 
 beneath his fearful load, and holding the Gorgon's face before his 
 eyes, turns him into stone ; and the stone which is to bear up the 
 brazen heaven must needs be a great mountain, whether in Libya 
 or in other regions, for the African Atlas was not the only mountain 
 which bore the name. But the phrase in the Odyssey which speaks 
 of him as knowing all the depths of the sea points to a still earlier 
 stage of the myth, in which Atlas was possessed of the wisdom 
 of Phoibos and was probably Phoibos himself. Regarded thus, the 
 myths which make the Okeanid Pleione his wife and the Pleiades 
 his children, or which give him Aithra for his bride and make her 
 the mother of the Hyades and the Hesperides, are at once explained. 
 He is thus naturally the father of Hesperos, the most beautiful star of 
 the heavens, who appears as the herald of Eos in the morning and 
 is again seen by her side in the evening. The Hellenic Heosphoros, 
 the Latin Lucifer, the Light-bringer, who is Phosphoros, is also called 
 a son of Astraios and Eos, the starlit skies of dawn. 
 The gar- Far away in the west by the stream of the placid Ocean is 
 
 Hesne- t ^ le dwelling of the Hesperides, the children or sisters of Hesperos, 
 rides. the evening star, or, as they might also be termed, of Atlas or of 
 
 Phorkys. This beautiful island which no bark ever approaches, and 
 where the ambrosial streams flow perpetually by the couch of Zeus, 
 is nevertheless hard by the land of the Gorgons and near the bounds 
 of that everlasting darkness which is the abode of Ahi and Pani, of 
 Geryon, Cacus, and Echidna. Hence the dragon Ladon guards with 
 them the golden apples which Gaia gave to Here when she became 
 the bride of Zeus, these apples being the golden-tinted clouds or 
 herds of Helios, the same word being used to denote both. 1 It 
 remained only to give them names easily supplied by the countless 
 epithets of the morning or evening twilight, and to assign to them a 
 local habitation, which was found close to the pillars or the mountain 
 of Atlas which bears up the brazen heaven above the earth. 
 Atlas and Atlas is thus brought into close connexion with Helios, the bright 
 
 HyperlSn. g d j the Latin Sol 2 and our sun. In the Iliad and Odyssey he is 
 himself Hyperion, the climber : in the Hesiodic Theogony, Hyperion 
 becomes his father by the same process which made Zeus the son of 
 Kronos, — his mother being Theia, the brilliant, or Euryphaessa, the 
 shedder of the broad light In the former poems he rises every 
 1 Max Muller, Selected Essays, i. 603. s See note i , p. 260. 
 
HYPERt6N. 285 
 
 morning from a beautiful lake by the deep-flowing stream of Ocean, CHAP. 
 
 and having accomplished his journey across the heaven pluflges again ' - • ■ ' 
 
 into the western waters. Elsewhere this lake becomes a magnificent 
 
 palace, on which poets lavished all their wealth of fancy; but 
 
 this splendid abode is none other than the house of Tantalos, 
 
 the treasury of Ixion, the palace of Allah-ud-deen in the Arabian tale. 
 
 Through the heaven his chariot was borne by gleaming steeds, 
 
 the Rohits and Harits of the Veda ; but his nightly journey from the 
 
 west to the east is accomplished in a golden cup wrought by 
 
 Hephaistos, or, as others had it, on a golden bed. 1 But greater 
 
 than his wealth is his wisdom. He sees and knows all things ; and 
 
 thus when Hekate cannot answer her question, Helios tells Demeter 
 
 to what place Kore has been taken, and again informs Hephaistos of 
 
 the faithlessness of Aphrodite. It is therefore an inconsistency when 
 
 the poet of the Odyssey represents him as not aware of the slaughter 
 
 of his oxen by Eurylochos, until the daughters of Neaira bring him 
 
 the tidings ■ but the poet returns at once to the true myth, when he 
 
 makes Helios utter the threat that unless he is avenged, he will 
 
 straightway go and shine among the dead. These cattle, which in 
 
 the Vedic hymns and in most other Greek myths are the beautiful 
 
 clouds of the Phaiakian land, are here (like the gods of the Arabian 
 
 Kaaba), the days of the lunar* year, seven herds of fifty each, the 
 
 number of which is never increased or lessened ; and their death 
 
 is the wasting of time or the killing of the days by the comrades 
 
 of Odysseus. 
 
 The same process which made Helios a son of Hyperion made Helios and 
 him also the father of Phaethon. 2 In the Iliad he is Helios Phaethon phaglh6n - 
 not less than Helios Hyperion • but when the name had come to 
 denote a distinct personality, it served a convenient purpose in 
 accounting for some of the phenomena of the year. The hypothesis 
 of madness was called in to explain the slaughter of the boy Eunomos 
 by Herakles ; but it was at the least as reasonable to say that if the 
 sun destroyed the fruits and flowers which his genial warmth had 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 3°3- ty tne starry, spotted Leopard of the 
 
 , The incident is the same as that which night, and where the noble beast is 
 
 ! is signified by the myth of Dionysos caught while going down the dark 
 
 Dithvreites the two doors being those, passage and perishes, although only to 
 
 necessarily, of the East and the West. be reborn in triumph at the Eastern 
 
 It is also exhibited in the contest of the Gate. The two animals, as protagonists 
 
 heraldic Lion and Leopard, the simple of night and day, are thus naturally 
 
 interpretation being that "the Lion, hostile. -Brown , The Umcorn, 76. 
 type of the hunting, radiate, diurnal 2 Some have_ held that the name 
 
 Sun speeds across heaven towards his Helios reappears in the Slavonic Volos, 
 
 fate and death in the Den of the Two the god of cattle.— Ralston, Songs of 
 
 Entrances the nocturnal cave tenanted the Russian People, 252. 
 
286 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS, 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Patroklos 
 and Tele- 
 machos. 
 
 The bond- 
 age of 
 
 called into life, it must be because some one who had not the skill 
 ' and the strength of Helios was holding the reins of his chariot. 1 
 Hence in times of excessive heat or drought the phrase ran that 
 Phaethon, the mortal son of an undying father, was unable to guide 
 the horses of Helios, while the thunderstorm, which ended the 
 drought and discomfited Vritra and the Sphinx, dealt also the death- 
 blow to Phaethon and plunged him into the sea. The tears of the 
 Heliades, his sisters, like the drops which fell from the eyes of Zeus 
 on the death of his son Sarpedon, answer to the down-pouring rain 
 which follows the discharge of the lightning. 
 
 Phaethon, then, is strictly a reflexion of his father with all his 
 beauty and all his splendour, but without his discretion or his 
 strength ; and the charge given to him that he is not to whip the 
 fiery steeds is of the very essence of the story. If he would but 
 abstain from this, they would bring him safely to his journey's end ; 
 but he fails to obey, and is smitten. The parallel between this legend 
 and that of Patroklos is singularly exact As Phaethon is allowed 
 to drive the horses of Helios under a strict charge that he shall not 
 touch them with his whip, so Achilleus suffers Patroklos to put on 
 his armour and ascend his chariot under the injunction that so soon 
 as he has driven the Trojans from the ships he is not to attempt to 
 pursue them to the city. Patroklos disobeys the command and is 
 slain by Hektor; but the sorrow of the Heliades is altogether sur- 
 passed by the fiery agony of Achilleus. It is in truth impossible not 
 to see the same weakened reflexion of a stronger personality in the 
 Latin Remus the brother of Romulus, in Arjuna the companion of 
 Krishna, in Peirithoos the associate of Theseus, and in all the other 
 mythical instances cited by Cicero as examples of genuine friendship. 
 In the folk-lore of the East these secondaries, represented by Faithful 
 John in the Teutonic story, reappear as Luxman in the legend of 
 Ramah, and as Butti in the tale of Vicram Maharajah. Nor can 
 we fail to discern the same idea in the strange story of Absyrtos, the 
 younger and weaker brother of the wise and unscrupulous Medeia, 
 who scatters his limbs in the sea to stay the pursuit of Aietes, — a 
 vivid image of the young sun as torn into pieces among the vapours 
 that surround him, while the light falling in isolated patches on the 
 sea seems to set bounds to the encroaching darkness which gives way 
 before the conqueror of the clouds. 
 
 The slaughter of the Kykl&pes brought on Phoibos the sentence 
 of a year's servitude ; and thus we have in the myth of Apollon him- 
 
 1 This is the Irish story of Cuchullin and Ferdiah, — Fergusson, Irish bejor: 
 the Conquest. 
 
ALKESTIS. 287 
 
 self the germs of the hard bondage which weighs down Herakles chap. 
 
 through his whole career, and is only less prominent in the* mythical ' — r~- 
 
 histories of Perseus, Theseus, and other heroes, who, like Achilleus, andHeL 
 fight in a quarrel which is not of their own choosing or making. 1 klfis - 
 The master whom Phoibos serves is one between whom and him- 
 self there is no such contrariety of will as marks the relations of 
 Herakles with Eurystheus. He is no hard exacter of tasks set in 
 mere caprice to tax his servant's strength to the utmost ; but he is 
 well content to have under his roof one who, like the Brownie of 
 modern superstition, has brought with him health and wealth and 
 all good things. One thing alone is wanting, and this even Phoibos 
 cannot grant him. It is the life of Alkestis, the pure, the devoted, 
 the self-sacrificing, for it had been told to Admetos that he might 
 escape death, if only his parents or his wife would die in his stead, 
 and Alkestis has taken the doom upon herself. 3 Thus in the very 
 prime of her beauty she is summoned by Thanatos, death, to leave 
 her home and children, and to cross with him the gloomy stream 
 which separates the land of the living from the regions of the dead ; 
 and although Phoibos intercedes for a short respite, the gloomy 
 being whose debtor she is lays his icy hands upon her and will not let 
 go until the mighty Herakles grapples with him, and having by main 
 force rescued her from his grasp, brings her "back to Admetos. Such 
 is the story told by Euripides, a story in which the character of 
 Herakles is exhibited in a light of broad burlesque altogether beyond 
 that of the Hymn to Hermes. We see in it at once the main 
 features of the cognate legends. It is essentially the myth of 
 Orpheus who like Admetos must be parted from his lovely bride, 
 and who differs from Admetos only in this, that he must go and 
 seek for her himself. In the one story the serpent stings and causes 
 the death of Eurydike : in the other, when Admetos enters his 
 bridal chamber on the day of his marriage, he sees on the bed a 
 knot of twisted snakes, the omen of the grief that is coming. But 
 although Alkestis may die, death cannot retain dominion over her ; 
 and thus we have again the story of the simple phrases that the 
 beautiful dawn or twilight, who is the bride of the sun, must die 
 
 1 " The thought of the sun as a 2 Hence the connexion of the name 
 
 bondman led the Peruvian Inca to deny with that of AlkmenS or of (Athene) 
 
 his pretension to be the doer of all Alalkomene. Mr. Brown, Great Diony-^ 
 
 things ; for, if he were free, he would siak Myth, ii. 245, claims Alalkomene' 
 
 go and visit other parts of the heavens as Phenician ; but he does not give the 
 
 where he had never been. He is, said Phenician form. There seems to be no 
 
 the Inca, like a tied beast who goes sufficient reason for surrendering either 
 
 ever round and round in the same this word or Aphrodite to the Semitic 
 
 track."— Max MUller, Chips, &>c., ii. vocabulary. 
 •13- 
 
288 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Character 
 of Hera- 
 Ides. 
 
 Herald 6s 
 and Eu- 
 rystheus. 
 
 after sunset, if the sun himself is to live on and gladden the world 
 - with his light,— must die, if she herself is to live again and stand 
 before her husband in all her ancient beauty. At this point the 
 myth of Admetos stops short, just as the Odyssey leaves the chief, 
 after his toil is ended, with the faithful Penelope, although it hints at 
 a coming separation which is to end in death. The legend of 
 Admetos carries on the tale a step further, and the vanishing of 
 Eurydike just as she reaches the earth is the vanishing of Daphne 
 from Apollon, of Arethousa from Alpheios, or it is the death of 
 Prokris slain by the unwitting Kephalos. 
 
 But this idea of servitude which is thus kept in the background 
 in the myths of Apollon serves as the links which connect together 
 all the phases and scenes of the life of Herakles. He is throughout 
 the toiling, suffering hero, who is never to reap any fruit of his 
 labour, and who can be cheered even by the presence and the love 
 of IolS, only when the fiery garment is eating deep into his flesh. 
 When this idea once becomes prominent, a series of tasks and of 
 successful achievements of these tasks was the inevitable sequel. 
 What is there which the sun-god in his majesty and power cannot 
 accomplish? What part of the wide universe is there which his 
 light cannot penetrate? It mattered not whither or against what 
 foes Eurystheus might send him ; he must assuredly return triumphant 
 over every adversary. On this fruitful stem would grow up a wealth 
 of stories which mythographers might arrange according to -any 
 system suggested by their fancy, or which might be modified to suit 
 any passing whim or local tradition and association ; and so long as 
 we remember that such systematic arrangements are results of recent 
 ages, we may adopt any such plan as the most convenient way of 
 dealing with the endless series of legends, all of them more or less 
 transparent, and all pointing out with unmistakeable clearness the 
 character of the hero who is the greatest representation of Indra on 
 Hellenic soil. From first to last, his action is as beneficent to the 
 children of men as it is fatal to the enemies of light, and the child 
 who strangles in his cradle the deadly snakes of darkness grows up 
 into the irresistible hero whom no danger can daunt and no difficulties 
 can baffle. 
 
 The immense number of exploits attributed to him, the arrange- 
 ment of which seems to have afforded a special delight to more recent 
 mythographers, would lead us to expect a large variety of traditions 
 modified by local associations. To go through them all would be an 
 endless and an unprofitable task; and we may safely accept the 
 notices of the Homeric and lyric poets as the more genuine forms of 
 
THE BIRTH OF HERAKLES. 289 
 
 the myth. Like Phoibos, Hermes, Dlonysos, and others, he is a son ci \^ Pm 
 
 of Zeus, born, as some said, in brilliant Argos, or as others ralated, in ' 
 
 the Boiotian Thebes. With him is born his twin brother Iphikl£s, 
 the son — so the tale went — of Amphitryon ; and thus the child of 
 the mortal father stands to the son of the undying king of Olympos 
 in the relation of Phaethon to Helios, of Patroklos to Achilleus, or of 
 Telemachos to the chieftain of Ithaka. The subjection of the hero 
 to his kinsman was brought about by the folly of Zeus, who, on the day 
 of his birth, boasted himself as the father of one who was to rule over 
 all the house of Perseus. Here" thereupon, urged on by At£, the 
 spirit of mischief, made him swear that the child that day to be born 
 of his lineage should be this ruler, and summoning the Eileithyiai 
 bade them see that Eurystheus came into the world before Hera- 
 kles. So wroth was Zeus when Here told him that the good man 
 Eurystheus must, according to his oath, be king of Argos, that 
 he seized Ate by the hair of her head, and swearing that she should 
 never again darken the courts of heaven, hurled her from Olympos. 
 Thus the weaker came to be tyrant over the stronger ; but when the 
 mythographers had systematised his labours, thny related that Zeus 
 made a compact by which Herakles should become immortal when 
 he had brought his twelve tasks to a successful issue. The story of 
 his birth tells us not only of the child in his cradle strangling the 
 horrid snakes of darkness which seek to destroy their enemy, but of 
 an infancy as troubled as that of Telephos or Oidipous. Like them, 
 Alkmene, favouring the jealousy of Here, exposed the babe on the 
 plain which thence received the name of Herakles ; and it is picked 
 up, of course, by the dawn goddess Athene, who beseeches Here, the 
 queen of the blue heaven, to nourish it. The child bites hard, and 
 Here flings it back to Athene, who carries it to her mother. 1 The 
 boy grows up the model of human strength and power ; and his 
 teachers point to the cloudland to which he himself belongs. Auto- 
 lykos and Eurytos, by whom he is taught to wrestle and to shoot with 
 the bow, denote the light and splendour of morning ; Kastor, who 
 shows him how to fight in heavy armour, is the twin brother, of Poly- 
 deukes, these twins answering to the Vedic Asvins or horsemen ; and 
 Linos, who teaches him music, is akin to Hermes, Pan, Orpheus, and 
 Amphion. The harper is slain by his pupil, and Amphitryon, fearing 
 that his son might use his strength in a like way again, sends him to 
 tend cattle, and in this task, which in other myths is performed by 
 Sarama or the daughters of Neiara, he lives until he has reached the 
 full strength of youth. Thus far we have a time answering to the 
 
 1 Diocl. iv. q. 
 
 U 
 
290 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOCK 
 II. 
 
 The lions 
 of Kith- 
 airon and 
 Nemea. 
 
 bright period in which Phoibos is tended by the nymphs in his infancy, 
 ■ when his face is unsoiled, and his raiment all white, and his terrible 
 sword is not yet belted to his side. It is the picture of the unclouded 
 sun rising in pure splendour, seeing the heavens which he must climb, 
 and ready for the conflicts which may await him — gloomy mists and 
 angry storm-clouds. The moral aspect which this myth may be made 
 to assume must be that of self-denial. The smooth road of indulgence 
 is the easiest on which to travel ; he who takes the rugged path of 
 duty must do so from deliberate choice ; and thus the brave Herakles, 
 going forth to his long series of labours, suggests to the sophist 
 Prodikos the beautiful apologue in which Arete and Kakia, virtue and 
 vice, each claim his obedience, as Aphrodite and Athene each claim 
 the golden prize which Paris must adjudge. The one promises end- 
 less pleasures here and hereafter • the other holds out the prospect of 
 hard days followed by healthful slumbers, and warns him that nothing 
 good was ever won without labour, nothing great ever done without 
 toil. The mind of Herakles is made up at once ; and the greatest 
 of all mythical heroes is thus made to inforce the highest lessons of 
 human duty, and to present the highest standard of human action. 
 The apologue is full of beauty and truth, and there is manifestly no 
 harm in such applications of myths when the myths themselves are 
 strained or not distorted in the process. The images of self-restraint, 
 of power used for the good of others, are prominent in the lives of 
 all' or almost all the Zeus-born heroes ; but these are not their only 
 aspects, and it is as necessary to remember that other myths told of 
 Herakles can no more be reconciled with this standard of generous 
 self-devotion than the conduct of Odysseus as he approaches the 
 Seirens' island with the Christian duty of resisting temptation. 
 
 With this high heroic temper Herakles sets forth for his first 
 great fight with the lion of Kithairon, and whether from its carcase 
 or from that of the Nemean beast, he obtains the lion's skin with 
 which he is seen so commonly represented, and which reappears in 
 the jackal's skin in the story of the enchanted Hindoo raja. 1 The 
 
 In his chapters on Ancient Faiths 
 and Legends, M. Maury enters at 
 length into the physiological questions 
 which on the Euemeristic hypothesis 
 must be connected with the myth of the 
 Nemean Lion. However conclusive his 
 arguments, may be, the inquiry is almost 
 superfluous. It cannot be necessary to 
 disprove the existence of lions in the 
 Peloponnese, unless we must also dis- 
 prove that of the Sphinx or the Chi- 
 maira. But, in truth, the dwelling of 
 
 1 With this lion's skin must be com- 
 pared the fish-skin with which the sun- 
 god is represented in the characters of 
 Proteus and Onnes or Dagon, and 
 which might be worn by Phoibos Del- 
 phinios. With the latter, it is simply a 
 sign of the sun as rising like Aphrodite 
 from the sea ; the lion's skin may denote 
 perhaps the raiment of tawny cloud 
 which the sun seems to trail behind 
 him as he fights his way through the 
 vapours whom he is said to overcome. 
 
MYTHICAL WEAPONS. 2 9 l 
 
 myth of the fifty daughters of Thestios or Thespios, which in some Con- 
 versions is connected with his first great exploit, is akin *to that of - 
 the fifty daughters of Danaos and the fifty children whom Asterodia 
 bare to Endymion. 1 It is but one instance out of many in which 
 we have the sun under an aspect altogether inconsistent with the 
 ideal of Prodikos. Herakles is no longer the hero who imposes on 
 himself a hard discipline, but the voluptuous wanderer who has many 
 loves in many lands. In his attack on the envoys of Erginos he is 
 armed with a coat of mail brought to him by the dawn-goddess 
 Athene, as Achilleus and Sigurd wear the armour brought to them 
 by Thetis and Hjordis. 3 The same thought suggested the gift of 
 the bow and arrows from Phoibos, the lord of the spear-like sunbeams, 
 of the sword from Hermes, whose stroke can split the forest trees, 
 of the peplos from Athene, the clear-faced morning. The arrows 
 bestowed on himbyApollon it must specially be noted are poisoned; 
 and these poisoned barbs are used by Philoktetes, who receives them 
 from Neoptolemos, the child of Achilleus, the brilliant but short-lived 
 sun, and by Odysseus, whom Athene restores to youthful beauty as 
 his life's labour draws towards its end. But we have no historical evi- 
 dence that poisoned arrows were used by any Hellenic tribes, or that 
 they would not have regarded the employment of such weapons with 
 the utmost horror. How then comes it to pass that the poets of the 
 Iliad and Odyssey can attribute to the Achaian heroes practices from 
 which their kinsmen would have shrunk with disgust ? The mystery is 
 easily solved. The equivocation which turned the violet-tinted rays 
 of morning into spears was inevitable ; the change of the spears or 
 arrows into poisoned barbs was, at the least, as natural and necessary. 3 
 
 As the conquest of the lion of Kithairon is the first great exploit, H»rakifs-. 
 so according to the systematising mythographers the bringing up of beros. 
 the dog Kerberos 4 from Hades is the last. This story is mentioned 
 
 the Nemeanlionis the den or cave with the legend which makes Apoll6n him- 
 
 two openings or entrances, the gates self the child of (Let6) the sombre night, 
 through one of which the sun enters * The word Ids, toy, which furnished 
 
 the land of night, while through the a name for the violet hue, for a spear, 
 
 other he comes forth again in the morn- and for poison, is really a homonym 
 
 ing. — Maury, Croyances et Legendes traceable to two or three roots ; and 
 
 de t Antiquiti, 194. This lion is also thus far the equivocation differs from 
 
 represented as mortally afraid of the that which turned Lykaon into a wolf, 
 
 cock, — for an obvious reason. — Guber and Arkas into a bear, these names- 
 
 natis, Zoological Mythology, ii. 158. being in fact of the same signification, 
 
 1 See p. 278. although the men who uttered them, 
 
 * Erginos is the father of Trophonios had ceased to be conscious of it. 
 and Agamede's, the builders of the * The name Kerberos is the Sanskrit 
 
 Delphian shrine — the myth of the Sarvara, or Sambara, one of the enemies 
 
 children of darkness raising the sane- slain by Indra. — Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 
 
 tuary of the lord of light answering to 1S2, 188. 
 
292 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The mad- 
 ness of 
 HeraklSs. 
 
 by the poet of the Odyssey, who makes Herakles tell Odysseus that 
 ■" his sufferings are but a reflexion of the toils which he had himself 
 undergone by the tyranny of the mean Eurystheus, and that this 
 task of bringing up the hound had been achieved by the aid of 
 Athene and Hermes, the dawn and the breeze of morning. 1 On 
 this framework was built an elaborate superstructure, which we need 
 not examine closely, but of which some at least of the details are 
 significant. The slaughter of the Kentaurs by Herakles, for which 
 he needed purification before descending to Hades, is the conquest 
 and dispersion of the vapours by the sun as he rises in the heaven ; 
 and the crime of Herakles is only another form of that of Ixion. As 
 he returns to the upper world he rescues Theseus, himself one of the 
 great solar heroes, and the child of Aithra, the pure air ; but Peiri- 
 thpos must remain behind, as Patroklos must die even though he 
 be the friend of Achilleus. The dog of Yama thus brought back is, 
 of course, carried down again by Herakles to the nether world. 
 
 But the sun as he rises in the heaven acquires a fiercer power ; 
 and thus Apollon becomes Chrysaor, and Herakles becomes mad. 
 It is the raging of the heat which burns up the fruits of the earth 
 which it has fostered, and so Herakles slays his own children by 
 Megara, and two also of the sons of Iphikles. At this point he is 
 represented by some as asking the Pythian priestess where he should 
 make his abode, and as receiving from her, instead of his former 
 title, Alkaios or Alkides, the sturdy, the name of Herakles, the 
 heavenly. 2 As such, he is the avenger of the fraud of Laomedon, 
 who had refused to pay the promised recompense to Poseidon and 
 Phoibos for building his walls and tending his flocks. As in the case 
 of Kepheus or of Oineus, the offended deities send a monster to 
 ravage the fields of Ilion, and Laomedon promises to bestow his 
 immortal horses on any one who will slay it. But again he breaks 
 his oath, by giving mortal steeds to Herakles when the beast has 
 been killed. The result is the first Trojan war mentioned in the 
 Iliad, which relates how Herakles, coming with six ships and few 
 men, shattered its towers and left its streets desolate. 8 In other 
 
 1 Od. xi. 626; //. viii. 369. The 
 latter passage is especially noteworthy 
 as indicating that clashing of wills 
 between Athene 1 and Zeus which Mr. 
 Gladstone is anxious to keep as much 
 as possible in the background. Athene 1 
 here speaks of Zeus as mad, hard of 
 heart, a blunderer, and an obstacle in 
 her path. 
 
 2 The name Herakles is the same as 
 • Here, wilh the termination denoting 
 
 glory or renown. 
 
 * //. v. 640. This story is put into 
 the mouth of the Herakleid Tlepolemos 
 when he is about to slay Sarped6n. — 
 Grote, Hist. Gr. i. 388. The other 
 incidents simply repeat the story of 
 Kepheus. The oracle says that a 
 maiden must be given up to the sea- 
 monster, and the lot falls on Hesione", 
 the daughter of Laomedon, as in the 
 Libyan tale it falls on Andromeda, the 
 
DEMONS OF DROUGHT. 293 
 
 words, Herakles is mightier than Agamemnon. He is the sun-god chap. 
 
 demanding his own recompense : and the Achaians among whom ' ' 
 
 Achilleus fights are the sun-children seeking to recover the beautiful 
 light of evening and the treasures which have been stolen with her 
 from the west. 
 
 Of the other exploits of Herakles, the greater number explain Orthros 
 themselves. The Nemean lion is the offspring of Typhon, Orthros, Hydra. 
 or Echidna ; in other words, it is sprung from Vritra, the dark thief, 
 and Ahi, the throttling snake of darkness, and it is as surely slain by 
 Herakles as the snakes which had assaulted him in the cradle. 
 Another child of the same horrid parents is the Lernaian Hydra, 
 its very name denoting a monster who, like the Sphinx or the Panis, 
 shuts up the waters and causes drought. It has many heads, one 
 being immortal, as the storm must constantly supply new clouds 
 while the vapours are driven off by the sun into space. Hence the 
 story went that although Herakles could burn away its mortal heads, 
 as the sun burns up the clouds, still he can but hide away the mist 
 or vapour itself, which at its appointed time must again darken the 
 sky. In this fight he is aided by Iolaos, the son of Iphikles, a name 
 recalling, like that of Iole, the violet-tinted clouds which can be seen 
 only when the face of the heaven is clear of the murky vapours. 
 Hence it is that Eurystheus is slain when Iolaos rises from the under 
 world to punish him for demanding from the children of the dawn- 
 goddess Athene the surrender of the Herakleids, who had found 
 among them a congenial home. The stag of Keryneia is, according 
 to some versions, slain, in others only seized by Herakles, who bears 
 it with its golden antlers and brazen feet to Artemis and Phoibos. 
 The story of the Erymanthian boar is in some accounts transferred 
 from Argos to Thessaly or Phrygia, the monster itself, which Herakles 
 chases through deep snow, being closely akin to the Chimaira slain 
 by Bellerophon. In the myth of the Augeian stables HeraklSs plays 
 the part of Indra, when he lets loose the waters imprisoned by the 
 Pani. 1 In this case the plague of drought is regarded not so much 
 in its effects on the health of man as in its influence on nature 
 
 daughter of Kepheus. Herakles, of the growth of the heads of the Lernaian 
 
 course, plays the part of Perseus, and Hydra. This myth is repeated in the 
 
 is aided by Athene and the Trojans, tale of the Two Stepsisters, and in the 
 
 who build him a tower to help him in Gaelic story of the Battle of the Birds, 
 
 the fight. of which Mr. Campbell ( Tales of the 
 
 1 This exploit, in the Norse story of West Highlands, i. 61) says that "it 
 
 the Mastermaid, is performed by the might have been taken from classical 
 
 prince, who finds that, unless he guides mythology if it stood alone, but Norwe- 
 
 the pitchfork aright, ten pitchforks full gian peasants and West Highlanders 
 
 of filth come in for every one that he could not so twist the story of Hercules 
 
 losses out, an incident which recalls into the same shape." 
 
294 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 E ?P K generally, in the disorder, decay, unseemliness, and filth which must 
 v — — ■ — follow from it. The clouds, here the cattle of Augeias, may move 
 across the sky, but they drop down no water on the earth, and do 
 nothing towards lessening the evil. Of these clouds Augeias promises 
 that Herakles shall become in part the lord, if he can but cleanse 
 their stables. The task is done ; but Augeias, like Laomedon, refuses 
 to abide by his bargain, and even defeats HeraklSs and his companions 
 in a narrow Eleian gorge. But the victory of Augeias is fatal to him- 
 self, and with Kteatos and Eurytos he is slain by Herakles. 
 The Mara- The myth of the Cretan bull seems to involve a confusion similar 
 
 thonian . 
 
 bull. to that which has led some to identify the serpent who is regarded as 
 
 an object of love and affection in the Phallic worship, with the 
 serpent who is always an object of mere aversion and disgust. 1 The 
 bull which bears Europe 1 from the Phoinikian land answers to the 
 bull Indra, which traverses the heaven, bearing the dawn from the 
 east to the west. The Cretan bull, like his fellow in the Gnossian 
 labyrinth, who devours the tribute children from the city of the 
 dawn-goddess, is a dark and malignant monster driven mad by 
 Poseidon ; but Crete lay within the circle of Phenician influence, 
 and the bull may be the savage and devouring Moloch of the Semitic 
 tribes. Although Herakles carries this monster home on his back, 
 he is compelled to let it go again, and it reappears as the bull who 
 ravages the fields of Marathon, till it is slain by the hands of 
 Theseus, who is the slayer also of the Minotauros. The clouds and 
 vapours pursued and conquered by the hero are seen again in the 
 mares of Diomedes, which consume their master and are thus 
 rendered tame, perhaps as the isolated clouds are unable to resist the 
 sun when the moisture which has produced them has been subdued. 
 They appear also as the Stymphalian birds, with claws, wings, and 
 beaks resembling those of the Sphinx, and like her being eaters of 
 human flesh or destroyers of men and beasts. These birds, it is 
 said, had taken refuge in the Stymphalian lake, because they were 
 afraid of the wolves— a phrase which exhibits the dark storm-clouds 
 as dreading the rays (Lykoi) of the sun, which can only appear when 
 themselves have been defeated. These clouds reappear yet again as the 
 cattle stolen by Geryon, and recovered by Herakles— a myth of which 
 the legend of Cacus exhibits the most striking and probably the most 
 genuine form. Nor is the legend of the golden apples guarded by 
 the Hesperides anything more than a repetition of the same idea, 
 being itself, as we have seen, a result of the same kind of equivoca- 
 tion which produced the myths of Lykaon, Arktouros, and Kallisto. 
 1 See section xii. of this chapter. 
 
ar£s and kyknos. 2 95 
 
 In the girdle of Hippolyte we have one of those mysterious chap. 
 
 emblems which are associated with the Linga in the worship of'— — ; ' 
 
 Vishnu. It is the magic kestos of Aphrodite and the wreath of the f Hippo- 
 Kadmeian Harmonia. Into the myth which related how Herakles lyte - 
 became its possessor, the mythographers have introduced a series of 
 incidents, some of which do not belong to it, while others merely 
 repeat each other. Thus, before he reaches the land of the Amazons, 
 Herakles aids Lykos against the Bebrykes, in other words, fights the 
 battle of the bright being against the roaring monsters who are his 
 enemies ; and thus, after he has slain Hippolyte and seized the 
 girdle, he visits Echidna, a being akin to the beautiful but mysterious 
 Melusina, who throws her spell over Raymond of Toulouse, and then 
 takes vengeance on the Trojan Laomedon, slaying the bright 
 Sarpedon, who in the Iliad falls by the spear of his descendant 
 Tlepolemos. 
 
 The narratives of these great exploits, which are commonly known M y' hs m- 
 
 r / J terspersed 
 
 as the twelve labours of Herakles, are interspersed with numberless among the 
 incidents of greater or less significance, some of them plainly in- theTweive 
 terpreting themselves. Thus, in his journey to the land of the Hes- „ bou ,^ ° f 
 perides he is tormented by the heat of the sun, and shoots his arrows 
 at Helios, who, admiring his bravery, gives him his golden cup in 
 which to cross the sea. 1 In Kyknos, the son of Ar£s the grinder or 
 crusher, he encounters an antagonist akin to Cacus, or even more 
 formidable. With his father Kyknos invades the sacred precincts of 
 Apollon, where he sits on his fiery chariot while the earth trembles 
 beneath the hoofs of his horses, and the altar and grove of Phoibos 
 are filled with the horrid glare. But the son of Alkmene is journeying 
 to Trachis, and Kyknos, whose chariot blocks up the road, . must 
 yield up the path or die. On the challenge of Herakles a furious 
 conflict ensues, in which we see the spears of Indra hurled against 
 his hateful enemy. The crash of the thunder rolls through the heaven, 
 and the big thunderdrops fall from the sky. 2 At last Kyknos is 
 slain, but Herakles is now confronted by Ares himself, whom he 
 
 1 In reference to such incidents as the theory, goes far to confirm it. It is 
 
 these, Mr. Paley says, " A curious but the unconscious blending of two modes 
 
 well-known characteristic of solar myths of representation— the sun as a person, 
 
 is the identification of the sun both with and the sun as a thing. To construct 
 
 the agent or patient, and with the thing a story, there must be both agents and 
 
 or object by which the act is exercised. subject-matter for action ; and both, 
 
 Ixion is the sun, and so is Ixion's from different points of view, may be 
 
 wheel. . . . Hercules is the sun, who the same."— On the Origin of Solar 
 
 expires in flame on the summit of Mount Myl/is, Dublin Review, July, 1879, 
 
 CEta ; but the fiery robe which scorches p. 109. 
 him to death is the sun-cloud. Now * Asp. Herald. 384. 
 
 ihis, so far from being an objection to 
 
296 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Herakles 
 and Eury- 
 tos. 
 
 conquers although he cannot slay him. Ar£s is indeed not the 
 passing storm, but the power from whom these storms come : he is 
 that head of the Lernaian hydra which cannot die, and thus he 
 escapes with a thigh wound, while the body of Kyknos, stripped of 
 its glittering armour, is buried by Keyx. In Antaios 1 Herakles 
 encounters the giant who, under the name of Polyphemos, seeks to 
 crush Odysseus. Like the latter, the Libyan monster is a son of the 
 sea-god — the black storm-vapour which draws to itself new strength 
 from the earth on which it reposes. Hence Herakles cannot over- 
 come him until he lifts him off the earth and strangles him in the 
 expanse of heaven, as the sun cannot burn up and disperse the 
 vapours until his heat has lifted them up above the surface of the 
 land. 
 
 The fiercer heats of summer may, as we have seen, suggest the 
 idea not only that another hand less firm than that of Helios is 
 suffering his fiery horses to draw too near the earth, but that Helios 
 himself has been smitten with madness, and cares not whether in 
 his fury he slays those whom he has most loved and cherished. The 
 latter idea runs through the myths of the raging Herakles, and thus, 
 when he has won Iole the daughter of Eurytos as the prize for success 
 in archery, her father refuses to fulfil the compact because a being 
 who has killed one bride and her offspring may repeat the crime: and 
 thus he is parted from Iole at the very moment of winning her. It 
 is the old story of Daphne, Prokris, or Arethousa, with this difference 
 only that the legend of Iole belongs to the middle heats of summer. 
 But Herakles may not be injured with impunity. The beautiful 
 cattle of Eurytos are feeding like those of Helios in the pastures 
 where the children of Neaira tend them, and Herakles is suspected 
 of driving them away. His friend Iphitos pleads his cause, but 
 
 1 Antaios, the uncouth awkward should be victorious over the enemies 
 
 opposed to them, and that these enemies 
 should appear in horrible shapes which 
 yet are not so formidable as they seem ; 
 in other words, they cannot stand 
 against the hero whose insignificant 
 stature and mean appearance they had 
 despised. All that we need say is 
 that they become more stupid as we go 
 further north. The Kyklops of the 
 Odyssey is not quite such a fool as the 
 Troll who slits his stomach that he may 
 eat the more, because ' ' Boots who ate 
 a match with the Troll " and has made 
 a slit in the scrip which he carries under 
 his chin, assures him that the pain is 
 nothing to speak of. The giant in the 
 story of the Valiant Tailor (Grimm) is 
 cheated much in the same fashion. 
 
 giant, may be fairly taken as a type of 
 the Teutonic Troll, in whom is com- 
 bined the unsightliness of Polyphemos 
 with the stupidity which, tolerably cha- 
 racteristic of the Kyklops, is brought 
 out still more clearly in the Teutonic 
 devil. Whether in Greek, Hindu, or 
 other mythology, these monsters are 
 generally outwitted, and hence nothing 
 is gained by hypotheses which see in 
 these Trolls the aboriginal inhabitants 
 who had not wit enough to hold their 
 ground against the new invaders of the 
 land, and who therefore betook them- 
 selves to the mountains. It is of the 
 very essence of the myths of Indra, 
 Heiakles, Bellerophontes, Perseus, or 
 any ether light-born heroes, that they 
 
HERAKLts THE BONDMAN. 297 
 
 when he asks the aid of Herakles in recovering the lost cattle, the chap. 
 
 angry hero turns on his friend and slays him. The friemdship of' ' 
 
 Herakles is as fatal to Iphitos as that of Achilleus to Patroklos. 
 Incident is now crowded on incident, all exhibiting the working of • 
 the same idea. It is the time of the wild simoon. Herakles ap- 
 proaches the sanctuary of Phoibos, but the Pythia will yield no 
 answer to his questions, and a contest follows between Herakles and 
 Phoibos himself, which is ended only when Zeus sunders them by 
 a flash of lightning. When thus for the time discomfited, he is told 
 that he can be loosed from his madness and again become sound in 
 mind only by consenting to serve for a time as a bondman ; and thus 
 the myth which makes Apollon serve in the house of Admetos, and 
 which made Herakles all his life long the slave of a mean tyrant, is 
 again brought into the story. He is now sold to Omphale (the 
 correlative of Omphalos), and assumes something like the guise of 
 the half-feminine Dionysos. But even with this story of subjection 
 a vast number of exploits are interwoven, among these being the 
 slaying of a serpent on the river Sygaris and the hunting of the 
 Kalydonian boar. 
 
 The tale of his return from the conquest of Ilion presents the Heraklte 
 same scenes under slightly different colours. In his fight with the Au ge. 
 Meropes he is assailed by a shower of stones, and is even wounded 
 by Chalkodon, — another thunderstorm recalling the fight with Ares 
 and Kyknos : and the same battle of the elements comes before us in 
 the next task which Athene; sets him, of fighting with the giants in the 
 burning fields of Phlegrai. These giants, it had been foretold, were 
 to be conquered by a mortal man, a notion which takes another form 
 in the surprise of Polyphemos when he finds himself outwitted by so 
 small and insignificant a being as Odysseus. At this point, after his 
 return to Argos, some mythographers place his marriage with Auge, 
 the mother of Telephos, whose story reproduces that of Oidipous or 
 Perseus. 
 
 His union with Deianeira, the daughter of the Kalydonian chief, Herakles 
 brings us to the closing scenes of his troubled and tumultuous career, naanira. 
 The name points, as we have seen, to the darkness which was to be 
 his portion at the ending of his journey, and here also his evil fate 
 pursues him. His spear is fatal to the boy Eunomos, as it had been 
 to the children of Megara ; but although in this instance the crime 
 had been done unwittingly, Herakles would not accept the pardon 
 tendered to him, and he departed into exile with Deianeira. At the 
 ford of a river Herakles entrusts her to the charge of the Kentaur 
 Nessos, who acted as ferryman, and who attempting to lay hands 0£ 
 
29S 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ALYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The death 
 of Hera- 
 kles. 
 
 Deianeira is fatally wounded by the hero. In his last moments 
 Nessos bids her preserve his blood, as the sure means of recovering 
 her husband's love if it should be transferred to another. The catas- 
 trophe brought about by these words of Nessos is related by 
 Sophokles; but before this end came, Herakles had aided many 
 friends and vanquished many foes. Among these was Augeias, whom 
 he attacked at the head of an Arkadian host, the men of the bright 
 land. Against him were arrayed, among other allies of the Eleian 
 king, Eurytos and Kteatos, the sons of the grinders or crushers 
 Molion and Aktor. Here the strength of Herakles for a time 
 fails him, and the enemy hesitates not to attack him during his sick- 
 ness ; but the hero lies in ambush, like the sun lurking behind the 
 clouds while his rays are ready to burst forth like spears, and having 
 slain some of his enemies, advances and takes the city of Elis, making 
 Phyleus king in place of Augeias, whom he slays together with his 
 children. 
 
 When at length the evening of his life was come, Deianeira 
 received the tidings that her husband was returning in triumph from 
 the Euboian Oichalia, not alone, but bringing with him the beautiful 
 Iole, whom he had loved since the hour when he first put the shaft to 
 his bow in the contest for that splendid prize. Now he had slain her 
 father, as Perseus slew Akrisios and as Oidipous smote down Laios, 
 and the maiden herself was coming to grace his home. Then the 
 words of Nessos come back to the memory of the forsaken wife, who 
 steeps in his blood the white garment which at the bidding of 
 Herakles Lichas comes to fetch from Trachis. The hero is about to 
 offer his sacrifice to the Kenaian Zeus, and he wishes to offer it up in 
 peace, clad in a seemly robe of pure white, with the fair and gentle 
 Iole standing by his side. But so it is not to be. Scarcely has he 
 put on the robe which Lichas brings than the poison 1 begins to 
 course through his veins and rack every limb with agony unspeakable, 
 as the garment given by Helios to Medeia consumed the flash of 
 Glauke and of Kreon. Once more the suffering hero is lashed into 
 madness, and seizing the luckless Lichas he hurls him into the sea. 
 Thus, borne at last to the heights of Oita, he gathers wood, and 
 charges those who are around him to set the pile on fire, when he 
 shall have laid himself down upon it. Only the shepherd Poias 
 ventures to do the hero's will : but when the flame is kindled, the 
 thunder crashes through the heaven, and a cloud comes down which 
 bears him away to Olympos, there to dwell in everlasting youth with 
 
 1 The poisoned Herakles answers to the leprous Chaldsean Izdubar, the 
 (solar) lion, with the thorn in his foot. 
 
HERAKLES AND BELLEROPHON. 299 
 
 the radiant Hebe as his bride. 1 It is a myth in which " looms a mag- CHAP. 
 
 nificent sunset," a the forked flames as they leap from the*smoke of "— — ' ' 
 
 the kindled wood being the blood-red vapours which stream from the 
 body of the dying sun. 8 It is the reverse of the picture which leaves 
 Odysseus with Penelope in all the brightness of early youth, knowing 
 indeed that the night must come, yet blessed in the profound calm 
 which has followed the storms and troubles of the past. It is the 
 picture of a sunset in wild confusion, the multitude of clouds hurrying 
 hither and thither, now hiding, now revealing the mangled body of 
 the sun, — of a sunset more awful yet not more sad than that which is 
 seen in the last hours of Bellerophon, as he wanders through the 
 Aleian plain in utter solitude, — the loneliness of the sun who has 
 scattered the hostile vapours and then sinks slowly down the vast 
 expanse of pale light with the ghastly hues of death upon his face. 4 
 
 Of the Latin Hercules we need say but little here. The most The Latin 
 prominent myth connected with the name in comparatively recent Hercllles - 
 times is that of the punishment of Cacus for stealing the oxen of the 
 hero ; and this story must be taken along with the other legends 
 which reproduce the great contest between the powers of light and 
 darkness set forth in the primitive myth of Indra and Ahi. The god 
 or hero of whom the Latins told this story is certainly the same in 
 character with the Hellenic son of Alkmene ; but, as Niebuhr insisted, 
 it is not less certain that the story must have been told from the first 
 not of the genuine Latin Hercules or Herculus, a deity who was the 
 guardian of boundaries, like the Zeus Herkeios of the Greeks, but of 
 some god in whose place Hercules has been intruded, from the pho- 
 netic resemblance between his name and that of Herakles. Apart from 
 this story the Latin Hercules, or rather Recaranus, has no genuine 
 mythology, the story of the Potitii and Pinarii being, like a thousand 
 
 1 There was no reason why the myth Brynhild in the Nibelung Song bids her 
 
 should stop short here ; and the cycle maidens scatter about at her death, 
 already so many times repeated is * It was easy to think of Herakles 
 
 carried on by making Herakles and as never wearied and never dying, but 
 
 HebS the parents of Alexiar6s and as journeying by the Ocean stream after 
 
 Aniketos, names which again denote sun-down to the spot whence he comes 
 
 the irresistible strength and the benig- again into sight in the morning. Hence 
 
 nant nature of the parent whose blood in the Orphic hymns he is self-born, 
 
 flows in their veins. The name Alexi- the wanderer along the path of light 
 
 arts belongs to the same class with (Lykabas) in which he performs his 
 
 Alexikakos, an epithet which Herald6s mighty exploits between the rising and 
 
 shares with Zeus and Apollon, along the setting of the sun. He is of many 
 
 with Daphnephoros, Olympios, Pange- shapes, he devours all things and pro- 
 
 net6r and others.— Max Miiller, Chips, duces all things, he slays and he heals. 
 
 11 
 
 Round his head he bears the Morning 
 and the Night (xii.), and 
 through the hours of darknes 
 us in'' the "shower of gold corns which a robe of stars (aarpoxiruv). 
 
 2 Max Miiller, ib. ii. 88. and the Night (xii.), and as living 
 
 3 The same picture is brought before through the hours of darkness he wears 
 
300 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Egyptian 
 myths. 
 
 Osiris 
 and 
 
 Rhada-, 
 manthys. 
 
 others, a mere institutional legend, to account for ceremonies in the 
 ' later ritual. 
 
 Still less is it necessary to give at length the points of likeness or 
 difference between the Hellenic Herakles and the deities of whom 
 Herodotos or other writers speak as the Herakles of Egypt or other 
 countries. By their own admission their names at least had little in 
 common ; and the affinity between the Greek hero and the Egyptian 
 Som, Chon, or Makeris, must be one of attributes only. It is, indeed, 
 obvious that, go where we will, we must find the outlines, at least, 
 of the picture into which the Greek mind crowded such an astonish- 
 ing variety of life and action. The sun, as toiling for others, not 
 for himself, as serving beings who are as nothing in comparison with 
 his own strength and splendour, as cherishing or destroying the fruits 
 of the earth which is his bride, as faithful or fickle in his loves, as 
 gentle or furious in his course, could not fail to be the subject of 
 phrases which, as their original meaning grew fainter, must suggest 
 the images wrought up with lavish but somewhat undiscerning zeal 
 into the stories of the Hellenic Herakles. Not less certainly would 
 these stories exhibit him under forms varying infinitely from the most 
 exalted majesty to the coarsest burlesque. 
 
 But although Egyptian mythology lies strictly beyond the limits of 
 our present subject, it is yet worth while to note that, while some of 
 the Egyptian myths seem to have a more direct reference to facts 
 of astronomy than may be found generally in Greek tradition, they 
 had their foundation, as a whole, in phrases which described the pheno- 
 mena of the outward world in all its parts. The origin of the Egyptian 
 people and of their civilisation is a question into which we cannot 
 enter ; but probably none will be found to assert that the Egyptian 
 people come from the stock which has produced the Aryan nations of 
 Europe and Asia. The character of this wonderful valley would go 
 far towards accounting for the forms assumed by the religion, laws, 
 and customs which grew up within it; and it is enough for us to 
 mark that their growth betrays no working of Aryan influences, while 
 in their turn the institutions and traditions of the Aryan tribes were 
 but little affected by those of Egypt. That there was some interchange 
 of thought as well as of commerce in prehistoric ages between 
 Greeks and Egyptians, is proved by the presence of Egyptian words 
 in a dress which seems altogether Hellenic and Aryan; and such 
 names as Harpokrates and Rhadamanthys justify a like inquiry to 
 that which names like Melikertes, Athamas, and Kadmos warrant, 
 when we deal with the myths and legends of Boiotia. Speaking 
 generally, however, we may safely say that between the main body of 
 
EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY. 301 
 
 the Greek and that of the Egyptian myths there was no direct connexion, chap. 
 and no points of likeness, which cannot be explained by the working ' ' 
 of independent minds on the same facts or the same materials. But 
 after Egypt had been thrown open to Greek commerce, the Greeks 
 were so impressed by the grandeur of the country and the elaborate 
 mystical system of the priesthood, that they were soon tempted not 
 only to identify their own deities with those of Egypt, but in some cases 
 to fancy that their names as well as the actions ascribed to them were 
 derived from that country. Thus Herodotos could quietly carry away 
 with him the conviction that the name of the Greek and Aryan Athene 
 was only that of the Egyptian Neith read, backwards. Nor need we 
 hesitate to say that the mystical system of the Egyptian priests, which 
 made so profound an impression on the mind of Herodotos, was 
 grafted in the process of ages on simpler myths, which corresponded 
 essentially with the phrases which lie at the root of Hindu, Greek, 
 and Teutonic mythology. 1 Thus the sleep of Uasar (Osiris) during 
 the winter, before his reappearance in the spring, is the sleep of the 
 fair maiden who is waked up by Sigurd, and answers to the sojourn of 
 Balder in the unseen world and to the imprisonment of Kore or 
 Persephone in the house of Hades. It is of this Osiris that the horned 
 maiden Isis is both the mother and the wife, and the dogheaded Anubis 
 (Anpu) is their companion. Osiris is killed by his brother Set, or 
 Sethi, as Balder is killed by Hodr; but after his imprisonment 
 beneath the earth he rises to a new life and becomes the judge of 
 the dead. This office was denoted by his title Rhot-amenti, a name 
 manifestly borrowed by the Greeks under the form Rhadamanthys. 
 The son of Isis and Osiris was Horos, who is represented as a boy on 
 a lotus flower with a finger in his mouth. His name, again, Har-pi- 
 chruti, Horus the Child, the Greeks threwinto the form of Harpokrates. 2 
 
 1 Renouf, Hibbei-t lectures, 1879, the night. But "although all myths 
 
 Lecture iii. are strictly true, they can be harmonised 
 
 1 It is well to know that an exami- only when transliterated into the lan- 
 nation of Egyptian mythology amply guage of physical reality." It was, 
 bears out the conclusions reached by however, the climate of the Nile valley 
 those who have worked in the wider which determined the character of 
 domain of Aryan tradition. It matters Egyptian mythology, and confined it 
 not where we may go, we are every- almost entirely to phenomena of regu- 
 where, as Mr. Renouf remarks, con- lar and perpetual occurrence. Mr. 
 fronted with the fact that, as soon as Renouf thus reaches the definite con- 
 the nature of the myth is understood, elusion, "Whatever may be the case in 
 all anomalies and seeming immoralities other mythologies, I look upon the 
 in the popular stories of the gods are sunrise and sunset, on the daily return 
 at once explained. In Egyptian myths, of day and night, on the battle between 
 as elsewhere, the birth of the sun may light and darkness, on the whole solar 
 be ascribed to ever so many different drama in all its details, that is acted 
 mothers. He may be the son of the every day, every month, every year, in 
 sky, or of the dawn, or of the sea, or of heaven and in earth, as the ' principal 
 
302 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Repe- 
 titions 
 of the 
 myth of 
 Heraklgs. 
 
 The story 
 of Perseus, 
 
 But the mythical history of Herakles is bound up with that of 
 his progenitors and his descendants, and furnishes many a link in 
 the twisted chain presented to us in the prehistoric annals of Greece. 
 The myth might have stopped short with the death of the hero; but 
 a new cycle is, as we have seen, begun when Hebe becomes the 
 mother of his children in Olympos, and Herakl£s, it is said, had in 
 his last moments charged his son Hyllus on earth to marry the 
 beautiful Iole. The ever-moving wheels, in short, may not tarry. 
 The children of the sun may return as conquerors in the morning, 
 bringing with them the radiant woman who with her treasures had 
 been stolen away in the evening. After long toils and weary conflicts 
 they may succeed in bearing her back to her ancient home, as 
 Perseus bears Danae to Argos; but not less certainly must the 
 triumph of the powers of darkness come round again, and the sun- 
 children be driven from their rightful heritage. Thus was framed 
 that woeful tale of expulsion and dreary banishment, of efforts to 
 return many times defeated but at last successful, which make up 
 the mythical history of the descendants of Herakles. But the 
 phenomena which rendered their expulsion necessary determined 
 also the direction in which they must move, and the land in which 
 they should find a refuge. The children of the sun can rest only 
 in the land of the morning, and accordingly it is at Athens alone 
 and from the children of the dawn-goddess that the Herakleids can 
 be sheltered from their enemies, who press them on every side. 
 Thus we find ourselves in a cycle of myths which might be repeated 
 at will, which in fact were repeated many times in the so-called 
 prehistoric annals of Greece, and which doubtless would have been 
 repeated again and again, had not the magic series been cut short 
 by the dawn of the historical sense and the rise of a real historical 
 literature. 
 
 In the Argive tradition the myth of Perseus 1 is made to embrace 
 the whole legend of Herakles, the mightiest and the most widely 
 known of all the mythical heroes of the Greeks. It is as belonging 
 
 subject' of Egyptian mythology." — 
 Hibbert Lectures, 109. Speaking of the 
 Babylonian mythology, Mr. Sayce comes 
 to the same conclusion. " The more 
 the Babylonian mythology is examined, 
 the more solar is its origin found to be, 
 thus confirming the results arrived at in 
 the Aryan and Semitic fields of research. " 
 With two exceptions only "the great 
 deities seem all to go back to the sun." 
 1 The name Perseus is one as to 
 which, if we regard it as an Aryan word, 
 
 we can scarcely venture to speak posi- 
 tively. It may mean simply the de- 
 stroyer ; but it is also possible that it 
 may point to the Parsoudos of Ktesias, 
 and therefore be a Babylonian name. 
 If it be so, . it would be only one of 
 many instances in which, in Mr. Brown's 
 words (The Unicorn, 55), "an Aryan 
 and a non-Aryan name, of somewhat 
 similar sound, have become united like 
 a double star." 
 
HERAKL^S AND PERSEUS. 303 
 
 to the race of Perseus, and as being by the arts of Here brought CHAP, 
 into the world before his cousin, that Eurystheus becomes the tyrant •■ • ' ■ • 
 of Herakles. Yet the story of Perseus is essentially the same as 
 the story of his more illustrious descendant; and the profound 
 unconsciousness of the Argives that the two narratives are in their 
 groundwork identical is a singular illustration of the extent to which 
 men can have all their critical faculties lulled to sleep by mere 
 difference of names or of local colouring in legends which are only 
 modifications of a single myth. In either case we have a hero whose 
 life, beginning in disasters, is a long series of labours undertaken at 
 the behest of one who is in every way his inferior, and who comes 
 triumphantly out of these fearful ordeals, because he is armed with 
 the invincible weapons of the dawn, the sun, and the winds. Nor 
 is there perhaps a single feature or incident in the whole myth to 
 which a parallel is not furnished by other Hellenic, or even other 
 Argive, legends. Before his birth, Akrisios, his mother's father, 
 learns at Delphoi, like the Theban Laios, that if his daughter has 
 a child, that child will be his destroyer. At once then he orders 
 that Danae shall be shut up in a brazen tower, an imprisonment 
 answering to that of Persephone in the land of Hades, or of Brynhild 
 in Niflheim. But here, as with them, a deliverer is wanted ; and this 
 deliverer is Zeus, the lord of the life-giving ether, who had wooed 
 Leda in the form of the white swan, the spotless cloud, and who now 
 enters the dungeon of Danae in a golden shower, the glittering rays 
 which herald the approach of spring with its new life for the trees and 
 flowers. Thus in his mother's dreary prison-house the golden child l 
 is born; and Akrisios in his wrath decrees that his daughter and her 
 babe shall share the doom of Oidipous and Dionysos. Like Semele, 
 she is placed with the infant in a chest or ark, which is thrust out 
 into the sea, and carried by the waves and tide to the island of 
 Seriphos, where the vessel is seen by Diktys, who of course is fishing, 
 and by him Danae' and her child are taken to the house of his brother 
 Polydektes, the chief of the island, a myth which we have to compare 
 with those of Artemis Diktynna and Persephone. Throughout the 
 story, Diktys is the kindly being whose heart is filled with pity for 
 the sorrowing mother, while Polydektes, a name identical with that 
 of Hades Polydegmon, is her unrelenting persecutor. He is thus 
 a champion of the lord of light, which is reflected in his name as in 
 that of Diktynna and the Diktaian cave in Crete ; and the equivoca- 
 tion in the one case is precisely the same as in the other. Polydektes 
 now tries all his arts to win Danae, and his efforts at once recall the 
 
 ' XpvtrJiraTpos, the Gold Child, in Grimm's collection of Teutonic stories. 
 
304 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK temptation of Sarama by Pani; but Danae is true to her child and to 
 ' his father, and Polydektes resolves to be rid of the youth who stands 
 thus in his way. So, like Eurystheus, he sends him away with a strict 
 charge that he is not to return unless he brings with him the Gorgon's 
 head, the sight of which can freeze every living being into stone. 
 Thus the dawn is parted from her son, for Phoibos himself must 
 leave his mother Leto and begin his westward journey. 1 He starts 
 alone, and as he thinks unbefriended, but with the high and generous 
 spirit which marks the youthful Herakles in the apologue of Prodikos, 
 and heavenly beings come to his aid as Arete promises to strengthen 
 the son of Alkm£ne\ From the dawn-goddess, Athene, he receives 
 the mirror into which he is to gaze when he draws his sword to smite 
 the mortal Gorgon, the fiend of darkness; from Hermes he obtains 
 the sword which never falls in vain ; and the Nymphs bring him the 
 bag in which he is to carry away the head of Medousa, the tarn- 
 kappe or invisible helmet of Hades, and the golden sandals which 
 will bear him along as swiftly as a dream, — in other words, the 
 golden chariot of Helios, or the armour of Achilleus, which bears 
 him up as a bird upon the wing. He is now the Chrysaor, armed 
 for the battle 2 and ready for his journey; and like the sun, he may 
 veil himself in clouds when he wishes not to be seen. But he 
 cannot reach the Gorgon's den until he has first passed the home 
 of the Graiai, the land of the gloaming, whose solitary eye and tooth 
 he refuses to restore until they have pointed out the road which 
 shall bring him to his journey's end. In other words, the sun must 
 go through the twilight-land before he can pierce the regions of utter 
 darkness and reappear in the beautiful gardens of the Hyperboreans, 
 the asphodel meadows of the tinted heavens of morning. When at 
 length his task is done, and he turns to go to the upper world, the 
 Gorgon sisters (the clouds of darkness) start up in fury, and their 
 brazen talons almost seize him as he reaches the clear blue heaven, 
 which is called the land of the brilliant Ethiopians. Here, again, 
 the same war is going on in which he has already been the conqueror. 
 The storm-cloud is seeking to devour the dawn and to blot out its 
 
 1 If Niebuhr is right in connecting for their conflict with the dragon, who 
 together the names Daunos, Danaos, represents both chaos and darkness, 
 Lavinus, Lakinus, Latinus, &c, the " and the chief weapon of the god who 
 name Danae is only another form of maintains nocturnal Kosmic order is, 
 Ahanft and Athene, of Dahana and as of course, the sickle-shaped moon." 
 Daphne. Hence Perseus with the crescent moon 
 
 2 Pherekydes speaks of Perseus as cuts off the Gorgo, or full moon. This 
 armed with the Harpe, the sickle which principle of reduplication has, as Mr. 
 Kronos bore in his hand when he Brown remarks, largely influenced the 
 assailed Ouranos. It is the weapon growth of myths. — The Unicorn, 54. ' 
 with which Bel and Merodach are armed 
 
dana£ and aithra. 305 
 
 tender light; in other words, the Libyan dragon seeks to make CHAP. 
 
 Andromeda his prey, as the maiden stands motionless on the rock - — . 
 
 to which she has been fastened. The monster is soon destroyed, as 
 the Sphinx is soon discomfited by Oidipous; and the awful power 
 of the Gorgon's glance is seen in the death of Phineus, and in the 
 merciful ending of the long labours of Atlas. But the great work 
 remains yet to be done, the avenging of the wrongs of Danae, as 
 the Achaians fought to avenge the griefs and woes of Helen. The 
 vengeance of Perseus must be as terrible as that of Achilleus or the 
 stern chieftain of Ithaka. But when Polydektes and his abettors 
 have been turned into stone and Diktys made king of the land, 
 Perseus yields up his magic weapons to the gods who gave them, and 
 departs with his mother to the old home in Argos. Once more 
 Danae treads her native soil, as Helen graces the halls of Menelaos 
 when Paris the thief has been slain. But the doom pronounced by 
 the Delphian priestess was still unfulfilled; and Akrisios no sooner 
 hears that Perseus is coming than he flies to Larissa. Thither 
 Perseus follows him, not as a foe, but as a friend, and takes part in 
 the games which Teutamidas the chief holds in his honour. Presently 
 a quoit hurled by Perseus lights on the foot of Akrisios, and the 
 prophecy is accomplished which makes Oidipous, Romulus, and 
 Cyrus slay their parents or their grandsires. The sequel is given in 
 two versions, corresponding to the choice given to Achilleus. 1 In 
 the one Perseus returns to Argos, and there dies in peace; in the 
 other grief and shame for the death of Akrisios drive him to abandon 
 his Argive sovereignty for that of Tiryns, where his kinsman 
 Megapenthes is king. In the latter, he may be compared with 
 Bellerophon wandering in gloom and loneliness through the Aleian 
 plain; in the former we have the tranquil time which follows the 
 great vengeance of Achilleus and Odysseus. Thus as the unwilling 
 destroyer even of those whom he loves, as the conqueror of monstrous 
 beasts and serpents, as toiling for a mean and cruel master, yet as 
 coming forth in the end victorious over all his enemies, Perseus is at 
 once the forefather and the counterpart of Herakles. He is himself 
 born in Argos the bright land, as Phoibos springs to life in Delos or 
 Artemis in Ortygia; but his mother Danae is almost as neutral and 
 colourless as Leto or Iokaste or Hekabe or Semele. The Argive 
 tradition runs in a circle, and the Athenian myth, jealously prized 
 as a wholly independent history, is made up of the same materials. 
 The practical identity of the Athenian legend of Theseus and the 
 Argive legend of the son of Alkmene suggested the proverb " Another 
 
 1 //. ix. 411 ; xvi. 685. 
 
 X 
 
306 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Herakles;" nor, if attention had been specially fixed on the task of 
 
 • ^— ■ tracing out such resemblances, would very keen powers of criticism 
 
 have been needed to show that the same process might be applied 
 to the legends of all the Hellenic tribes. 
 Birth and The myth of Theseus is indeed more transparent than that of his 
 
 youth of two great kinsmen. As Perseus is the son of the golden shower, so 
 
 Theseus 
 
 is Theseus the child of Aithra, the pure air • and if in one version he 
 is said to be a son of Aigeus, king of Athens, in another he is called 
 a son of Poseidon, as Athene is Tritogeneia, and Aphrodite comes up 
 from the sea ; but Aigeus himself is only Poseidon under a name 
 denoting the dash of the waves on the shore, and when Apollodoros 
 speaks of Aigeus as a son not of Pandion but of Skyrios, we are still 
 in the same magic circle, for the island of Skyros seems to have been 
 noted especially for the worship of the Ionian Poseidon. 1 In some 
 of its earlier incidents the myth carries us to the story of Sigurd and 
 Brynhild. As he grows up his mother tells him that a mighty work lay 
 before him so soon as he could lift the great stone beneath which lay 
 his father's sword and sandals, the sword and sandals which Perseus 
 had worn when he went to the Gorgons' land Thus gaining these 
 prizes as Sigmund obtained the good sword Gram, Theseus started 
 on that career of adventure and conquest which, with differences of 
 local colouring and detail, is the career of Oidipous, Meleagros, Belle- 
 rophon, Odysseus, Sigurd, Grettir, and other mythical heroes, as well 
 as of Herakles and Perseus. Like these, he fights with and over- 
 comes robbers, murderers, dragons, and other monsters. Like some 
 of them, also, he is capricious and faithless. Like them, he is the 
 terror not only of the evil men but of the gods of the under world. 
 The six At his birth Poseidon gave to his son the three wishes which 
 
 h2first° f a PP ear again and again in Teutonic folk-lore, and sometimes in a 
 journey. ludicrous form. 2 The favour of the sea-deities is also shown in the 
 anecdote told by Pausanias s that when Minos cast doubts on his 
 being a son of Poseidon, and bade him, if he were such, to bring up a 
 ring thrown into the sea, Theseus dived and reappeared not only 
 with the ring but with a golden crown, which Aphrodite had placed 
 upon his head. His journey from Troizen to Athens is signalised 
 by exploits which later mythographers regarded as six in number, as 
 twelve were assigned to Herakles. They are all, as. we might expect, 
 merely different forms of the great fight waged by Indra and Oidipous 
 
 1 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 287. The 2 Eur. Hipp. 46 ; Preller, Gr. Myth. 
 
 name Pandion is manifestly a masculine ii. 288. 
 form of Pandia, an epithet of Sel6n * i. 16, 3 ; Preller, ii. 
 
 the moon, when at its full. 
 
SINIS, THE PINE-BENDER. 3C7 
 
 against Vritra, Ahi, or the Sphinx. Thus the robber Periphetes is CHAP. 
 
 the club-bearing son of Hephaistos, who, being weak in the # feet, uses ■ ' 
 
 his weapon to smite down the passers-by. But Sinis the robber, or 
 plunderer, is his kinsman, being like himself a son of Poseidon, and 
 from his name Pityokamptes is the stormwind which bends the pine 
 trees. The myth went that he slew his victims by compelling them 
 to bend a fir tree which he allowed to fly back upon them, and that 
 Theseus who caught him in his own trap nevertheless felt that he 
 needed to purify himself for the death of one who was also a son of 
 the sea. 1 The same idea gave rise to the myth of Phaia, the dark or 
 ashen-coloured sow of Krommyon, who shares the fate of all such 
 monsters, and again to that of Skeiron, who hurls from the cliffs the 
 travellers whom he has constrained to kneel and wash his feet, 2 and 
 who in his turn is in like manner destroyed by Theseus. In Kerkyon, 
 whose name apparently connects him with the Kerkopes, we have a 
 reflexion of Laios, Akrisios, Amulius, and other beings who seek 
 from fear for themselves to destroy their children or their children's 
 children. The story of his daughter AlopS is simply the story of 
 Auge, Semele, Danae, and many others ; but Kerkyon himself is the 
 Eleusinian wrestler, who is defeated by Theseus in his own art and 
 slain. The robber Prokroustes is a being of the same kind ; but the 
 myth attached to his name does not explain itself like the rest, and 
 may perhaps have been suggested by the meaning of the word which 
 may denote either the process of beating or hammering out, or simply 
 a downright blow. In the latter case Prokroustes would simply be 
 Sinis or Periphetes under another name ; in the former, the story of 
 a bed to which he fitted the limbs of his victims by stretching them 
 or cutting them off might not unnaturally spring up. 3 
 
 Theseus now enters the dawn city with a long flowing robe, and These-is at 
 with his golden hair tied gracefully behind his head; and his soft" tlens " 
 beauty excites the mockery of some workmen, who pause in their 
 work of building to jest upon the maiden who is unseemly enough to 
 walk about alone. It is the story of the young Dionysos or Achilleus 
 
 1 See further, Brown, Great Diony- 3 The story is told of the men of 
 siak Myth, ii. 260. Mr. Brown sees Sodom in the Arabian myth. — Gould, 
 in the story of Sinis a picture of Phe- Legends of Old Testament Characters, i. 
 nician barbarity and its overthrow. 200. The notion seems scarcely Greek. 
 
 2 Preller has no doubt on this head. But generally in stories in which Po- 
 "Esscheint wohldassdieserSkeiron. . . seidon is prominent, the existence of 
 ein Bild fiir die heftigen Sturmc ist, Semitic influence is at least possible ; and 
 welche den Wanderer von den Skeiron- this possibility should be always taken 
 ischen Felsen, so hiess dieser Pass, into account in the examination of 
 leicht in die See himmterstiessen, wo details which seem to be non-Aryan in 
 die Kiippen seine Glieder zerschellten." character. 
 
 — Gr. Myth, ii 290. 
 
3o8 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Theseus 
 and the 
 Mino- 
 taur os. 
 
 in woman's garb ; but Theseus is mightier than they, and without 
 - saying a word, he unspans the oxen of the builders' wagon, and hurls 
 the vehicle as high above the temple pillars as these rose above the 
 ground. 1 In the house of his fathers he was still surrounded by 
 enemies. Aigeus was now wedded to the wise woman Medeia, who 
 in her instinctive jealousy of the beautiful youth makes Aigeus an 
 accomplice in her scheme for poisoning him. The deadly draught 
 is placed on the banquet-table, but Aigeus recognises the sword which 
 Theseus bears, and, embracing him as his, bids Medeia depart with 
 her children to her own land. He encounters foes more formidable 
 in the fifty gigantic sons of Pallas, who have thrust themselves into 
 the place of Aigeus, as the suitors in Ithaka usurp the authority of 
 Odysseus ; but by the aid of the herald Leos, who betrays them, 
 Theseus is again the conqueror. 2 He is, however, scarcely more than 
 at the beginning of his toils. The fields of Marathon are being 
 ravaged by a bull, 3 in whom we see a being akin to the terrible 
 Cretan Minotauros, the malignant power of darkness hidden away in 
 its labyrinth of stars. In his struggle with this monster he is aided 
 by the prayers and offerings of the benign and aged Hekale, whose 
 eyes are not permitted to look again on the youth whom she has so 
 tenderly loved — a myth which brings before us the gentle Telephassa 
 sinking down in utter weariness, before her heart can be gladdened 
 once more by the sight of her child Europe. 4 
 
 He has now before him a still harder task. The bull which now 
 fills Athenian hearts with grief and fear has his abode not at Mara- 
 thon, but at Knossos. In the war waged by Minos in revenge for 
 the death of his son Androgeos, who had been slain on Attic soil, 
 the Cretan king was the conqueror. 6 With the war had come 
 famine and pestilence ; and thus the men of Athens were driven to 
 accept terms which bound them for nine years to send yearly a 
 tribute of seven youths and seven maidens, as victims to feed the 
 
 * Paus. i. 19, 1 ; Preller, Gr. Myth. 
 ii. 291. 
 
 2 These fifty sons of Pallas must 
 be compared with the fifty sons and 
 daughters of ^Egyptos, Danaos, Aster- 
 odia, and Selene. But these are clearly 
 images of the starry heavens ; and thus 
 the myth of the Pallantides is simply a 
 story of the night vieing with, or usurp- 
 ing the prerogatives of, the day. 
 
 3 In the story of Krishna this bull 
 is animated by the demon Arishta. — 
 Vishnu Purana, H. II. Wilson, 530. 
 
 • 4 The name Hekale is the same as 
 Hekate and Hekatos, and thus, like 
 Telephassa, has simply the meaning of 
 
 rays shot from a distant orb. 
 
 s The myth of Androgeos has many 
 versions. The most important exhibits 
 him as a youth of great beauty and 
 promise, unable to achieve the tasks 
 which may be done only by the greatest 
 heroes. On this account, he is torn by 
 the Marathonian bull whom Aigeus has 
 charged him to slay: in other words, 
 he is Patroklos striving to slay an 
 enemy who can be conquered only by 
 Achilleus ; and the war which Minos 
 wages answers to the bloody vengeance 
 of Achilleus for the death of his com- 
 rade. 
 
THE TRIBUTE CHILDREN. 3°9 
 
 Minotauros. The period named is the nine years' cycle, while the CHAP. 
 
 tribute children may represent the months of the lunar year. Twice ' 
 
 had the black-sailed ship departed from the haven with its doomed 
 freight when Theseus offered himself as one of the tribute children, 
 to do battle with the monster. In this task he succeeds only 
 through the aid of Ariadng, as Iason does the bidding of Aietes only 
 because he has the help of Medeia. The thread which the maiden 
 places in his hand leads him through all the mazes of the murky 
 labyrinth, 1 and when the beast is slain, she leaves her home with the 
 man to whom she has given her love. But she herself must share 
 the woes of all who love the bright sun. Beautiful as she is, she 
 must be abandoned in Naxos, while Theseus, like Sigurd, goes upon 
 his way ; and in his place must come the vine-crowned Dionysos, 
 who shall place on her head a glittering diadem to shine among the 
 everlasting stars. Theseus himself fulfils the doom which places him 
 among the fatal children. He forgets to hoist the white sails in 
 token of victory, and Aigeus, seeing the black hue of the ship, throws 
 himself into the sea which bears his name. 2 
 
 In another adventure he is the enemy of the Amazons, mysterious Theseus 
 beings of whom it is enough to say that they are opposed or AmaSma. 
 slaughtered not only by Theseus, but by Herakles, Achilleus, and 
 Bellerophon, and that thus they must be classed with the other beings 
 in whom are seen reflected the features of the cloud enemy of Indra. 
 Their beauty, their ferocity, their seclusion, all harmonise with the 
 phenomena of the clouds in their varying aspects of storm and sun- 
 shine ; 3 and thus their fight with Theseus in the streets of Athens 
 would be the struggle of dark vapours to throw a veil over the city of 
 the dawn, and their defeat the victory of the sun which drives away 
 the clouds. They are thus at once the natural allies of the king of 
 Ilion, the stronghold of the robber Paris, and the friends of his 
 
 1 This is the work of Daidalos, the Ephesian Artemis whose images answer 
 cunning smith, for Pasiphae, to whom to this description, and who was 
 corresponds Fair Rosamond for whom worshipped as Amazo. The Amazon 
 Henry builds the labyrinth of Wood- would thus be further identified with 
 stock. In Icelandic Volundurshus, the Isis, the horned moon ; and her wander- 
 house of Wayland, means a labyrinth. ings would follow as a matter of course, 
 
 s This incident precedes the death as in the myth of 16. With this must 
 of Tristram in the Arthur cycle. . be compared the Fortuna Mammosa of 
 
 3 If the name be Greek at all, it the Latins, and seemingly the Teutonic 
 
 seems to suggest a comparison with Ciza, Zizi, who was worshipped under 
 
 &$eh<pos ; and the story of the cutting the same form as the Ephesian Artemis, 
 
 off the breasts would thus be the result Some have supposed that Tacitus meant 
 
 of a mistaken etymology. It should be this deity, when he spoke of German 
 
 added that some see in the name an tribes as worshipping lsis : others iden- 
 
 intensive force which makes it the tify the name with the Greek tIt6ti. 
 
 equivalent of the German " vielbebriis- Work. s.V. 
 tete," and thus identify it with the 
 
3io 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Theseus 
 in the 
 under 
 world. 
 
 enemies ; for Antiope, who is stolen away by Herakles, becomes the 
 1 bride of Theseus and the mother of Hippolytos, 1 whose story exhibits 
 the action of a moral sentiment which has impressed itself even more 
 deeply on the traditions of Thebes. Hippolytos is to Theseus what 
 Patroklos is to Achilleus, or Phaethon to Helios, or Little John to 
 Robin Hood, the reflexion of the sun in all its beauty, but without its 
 strength and power ; and the love of Phaidra (the gleaming) for the 
 glorious youth is simply the love of Aphrodite for Adonis, and, like 
 that of Aphrodite, it is repulsed. But Phaidra is the wife of Theseus, 
 and thus her love for Hippolytos becomes doubly a crime, while the 
 recoil of her feelings tempts her to follow the example of Anteia in 
 the myth of Bellerophon. Her trick is successful -, and Hippolytos, ^ 
 going forth under his father's curse, is slain by a bull which Poseidon 
 sends up from the sea, the storm-cloud which Theseus had fought 
 with on the plains of Marathon. But Hippolytos, like Adonis, is a 
 being whom death cannot hold in his power, and Asklepios raises 
 him to life, as in the Italian tradition Virbius, the darling of the 
 goddess of the groves, is brought back from the dead and entrusted 
 to the care of the nymph Egeria. 
 
 Theseus, indeed, like Herakles, is seen almost everywhere. He 
 is one of the chiefs who sail in the divine Argo to recover the golden 
 fleece ; he joins the princes of Aitolia in the hunt of the Kalydonian 
 boar, and takes part in the war of the Epigonoi before Thebes. But 
 a more noteworthy myth is that which takes him, like Orpheus, into 
 the nether world to bring back another Eurydike in the form of the 
 maiden Persephone. This legend exhibits another reflexion of 
 Theseus in Peirithoos, a son of Zeus or Ixion, the heaven or the 
 proud sun, and Dia, the clear-shining dawn. 2 Peirithoos had already 
 aided Theseus when he took Helen from Sparta and placed her in 
 the hands of his mother Aithra, an act requited in the myth which 
 carries Aithra to Ilion and makes her the handmaid of Helen. The 
 attempt of Peirithoos ends as disastrously as the last exploits of 
 Patroklos, and Theseus himself is shut up in Hades until Herakles 
 comes to his rescue, as he does also to that of Prometheus. The 
 presence of the Dioskouroi, the bright Asvins or horsemen, com- 
 plicates the story. These carry away Helen and Aithra, and when 
 Theseus comes back from the unseen land, he finds that his strong- 
 
 1 Others make Hippolytos a son of 
 Hippolyt£, the Amazonian queen, whose 
 girdle Herakles brings to Eurystheus, 
 and who is thus not the enemy of The- 
 seus, as in some versions, but his bride. 
 
 2 The carrying off of Hippodameia, 
 
 the bride of Peirithoos, at her wedding- 
 feast, by the drunken Kentaur Eurytion, 
 is a myth of the wind-driven and stag- 
 gering cloud bearing away the golden 
 light into the distant heavens. 
 
BELLEROS AND VRITRA. 311 
 
 hold of Aphidnai has been destroyed, and that Menestheus is king in CHAP. 
 
 Athens. He therefore sends his sons to Euboia, and hastens to ■ : — • 
 
 Skyros, where the chief Lykomedes hurls him from a cliff into the 
 sea, a death which Kephalos inflicted upon himself at the Leukadian 
 or White Cape. But though his own life closes in gloom, his 
 children return at length with Aithra from Ilion, and are restored, 
 like the Herakleids, to their ancient inheritance. 
 
 This is the Theseus who, in the pages of Thucydides, consolidates The The- 
 the independent Attic Demoi into one Athenian state, over which he xhucy- 
 rules as a constitutional sovereign, confining himself strictly to his dides. 
 definite functions. There is nothing more to be said against the 
 method by which this satisfactory result is obfained than that it may 
 be applied with equal profit, if not with equal pleasure, to the stories, 
 of Boots and Jack the Giant-Killer. 
 
 In the Corinthian tradition, Hipponoos, the son of Glaukos or of Hipponoos-. 
 Poseidon, is known especially as the slayer of Belleros, whom the pontes, 
 same tradition converted into a near kinsman, but in whom we are 
 now able to discern a being whose features much resemble those of 
 the gloomy Vritra. Like Perseus, Theseus, Phoibos, he is a son of 
 the heaven or the sea ; 1 and his career is throughout that of the sun 
 journeying through thunderstorms and clouds. In his youth he 
 attracts the love of Anteia, the wife of Proitos, who on his refusal 
 deals with him as Phaidra deals with Hippolytos ; and Proitos, 
 believing her lies, sends him as the bearer of woeful signs which are 
 to bid Iobates, the Lykian king, to put the messenger to death. The- 
 fight with the monster Chimaira which ensues must come before us- 
 among the many forms assumed by the struggle between the darkness- 
 and the light ; and in the winged steed Pegasos, on which Bellero- 
 phon is mounted, we see the light-crowned cloud soaring with or 
 above the sun into the highest heavens. But although he returns 
 thus a conqueror, Iobates has other toils still in store for him. He 
 must fight with the Amazons and the Solymoi, and last of all must be 
 assailed by the bravest of the Lykians, who, by the king's orders, lurk 
 in ambush for him. These are all slain by his unerring spear ; and 
 Hipponoos is welcomed once more to the house of Proitos. But the 
 doom is not yet accomplished. The hatred of the gods lies heavy 
 upon him. Although we are not told the reason, we have not far to 
 seek it. The slaughter of the Kyklopes roused the anger of Zeus 
 against Phoibos : the blinding of Polyphemos excited the rage of 
 
 1 " Als Sonnenheld gilt Bellerophon Meere aufsteigt." — Preller, Gr. Myth. 
 fur einen Sohn des Glaukos, oder des ii. 78. 
 Posei.-ion, weil die Sonne aus dem 
 
312 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Poseidon against Odysseus : and these victims of the sun-god are all 
 
 " ■ ' murky vapours which arise from the sea. The wrath of Athene 1 and 
 
 Poseidon added sorely to the length and weariness of the wanderings 
 of Odysseus ; nor could it leave Bellerophon at rest. Like Odysseus, 
 he too must roam through many lands, and thus we find him wander- 
 ing sadly along the Aleian plain, avoiding the paths of men, treading, 
 in other words, that sea of pale light in which, after a day of storms, 
 the sun sometimes goes down without a cloud to break its monotonous 
 surface. 
 T t h Oid' rth When at the close of his disastrous life Oidipous draws near to die 
 
 pous. in the sacred grove of the Erinyes, it is Theseus who stands by his 
 
 side to guide him, where no other mortal man might dare to tread ; 
 and thus the Theban king is at once seen as a being of the same race 
 with the son of Aigeus and Aithra. Nor does the connexion cease 
 here. If Aigeus deserts his wife and leaves the infant Theseus to her 
 sole care, Oidipous also suffers from the hatred of his father, who, like 
 Akrisios and Astyages, has learnt from the Delphic oracle that if he 
 has a son that son will be his destroyer. Hence no sooner is 
 Oidipous born than the decree goes forth that the child must be 
 slain ; but the servant to whom he is intrusted contents himself with 
 exposing the babe on the slopes of Kithairon, where a shepherd finds 
 him, and carries him, like Cyrus or Romulus, to his wife, who 
 cherishes the child with a mother's care. After a while, Oidipous is 
 taken to Corinth and brought up as the son of Polybos and Merope, 
 and all things go smoothly until some one at a feast throws out a 
 hint that he is not the son of his supposed parents. To the questions 
 which he is thus driven to put to Merope the answers returned satisfy 
 him for a time, but for a time only. The anxious doubts return ; and 
 in his utter perplexity he hastens to Delphoi and there learns, as 
 Laios had learnt already, that his doom would make him the 
 destroyer of his father and the husband of his mother. Gloomy and 
 sick at heart, he takes the way towards Thebes, being resolved not to 
 run the risk of killing Polybos (whom he supposed to be his father), 
 if he returned to Corinth, and as he journeys, he falls in with a 
 chariot in which rides an old man. The servant insolently bids 
 Oidipous to stand aside, and on his refusal the old man strikes at 
 him with his staff. Oidipous, thoroughly angered, slays both, and 
 goes on his way, unconscious that he has fulfilled the prediction of 
 Phoibos, the murdered man being Laios the king of Thebes. 
 The career Laios is thus a being whose nature closely resembles that of Leto 
 pous. or of Leda, the night which is the parent of the sun, and which may 
 
 be regarded with equal justice as hating its offspring or loving it. 
 
LAIOS AND HIS SON. 313 
 
 Apart from his fear of the son of Iokaste, his character is as neutral chap. 
 
 as that of the mother of Phoibos ; indeed, we can scarcely be said ' ■ — ' 
 
 to know anything of him beyond the tale that he stole away the 
 beautiful Chrysippos with his golden steeds, as the eagle of Zeus 
 carried Ganymedes up to Olympos, the latter being an image of the 
 tinted clouds of morning bearing the dawn to the high heaven, 
 the former a picture of the night robbing the sky of its splendour. 
 The story of his cruel treatment of his son was regarded as accounting 
 for the name Oidipous, or Swellfoot, from the tight bandages which 
 hurt his limbs as he lay exposed on Kithairon. The explanation has 
 about the same value as that by which the nurse Eurykleia professed 
 to account to Odysseus for the name which he bore. 1 The sequel 
 of the myth furnished another explanation, to which probably less 
 exception may be taken. When Oidipous drew near to Thebes, 
 he found the city full of misery and mourning. The Sphinx had 
 taken up her abode on a rock which overhung the town, and there 
 sat watching the people as they died of famine and wasting sickness. 
 Only when the man came who could expound her mysterious riddle 
 would she free them of her hateful presence ; and so in their 
 perplexity the chiefs of the city had decreed that he who discomfited 
 the monster should be made king and have Iokaste as his bride. 
 Meanwhile the Sphinx sat motionless on the cliff, uttering from time 
 to time the mysterious sounds which conveyed no sense to the ears 
 of mortal men. This dreadful being who shut up the waters is, 
 it may be enough to say here, only another Vritra, and her name 
 has the exact meaning of Ahi, the choking or throttling snake ; and 
 the hero who answers her riddle may thus not unnaturally receive 
 his name from his wisdom. Thus much is certain, that the son 
 of Laios speaks of himself as knowing nothing when he first drew 
 near to encounter the Sphinx, while afterwards he admits that his 
 name is a familiar word in all mouths, 3 and thus Oidipous becomes 
 the counterpart of the wise Medeia. With the death of the Sphinx 
 
 1 M. Breal thinks that if the name with not less truth that the swelling of 
 
 really belongs to this root, it must be the sun has reference to his rising, and 
 
 taken as denoting the sun when it to its apparent enlargement at the base 
 
 touches the horizon, "lorsque, par 1'effet until half its disk becomes visible. Mr. 
 
 de vapeurs qui flottent dans les couches Paley regards the name Odysseus as 
 
 inferieures de l'atmosphere, il semble equivalent to S Svcrdfiems (using this 
 
 de moment au moment augmenter le word not as the future but the epic 
 
 volume." He thinks also that the aorist participle), and to Endymion 
 
 wounds thus inflicted on Oidipous must the o in the word being the prefix as in 
 
 be compared with those of Achilleus in onfiptnos, oSoiis, &c. 
 the Hellenic mythology, of Baldur and * 6 itr/iey eiS&s OlSiwous.— Soph. Oid. 
 
 Sigurd in the Teutonic legends, and of Tyr, 397. 1 
 
 Isfendiyar and Rustem in the Persian 6 irairi Kheivbs OlSlmvs KaKov/ti-i/os. 
 
 story. It might, however, be said — ib. 8. 
 
314 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK ends the terrible drought. Oidipous has understood and interpreted 
 the divine voices of Typhon, or the thunder, which the gods alone 
 
 can comprehend. 1 The sun appears once more in the blue heaven, 
 in which he sprang into life in the morning; in other words, Oidipous 
 is wedded to his mother Iokaste, and the long train of woes which 
 had their root in this awful union now began to fill the land with 
 a misery as great as that from which Oidipous had just delivered it a 
 As told by ^Eschylos and Sophokles, it is a fearful tale ; and yet if 
 the poets had' but taken any other of the many versions in which 
 the myth has come down to us, it could never have come into 
 existence. They might, had they pleased, have made Euryganeia, 
 the broad shining dawn, the mother of Antigone and Ismeng, of 
 Eteokles and Polyneikes, instead of Iokaste, the violet light, which 
 reappears in the names Iole, Iamos, Iolaos, Iasion, and Iobates. 
 Undoubtedly the mother of Oidipous might be either Euryganeia, 
 Iokaste or Astymedousa, who are all assigned to him as his wives ; 
 but only by giving the same name to his mother and his wife could 
 the moral horrors of the story be developed, and the idea once 
 awakened took too strong a hold on their imagination to be lightly 
 dislodged. 
 The Thus far the story resolves itself into a few simple phrases, which 
 
 Oidipous. spoke of the thundercloud as looming over the city from day to day, 
 while the waters remained imprisoned in its gloomy dungeons, like 
 the rock which seemed ever going to fall on Tantalos, — of the sun 
 as alone being able to understand her mysterious mutterings and 
 so to defeat her scheme, and of his union with the mother from 
 whom he had been parted in his infancy. The sequel is not less 
 transparent. Iokaste, on learning the sin of which she has un- 
 wittingly been guilty, brings her life to an end, and Oidipous tears' 
 out the eyes which he declares to be unworthy to look any longer 
 on the things which had thus far filled him with delight. In other 
 words, the sun has blinded himself. Clouds and darkness have 
 closed in about him, and the clear light is blotted out of the heaven. 8 
 
 1 The conduct of Signy, mother of winter), but the tears of Rapunzel (the 
 
 Sinfjotli in the Helgi Saga, stands out tears which Eos sheds on the death of 
 
 in marked contrast with that of Oidipous Memn6n) fall on the sightless eyeballs, 
 
 and Iokaste". and his sight is given to him again. In 
 
 s Breal, Le Mythe d 'Edife, 17. the story of the Two Wanderers (the 
 
 3 So in the German story of Rapun- Dioskouroi or Asvins, the Babes in the 
 
 zel, the prince, when his bride is torn Wood) one of the brothers, who is u 
 
 from him, loses his senses with grief, tailor, and who is thrust out to starve, 
 
 and springing from the tower (like falls into the hands of a shoemaker who 
 
 Kephalos from the Leukadian cliff) gives him some bread only on condition 
 
 falls into, thorns which put out his eyes. that he will consent to lose his eyes. 
 
 Thus he wa'-.ders blind in the forest (of His sight is, of course, restored as in the 
 
THE DEATH OF OIDIPOUS. 3 X 5 
 
 Nor is this blinding of the sun recorded only in this Theban story, chap. 
 
 Bellerophon, when thrown from his winged steed Peg^sos, is said ' ' 
 
 to have been both lamed and blinded, and the story may be com- 
 pared with the blinding of Samson before he bends the pillars of the 
 temple and brings death and darkness on all who are around him. 1 
 The feuds and crimes which disgrace his family when he has yielded 
 up his sceptre to his sons are the results of a moral process, and 
 not of the strictly mythical developement which makes him the slayer 
 of Laios, a name which, denoting simply the enmity of the darkness 
 to the light, is found again in Leophontes as an epithet of Hipponoos, 
 who is also called Bellerophon. 2 
 
 But if IokastS, the tender mother who had watched over him at Oidipous 
 
 and 
 
 his birth, is gone, the evening of his life is not without its consolation. Antigone. 
 His sons may fill the city with strife and bloodshed ; his daughter 
 Ismene may w.aver in her filial allegiance ; but there yet remains one 
 who will never forsake him, and whose voice shall cheer him in his 
 last hour. In this beautiful being, over whom Sophokles has thrown 
 a singular charm, M. Breal sees the light which sometimes flushes 
 the eastern sky as the sun sinks to sleep in the west. 8 The word 
 must certainly be compared with such names as Anteia, Antiope, 
 Antikleia ; while the love of Antigong for Oidipous seems to carry 
 us to the love of Selene for Endymion or of Echo for the dying 
 Narkissos. With the death of Oidipous, her own life draws towards 
 its close. It is brought about indeed by the despotic cruelty of 
 Kreon; but the poet could scarcely withstand the force of the feeling, 
 which in accordance with the common phenomena of the heavens 
 bound up the existence of Oinong, Kleopatra, Brynhild, Althaia, with 
 
 other story. In the story of the "Prince unnecessary to say that the evidence 
 who was afraid of Nothing " (the Sigurd for the historical existence of Zaleukos 
 of Brynhild), the hero is blinded by a is worth as much and as little as that 
 giant, but the lion sprinkling some which is adduced for the historical 
 water on his eyes restores the sight in character of Minos, Manu, Lykourgos, 
 part, and bathing himself in the stream and Numa. The story told of Zaleukos 
 which he finds near him, the prince himself that he agreed to have one of 
 necessarily comes out of the water able his own eyes put out rather than allow 
 to see as well as ever. In the Norse his son, who had been convicted of 
 Tales (Dasent) Oidipous appears as the adultery, to lose both his eyes, points 
 blinded brother in the story of True to the myths of the blinded Oidipous 
 and Untrue, and as the blinded prince and the one-eyed Kyklops or Wuotan. 
 in that of the Blue Belt. The law by which the punishment is 
 1 In the same way the Athenian inflicted simply reflects the story of 
 Drakon, whose name corresponds pre- Oidipous, who is strictly punished for 
 cisely to that of the Spartan Lykourgos incest by the loss of his eyes ; and the 
 and the Lokrian (Epizephyrian) law- name Zaleukos, the glistening or gleam- 
 giver Zaleukos, has but one indiscrimi- ing, carries us to Apollon Lykios, the 
 nate punishment of death for all offences. Latin Lucius, Lucna, Luna, &c. 
 In the code of the Lokrian Zaleukos, * See the section on Bellerophon. 
 the punishment of adulterers is said a Breal, Le Mythe (PEdipe, 21. 
 to have been loss of the eyes. It is 
 
3l6 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK the life of the being whom they had loved and lost. Here again 
 Antigone, betrothed to the youthful Haimon, dies in the dark cave, 
 like the bright clouds which Vritra shuts up in his horrid dungeons. 
 But before this last catastrophe is brought about, there is a time of 
 brief respite in which Oidipous reposes after all the griefs and sorrows 
 which have come upon him, some at the rising of the sun or its 
 setting, some at noonday or when the stars twinkled out in the sky. 
 All these had burst as in a deluge* on his devoted head ; 1 but now 
 he draws nigh to the haven of rest. His feet tread the grass-grown 
 pathway; over his head the branches sigh in the evening breeze; and 
 when an Athenian in holy horror bids him begone from the sacred 
 grove of the Eumenides, Oidipous replies that their sanctuary can 
 never be violated by him. He is not merely their suppliant, but their 
 friend ; and they it is who will guide him peacefully through the dark 
 valley of the shadow of death. One prayer only he ha§ to make, and 
 this is that some one will bring Theseus, the Athenian king, to his 
 side before he dies. The wish is realised ; and we see before us 
 perhaps the most striking of all mythical groups, — the blinded 
 Oidipous sinking peacefully into his last sleep, as he listens to the 
 voice of the man who rules in the city of the dawn-goddess Athene, 
 and feels the gentle touch of his daughter's hand, while over him 
 wave the branches in the grove of the Eumenides, benignant always 
 to him, and now reflecting more than ever the loveliness of the Eastern 
 Saranyu. Then comes the signal of departure, that voice of the 
 divine thunder which now, as before, when he encountered the 
 Sphinx, Oidipous alone can understand. Without a murmur he 
 prepares to obey the summons, and with Theseus alone, the son 
 of the sea and air, by his side, calmly awaits the end. With wonder- 
 ful fidelity to the old mythical phrases, the poet tells us of the hero 
 who has passed away, by no touch of disease, for sickness could 
 not fasten on his glorious form, by no thunderstroke or sea-roused 
 whirlwind, but guided by some heaven-sent messenger, or descending 
 into the kindly earth where pain and grief may never afflict him 
 more. Well may the poet speak as though he were scarcely telling 
 the story of the death of mortal man. 2 
 
 1 Soph. Oid. Kol. 1248. across the blue heaven, which, growing 
 
 2 Ibid. 1665. We have here the darker every moment, seems to be 
 image of the wise and beneficent king lulled in the profoundest slumber, 
 smitten by the stroke of an unulter- Here the sky is passive, while the 
 able woe, yet going down blinded to twilight with its lovely clouds is active ; 
 his grave with incommunicable dig- but when we remember that the twi- 
 nity and majesty. But there might be light is the daughter of the heaven, we 
 another side to the picture. The ex- have, Dr. Goldziher insists (Mythology 
 quisite tints of evening twilight are seen among the Hebrews, p. 189, et seq. ), the 
 to spread themselves languishingly framework of the story of Lot and his 
 
AUG& AND ARGIOP&. 3 17 
 
 The tomb of Endymion was shown in Elis, and the Cretans chap. 
 pointed to the grave of Zeus ; but no man could say in what precise ■ — ■ 
 spot the bones of Oidipous reposed. It was enough to know that 
 a special blessing would rest on the land which contained his 
 sepulchre ; and what place could be more meet for this his last abode 
 than the dearest inheritance of Athene ? 
 
 The Theban myth of Oidipous is repeated substantially in the The story 
 Arkadian tradition. As Oidipous is the son of Laios and Iokaste, ph™ e " 
 the darkness and the violet-tinted sky, so is Telephos (who has the 
 same name with Telephassa, the far-shining) the child of Aleos 
 the blind, and Auge the brilliant: and as Oidipous is left to die 
 on the slopes of Kithairon, so Telephos is exposed on mount 
 Parthenion. There the babe is suckled by a doe, 1 which represents 
 the wolf in the myth of Romulus and the dog of the Persian story 
 of Cyrus, and is afterwards brought up by the Arkadian king 
 Korythos. Like Oidipous, he goes to Delphoi to learn who is his 
 mother, and is there bidden to go to Teuthras, king of Mysia. But 
 thither Auge had gone before him, and thus in one version Teuthras 
 promised her to Telephos as his wife, if he would help him against 
 his enemy Idas. This service he performs, and Auge differs from 
 Iokaste only in the steadiness with which she refuses to wed Telephos, 
 although she knows not who he is. Telephos now determines to 
 slay her, but Herakles reveals the mother to the child, and like 
 Perseus, Tele'phos leads his mother back to her own land. In 
 another version he becomes the husband not of Auge, but of 
 a daughter of Teuthras, whose name Argiope shows that she is" but 
 Auge under another form. In this tradition he is king of Mysia 
 
 daughters — a story which may be corresponds exactly to that of the 
 matched with a hundred others. When Vedic Varuna and the Hellenic Ou- 
 in the Vedic hymn Prajapati seeks to ranos. What then, he argues, would 
 do violence to his daughter Ushas, the they behold, who looked up to the 
 myth is transparent ; for Prajapati is sombre heaven and saw spread on its 
 literally the lord of light, and Ushas is unbroken surface the tender light be- 
 the dawn. It is scarcely less obvious coming gradually fainter and fainter in 
 in the Volsung story, where the sister the west ? Would not this bright flush- 
 deceives the brother and becomes the be the glow on the cheeks of the dawn- 
 mother of Sinfjotli. But the hero who maiden, now left in abs*lute solitude 
 slays the slayer of the sun must himself with its parent the dark heaven ? and 
 be the offspring of his murdered father, would not the next thought be that of 
 and of the beautiful maiden whom he the union from which must spring the 
 loves in the morning and greets" again days that were to come? 
 at eventide. Like that of Signy, the * Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 255. 
 purpose of Lot's daughters is avowed. The only legend, perhaps, which speaks 
 Besides themselves and their father no of the beast as intent on devouring 
 human being is left, and the race must instead of fostering the child is that of 
 not be suffered to die out. In both Hugdietrich. — Introduction to Com- 
 stories there is the same necessity. parative Mythology, 296 ; Popular 
 Etymologically, Lot, Dr. Goldziher as- Romances of the Middle Ages, 333. 
 serts, is the coverer, and thus the name 
 
3l8 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK when the Achaians come to Ilion to avenge the wrongs of Helen, 
 
 • - J ' and he resists them with all his power. In the ensuing strife he 
 
 is smitten by Achilleus, and all efforts to heal the wound are vain. 
 In his misery he betakes himself again to the oracle, and learns that 
 only the man who has inflicted the wound can heal it. In the end, 
 Agamemnon prevails on Achilleus to undo his own work, and to 
 falsify in the case of Telephos the proverb which made use of his 
 name to describe an incurable wound. The means employed is 
 the rust of the spear which had pierced him, — an explanation which 
 turns on the equivocal meaning of the words tos, ion, as denoting rust, 
 poison, an arrow, and the violet colour. 
 Twofold As we read the story of Telephos we can scarcely fail to think of 
 
 the Trojin tne stor y °^ the Trojan Paris, for like Telephos Paris is exposed as a 
 Paris. babe on the mountain side, and like him he receives at the hands of 
 Achilleus a wound which is either incurable or which Oinone either 
 will not or cannot heal. Paris is the great malefactor who by taking 
 Helen from Sparta brings the Achaian chiefs to the assault of Troy ; 
 and as Helen is manifestly the Vedic Sarami, the beautiful light of 
 the morning or the evening, Paris as conveying her to his stronghold 
 is the robber who drives off the shining cattle of Indra to his dungeon 
 The fight at Troy is thus the struggle of the children of the Sun to 
 recover from the dreary caves of night the treasure of which the 
 darkness deprived them in the evening ; in other words, Ilion is 
 the fortress of Vritra or Ahi, and Paris the successful seducer of 
 Helen represents the unsuccessful seducer of Sarama. But even in 
 the eyes of Sarama the Pani is not altogether repulsive; and the 
 Gorgon Medousa shares the beauty of Asterodia and Selene, of Ursula 
 and the Fairy Queen. Hence to a large extent a parallel may be 
 drawn between the career of the bright heroes and that of the dark 
 beings who oppose them. In his capriciousness, his moody sullenness, 
 his self-imposed inaction, Paris resembles Meleagros and Achilleus. 
 The cause also is the same. Achilleus is angry because Briseis is 
 taken away : Paris is indignant because he is desired to give up 
 Helen. But if the Trojans as a whole represent the enemies of Indra, 
 many of those chiefs who take his part are heroes whose solar origin 
 is beyond all question. On his side may be seen the Ethiopian 
 Memnon, over whose body the morning weeps tears of dew, and who, 
 rising from the dead, is exalted for ever to the bright halls of Olympos. 
 With them are ranged the chieftains of the bright Lykian land ; and 
 assuredly in Glaukos and Sarpgdon we discern not a single point 
 of likeness with the dark troops of the Panis. There is nothing in 
 the history of mythology which should make this result a matter of 
 
THE ACHAIAN AND TROJAN CHIEFS. • 319 
 
 surprise. The materials for the great epic poems of the Aryan world CHAP. 
 
 are the aggregations of single phrases which have been^gradually ■ ' 
 
 welded into a coherent narrative; and the sayings which spoke of 
 the light as stolen away in the evening from the western sky and 
 carried away to the robber's stronghold far away towards the east, of 
 the children of the light as banding together to go and search out 
 the thief, of their struggle with the seducer and his kinsfolk, of the 
 return of the light from the eastern sky back again to its home in the 
 west, were represented by the mythical statements that Paris stole 
 Helen from the Western Sparta and took her away to Ilion, that the 
 kinsfolk of Helen roused the Achaian chiefs to seek out the robber 
 and do battle with him and his people, and that after a hard fight 
 Helen was rescued from their grasp and brought back to the house 
 of Menelaos. But there was a constant and an irresistible tendency 
 to invest every local hero with the attributes which are reflected upon 
 Herakles, Theseus, and Perseus from Phoibos and Helios the lords 
 of light; and the several chiefs whose homes were localised in 
 Western Asia would as naturally be gathered to the help of Hektor 
 as the Achaian princes to the rescue and avenging of Helen. Over 
 every one of these the poet might throw the rich colours of the heroic 
 ideal, while a free play might also be given to purely human instincts 
 and sympathies in the portraits of the actors on either side. If Paris 
 was guilty of great crimes, his guilt was not shared by those who 
 would have made him yield up his prey if they could. He might be 
 a thief, but they were fighting for their homes, their wives, and their 
 children : and thus in Hektor we have the embodiment of the highest 
 patriotism and the most disinterested self-devotion, — a character, in 
 fact, infinitely higher than that of the sensitive, sullen, selfish and 
 savage Achilleus, because it is drawn from human life, and not, like 
 the other, from traditions which rendered such a portrait in his case 
 impossible. 1 
 
 The eastern myth then begins with incidents parallel to those The birth 
 which mark the birth and childhood of Dionysos, Telephos, Oidipous, ? nd ln " f 
 Romulus, Perseus, and many others. Before he is born, there are Paris, 
 portents of the ruin which, like Oidipous, he is to bring upon his house 
 and people. His mother Hekabe dreams that her child will be a torch 
 
 1 e< -yffe Aphrodite' und Helena, so ist ganz der Orientalische Held, zu- 
 
 erschien auch Paris in den Kyprien, ver- gleich mannhaft und weichjich \vie 
 
 muthlich nach Anleitung ortlicher Tra- Dionysos, wie Sardanapal, wie der Ly- 
 
 ditionen, in einem andern Lichte und dische Herakles, gross in der Schlacht 
 
 als Mittelspunkt eines grosseren Sagen- und gross im Harem, die gerade Gegen- 
 
 complexes, welcher gleichfalls bei den satz zu den Griechischen Helden, na- 
 
 spiiteren Dichtern und Kunstlern einen mentlich zu Menelaos und zum Achill." 
 
 lebhaften Anklang gefunden hat. Er — Preller, Cr. Myth. ii. 413. 
 
320 
 
 •MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The judg- 
 ment of 
 Paris. 
 
 to set Ilion in flames ; and Priam, like Laios, decrees that the child 
 - shall be left to die on the hillside. But the babe lies on the slopes of 
 Ida (the Vedic name for the earth as the bride of Dyaus the sky), and 
 is nourished by a she-bear. 1 The child grows up, like Cyrus, among the 
 shepherds and their flocks, and for his boldness and skill in defending 
 them against the attacks of thieves and enemies he is said to have 
 been called Alexandros, the helper of men. In this his early life he 
 has the love of Oinone, the child of the river-god Kebren, 2 and thus 
 a being akin to the maidens who, like Athene' and Aphrodite, are born 
 from the waters. Meanwhile, he had not been forgotten in Ilion. 
 His mother's heart was still full of grief, and Priam at length ordered 
 that a solemn sacrifice should be offered to enable his dead son to 
 cross the dark stream of Hades. The victim chosen is a favourite 
 bull of Paris, who follows it in indignation, as the men lead it away. 
 In the games now held he puts forth his strength, and is the victor 
 in every contest, even over Hektor. His brothers seek to slay the 
 intruder, but the voice of Kasandra his sister is heard, telling them 
 that this is the very Paris for whose repose they were now about to 
 slay the victim, — and the long-lost son is welcomed to his home. 
 
 At this point the legend carries us to the Thessalian myth. When 
 Thetis rose from the sea to become the bride of Peleus, Eris, who 
 alone was not invited with the other deities to the marriage-feast, 
 threw on the banquet-table a golden apple, 8 with the simple inscrip- 
 tion that it was a gift for the fairest Her task of sowing the seeds 
 of strife was done. The golden apple is the golden ball which the 
 Frog-prince brings up from the water, the golden egg which the red 
 hen lays in the Teutonic story, the gleaming sun which is born of the 
 morning ; and the prize is claimed, as it must be claimed, by Here, 
 Athene, and Aphrodite, the queens of heaven and the goddesses of 
 the dawn. For the time the dispute is settled by the words of Zeus, 
 who bids them carry their quarrel before the Idaian Paris, who shall 
 decide between them. As the three bright beings draw near, the 
 shepherd youth is abashed and scared, and it is only after long 
 encouragement that he summons spirit to listen to the rival claims. 
 Here, as reigning over the blue ether, promises him the lordship of 
 Asia, if he will adjudge the prize to her ; Athene, the morning in its 
 character as the awakener of men's minds and souls, assures him of 
 
 1 The equivocal meaning of the 
 name Arktos, the bear, has already 
 come before us in the myths of the seven 
 arkshas and the seven rishis ; and pro- 
 bably all the animals selected to perform 
 this office of nourishing exposed children 
 will be found to have names which, like 
 
 the Greek hiicos, a wolf, denote the 
 glossiness of their coats. 
 
 2 That this name Kebren is probably 
 the same as Severn, the intermediate 
 forms leave little room for doubting. 
 
 » See Campbell's Tales of the West 
 Highlands, i. lxxxii., &c. 
 
THE STOLEN TREASURE. 3 21 
 
 renown in war and fame in peace ; but Paris is unable to resist the CHAP. 
 
 laughter-loving goddess, who tells him that if his verdict is* for her he ^— - 
 
 shall have the fairest bride that ever the world has seen. Hence- 
 forth Paris becomes the darling of Aphrodite, but the wrath of Here 
 and Athene lies heavy on the doomed city of Ilion. Fresh fuel was 
 soon to be supplied for the fire. A famine was slaying the people 
 of Sparta, and Menelaos the king learnt at Delphoi that the plague 
 could not cease until an offering should be made to appease the sons 
 of Prometheus, who were buried in Trojan soil. Thus Menelaos 
 came to Ilion, whence Paris went with him first to Delphoi, then to 
 Sparta. The second stage in the work of Eris was reached. The 
 shepherd of Ida was brought face to face with the fairest of all the 
 daughters of men. He came armed with the magic powers of 
 Aphrodite, whose anger had been kindled against Tyndareos, because 
 he had forgotten to make her an offering ; and so, when Menelaos 
 had departed to Crete and the Dioskouroi were busied in their 
 struggle with the sons of Aphareus, Paris poured his honied words 
 into the ears of Helen, who yielded herself to him with all her 
 treasures, and sailed with him to Ilion in a bark which Aphrodite 
 wafted over a peaceful sea. 
 
 There is scarcely a point in this legend which fails of finding a Paris and 
 parallel in other Aryan myths. The beautiful stranger, who beguiles Helen - 
 the young wife when her husband is gone away, is seen again in the 
 Arkadian Ischys who takes the place of Phoibos in the story of 
 Koronis, in the disguised Kephalos who returns to win the love of 
 Prokris. The departure of Menelaos for Crete is the voyage of the 
 sun in his golden cup from west to east when he has reached the 
 waters of Okeanos ; * and the treasures which Paris takes away are 
 the treasures of the Volsung tale and the Nibelung song in all their 
 many versions, the treasures of light and life which are bound up 
 with the glory of morning and evening, the fatal temptation to the 
 marauding chiefs, who in the end are always overcome by the men 
 whom they have wronged. There is absolutely no difference between 
 the quarrel of Paris and Menelaos, and those of Sigurd and Hogni, 
 of Hagen and Walthar of Aquitaine. In each case the representative 
 of the dark power comes in seeming alliance with the husband or the 
 lover of the woman who is to be stolen away ; in other words, the 
 first shades of night thrown across the heaven add only to its beauty 
 and its charm, like Satan clothed as an angel of light In each case 
 the wealth to be obtained is scarcely less the incitement than the 
 loveliness of Helen, Brynhild, or Kriemhild. Nor must we forget the 
 1 Helios leaves E6s behind him. 
 
 Y 
 
322 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 B °°K stress laid in the Iliad on these stolen treasures. All are taken : 
 
 ' ' Paris leaves none behind him ; * and the proposals of Antenor and 
 
 Hektor embrace the surrender of these riches not less than that of 
 Helen. The narrative of the war which avenges this crime belongs 
 rather to the legend of Achilleus ; and the eastern story of Paris 
 is resumed only when, at the sack of Troy, he is wounded by 
 Philoktetes in the Skaian or western gates, and with his blood on 
 fire from the poisoned wound, hastens to Ida and his early love. 
 Long ago, before Aphrodite' helped him to build the fatal ship which 
 was to take him to Sparta, Oinong had warned him not to approach 
 the house of Menelaos, and when he refused to listen to her counsels 
 she had told him to come to her if hereafter he should be wounded. 2 
 But now when he appears before her, resentment for the great wrong 
 done to her by Paris for the moment overmasters her love, and she 
 refuses to heal him. Her anger lives but for a moment ; still when 
 she comes with the healing medicine it is too late, and with him she 
 lies down to die. 8 Eos cannot save Memnon from death, though 
 she is happier than Oinone, in that she prevails on Zeus to bring 
 her son back from the land of the dead. 
 
 T Frv d A at » ^° en ^ s t ' le l e S en( i °f t ' ie Trojan Alexandros, with an incident 
 
 which recalls the stories of Meleagros and Sigurd, and the doom of 
 Kleopatra and Brynhild; and such are the materials from which 
 Thucydides has extracted a military history quite as plausible as that 
 of the siege of Sebastopol. 
 Iamos the A happier fate than that of Telephos or Paris attends the 
 child. Arkadian Iamos, the child of Evadne and Phoibos. Like his father 
 and like Hermes, he is weak and puny at his birth, and EvadnS in 
 her misery and shame leaves the child to die. But he is destined 
 for great things, and the office of the dog and wolf in the legends 
 of Cyrus and Romulus is here performed by two dragons, not the 
 horrid snakes which seek to strangle the infant Herakles, but the 
 glistening creatures who bear a name of like meaning with that of 
 Athene, and who feed the child with honey. But Aipytos, the 
 chieftain of Phaisana, and the father of EvadnS, had learnt at 
 Delphoi that a child of Phoibos had been born who should become 
 the greatest of all the seers and prophets of the earth, and he asked 
 all his people where the babe was : but none had heard or seen him, 
 for he lay far away amid the thick bushes, with his soft body bathed 
 in the golden and purple rays of the violets. 4 So when he was 
 
 * //.iii. 7o, 91. ■ Apollod. iii. 12, 6. 
 
 So m the cycle of the Arthur myths, « In this myth Pindar uses the word 
 
 Ysolde alone can heal Tristram. ios, twice, as denoting in the one case 
 
CORRELATIVE DEITIES. 3 2 3 
 
 found, they called him Iamos, the violet child ; and as he grew in chap. 
 
 years and strength, he went down into the Alpheian stream, and ' ' 
 
 prayed to his father that he would glorify his son. Then the voice 
 of Zeus Poseidon was heard, bidding him come to the heights of 
 Olympos, where he should receive the gift of prophecy and the 
 power to understand the voices of the birds. The local legend 
 made him, of course, the soothsayer of the Eleian Olympia, where 
 Herakles had founded the great games. 
 
 The myth of Pelias and Neleus has the same beginning with Pelias and 
 the stories of Oidipous, Telephos, and Paris. Their mother Tyro 
 loves the Enipean stream, and thus she becomes the wife of 
 Poseidon; in other words, her twin sons Pelias and Neleus are, 
 like Aphrodite 1 and Athene, the children of the waters. These 
 Dioskouroi, or sons of Zeus Poseidon, are left to die, but a mare 
 suckles the one, a dog the other ; and in due course they avenge 
 the wrongs of Tyro by putting to death the iron-hearted Sidero, 
 whom her father Salmoneus had married. The sequel of the tale, 
 which makes Pelias drive his brother from the throne of Iolkos, 
 belongs rather to the history of Ias6n. 
 
 This myth which has now come before us so often is the ground- Romulus 
 work of the great Roman traditions. Here also we have the Remus 
 Dioskouroi, Romulus and Remus, the children of Mars and the 
 priestess Rhea Ilia or Silvia. Like Perseus and Dionysos, the babes 
 are exposed on the waters ; but a wolf is drawn to them by their 
 cries, and suckles them until they are found by Acca Larentia, and 
 taken to the house of her husband the shepherd Faustulus. There 
 they grow up renowned for their prowess in all manly exercises, and, 
 like Cyrus, the acknowledged leaders of all their youthful neighbours ; 
 and when at length Remus falls into the hands of king Amulius, 
 Romulus hastens to his rescue, and the tyrant undergoes the doom 
 of Laios and Akrisios. These two brothers bear the same name, 
 for Remus and Romus are only another and an older form of 
 Romulus j 1 and thus a foundation might be furnished for the story 
 of their rivalry, even if this feature were not prominent in the myths 
 of Pelias and Neleus and the Dioskouroi who are the sons of Zeus 
 
 honey, in the other the violet flower. as applied to colour is traced by Prof. 
 
 But the phrase which he uses, Ptfipey- Max Muller to the root z, as denoting a 
 
 lihos aK-rlaw tuv (01. vi. 92), leads us crying hue, i.e. a loud colour. The 
 
 to another meaning of ios, which, as story of Iamos is the institutional le- 
 
 a spear, represents the far-darting rays gend of the Iamidai, on whom Pindar 
 
 of the sun; and a further equivoca- bestows the highest praise alike for 
 
 tion was the result of the other mean- their wisdom and their truthfulness, 
 jng of poison attached to the same ' Hence they are mere eponymoi, 
 
 word. Hence the poisoned arrows of like Boiotos, Orchomenos, &c. 
 Achilleus and Philoktetes. The word 
 
Astyages. 
 
 324 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and Leda, as well as in the rivalry of Eos and Prokris, of NiobS and 
 Leto, of Athene and Medousa. Nor does Romulus resemble 
 Oidipous less in the close of his life than at his birth. He is taken 
 away in a thunderstorm, wrapped in the clouds which are to bear 
 him in a fiery chariot to the palace of Jupiter, just as Olaf of Sweden 
 disappears in the din of battle. 
 Cyrus and The myth of Cyrus differs from the Romulean legend only in the 
 fact that here it has gathered round an unquestionable historical 
 person. But it cannot be too often repeated that from the myth we 
 learn nothing of his history, and his history confers no sort of credi- 
 bility on the myth. So far as the latter is concerned, in other words, 
 in all that relates to his earlier years, he remains wholly unknown to 
 us, while the story resolves itself into the stock materials of all such 
 narratives. As Laios in the Theban myth is the enemy, Dasyu, of the 
 devas or bright gods, so is Astyages only a Grecised form of Asdahag, 
 the Azidahaka or biting snake of Hindu legend and the Zohak of the 
 epic of Firdusi. Like Laios also he is told that if his daughter 
 Mandane has a son, that child will live to be king in his stead In 
 this case the emblem seen before the birth of the infant is not a 
 torch but a vine which overspreads the whole of Asia, and the babe 
 who is exposed is not the child whom Harpagos' delivers to the herds- 
 man clad in a magnificent golden robe, but the dead child which 
 happens to be born in the herdsman's house just as he enters it with 
 the doomed son of Mandane. Under this man's roof Cyrus grows, 
 up with the true spirit of kingship, and when he is chosen despot 
 by the village boys in their sport, he plays his part so well that 
 Artembares, the father of a boy who has been scourged by his 
 orders, complains to Astyages of the insult The bearing of the youth 
 and his apparent age make Astyages think of the babe whose death 
 he had decreed, and an examination of the herdsman justifies his 
 worst fears. On Harpagos, to whom he had in the first instance 
 intrusted the child, he takes an awful vengeance ; but the magi satisfy 
 him that the election of Cyrus to be king of the village boys fulfils 
 the terms of prophecy, and that therefore he need have no further 
 fears on his account. Thus Cyrus is suffered to grow up in the palace, 
 and is afterwards sent to his father, the Persian Cambyses. Har- 
 pagos thinks that the time is now come for requiting Astyages for his 
 detestable cruelty, and counsels Cyrus to raise the standard of revolt. 
 The sequel is an institutional legend, of much the same value with 
 the story of the setting up of the Median monarchy by Deiokes, a 
 name in which we also recognise the Dahak or biter of Hindu 
 mythology. 
 
CHANDRAGUPTA AND SEMIRAMIS. 325 
 
 In its earlier scenes the legend of Chandragupta presents some CHAP. 
 
 points of difference with that of Cyrus. The child is exposed to great ■ ' 
 
 danger in his infancy ; but it is at the hands, not of his kinsman, but g Up ta. 
 of a tributary chief who has defeated and slain his suzerain, and it is 
 his mother who, " relinquishing him to the protection of the devas, 
 places him in a vase, and deposits him at the door of a cattle-pen. " 
 Here a bull named Chando comes to him and guards him, and a 
 herdsman, noting this wonder, takes the child and rears him as his 
 own. The mode by which he is subsequently discovered differs from 
 the Persian story only by the substitution of the chopping off of hands 
 and feet instead of scourging. This is done by axes made of the 
 horns of goats for blades, with sticks for handles; and the lopped 
 limbs are restored whole at Chandragupta's word when the play is 
 done. 1 Slightly altered, this story becorhes the legend of Semiramis, 
 whom her mother the fish-goddess Derketo exposes in her infancy ; 
 but she was saved by doves, and like Cyrus, Romulus, and Chandra- 
 gupta, brought up by a shepherd until her beauty attracts Onnes, 
 one of the king's generals, and afterwards makes her the wife of 
 king Ninus himself, whom in some versions she presently puts 
 to death, in order that she may reign alone, like Eos surviving 
 Kephalos. 2 
 
 As handed down to us by Greek poets and mythographers, the story Kadmos 
 of Europe is, like that of Daphne' or Arethousa, Psyche or Urvasi, one Eu r s p g. 
 of the many forms assumed by the myth that the sun and the dawn 
 are soon parted. The scene is laid in the Phoinikian or purple land, 
 a region belonging to the same aerial geography with Lykia, Delos, 
 Ortygia, the Arkadia of Kallisto or the Athens of Theseus and 
 Peirithoos. But when Phenicia became to the Greeks the name of 
 an earthly country, versions were not long wanting, which asserted 
 that Agenor was born in Tyre or Sidon, or some other spot in the 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Sanskr. Lit. 290. Assyria ; and the king of Assyria was 
 
 2 Unlike Cyrus and Chandragupta, doubtless one of those whom he har- 
 Ninus and Semiramis are, like Romu- nessed to his chariot. But the history 
 lus, purely mythical or fabulous beings. of Assyria makes no mention of Sesos- 
 ." The name of Ninus is derived from tris. Semiramis is related to have con- 
 the city : he is the eponymous king and quered Egypt ; but the history of Egypt 
 founder of Nineveh, and stands to it in makes no mention of Semiramis. " — Sir 
 the same relation as Tros to Troy, Medus G. C. Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients, 
 to Media, Mason to Maeonia, Romulus 408. Romulus is one of seven kings 
 to Rome. His conquests and those of whose chronology is given with great 
 Semiramis are as unreal as those precision ; but this chronology is 
 of Sesostris. It is the characteristic of throughout, in Niebuhr's trenchant 
 these fabulous conquerors, that, although words, ' ' a forgery and a fiction. " — Hist. 
 they are reported to have overrun and Rome, vol. i. ; Edinburgh Review, Jan. 
 subdued many countries, the history of 1867, p. 130 ; Dictionary of Science, 
 those countries is silent on the subject. Literature and Art, s.v. " Tabulation of 
 Sesostris is related to have conquered Chronology." \ 
 
326 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK territories of Canaanite tribes. The assertion by itself might be worth 
 
 " : ' little ; but we have to take it along with a multitude of names in 
 
 Boiotian mythology which unquestionably are neither Greek nor even 
 Aryan, and are not less certainly Semitic. The word Agenor is 
 indeed purely Greek in form ; but so might we also say is Palaimon, 
 and yet Palaimon is as surely Baal-hamon as Melikertes is Melkarth. 
 In continental Hellas the waves of Phenician enterprise broke 
 especially on the Boiotian coast ; and when we find there myths in 
 which a large proportion of the names are manifestly Semitic, we must 
 be ready to weigh any evidence which may tend to show that of the 
 remaining names some may be Semitic also. Nay more, the general 
 suspicion becomes reasonable that mythical names or Greek traditions 
 which cannot be referred to Greek or other Aryan sources may be 
 Semitic ; and this suspicion" would rest with special force on such 
 names as AsklSpios, Astarte, and Dionysos. In spite of the explana- 
 tion which traces Aphrodite to Aphros, the froth or foam of the sea, 
 it is possible that the name may not be Aryan at all ; and Agenor 
 therefore may be simply an adaptation of the Semitic Chnas. It may, 
 however, be a mere translation : and undoubtedly the Greek name 
 conveys the same meaning with the Semitic Baal. In the Greek 
 version Agenor is the husband of Telephassa, the feminine form of 
 the name Telephos, a word conveying precisely the same meaning 
 with Hekatos, Hekate, Hekatebolos, well known epithets of the sun 
 and moon. His children are Kadmos, Phoinix, Kilix, and Europe^ 
 although in some accounts Europe is herself a daughter of Phoinix. 
 On this maiden, the broad-flushing light of dawn, Zeus, the heaven, 
 looks down with love ; and the white bull, the spotless cloud, comes 
 to bear her away to a new home, in Crete, the western land. She 
 becomes the mother of Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon. But 
 in the house from which she is thus torn all is grief and sorrow. 
 There can be no more rest until the lost one is found again; the 
 sun must journey westwards until he sees again the beautiful tints 
 which greeted his eyes in the morning. Kadmos therefore is bidden 
 to go in search of his sister, with strict charge never to return unless 
 he finds her. With him goes his mother, and a long and weary 
 pilgrimage brings them at length to the plains of Thessaly, where 
 Telephassa, worn out with grief and anguish, lies down to die. But 
 Kadmos must journey yet further westward; and at Delphoi he 
 learns that he must follow a cow which he would be able to dis- 
 tinguish by certain signs, and where she lay down from weariness, there 
 he must build his city. The cow, one of the herd to which belong 
 the bull of Europe and the cattle of Helios, lies down on the site of 
 
HARMONIA AND ERIPHYL^. 3 2 7 
 
 Thebes. But before he can offer the cow * in sacrifice to the dawn- CI ^ P- 
 
 goddess Athene, he has to fight with the cloud in a form akin to 
 that of the Pythian monster, or of the Sphinx which at a later period 
 of its mythical history was to vex his own people. A great dragon, 
 the child of Ares, the grinder or crusher, guards the well from which 
 he seeks to obtain water, and slays the men whom he sends to fetch 
 it. Kadmos alone, like Oidipous, can master it; but his victory is 
 followed by another struggle or storm. He sows in the earth the 
 dragon's teeth, which, as in the story of Iason in Kolchis, produce a 
 harvest of armed men who slay each other, leaving five only to 
 become the ancestors of the Thebans. It is the conflict of the 
 clouds which spring up from the earth after the waters have been let 
 loose from the prison-house, and mingle in wild confusion until a few 
 only remain upon the battle-field of the heaven. But if Phoibos 
 himself paid the penalty for slaying the Kyklopes, Kadmos must not 
 the less undergo, like him, a time of bondage, at the end of which 
 Athene 1 makes him king of Thebes, and Zeus gives him Harmonia as 
 his bride. These incidents interpret themselves; while the gifts 
 which Kadmos bestowed on Harmonia suggest a comparison with 
 the peplos 2 of Athene and the hangings woven for the Ashera by the 
 Syrian women, as well as with the necklace of Eriphyle, and through 
 this with the circular emblems which reproduce the sign of the Yoni. 
 The wars in which Kadmos fights are the wars of Kephalos or 
 Theseus ; and the spirit of the old myth is seen in the legend, that 
 when their work here was done, Kadmos and his wife were changed 
 into dragons (like the keen-sighted creatures which draw the chariot 
 of Medeia), and so taken up to Elysion. 
 
 The children of Europe are more prominent in Hellenic mytho- Minos and 
 logy than Kadmos himself. Minos, who appears first in the lists of Ja^" 10 " 
 Apollodoros, is in some accounts split up into two beings of the same 
 name ; but the reason which would justify this distinction might be 
 urged in the case of almost all the gods and heroes of Aryan tradition. 
 It is enough to say that as the son of Zeus and Europe he is the son 
 of the heaven and the morning ; as the offspring of Lykastos and 
 
 1 This cow had on each side a mark god as much or more than that of the 
 
 like the moon (Paus. ix. 12). It led vine-god fills Boioto-Euboia from end 
 
 Kadmos through Phokis : and the coins to end." — Brown, Great Dionysiak 
 
 of Phokis bear the head of an ox, and Myth, i. 390. 
 
 also the heads of three oxen placed 2 The star-spangled peplos ofHar- 
 
 triangularly, like the three legs in the monia is the star-lit vault of heaven, 
 
 arms of the Kingdom of Man. "Epa- According to Pherekydes this peplos 
 
 phos, thus connected with Euboia, hangs on a winged oak, which is 
 
 is the Hellenic idea of the Egyptian indubitably the world-tree Yggdrasil. 
 
 Apis. ... In a word, the cult of the Ox- Brown, 7 he Unicorn, 89. 
 
328 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Ida, he has the same brilliant sire, but his mother is the earth. In 
 
 IT ' ' 
 
 II 
 
 his name he is simply man, the measurer or thinker, the Indian Manu : 
 and if in the Hindu legend Manu enters the ark with the seven 
 rishis at the time of the great deluge, so Minos is . the father of Deu- 
 kalion, in whose days the floods are let loose in the western land. 
 Thus as the representative of the great human family, he becomes 
 . not merely like Manu the giver of earthly codes or institutes, but a 
 judge of the dead in the nether worldj»with Rhadamanthys and Aiakos, 
 who were admitted to share this office. The conception which made 
 Manu the builder of the ark is seen apparently in the maritime power 
 and supremacy attributed to the Cretan Minos, a supremacy which 
 to Thucydides seemed as much a fact of history as the Peloponnesian 
 war. This power, according to Apollodoros, Minos the grim 1 
 obtained by overcoming his brothers, who quarrelled after Asterion 
 the king of Crete had married their mother Europe. But although 
 Minos had boasted that whatever he desired the gods would do, he 
 was none the more shielded against disaster. At his wish Poseidon 
 sent up a bull from the sea, on the pledge of Minos that he would 
 offer the beast in sacrifice. Minos offered one of his own cattle in 
 his stead ; and Poseidon not only made the bull mad, but filled Pasi- 
 phaS with a strange love for the monster. From the union of the 
 bright heaven with this sombre progeny of the sea sprang the Mino- 
 tauros, who in his den far away within his labyrinth of stars devoured 
 the tribute children sent from the city of Athene, and who, by the 
 help of Ariadne, falls under the sword of Theseus as Iason by the aid 
 of Medeia conquers the fire-breathing bulls of Kolchis. So trans- 
 parent is the legend of the " solar hero and solar king of Crete," 2 who 
 rules over the island in the nine years' cycle which reappears in the 
 myth of the tribute children. Like Indra and Krishna, like Phoibos 
 and Alpheios and Paris, he is the lover of the maidens, the hot and 
 fiery sun greeting the moon and the dew. 8 Hence, in the words of one 
 who professes to distrust the conclusions of Comparative Mythology, 
 " the great king of Crete met his end in the distant evening-land 
 where the sun goes down." 4 He is slain in Sicily by king Kokalos, 
 
 1 Od. xi. 322. Sagen von Kreta erscheint Minos als 
 
 2 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 118. grosser Jager, der in den Bergen und 
 * In this aspect of his character Waldern seiner Insel das Wild und die 
 
 Minos is the lover of Diktynna and of Nymphen jagt, wie wir namentlich von 
 
 Prokris, according to the strange story seiner Liebe zur Diktynna und zur 
 
 told by Apollodoros, iii. 15,1. Prokris Prokris wissen, die wieder den Mond 
 
 avoids the doom which befalls all other bedeuten, wie Minos in solchen Fabeln 
 
 victims of his love by making Minos die heisse und feurige Sonne zu bedeuten 
 
 take the antidote of Kirke. Of these scheint." — Gr. Myth. ii. 122. 
 myths Preller says, " In noch andern * Preller, Gr. Myth. ibid. 
 
AIAKOS AND AIGINA. 3 2 9 
 
 a name which reminds us of Horatius Codes, 1 and which seems CHAP, 
 to denote simply the eyeless gloom of night. • ' ' 
 
 Of Rhadamanthys, who in the ordinary version is like Minos, a Rhada- 
 son of Zeus and Europe, little more is told us, apart from the seem- ™ a d nt ys 
 ingly later story of Apollodorus, than that for the righteousness of Aiakos. 
 his life he was made the judge of Elysion, and that Minos was after- 
 wards joined with him in this office. In name then, as in office, he 
 is the Khemic Rhot-amenti, the judge of the dead. 2 Pausanias, who 
 gives this priority to Rhadamanthys, adds that some spoke of him as 
 a son of Hephaistos, who in this myth was a son of Talos, a son of 
 the eponymos Kres. 8 The same reputation for impartial justice 
 added to their number Aiakos, who in one version is a brother of 
 Minos and Rhadamanthys, in another a son of Zeus and Aigina, the 
 nymph whose name denotes the beating of the surf on the island 
 which was called after her. 4 In this island Aiakos, ruling over -a 
 race of Myrmidons, or ant-born men, 6 - plays the part of Oidipous 
 at Thebes or Phoibos at Delphoi. For the Virtra or dragon which 
 shuts up the waters is sent by Here, who is jealous of the love 
 of Zeus for Aigina, to desolate the island ; and when they send to 
 learn the will of the god at Pytho, the answer is that the plague can 
 be removed only by the prayers of the righteous Aiakos. At their 
 entreaty he offers up a solemn sacrifice, and the rain falls once 
 more upon Hellas. 6 With Poseidon and Phoibos he takes part in 
 the work of building the Ilian walls ; and here also the dragons are 
 seen again. Three of them rush against the walls, and one makes its 
 way through the portion built by Aiakos, while the other two fall 
 dead beneath the structure of the gods, — a myth which was inter- 
 preted to mean the future overthrow of Ilion by the descendants of 
 Aiakos. 
 
 In the Cretan myth Sarpedon also is a brother of Minos, and Nestor 
 therefore a son of Zeus and Europe. Other versions told of a Sar- pg<j6n? r " 
 pedon who was the child of Laodameia, the daughter of Bellero- 
 phontes. As in the case of Minos, mythographers made two beings 
 out of one, as they might indefinitely have extended the number. 
 
 1 This word seems to be akin to the 2 Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, 
 
 Latin adjective csecus, and possibly with i. 208. 
 Kaikias, the word which seems to have * Paus. viii. 53, 2. 
 
 suggested the myth of Cacus. It is * Its former name is said to have 
 
 made up of the particle denoting sepa- been Oin6ne or Oinopia. Aigina belongs 
 
 ration, ha, and the root oc, which we to the same root with Aigai, Aigaion, 
 
 find in the Latin oculus, the German and Aigeus, the eponymos of the Aigaian 
 
 auge, the English eye. The same (Egean) sea. 
 formation has given us the words halt, 5 See p. 82, et seq. 
 
 half, celibacy, &c— Bopp, Com/. Gr. ' Paus. ii. 29, 6. 
 
 §3°8. 
 
33Q 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Memndn 
 the Ethio- 
 pian. 
 
 Of the one SarpMon it is said that Zeus granted to him, as to Nestor, 1 
 ' a life stretching over three generations of men ; of the other the 
 beautiful story is told which we find in the Iliad The legend is 
 transparent throughout. If his grandsire Hipponoos received the 
 name by which he was commonly known from his slaying of a 
 monster answering to the Pythian dragon or the Theban Sphinx, his 
 mother Laodameia is as clearly the beautiful evening weaving to- 
 gether her tinted clouds, and slain by Artemis before her web is 
 finished. To her son, the chief of Lykia, the land of light, as to 
 Achilleus, a brief but a brilliant career is allotted. With his friend 
 Glaukos (a name denoting the bright day as Sarpedon is the creeping 
 light of early morning) he leaves' the banks of the golden stream of 
 Xanthos, and throws in his lot with the brave and pure-minded 
 Hektor ; but the designs of Here require that he must die, and the 
 tears of Zeus fall in big raindrops from the sky because it is not 
 possible for him to avert the doom. So Sarpedon falls beneath the 
 spear of Patroklos ; but no decay may be suffered to mar his beauty. 
 Phoibos himself is charged to bathe the body in Simoeis, and wrap it 
 in ambrosial robes, while Thanatos and Hypnos, death and sleep,' 
 are bidden to bear it away to his Lykian home, which they reach just 
 as Eos is spreading her rosy light through the sky, — an exquisite 
 variation on the myth of Endymion plunged beneath the waters, or 
 Narkissos in his profound lethargy, or Helios moving in his golden 
 cup from the western to the eastern ocean. 
 
 From the story of Sarpedon the legend of Memnon, it is scarcely 
 necessary to say, differs only in the greater clearness with which it 
 represents the old phrases. Sarpedon, though a being akin to 
 
 1 If the myth of Odysseus, as con- 
 trasted with that of Achilleus, points to 
 the slow sinking of the unclouded sun 
 in perfect repose after the weary battle 
 and wanderings of a stormy day, and 
 thus suggests the idea of the tranquil 
 evening of life for the chief who has 
 grown old in fighting, the notion of age 
 thus given is brought out more promi- 
 nently in other legends, whether of the 
 Greek or the Teutonic nations. The 
 decrepitude preceding the death of the 
 sun, a notion as familiar as that of his 
 undying vigour and everlasting youth, 
 is exhibited in the story of Tithfinos, 
 which differs from that of Nestor only 
 in the weakness which paralyses the 
 being once so powerful. In the story 
 of Olger the Dane the weakness which 
 comes from age is kept away while the 
 magic ring is on his finger : if it be 
 
 removed, he becomes as helpless as 
 Tithdnos. With the wisdom of Phoibos 
 Nestor retains the vigour of Herakles, 
 whose friend he had been, and whose 
 skill in the management of chariots and 
 horses he has inherited in double portion; 
 Like Phoibos, again, he has the gift of 
 honeyed eloquence, the gift of Hermes 
 to the sun-god ; and more particularly 
 as he grows in wisdom, he becomes 
 more keen-sighted, more prudent, more 
 sagacious. Nestor then and Odysseus 
 stand as an idea altogether distinct from 
 that which is embodied in the concep- 
 tions of Achilleus and Siegfried, and 
 the two types may be traced through 
 the Aryan mythology generally, in the 
 Godmund who lives five hundred years, 
 as in the Sigurd who falls in the full 
 glory of his youth. — Grimm, D. M. 
 365 ; Max Miiller, Chips, &c, ii. 84. 
 
memn6n and mimir. 331 
 
 Phoibos and Helios, is yet regarded as the ruler of mortal Lykians, CHAP. 
 
 and his cairn is raised high to keep alive his name amongst his ■ '— • 
 
 people. With Memnon the myth has not gone so far. He is so 
 transparently the son of Eos that he must rise again. Like Zeus, 
 Eos weeps tears of dew at the death of her child, but her prayers 
 avail to bring him back, like Adonis or Tammuz, from the shadowy 
 region, to dwell always in Olympos. If again Sarpedon is king of 
 the land of light (Lykia), Memnon rules over the glistening country 
 of Aithiopia (Ethiopia), the ever youthful child of Tithonos, the sun 
 whose couch Eos leaves daily to bring back morning to the earth. 
 Nay, so clear is the meaning of the story, that he is by some called 
 the child of Hemera, the day ; and his gleaming armour, like that of 
 Achilleus, is wrought by the fire-god Hephaistos. When Memnon 
 falls in atonement for the slaughter of Antilochos, the son of Nestor, 
 his comrades are so plunged in grief that they are changed into birds, 
 which yearly visit his tomb to water the ground with their tears. 
 Not less obvious is the meaning of another story, which brings before 
 us the battle of the clouds over the body of the dead sun — a fight 
 which we see in a darker form in the desperate struggle of the 
 Achaians and Trojans over the body of Achilleus. To comfort E6s, 
 Zeus makes two flocks of birds (the swan maidens or winged clouds 
 of Teutonic folk-lore) meet in the air and fight over Memnon's 
 funeral sacrifice, until some of them fall as victims on the altar. Of 
 Memnon's head the tale was told that it retained the prophetic power 
 of the living Helios, a story which is found in the myth of the Teu- 
 tonic Mimir, and which might also have been related of Kephalos, 
 the head of the sun. 
 
 Like Minos and Sarpedon, Kephalos is assigned in different Kephalos 
 versions of the myth to different parents, whose names denote, how- 
 ever, the same idea ; but there is no other reason for dividing him 
 into two persons. In the one account he is a son of Hermes and 
 Herse, the morning breeze and the dew, and by him Eos becomes 
 the mother of Tithonos or, as others said, of Phaethon. In the 
 other he is the son of the Phokian Deion, and Herse appears as the 
 wife of Erechtheus, and the mother of his wife Prokris or Prokng, 
 who is only the dew under another name. 1 Nor is the whole story 
 
 ' * Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 145, is form of Prokris, cannot be referred to 
 
 content to regard the name as an abbre- ri irpotctKpiixeim. Preller adduces the 
 
 viated form of h irpoKeKpificvri, alleging expression applied to Hekate 1 , ri]v irepl 
 
 the use of irpinpiv for irpSupiiriv by irtivTav Zeiir Kpoj/i'Bjjj rijitTjffe, in illus- 
 
 Hesiod, a fact which, if proved, is but tration of his etymology and of his 
 
 a slender warrant for the other. But belief that Prokris is the moon. But 
 
 Herse 1 , the mother of Prokris, is con- the incidents in the life of Prokris do 
 
 fessedly the dew, and Prokne, the other not point to the course of the moon and 
 
332 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK anything more than a series of pictures which exhibit the dew as 
 
 ^i ■ lovingly reflecting the rays of the sun, who is also loved by the 
 
 morning, until at last his fiery rays dry up the last drops which still 
 lurk in the deep thicket. Hence we have at once the groundwork 
 of the jealousy of Eos for Prokris, as of Here for 16 or Europe. But 
 the dew reflects many images of the same sun ; and thus the phrase 
 ran that Kephalos came back in disguise to Prokris, who, though 
 faithless to her troth, yet gave her love to her old lover, as Koronis 
 welcomed in Ischys the reflection of Phoibos Apollon. All that was 
 needed now was to represent Eos as tempting Kephalos to test the 
 fidelity of Prokris, and to introduce into the legend some portion of 
 the machinery of every solar tale. The presents which Eos bestows 
 on Kephalos to lure Prokris to her ruin are the riches of Ixion, on 
 which his wife Dia cannot look and live ; and when Prokris awakes 
 to a sense of her shame, her flight to Crete and her refuge in the 
 arms of Artemis denote the departure of the dew from the sun- 
 scorched hills to the cool regions on which the moon looks down. 
 But Artemis Hekate, like her brother Hekatos, is a being whose rays 
 have a magic power, and she bestows on Prokris a hound which 
 never fails to bring down its prey, and the spear which never misses 
 its mark. Prokris now appears disguised before the faithless 
 Kephalos, who has given himself to Eos ; but no entreaty can prevail 
 on her to yield up the gifts of Artemis except in return for his love. 
 The compact is made, and Prokris stands revealed in all her ancient 
 loveliness. E6s for the time is baffled ; but Prokris still feels some 
 fear of her rival's power, and as from a thicket she watches Kephalos 
 hunting, in other words, chasing the clouds along the blue fields of 
 heaven, she is smitten by the unerring spear and dies, like the last 
 drop of dew lingering in the nook where it had hoped to outlive the 
 day. The same mythical necessity which made Delos, Ortygia, or 
 Lykia, the birthplace and home of Phoibos and Artemis, localised 
 the story of Prokris in the land of the dawn-goddess Athene, and then 
 carried Kephalos away on his westward journey, toiling and suffering, 
 like Herakles, or Apollon, or Kadmos. He must aid Amphitryon 
 in hunting the dog which, sent by Poseidon or Dionysos, like the 
 Marathonian bull, ravaged the plain of Thebes ; he must go against 
 the Teleboans, the sea-robbers of the Akarnanian coast ; and finally, 
 wearied out with his toil, he must fall from the Leukadian or glisten- 
 its phenomena ; and Prokris is not connexion of Prokris and Prokne' -with 
 preferred or honoured, but throughout the Greek irpiif, a dewdrop, and the 
 slighted and neglected. Hence there is cognate words-which with it are referred 
 absolutely no reason for refusing to take to the root prish. 
 into account the apparently obvious 
 
BALDUR AND HODR. 333 
 
 ing cape into the sea, as the sun, greeting the rosy cliffs, sinks CHAP, 
 beneath the waters. 1 • ' ■ — ' 
 
 Section XL— TEUTONIC SUN-GODS AND HEROES. 
 
 In Caedmon and the epic of Beowulf the word baldor, bealdor, is Ba ldur 
 found in the sense of prince or chief, as magsa bealdor, virginum and Brand, 
 princeps. Hence the name Baldr or Baldur might be referred to 
 the Gothic balgs, our bold, and stress might be laid on the origin of 
 the name of Baldur's wife Nanna from a verb nenna, to dare. But 
 Grimm remarks that the Anglo-Saxon genealogies speak of the son 
 of Odin not as Baldur but as Baldag, Beldeg, a form which would 
 lead us to look for an Old High German Paltac. Although this is 
 not found, we have Paltar. Either then Baldag and Bealdor are 
 only forms of the same word, as Regintac and Reginari, Sigitac and 
 Sighar, or they are compounds in which ba.1 must be separated from 
 dag j and thus the word might be connected with the Sclavonic 
 Bjelbog, Belbog, the white shining god, the bringer of the day, the 
 benignant Phoibos. 2 Such an inference seems to be strengthened 
 by the fact that the Anglo-Saxon theogony gives him a son Brond, 
 who is also the torch or light of day. Baldur, however, was also . 
 known as Phol, a fact which Grimm establishes with abundant 
 evidence of local names ; and thus the identity of Baldr and Bjelbog 
 seems forced upon us. Forseti, or Fosite, is reckoned among the 
 M£\r as a son of Baldur and Nanna, a name which Grimm compares 
 with the Old High German forasizo, praeses, princeps. 8 The being 
 by whom Baldur is slain is Hodr, a blind god of enormous strength, 
 whose name may be traced in the forms Hadupracht, Hadufians, 
 &c, to the Chatumerus of Tacitus, and may possibly be akin to 
 the Greek Hades. 4 He is simply the power of darkness triumphing 
 over the lord of light ; and hence there were, as we might expect, 
 
 1 Another account made the dog of black. In the Slavonic mythology, the 
 
 Prokris a work of Hephaistos, like the sun is the child of Svarog, the gleaming 
 
 golden statues of Alkinobs, and spoke of heaven is called Dazhbog, the word 
 
 it as a gift from Zeus to Europe", who Dazh being the adjectival form of Dag, 
 
 gave it to Minos, and as bestowed by Ger. tag, day. — Ralston, Songs of the 
 
 Minos on Prokris, who at last gives it Russian People. The Wendic Bog, 
 
 to Kephalos. Prokris is also a bride Bogu, is regarded as representing the 
 
 of Minos, whom she delivers from the Vedic Bhaga, the distributor. — Tiele, 
 
 spells of a magician who acts by the cited by Mr. Brown, Religion of 
 
 counsels of Pasiphae, who is also called Zoroaster, &c, 35. 
 a wife of Minos. * Deutsche Myth. 212. 
 
 * The name may be further traced 4 In this case these names would 
 
 in the Latin pallidus, and through the seem to contain the same root with the 
 
 English and German pale and bleich, to Latin odi, odium, hate, hatred. 
 blank, blanch, blench, and lastly to 
 
334 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK two forms of the myth, one of which left Baldur dead, like Sarpgdon, 
 - "' • another which brought him back from the unseen world, like 
 Memnon and Adonis. 1 
 The dream But the essence of the myth lies in his death, the cause of which 
 
 of Baldur. 
 
 is set forth in a poem of the elder Edda, entitled Baldur's dream, a 
 poem so beautiful and so true to the old myth that I may be forgiven 
 for citing it in full. 
 
 The gods have hastened all to the assembly, 
 The goddesses gathered all to the council ; 
 The heavenly rulers take counsel together, 
 Why dreams of ill omen thus terrify Baldur. 
 
 Then uprose Odin the all-creator 
 And flung the saddle on Sleipnir's back, 
 And downwards rode he to Nebelheim, 
 Where a dog met him from the house of Hel. 
 
 Spotted with blood on his front and chest, 
 Loudly he bayed at the father of song ; 
 But on rode Odin, the earth made moaning, 
 When he reached the lofty mansion of Hel. 
 
 But Odin rode on to its eastern portal, 
 
 Where well he knew was the Vola's mound ; 
 The seer's song of the wine-cup singing, 
 Till he forced her to rise, a foreboder of ill. 
 
 " What man among men, one whom I know not, 
 Causes me trouble and breaks my rest ? 
 The snow hath enwrapped me, the rain beat upon me, 
 The dews have drenched me, for I was long dead." 
 
 " Wegtam my name is, Waltam's son am I ; 
 
 Speak thou of the under world, I of the upper ; 
 For whom are these seats thus decked with rings, 
 These shining chains all covered with gold ? " 
 
 " The mead is prepared for Baldur here, 
 
 The gleaming draught covered o'er with the shield ; 
 There is no hope for the gods above ; 
 Compelled I have spoken, but now am I mute." 
 
 " Close not thy lips yet, I must ask further, 
 
 Till I know all things. And this will I know. 
 What man among men is the murderer of Baldur, 
 And bringeth their end upon Odin's heirs ? " 
 
 " Hbdur will strike down the Mighty, the Famed one, 
 He will become the murderer of Baldur, 
 And bring down their end on the heirs of Odin : 
 Compelled I have spoken, but now am I mute. " 
 
 1 The glory of Baldur is reflected in Mythology, 298 ; and Popular Romances 
 the picture of Frithjof. FortheFrithjof of the Middle Ages, 372. 
 Saga see Introduction to Comparative 
 
THE DYING YEAR. 335 
 
 " Close not thy lips yet, I must ask further, CHAP. 
 
 Till I know all things. And this will I know ; # > ,. .' 
 
 Who will accomplish vengeance on Hodur, 
 And bring to the scaffold the murderer of Baldur ? " 
 
 " Rindur in the west hath won the prize 
 
 Who shall slay in one night all Odin's heirs. 
 
 His hands he shall wash not : his locks he doth comb not, 
 
 Till he brings to the scaffold the murderer of Baldur." 
 
 " Close not thy lips yet, J will ask further, 
 
 Till I know all things. And this will I know ; 
 The name of the woman who refuses to weep, 
 And cast to the heavens the veil from her head. " 
 
 " Thou art not Wegtam as erst I deemed thee, 
 But thou art Odin the all-creator." 
 " And thou art not Vola, no wise woman thou, 
 Nay, thou art the mother of giants in Hel. " 
 
 " Ride home, O Odin, and make thy boast, 
 That never again shall a man visit me, 
 Till Loki hath broken his fetters and chains, 
 And the twilight of gods brings the end of all things. " 
 
 Some features in this legend obviously reproduce incidents in The death 
 Greek mythology. The hound of hell who confronts the Father of 
 Song is the dog of Yamen, the Kerberos who bars the way to Orpheus 
 until he is lulled to sleep by his harping ; while the errand of Odin 
 which has for its object the saving of Baldur answers to the mission 
 of Orpheus to recover Eurydike. Odin, again, coming as Wegtam ' 
 the wanderer reminds us at once of Odysseus the far-journeying and 
 long-enduring. The ride of Odin is as ineffectual as the pilgrimage 
 of Orpheus. All created things have been made to take an oath that 
 they will not hurt the beautiful Baldur : but the mistletoe has been 
 forgotten, and of this plant Loki puts a twig into the hand of Baldur's 
 blind brother Hodr, who uses it as an arrow and unwittingly slays 
 Baldur while the gods are practising archery with his body as a mark. 
 Soon, however, Ali (or Wali) is born, a brother to Baldur, who 
 avenges his death, but who can do so only by slaying the unlucky 
 Hodr. 
 
 The mode in which this catastrophe is brought about cannot fail The 
 to suggest a comparison with the myth which offers SarpMon as a ^njaUiur. 
 mark for the arrows of his uncles, and with the stories of golden 
 apples shot from the heads of blooming youths, whether by William 
 Tell, or William of Cloudeslee, or any others. In short, the gods are 
 here in conclave, aiming their weapons at the sun, who is drawing 
 
 i "Wag-tame," broken into the road, " gnarus via?. " — Grimm, Teutonic My- 
 thology, Stallybrass, i. 314. 
 
336 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK near to his doom, as the summer approaches its end. They have no 
 
 ■ ii — ■ wish to slay him ; rather, it is the wish of all that he should not die ; 
 
 but he must be killed by his blind brother, whose victory is por- 
 tended, when the nights begin to be longer than the day. The 
 younger brother born to avenge him is the new sun-child, whose birth 
 marks the gradual rising again of the sun in the heaven. The myth 
 now becomes transparent Baldur, who dwells in Breidablick or 
 Ganzblick (names answering precisely to Europe and Pasiphae, the 
 broad-spreading light of morning, or the dazzling heavens), is slain by 
 the wintry sun, and avenged by Ali or Wali, the son of Odin and 
 Rind, immediately after his birth. Ali is further called Bui, the tiller 
 of the earth, over which the plough may again pass on the breaking 
 of the frost. These incidents at once show that this myth cannot 
 have been developed in the countries of northern Europe. Bunsen 
 rightly lays stress, and too great stress can scarcely be laid, on the 
 thorough want of correspondence between these myths and the 
 climatic conditions of northern Germany, still more of those of 
 Scandinavia and of Iceland. It may be rash to assign them dog- 
 matically to Central Asia, but indubitably they sprung up in a country 
 where the winter is of very short duration. Baldur then is " the god 
 who is slain," like Dionysos who is killed by his brothers and then 
 comes to life again : but of these myths the Vedic hymns take no 
 notice. " In the region where they arose there is no question of any 
 marked decline of temperature," and therefore these poems "stop 
 short at the collision between the two hostile forces of sunshine and 
 storm." x 
 
 1 " The tragedy of the solar year, of parative Mythology, that I avail myself 
 
 the murdered and risen god, is familiar all the more readily of the evidence by 
 
 to us from the days of ancient Egypt : which this fact has been established by 
 
 must it not be of equally primaeval one who believes that Atli and one or 
 
 origin here?" [in Teutonic tradition]. — two other names of the Nibelung Lay 
 
 Bunsen, God in History, ii. 458. are "undoubtedly historical." On this 
 
 The evidence which has established point, indeed, Bunsen has left no work 
 
 the substantial identity of the story of to be done. If he has left in the Lay 
 
 the Iliad with that of the Odyssey has of the Nibelungs two or three historical 
 
 also shown that the Nibelung Lay prac- names, he has left nothing more. The 
 
 tically reproduces the myth of the Vol- narrative or legend itself carries us to 
 
 sungs, and that the same myth is pre- the Breidablick (Euryphaessa) or Ganz- 
 
 sented under slightly different colours blick (Pasiphae) which is the dazzling 
 
 in the legends of Walthar of Aquitaine abode of Baldur, the type of the several 
 
 and other Teutonic romances, ch. Helgis, of Sigurd and Siegfried, as he 
 
 vi. The materials of these narra- is also of Achilleus and Odysseus, of 
 
 tives are, in short, identical with the Rustem, Perseus, or Heraklfe. 
 legends of the Teutonic Baldur and the In the Slavonic mythology, Perun, 
 
 Greek Helen, and the whole narrative Perkunas, dies like Baldur or Adonis, 
 
 thus becomes in each case transparent and remains lying veiled in a shroud or 
 
 in almost every part. The identity of floating over dark waters, until the 
 
 the Sigurd of the Edda with the Sieg- spring recalls him to life. — Ralston, 
 
 fried of the Nibelung Song has so impor- Songs of the Russian People, 98. 
 tant a bearing on the results of Com- 
 
THE LEGEND OF TELL. 33? 
 
 The myth of Tell, with which the story of Baldur and ^Sarpedon chap. 
 
 suggests a comparison, has received its deathblow as much from the ■ '- — ' 
 
 hands of historians as from those of comparative mythologists. But ^eUand 
 there are probably few legends which more thoroughly show that from Gesler. 
 myths which have worked themselves into the narrative of an historical 
 age there is absolutely nothing to be learnt in the way of history. 
 Even if the legend of Tell be given up as a myth, it might be con- 
 tended that at the least it indicates some fact, and this fact must be 
 the oppression of the Swiss by Austrian tyrants; and yet this supposed 
 fact, without which the story loses all point and meaning, has been 
 swept away as effectually as the incidents which have been supposed 
 to illustrate it. The political history of the Forest Cantons begins at 
 a time long preceding the legendary date of Tell and Gesler; and the 
 election of Rudolf of Hapsburg as king of the Romans in 1273 was 
 important to the Swiss only from their previous connexion with his 
 house. 1 In short, we have proof of the existence of a confederation 
 of the Three Cantons in 1291, while the popular account dates its 
 origin from the year 1314, and ascribes it to the events which are 
 assigned to that time. Nay, more, " there exist in contemporary re- 
 cords no instances of wanton outrage and insolence on the Hapsburg 
 side. It was the object of that power to obtain political ascendancy, 
 not to indulge its representatives in lust or wanton insult. That it 
 was so becomes all the more distinct, since there are plentiful records 
 of disputes in which the interests of the two were mixed up with those 
 of particular persons." In these quarrels, we are told, "the symptoms 
 of violence, as is natural enough, appear rather on the side of the 
 Swiss Communities than on that of the aggrandising imperial house;" 
 and the attack on the abbey of Einsiedeln was treated " not as a crime 
 of which the men of Schwitz were guilty, but as an act of war for 
 which the Three Cantons were responsible as a separate state." The 
 war of Swiss independence which followed this event was brought to 
 an issue in the battle of Morgarten ; but the documents which have 
 preserved the terms of peace simply define the bounds of the imperial 
 authority, without questioning that authority itself. In all this there 
 is no real need of the exploits of Tell, or rather there is no room for 
 them, even if the existence of the Confederation were not traced back 
 to a time which according to the legend would probably precede his 
 birth. 
 
 This legend, which makes Tell not less skilful as a boatman than The myth 
 
 Wholly 
 
 1 The evidence of this connexion Confederation Suisse in the Edinburgh 
 has been ably summarised by the writer Review for January, 1869, p. 134, et sea. 
 of the article on Rilliet's Origiius de la 
 
338 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Utter im- 
 possibility 
 of the 
 Swiss 
 story. 
 
 as an archer, is not noticed by chroniclers who would gladly have 
 retailed the incidents of the setting up of the ducal cap by Gesler in 
 the market-place, of Tell's refusal to do obeisance to it, of his capture, 
 and of the cruelty which compelled him to shoot an apple placed on 
 his son's head, of his release during the storm on the lake that he 
 might steer the skiff, and finally of the death of Gesler by Tell's 
 unerring shaft. When examined more closely, all the antiquities of 
 the myth were found to be of modern manufacture. The two chapels 
 which were supposed to have been raised by eye-witnesses of the 
 events were " trumpery works of a much more recent date," — and if 
 the tales of the showmen were true, the place had "remained un- 
 changed by the growth and decay of trees and otherwise for six 
 centuries and a half." Further, the hat set on a pole that all who 
 passed by might do obeisance is only another form of the golden 
 image set up that all might worship it on the plains of Dura, and 
 here, as in the story of the Three Children, the men who crown the 
 work of Swiss independence are three in number. 
 
 Yet so important is this story as showing how utterly destitute of 
 any residuum of fact is the mythology introduced into the history even 
 of a well-known age, that I feel myself justified in quoting the passage 
 in which M. Rilliet sums up the argument proving the absolute im- 
 possibility of the tale from beginning to end. 
 
 " The internal history of the three valleys offers to the existence 
 of a popular insurrection which freed them from the tyranny of King 
 Albert of Austria a denial which the consequent conduct of this prince 
 and that of his sons fully confirms. A revolt which would have 
 resulted not only in defying his authority, but outraging it by the ex- 
 pulsion and murder of his officers, would not have been for one instant 
 tolerated by a monarch not less jealous of his power than resolute to 
 make it respected. So when we see him in the month of April, 1308, 
 when he went to recruit in Upper Germany for his Bohemian wars, 
 sojourning on the banks of the Limmat and the Reuss, and approach- 
 ing the theatre assigned to the rebellion, without making the slightest 
 preparation or revealing any intention to chastise its authors ; when 
 we find him at the same time entirely occupied in celebrating the 
 festival of the Carnival with a brilliant train of nobles and prelates ; 
 when we find him soon afterwards, on April 25, confirming to the 
 abbey of Zurich the possession of domains comprehending the places 
 which were the very centre, of the revolt ; when we find him, six days 
 later, regardless of revelations about the plot which was to cost him 
 his life, banqueting with the sons and the nephew whose hands were 
 already raised against him, and thence proceed, full of eagerness, to 
 
WILLIAM OF CLOUDESLEE. 339 
 
 meet the queen who was on her way to join him,— it seemsimpossible CI JAP. 
 
 to admit that he was swallowing in silence an affront inflicted on him ' ' 
 
 by insolent peasants, and which an inexplicable impunity could only 
 render all the more mortifying to his self-love and compromising to 
 his authority." 
 
 The myth is thus driven off the soil of the Helvetian republic. Other ver- 
 We find it growing as congenially in almost every Aryan land, and tne myth 
 in some regions which are not Aryan at all. It is the story of the of TelL 
 ballad of Clym of the Clough, in which Cloudeslee performs not only 
 the exploits assigned to Locksley in Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe," 
 but this very deed of Tell. Here the archer is made to say : 
 
 *' I have a sonne seven years old : 
 
 Hee is to me full deere : 
 I will tye him to a stake — 
 
 All shall see him that bee here— 
 And lay an apple upon his head, 
 
 And goe six paces him froe, 
 And I myself with a broad arrowe 
 
 Shall cleave the apple in towe." 
 
 Hanging is to be the penalty in case of failure. The result is of 
 course as in the myth of Tell; but the sequel which involves the 
 actual death of the Vogt in that legend is represented in the English 
 ballad by the hope which the king expresses that he may never serve 
 as a mark for Cloudeslee's arrows. Here also Cloudeslee, whose 
 very name attests his birth and abode in the cloud-land, is one of" 
 a trio (along with Adam Bell and Clym of the Clough), which 
 answers to the Swiss triumvirate ; and Grimm is fully justified 
 in remarking that Cloudeslee's Christian name and Bell's surname 
 exhibit the two names of the great Swiss hero. 1 By Saxo Gramma- 
 ticus, a writer of the twelfth century, the story is told of Palnatoki, 
 who performs the same exploit at the bidding of King Harold 
 Gormson, and who when asked by the king why he had taken three 
 arrows from his quiver when he was -to have only one shot, replies, 
 " That I might avenge on thee the swerving of the first by the points 
 of the rest." In the Vilkina Saga the tale is related, and almost in 
 the same terms, of Egill, " the fairest of men," the brother of Volundr, 
 our Wayland Smith, while in the Malleus Maleficarum it is told of 
 
 1 "Ausser den angefuhrten deut- dessen Vorname, wie der Zuname des. 
 
 schen und nordischen Erzahlungen lasst ersten, Bell, an Tell gemahnt, erbietet 
 
 sich noch eine altenglische in dem nor- sich vor dem Konig, seinem sieben- 
 
 thumbrischen Liede von den drei Wild- jahrigen Sohn einen Apfel auss haupt zu 
 
 schiitzen Adam Bell, Clym, und Wilharn legen und 120 Schritte weit heYab zu 
 
 of Cloudesle aufweisen; der letzte, schiessen."— Grimm, £>. Myth. 355. 
 
340 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book Puncher, a magician on the Upper Rhine. 1 Another version is seen 
 
 • — - in the Saga of Saint Olaf, who challenges Eindridi, a heathen whom 
 
 he wishes to convert, to the same task, only leading the way himself. 
 Olafs arrow grazes the child's head, and the pleading of Eindridi's 
 wife then induces the king to put an end to the contest. With some 
 differences of detail the legend reappears in the story of another 
 Harold (Sigurdarson), in the eleventh century. Here the rival or 
 opponent of the king is Heming, whose arrows, as Harold remarks, 
 are all inlaid with gold, like the arrows of Phoibos. Enraged at 
 many defeats, the king at last dares Heming to shoot a nut on the 
 head not of his son but of his brother. Not less significant in some 
 of its touches is the Faroese tradition, which attributes Tell's achieve- 
 ment to Geyti, Aslak's son, the king being the same who is confronted 
 by Heming. Learning that Geyti is his match in strength, Harold 
 rides to the house of Aslak, and asking where his youngest son is, 
 receives for answer that he is dead and buried in the churchyard of 
 Kolrin. The king insists on seeing the body, and the father replies 
 that where so many lie dead it would not be easy to find the corpse 
 of his son. But as Harold rides back over the heath, he meets 
 a huntsman armed with a bow, and asking who he is, learns that it 
 is the dead Geyti, who has returned to the land of the living, like 
 Memnon, or Euridykfe, or Adonis. The story otherwise differs little 
 if at all, from that of Heming. In a Finnish story, as in the Tell 
 myth, the apple is shot off a man's head; but the archer (and this 
 feature seems specially noteworthy) is a boy of twelve years old, who 
 appears armed with bow and arrows among the reeds on the banks 
 of a lake, and threatens to shoot some robbers who had carried off 
 his father as a captive from the village of Alajarvi. The marauders 
 agree to yield up the old man if the boy will do by him as Tell and 
 Cloudeslee do by their sons. The legend at the least suggests 
 a comparison with the myth of the youthful Chrysaor, who also is 
 seen on the shore of the Delian sea; while the twelve years look 
 much like the ten years of the Trojan contest, the hours of the night 
 during which the sun lies hid from the sight of men until he comes 
 forth ready for the work in which his triumph is assured. The myth 
 might be traced yet further, if it were necessary to do so. Further 
 still, it seems impossible not to discern the same myth in the legend 
 which tells us of the Lykian Sarpedon, that when Isandros and 
 Hippolochos disputed with each other for the throne, his mother 
 Laodameia offered him for the venture, when it was settled that the 
 
 'The passages from these three Dasent, iVora:7a/«,introductiori,xxxv - 
 works are quoted at length by Sir G. xxxix. 
 
TELL AND SARPEDON. 341 
 
 kingdom should belong to the man who could shoot a ring from the chap. 
 
 breast of a child without hurting him. The tale is here inijerted, and • ^ — • 
 
 the shot is to be aimed at the child who lies exposed like Oidipous 
 on Kithairon, or Romulus among the reeds of the Tiber, but who is 
 as sure to escape the danger as Tell and the others are to avoid the 
 trap in which their enemies think to catch them. 
 
 To say more is but to slay the slain. " William Tell, the good The far- 
 archer, whose mythological character has been established beyond | a° tmg 
 contradiction, is the last reflexion of the sun-god, whether we call him 
 Indra, or Apollo, or Ulysses." 1 
 
 Section XII.— THE VIVIFYING SUN. 
 
 In strictness of speech the Vedic Vishnu is nothing but a name. Flexible 
 The writers of the A'itareya-brahmana could still say, " Agni is all the j* y^u. 
 deities, Vishnu is all the deities." 2 Hence he rises sometimes to 
 a dignity greater even than that of Dyaus and Indra, while at others 
 he is spoken of as subordinate to them, or is regarded as simply 
 another form of the three deities Agni, Vayu, and Surya. In some 
 hymns he is associated with Indra as Varuna is linked with Mitra, 
 and Dyaus with Prithivi. 
 
 " All divine power, like that of the sky, was completely communi- 
 cated to thee, Indra, by the gods (or worshippers), when thou, 
 O impetuous deity, associated with Vishnu, didst slay Vritra Ahi, 
 stopping up the waters." 3 
 
 In truth, it may almost without exaggeration be said that the 
 whole Vedic theology may be resolved into a series of equations, the 
 result being one quite consistent with a real monotheism. 4 Thus 
 Vishnu is himself Agni and Indra. 
 
 "Thou, Agni, art Indra, bountiful to the excellent; thou art 
 Vishnu, the wide-stepping, the adorable." 5 
 
 These are again identified with other gods : 
 
 " Thou, Agni, art Varuna, when thou art born ; thou art Mitra, 
 when thou art kindled ; son of strength, in thee reside all the gods : 
 thou art Indra to the man who sacrifices." 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Chips, &c, ii. 233. condition of mind which, owning a 
 
 * Max Miiller, Sanskrit Lit. 391. multitude of Gods, addresses each 
 
 ' JZ. V. vii. 20, 2; Muir, Sanskrit separately in the language of mono- 
 
 Texts, part iv. ch. ii. sect. I. theism. — Hibbert Lectures, 286, el seq. 
 4 Professor Max Miiller now prefers i R. V. ii. 1, 3; Muir, ii. 
 
 the term Henotheism to denote the 
 
342 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK » Thou art Aryaman, when thou, self-controlled, possessest the 
 
 • ^ — ■ secret name of the maidens." l 
 
 Agni, again, although along with Indra, Soma, and Parameshthin. 
 he is a son of Prajapati, 2 is according to the same writers Prajapati 
 himself. 
 
 "The man who became Prajapati is the same as this Agni who is 
 kindled on the altar." 
 
 This name brings us at once to other equations, for Prajapati is . 
 Daksha : he is also Time and Death. 
 
 "The gods were afraid of this ertder, death, the year which is 
 Prajapati, lest he should by days and nights bring on the end of our 
 life." 
 
 Elsewhere Prajapati is Brahma. 
 
 "Those men who know Brahma know him who occupies the 
 highest place (Parameshthin) : he who knows Parameshthin and who 
 knows Prajapati, they who know the ancient Brahmana (deity ?), they 
 know Skambha." 3 
 Vishnu the It is scarcely necessary, then, to say that in all the phrases which 
 god." 8 describe the attributes of Vishnu, the origin of each conception is 
 plainly discernible. He is especially the god who traverses the 
 heaven in three strides, these strides being taken by some commen- 
 tators to denote his manifestations as fire on the earth, as lightning in 
 the atmosphere, and as . the sun in heaven, or in other words, his 
 identity with Agni, Vayu, and Surya. By others they are regarded as 
 setting forth the rising, culmination, and setting of the sun ; and there 
 can be little doubt that the latter idea was at the first most closely 
 associated with the thought of Vishnu. 1 It would seem indeed that 
 these gods are distinguished only when the worshipper wishes to add 
 to the titles of the being whom he invokes in his litanies. 
 
 " Agni, Varuna, Mitra, ye gods, give us strength, and ye hosts of 
 Maruts, and Vishnu. May both the Asvins, Rudra, and the wives of 
 the deities, with Pushan, Bhaga, and Sarasvati, be pleased with us. 
 
 " I invoke for our protection Indra and Agni, Mitra and Varuna, 
 Aditi, heaven, earth and sky, the Maruts, the mountains, the waters, 
 Vishnu, Pushan, Brahmanaspati, Bhaga, Samsa, and Savitri. 
 
 1 Jt. V. v. 3, I ; Muir, Sanskrit quently ascribed to India, Varuna, 
 
 Texts, pt. iv. ch. ii. sect. I. Vishnu, and Savitri. 
 
 s Satapatha Brahmana, xi. I, 6; "Vishnu, thou didst prop asunder 
 
 Muir, ib. these two worlds ; thou didst envelope 
 
 Ath. V. x. 7, 7 ; Muir, Sanskrit the earth on every side with beams of 
 
 Texts, part iv. p. 17. Skambha is the light."— A'. V. vii. 99. 3. 
 supporter or propper, p. 37. ■ This * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, pt. iv. p. 
 
 function, Dr. Muir remarks, is ire- 57. 
 
THE THREE PACES. 343 
 
 "And may Vishnu and the wind, uninjuring, and Soma, the CHAP. 
 
 bestower of riches, give us happiness. And may the Ribhus, ■ 
 
 Asvins, Tvashtri, and Vibhvan be favourable to us, so afe to grant 
 us wealth. " 1 
 
 Much of the later mythology respecting Vishnu turns on the Dwarf In- 
 Dwarf Incarnation, which may be compared with the myth of the, 
 maimed Hephaistos. In both cases the defect is simply a veil 
 putting out of view the irresistible power of the god. The fire at its 
 birth is weak, and its flame puny; the sun sheds but little warmth as 
 he rests on the horizon at his rising ; and it might well be said that 
 none could tell how vast a power lay in these seemingly weak and 
 helpless beings. So Vishnu, manifesting himself as the Dwarf, obtains 
 from the Asuras as much as he can lie upon, or as much as he can 
 cover in three strides. It is thus that Bali, the great enemy of the 
 gods, is overcome. Having conquered the three worlds, Bali terrifies 
 Indra, who, with other deities, beseeches Vishnu to take the shape 
 of a dwarf and deceive their conqueror. Having in this shape 
 approached the son of Virochana.and obtained the boon of the three 
 paces, "the thrice-stepping Vishnu assumed a miraculous form, and 
 with three paces took possession of the worlds. For with one step 
 he occupied the whole earth, with a second the eternal atmosphere, 
 and with a third the sky. Having then assigned to the Asura Bali an 
 abode in Patala (the infernal region), he gave the empire of the three 
 worlds to Indra. " 2 In the Mahabharata this fact is ascribed to 
 Krishna, who, having become the son of Aditi, was called Vishnu. s 
 In the Bhagavata Purana the story assumes proportions almost as 
 vast as those of the god whom it seeks to glorify. No sooner has 
 Bali granted the seemingly moderate request of Hari or Vishnu, than 
 the body of the dwarf begins to expand and fills the whole universe, 
 and Bali is bound with the chains of Varuna. 4 This dwarf appears 
 elsewhere in the person of the child Kumara, the son of Aushasi, the 
 daughter of the dawn. 6 Thus throughout we are dealing with phrases 
 which the Hindu commentators knew to be mere phrases; and thus also 
 without a thought of injustice done to the deities whom he seemed to 
 
 1 R. ■ V. v. 46 ; Muir, Sanskrit pared with Menelaos : in other words, 
 Texts, pt. iv. p. 69. he is Shortshanks (Grimm). Eoots is 
 
 2 Ramayana, i. 322; Muir, ib. 117. despised for his insignificant stature, 
 
 3 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, pt. iv. p. and the Master Thief incurs the same 
 118. contempt. The idea of mere diminu- 
 
 4 Id. ib. p. 125, &c. tivcness issues at length in the stories of 
 8 Id. ib. p. 284. The diminutive size Tom Thumb : but Tom Thumb is in 
 
 of many of the heroes of popular tradi- reality as little to be despised as any 
 tion must be traced to this idea. Odys- other hero of Aryan legends, 
 seus is small, when he stands, as com- 
 
344 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK disparage, the worshipper could say that Varuna himself and the 
 
 ' --— ' Asvins do the bidding of Vishnu, and that Vishnu is more beneficent 
 
 than his chosen companion Indra. 
 
 " King Varuna and the Asvins wait on the decree of this ruler, 
 attended by the Maruts : Vishnu possesses excellent wisdom, which 
 knows the proper day, and with his friend opens up the cloud. 
 
 "The divine Vishnu who has chosen companionship with the 
 beneficent Indra, himself more beneficent, the wise god has gratified 
 the Arya." x 
 
 And again, 
 
 " Thou, Agni, art Indra, bountiful to the good ; thou art Vishnu, 
 the wide-stepping, the adorable." a 
 Majesty of So when Indra is about to smite Vritra, he is at once represented 
 isnniu ag bidding his friend Vishnu to stride vastly. 
 
 " Friend Vishnu, stride vastly : sky, give room for the thunderbolt 
 to strike; let us slay Vritra and let loose the waters." 3 
 
 Yet although in some passages Vishnu is described as having 
 established the heavens and the earth, and as sustaining the world by 
 his own inherent force, still he is said in others to make his three 
 strides through the power of Indra. 
 
 " When, Indra, the gods placed thee in their front in the battle, 
 then thy dear steeds grew. 
 
 " When, thunderer, thou didst by thy might slay Vritra who stopped 
 up the streams, then thy dear steeds grew. 
 
 " When by thy force Vishnu strode three steps, then thy dear steeds 
 grew." 4 
 
 Elsewhere we are told that mortal man cannot comprehend his 
 majesty. 
 
 " No one who is being born, or has been born, has attained, O 
 divine Vishnu, to the furthest limit of thy greatness." 5 
 The palace Th e personality of the mythical Vishnu is, in short, as transparent 
 of Vishiiu. as that of Helios or Selene. He dwells in the aerial mountains, in a 
 gleaming palace where the many-horned and swiftly moving cows abide. 
 " Here that supreme abode of the wide-stepping vigorous god shines 
 intensely forth." These cows are in some places the clouds, in others, 
 the rays which stream from the body of the sun. But on the whole 
 it must be admitted that the place of Vishnu in the Rig Veda, as 
 compared with the other great deities, is in the background ; and the 
 institutional legends of later Brahmanic literature throw but little light 
 
 ' S. V. i. 156 ; Muir, Sanskrit » R. V. viii. 89, 12 ; Muir, ib. p. 68, 
 
 Texts pt. iv. p. 66. * A'. V. viii. 12 ; Muir, ib. p. 77. 
 
 2 taun-i ib. » Muir, ib. p. 63. 
 
VISHNU AND KRISHNA. 345 
 
 on the mythical idea of this deity, and perhaps none on the mythology CHAP. 
 
 of any other people. ' ' 
 
 As the supreme spirit, whose ten Avatars or Incarnations are Avatars of 
 among the later developements of Hindu theology, Vishnu is associated 
 or identified not only with Siva or Mahadeva, but with Rama in the 
 Ramayana, and with Krishna in the Mahabharata. 1 But the Ma- 
 hadeva, with whom he is thus identified, is himself only Varuna or 
 Dyaus, under another name. " He is Rudra, he is Siva, he is Agni, 
 he is Saiva, the all-conquering; he is Indra, he is Vayu, he is the 
 Asvins, he is the lightning, he is the moon, he is Iswara, he is Surya, 
 he is Varuna, he is time, he is death the ender ; he is darkness, and 
 night, and the days ; he is the months and the half-months of the 
 seasons, the morning and evening twilight, and the year." 2 Krishna, 
 again, is said to be sometimes a partial, sometimes a perfect manifesta- 
 tion of that god ; but the phrases in which Krishna is spoken of are as 
 indefinite and elastic as those which speak of Agni, Indra, or Vishnu. 
 In some passages Krishna is simply a son of Devaki. But as Vishnu 
 is also Brahma, so is Krishna also the supreme deity. 3 Elsewhere it 
 is said that Brahma and Mahadeva themselves proceed from Krishna, 
 who again identifies himself with Rudra, although in other passages 
 Rudra is described as mightier ; * and in each case commentators, as 
 we might expect, are ready with the reasons which reconcile the seem- 
 ing inconsistency. Like Vishnu, Krishna rises to greater importance 
 in later times, and in far more abundant measure. The popular 
 affections were more and more fixed on the bright god who was born 
 in a cave, at whose birth the exulting devas sang in the heavens, 
 whose life was sought by a cruel tyrant, and who, like Zeus or Herakles, 
 had many loves in many lands. 
 
 In this later theology the idea which regarded the sun as the Emblems 
 generator of all life left the attributes of Vishnu by comparison in whh°the ed 
 the shade; and the emblem thus especially associated with this worship of 
 deity marks a singular stage in the history of religion. If the subject 
 is one which must be approached with the utmost caution, it is also 
 one in which we are especially bound not to evade or misrepresent 
 the facts. If the form of faith, or rather it should be said, of worship, 
 with which we have now to deal, has prevailed in all lands and still 
 prevails amongst a large majority of mankind, it becomes our duty 
 to trace fairly, to the best of our power, its origin and growth, and to 
 
 1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, pt. iv. ch. ii. I are alike the origin of the world, who 
 sect. 5. have come down to lighten its load ? " — 
 
 2 Muir, ib. Vislinu Purana, H. H. Wilson, 519. 
 
 3 Id. ib. p. 152. "Do you not know,'' * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, pt. iv. pp. 
 says Krishnato .Halarama, "that you and 214,216,239. 
 
34<5 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Sensuous 
 stage of 
 language. 
 
 measure accurately the influence which it has exercised on the human 
 ■ intellect and on human morality. If in our search we find that phrases 
 and emblems, to which we now attach a purely spiritual signification, 
 have acquired this meaning gradually as the ruder ideas which marked 
 the infancy of the human race faded from the mind, we shall not 
 allow old associations and prejudices to stand in the place of evidence, 
 or suffer the discovery to interfere with or weaken moral or religious 
 convictions with which these phrases or emblems have no inseparable 
 connexion. The student of the history of religion can have no fear 
 that his faith will receive a shock from which it cannot recover, if his 
 faith is placed in Him with whom there is no variableness nor shadow 
 of turning, and whose work human passion can neither mar nor 
 hinder. He can walk in confidence by the side of the student of 
 language and mythology, and be content to share his labour, if he 
 hopes that such efforts may one day "lay bare the world-wide founda- 
 tions of the eternal kingdom of God." 1 
 
 In truth, the evidence which must guide us at the outset of the 
 inquiry can be furnished by the science of language alone. The very 
 earliest records to which we can assign any historical character refer 
 to states of society which are comparatively late developements. 
 The history of words carries us back to an age in which not a single 
 abstract term existed, in which human speech expressed mere bodily 
 wants and mere sensual notions, while it conveyed no idea either of 
 morality or of religion. If every name which throughout the whole 
 world is or has been employed as a name of the One Eternal God, 
 the Maker and Sustainer of all things, was originally a name only for 
 some sensible object or phenomenon, it follows that there was an age 
 the duration of which we cannot measure, but during which man had 
 not yet risen to any consciousness of his relation to the great Cause 
 of all that he saw or felt around him. If all the words which now 
 denote the most sacred relations of kindred and affinity were at the 
 first names conveying no such special meaning, if the words father, 
 brother, sister, daughter, were words denoting merely the power or 
 occupation of the persons spoken of, then there was a time during 
 which the ideas now attached to the words had not yet been 
 developed. 2 But the sensuousness which in one of its results pro- 
 duced mythology could not fail to influence in whatever degree the 
 religious growth of mankind. This sensuousness, inevitable in the 
 infancy of the human race, consisted in ascribing to all physical 
 objects the same life of which men were conscious themselves. They 
 
 1 Max Miiller, " Semitic Monotheism," Chips, &c, i. 378. 
 8 See book i. ch. ii. 
 
THE VITAL POWERS OF NATURE. 347 
 
 had everything to learn and no experience to fall back upon, while CHAP. 
 
 the very impressions made upon them by the sights and sounds of ' 
 
 the outward world were to be made the means of leading them 
 gradually to correct these impressions and to rise beyond them to 
 facts which they seemed to contradict Thus side by side were grow- 
 ing up a vast mass of names which attributed a conscious life to the 
 hosts of heaven, to the clouds, trees, streams and flowers, and a 
 multitude of crude and undefined feelings, hopes, and longings which 
 were leading them gradually to the conscious acknowledgment of 
 One Life as the source of all the life which they saw around them. 1 
 The earliest utterances of human thought which have come down to 
 us belong to a period comparatively modern ; but even some of these, 
 far from exhibiting this conviction clearly, express the fears and 
 hopes of men who have not yet grasped the notion of any natural 
 order whatever. The return of daylight might depend on the caprice 
 of the arbitrary being whom they had watched through his brilliant 
 but brief journey across the heaven. The sun whose death they had 
 so often witnessed might sink down into the sea to rise again from it 
 no more. The question eagerly asked during the hours of night 
 betray a real anguish, and the exultation which greeted the dawn, if it 
 appear extravagant to us, comes manifestly from men for whom 
 nature afforded but a very slender basis for arguments from analogy. 3 
 But although the feeling of confidence in a permanent order of nature 
 was of long or slow growth, the phenomena of nature suggested other 
 thoughts which produced their fruit more quickly. The dawns as 
 they came round made men old ; but the Dawn herself never lost her 
 freshness, and sprang from the sea-foam as fair as when she first 
 gladdened the eyes of man. Men might sicken and die, but the 
 years which brought death to them could not dim the light of the 
 sun ; and this very contrast supplied the first intimation of beings 
 which do not wither and decay — of immortals, of immortality. 3 When 
 from this thought of the immortality of other beings they awoke at 
 length to the consciousness that man himself might be among the 
 number of immortal creatures, the feeling at once linked itself with 
 another which had thus far remained almost dormant To adopt 
 once more the words of Professor Max Miiller, " by the very act of 
 the creation God had revealed himself;" 4 but although many words 
 might be used to denote " that idea which the first breath of life, the 
 
 1 Max ■Miiller, "Semitic Mono- thology," Chips, ii.:Q7. : 
 theism," Chips, &c, i. 355- " /tl - " Semitic Monotheism," Chips, 
 
 * Seep. 21. »■ 35 2 - 
 « Max Mi-il'er, " Comparative My- 
 
348 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK fj rs t; sight of the world, the first consciousness of existence, had lor 
 ' — — "- — ' ever impressed and implanted in the human mind," * the idea of a real 
 relation with this Unchangeable Being could be awakened in men 
 only when they began to feel that their existence was not bounded to 
 the span of a few score years. 
 Semitic'"'' ^ tw °f°^ influence, however, was at work, and it produced 
 Mono- substantially the same results with the Semitic as with the Aryan 
 races. Neither could be satisfied with effects while seeking for a 
 Cause; and the many thoughts as to the nature of this Creative 
 Power would express themselves in many names. The Vedic gods 
 especially resolve themselves into a mere collection of terms, all 
 denoting at first different aspects of the same idea ; and the con- 
 sciousness of this fact is strikingly manifested by the long line of later 
 interpreters. A monstrous overgrowth of unwieldy mythology has 
 sprung up round these names, and done its deadly work on the minds 
 of the common people ; but to the more thoughtful and the more 
 truthful, Indra and Vamna, Dyaus and Vishnu, remained mere terms 
 to denote, however inadequately, some quality of the Divine Nature. 2 
 But the Vedic Indra and Dyaus might have a hundred epithets, and 
 alike in the East and West, as the meaning of these epithets was 
 either in part or wholly forgotten, each name came to denote a 
 separate being, and suggested for him a separate mythical history. 
 Thus the Hindu sun-god Surya was represented among the Hellenic 
 tribes not only by Helios and Phoibos, but by Herakles and Perseus, 
 Theseus and Bellerophon, Kephalos, Endymion, Narkissos, Kadmos, 
 Oidipous, Meleagros, Achilleus, Tantalos, Ixion, Sisyphos, and many 
 more. The Vedic Dahana. reappeared not only as Daphne and 
 Athene, but as Eurydike, Euryphassa, Iole, Iokaste, Danae, Briseis, 
 Aphrodite, Europe, Euryganeia, with other beings, for most of whom 
 life had less to offer of joy than of griet. But although the fortunes 
 of these beings varied indefinitely, although some were exalted to the 
 highest heaven and others thrust down to the nethermost hell and 
 doomed to a fruitless toil for ever and ever, yet they were all super- 
 human, all beings to be thought of with fear and hatred if not with 
 love, and some of them were among the gods who did the bidding of 
 Zeus himself, or were even mighty enough to thwart his will. Thus 
 these names remained no longer mere appellations denoting different 
 aspects of the character of the same being ; and from the Dyaus, 
 Theos, and Deus, of Hindus, Greeks, and Latins, sprung the Deva, 
 Theoi, Dii, and the plural form stereotyped the polytheism of the 
 
 ■ Max Miiller, " Semitic Monotheism,'' Chips, ii. 363. 
 " Colebrooke, Essays, i. 24, et seq. 
 
THE ALTAR AND THE GROVE. 349 
 
 Aryan world. 1 The history of the Semitic tribes was essentially the chap. 
 
 same. The names which they had used at first simply a*s titles of ' ' 
 
 God underwent no process of phonetic decay like that which con- 
 verted the name of the glistening ether into the Vedic Dyaus and the 
 Greek Zeus. The Semitic epithets for the Divine Being had never 
 been simple names for natural phenomena ; they were mostly general 
 terms, expressing the greatness, the power, and the glory of God. 
 But though El and Baal, Moloch and Milcom, never lost their meaning, 
 the idea which their teachers may have intended to convey by these 
 terms was none the less overlaid and put out of sight. Each epithet 
 now became a special name for a definite deity, and the people 
 generally sank into a worship of many gods as effectually as any of 
 the Aryan tribes, and clung to it more obstinately. 
 
 The recognition of beings powerful enough to injure, and perhaps Idea ^ and 
 placable enough to benefit, the children of men, involved the the vivify- 
 necessity of a worship or cultus. They were all of them gods of life j£ s n a°ure r 
 and death, of reproduction and decay, of the great mystery which 
 forced itself upon the thoughts of men from infancy to old age. If 
 the language of poets in general describes the phenomena of nature 
 under metaphors suggested by the processes of reproduction and 
 multiplication in the animal and vegetable world, the form which 
 the idea would, take among rude tribes with a merely sensuous 
 speech is sufficiently obvious. The words in which yEschylos and 
 Shelley speak of the marriage of the heaven and the earth do but throw 
 a veil of poetry over an idea which might easily become coarse and 
 repulsive, while they point unmistakeably to the crude sensuousness 
 which adored the principle of life under the signs of the organs of 
 reproduction in the world of animals and vegetables. The male and 
 female powers of nature were denoted respectively by an upright and 
 an oval emblem, and the conjunction of the two furnished at once 
 the altar and the ashera, or grove, against which the Hebrew prophets 
 lifted up their voice in earnest protest. It is clear that such a cultus 
 as this would carry with it a constantly increasing danger, until the 
 original character of the emblem should be as thoroughly disguised 
 as the names of some of the Vedic deities when transferred to 
 Hellenic soil. But they have never been so disguised in India as 
 amongst the ancient Semitic tribes ; 2 and in the kingdoms both of 
 
 1 Max Miiller, "Semitic Mono- tragen durften (Thucyd. vi. 56; Suid. 
 
 theism," Chips, ii. 369. s.v. 'AjSfa<popia) und des Phallus Ver- 
 
 8 "Wie wenig das Alterthum den ehrung selbst von den Vestalischen 
 
 Begriffder Unzucht mit diesem Bilde Jungfrauen (Plin. xxviii. 4, 7)." — Nork, 
 
 verband, beweist, dass in. den Eleusi- Real-WSrterbuch, s.v. Phalluscult, 52. 
 
 nien nur die Jungfrauen die b.itifi^i\Ta Even when the emblems still retain 
 
350 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Judah and of Israel the rites connected with these emblems assumed 
 their most corrupting form. Even in the Temple itself stood the 
 Ash era, or the upright emblem, 1 on the circular altar of Baal-Peor, 
 the Priapos of the Jews, thus reproducing the Linga and, Yoni of 
 the Hindu. For this symbol the women wove hangings, as the 
 Athenian maidens embroidered the sacred peplos for the ship 
 presented to Athene at the great Dionysiac festival. Here, at the, 
 winter solstice, they wept and mourned for Tammuz (Athamas), the 
 fair Adonis, done to death by the boar, as Surya Bai is poisoned by 
 the Raksbas' claw, and Rustem slain by the thorn of winter. Here 
 also, on the third day, they rejoiced at the resurrection of the lord 
 of light. 2 Hence, as most intimately connected with the reproduction 
 of life on earth, it became the symbol under which the sun, invoked 
 with a thousand names, has been worshipped throughout the world 
 as the restorer of the powers of nature after the long sleep or death 
 of winter. 
 
 more or less manifestly their original 
 character, the moral effect on the people 
 varies greatly, and the coarser develope- 
 ments of the cultus are confined to a 
 comparatively small number. Professor 
 Wilson says that "it is unattended in 
 Upper Egypt by any indecent or indeli- 
 cate ceremonies " (" On Hindu Sects," 
 Asiatic Review, vol. xvii.); and Sir 
 William Jones remarks that "it seems 
 never to have entered into the heads of 
 the Hindu legislators and people that 
 anything natural could be offensively 
 obscene — a singularity which pervades 
 all their writings,' but is no proof of the 
 depravity of their morals; hence the 
 worship of the Linga by the followers of 
 Siva, and of the Yoni by the followers 
 of Vishnu. " — Works, vol. ii. p. 3 1 1 . In 
 other words, the origin of the Phallos- 
 wors'.iip " nicht aus der moralischen Ver- 
 dorbenheit der Volker . . . sondern 
 aus ihrer noch kindlich naiven Denk- 
 weise erklart werden muss, wo man un- 
 bekummert um die Decenz des Aus- 
 drucks oder des Bildes stets dasjenige 
 wahlte, welches eine Idee am passend- 
 sten bezeichnete. Welches Glied 
 konnte aber bezeichnender an den 
 Schbpfermahnen als ebendas schaffende 
 Organ?" — Nork, Real- Wbrterbtich, s.v. 
 Phalluscult, 49. 
 
 1 This Ashera, which in the author- 
 ised English version of the Old Testa- 
 ment is translated "grove," was in fact 
 a pole or stem of a tree; and hence it is 
 that the reforming kings are said to 
 hew it down, while the stone altar, or 
 Yoni, on which it rests, is broken up. 
 
 2 That Adonis was known also by 
 the name Iao cannot be doubted. The 
 epithet specially applied to this darling 
 of Aphrodite is a/3po's, tender; and in 
 the oracle of the Klarian Apollon the 
 god of the autumn is called a&pbs 'Iaii. 
 That Adonis was known to the Cyprians 
 by this name is stated by Tzetzes and 
 Lykophron, 831. 6 "ASowis Taias irapa 
 Kvirplois K«A.e?rai — Tavas here being 
 merely a transcriber's error for 'lavas. 
 Adonis again stands to Dionysos in the 
 relation of Helios to Phoibos, or of 
 Zeus to Ouranos. Ae^ctoi fur i 
 "ASavts intb rod (rubs SiaxpBapTJifai' rby 5' 
 "h.Zvvii' 01/x erepov aWa At6vvcrov elvai 
 vofil^ovai. Plut. Sympos. iv. quest, v. 
 3; Movers, Plibnhie, ch. xiv.; Colenso, 
 On the Pentateuch, part v. appendix iii. 
 Thus we come round again to the oracle 
 of the Klarian Apollon, which teaches 
 that the supreme god is called, according 
 to the seasons of the year, Hades, Zeus, 
 Helios, and Iao. 
 
 (ppafco rbv TrdvTo>y Virarov 6ebv ippev 
 
 lad), 
 XeO i<m /**'" T ' 'AlSlJl', A/a t' uapos 
 
 ao^(Ofj.4voio, 
 'HeAioi Se 64oovs, fifroTrcipov 5 s a.0pbv 
 
 '\adi. 
 
 Hades is thus supreme lord while Per- 
 sephone abides in the unseen land, and 
 the name of Zeus here retains something 
 of its original meaning. He is the god 
 of the bright sky from which the rain 
 falls, the India or sap-god of the 
 Hellenes. 
 
EMBLEMS OF FERTILITY AND WEALTH. 
 
 35i 
 
 As such the symbol was from the first venerated as a. protecting chap. 
 power, and the Palladion thus acquired its magic virtue. 1 So guarded, ^""T^r 
 Jacob is content to lie down to sleep in his weary journey to the piiiais. 
 house of Laban ; and according to later Jewish tradition the stone 
 so set up was carried to Jerusalem, and there reverenced. But the 
 erection of these stone columns or pillars, 2 the forms of which in 
 most cases tell their own story, is common throughout the East, 
 some of the most elaborate being found near Ghizni. 3 The wooden 
 emblem carries us, however, more directly to the natural mythology 
 of the subject. The rod acquired an inherent vitality, and put forth 
 leaves and branches in the Thyrsoi of the Dionysiac worshippers and 
 the Seistron 1 of Egyptian priests. It became the tree of life, and 
 reappeared as the rod of wealth and happiness given by Apollon to 
 Hermes, 5 the mystic spear which Abaris received from the Hyper- 
 borean Sun-god, and which came daily to Phoibos in his exile laden 
 with all good things. It was seen as the lituus of the augur, the 
 
 1 The word denotes simply a figure 
 of Pallas, and Pallas is but another 
 form of Phallos. To the same class 
 belong the names of Pales, the Latin 
 god of flocks and shepherds, and of the 
 Sicilian Palikoi. The former is con- 
 nected with the Roman Palatium, the 
 spot doubtless where the emblem was 
 supposed to have been first set up. The 
 latter are Dioskouroi, twin sons of Zeus 
 and Thaleia, although they have rather 
 the character of demons. For the de- 
 scription of an ancient Egyptian amulet 
 illustrating the expression " Phallos of 
 the sun," see Brown, The Ur.icorn, 80. 
 Here the Phallos is placed before the 
 horizon, as showing the secret power of 
 the sun in the renewal of the face of the 
 world, and is winged in order to identify 
 it with the solar orbs. 
 
 2 They are the columns of Herakl£s, 
 Dionysos, Osiris, and Sesostris. The 
 statements of Herodotos about the 
 pillars set up by this last-named god 
 are singularly significant. They are 
 distinctly connected with virile strength, 
 although he supposes that they were 
 erected to receive inscriptions. The 
 names of those nations, who had won 
 a reputation for bravery, were carved on 
 them without further marks; 6twv tie 
 o/ioxIt! icaX eiirerias irapzhafie ras w6\is, 
 Toirouri 5<s iveypatye iv Tjjcri orrihritri 
 /tori ra!)T& Kol Toiai hviprftoitri tuv 
 MSvitav yefOfitvoiat, teal S}] Hal alSo7a 
 yvvaixhs irpocreveypatye, tSrj\a $t>v\i/i&/os 
 ■KOiiav Sis €"i-n(rav kvaKxties, ii. 102. In 
 short, they exhibited,like the representa- 
 
 tions of Vishnu, the two emblems com- 
 bined ; and they might be combined in 
 many ways. " Das Zeichen Schiba's 
 ein Triangel, mit der Spitze nach oben 
 (A), das aufwarts strebende, Feuer ver- 
 sinnlichend, wie umgekehrt, des feuchten 
 Wischnu Symbol das (v), das abwarts 
 fliessende Wasser versinnlichend. Da- 
 mit die Welt geschaffen werde, musste 
 Wischnu einst dem Schiba die Dienste 
 des Weibes leisten. Der monotheist- 
 ische Israelit gab beide Zeichen dem 
 Jehovah, wie der Judische Talisman 
 
 I Y~X ) Scutum Davidis genannt, be-i 
 
 weist." — Nork, s.v. Schiba. We can- 
 nothesitate to connectwiththesecolumns 
 the pillared Saints whether of the East 
 or the West. The Stylite did not choose 
 thus to exalt himself without any rea- 
 son. He found the column or pillar, 
 Phallos, an object of idolatrous reve- 
 rence, and he wished doubtless to con- 
 nect the emblem with more spiritual 
 associations. 
 
 3 Fergusson, Hist, of Arch., ii. 642. 
 
 1 This instrument exhibits both the 
 symbols in combination. 
 
 5 Hymn to Hermes, 529. "Among 
 the Manichean myths prevalent among 
 the Albigenses was one preserved to 
 us by the troubadour Pierre de St. 
 Cloud. When Adam was driven out of 
 paradise, God in mercy gave him a mira- 
 culous rod, which possessed creative 
 powers. " — Baring-Gould, Legends of 
 Old Testament Characters, i. 44. 
 
352 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK crooked staff of the shepherd, the sceptre of the king, and the 
 
 ' - divining rod which pointed out hidden springs or treasure to modern 
 
 conjurors. 1 In a form which adhered still more strictly to the first 
 idea the emblem became the stauros or cross of Osiris, and a new 
 source of mythology was thus laid open. To the Egyptian the cross 
 thus became the symbol of immortality, and the god himself was 
 crucified to the tree which denoted his fructifying power. Rising 
 from a crescent, the modified form of the Yoni, the cross set forth 
 the marriage of Ouranos and Gaia, of Vishnu and Sacti, of heaven 
 and earth. But this cross was itself a new symbol of the sun, and 
 in the so-called Assyrian representations of the moon-goddess the 
 sun is exhibited in human form standing on the crescent. More 
 commonly the plain stauros was joined with an oval ring, was worn 
 as an amulet, and was reproduced by the Christians of Egypt as a 
 sacred mark inserted in their inscriptions. In this form, or in that 
 of a ring inclosing a cross of four spokes, this emblem is found every- 
 where. It is peculiar neither to Egyptians nor Assyrians, neither to 
 Greeks, Latins, Gauls, Germans, or Hindus ; and no attempt to 
 explain its original employment by any one of these nations is 
 admissible, unless it explains or seeks to explain them for all. We 
 recognise the male symbol in the trident of Poseidon or Proteus, and 
 in the fylfot or hammer of Thor, which assumes the form of a cross 
 patte'e in the various legends which turn on the rings of Freya, 
 Holda, Venus, or Aphrodite. In each of these stories the ring is 
 distinctly connected with the goddess who represents the female 
 power in nature, or tells its own tale of sensuous passion. In one 
 of the latest of these stories a newly married youth at Rome places 
 his wedding ring on a statue of Venus, and finds to his dismay not 
 only that he cannot dislodge it from her stony finger, but that the 
 goddess herself claims to stand to him in the relation of Aphrodite' 
 to Adonis. 2 As we might expect, this myth was transferred to the 
 Virgin Mary, and the knight whose ring she refuses to surrender 
 
 ' In a picture of St. Zeno of Verona Mr. Gould cites from Ccesarius Heister- 
 
 the two emblems are combined, the fish bachensis a tale, in which a necromancer 
 
 (vesica piscis) being seen pendant from warns some youths placed within a 
 
 the pastoral or shepherd's staff. — Jame- magic ring to be on their guard against 
 
 son, Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 417. the allurements of the beings whom he 
 
 The bauble used by fools and clowns is was about to raise by his incantations, 
 
 a phallos, sometimes actually so re- These beings are beautiful damsels, one 
 
 presented, the cock's head and the ass's of whom, singling out a youth, holds 
 
 head being relics of the Priapeia. — Fos- out to him a ring of gold, which the 
 
 broke, British Monachism, p. 44 ; youth touches, thus placing himself in 
 
 Buckle, Commonplace Book, art. 1857. her power. — Curious Myths, i. 225. 
 
 2 This story is given by Fordun, See also Scott, Border Minstrelsy 
 
 Matthew of Westminster, Roger of introduction to ballad of Tamlane. ' 
 "Wendover, and Vincent of Beauvais. 
 
THE FATAL RING. 
 
 353 
 
 looks upon himself as betrothed to the mother of God, and dedicates CHAP. 
 
 himself to her by taking the monastic vows. In the older Saga of ■ 
 
 the Faroese this ring appears as that of Thorgerda, who allows Earl 
 
 Hakon to draw it from her statue after he had besought her for it 
 
 with many tears. This ring Hakon gives to Sigmund Brestesson, 
 
 bidding him never to part with it When Sigmund afterwards 
 
 refused to yield it to Olaf, the Norwegian warned him that it should 
 
 be his bane, and the prediction was fulfilled when, for the sake of 
 
 this ring, Sigmund was murdered in his sleep. 1 Finally, the symbol 
 
 of the Phallos in its physical characteristics suggested the form of 
 
 the serpent, which thus became the emblem of life and healing, and 
 
 as such appears by the side of the Hellenic Asklepios, and in the 
 
 brazen crucified serpent venerated by the Jewish people until it 
 
 was destroyed by Hezekiah. 2 
 
 Here then we have the key to that tree and serpent worship Tree and 
 ... ,, serpent 
 
 which has given rise to much ingenious and not altogether profitable worship. 
 
 speculation. The analysis of language and all that we know of the 
 
 historical growth of ideas would prepare us for the developement of 
 
 such a cultus. The condition of thought which led men to use the 
 
 names applied first to the visible heaven or the sun as names for the 
 
 1 This ring is the "teterrima causa" 
 of the war of Troy (Horace, Sat. i. 3, 
 107), and carries with it the same doom 
 which the marriage of Brynhild brought 
 to Sigurd the Volsung. It reappears 
 in the story of Amphitriyon, and again 
 of Uther and Igraine in the Arthur 
 myth. With these legends may be 
 compared the story of the crown of the 
 hero Astrabakos (Herodotos, vi. 69), 
 the counterpart of the Scottish myth 
 of Tamlane. Sir. W. Scott {Border 
 Minstrelsy, ii. 266) cites from Gervase 
 of Tilbury an account of the Dracae, a 
 sort of water-spirits, who inveigled 
 women and children into the recesses 
 which they inhabit, beneath lakes and 
 rivers, by floating past them on the 
 surface of the water, in the shape of 
 gold rings or cups ; and remarks that 
 "this story in almost all its parts is 
 current in both the Highlands and Low- 
 lands of Scotland, with no other varia- 
 tion than the substitution of Fairies for 
 Dracas, and the cavern of a hill [the 
 Horselberg] for that of a river." 
 
 s This symbol of the serpent re- 
 appears in the narrative of the tempta- 
 tion and fall of Eve, the only difference 
 being that the writer, far from sharing 
 the feelings of the devotees of Baal-peor, 
 
 regarded their notions and their practices 
 with the utmost horror ; and thus his 
 narrative exhibits the animal indulgence 
 inseparable from those idolatrous rites, 
 as destructive alike to the body and the 
 mind of man. The serpent is therefore 
 doomed to perpetual contempt, and 
 invested with some of the characteristics 
 of Vritra, the snake-enemy of Indra. 
 But Vritra is strictly the biting snake 
 of darkness ; and it is scarcely necessary 
 to say, that the Egyptian serpent is the 
 result of the same kind of metaphor 
 which has given to the elephant the 
 epithet of anguimanus. The phallic 
 tree is also introduced into the narrative 
 of the Book of Genesis : but it is here 
 called a tree not of life but of the know- 
 ledge of good and evil, that knowledge 
 which dawns in the mind with the first 
 consciousness of difference between man 
 and woman. In contrast with this tree 
 of carnal indulgence tending to death 
 is the tree of life, denoting the higher 
 existence for which man was designed, 
 and which would bring with it the 
 happiness and the freedum of the chil- 
 dren of God. In the brazen serpent of 
 the Pentateuch, the two emblems of the 
 Stauros or cross and serpent, the quies- 
 cent and energising Phallos, are united. 
 2 A 
 
354 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Sacrifices 
 connected 
 with this 
 worship. 
 
 Symbols of 
 wealth. 
 
 Supreme God could not possibly make choice of any other emblems 
 to denote the power which maintains and multiplies life. The 
 cruder realism which suggested the image of the serpent 1 was in 
 some degree refined in the symbol of the (stauros) tree, and the 
 stake or cross of Osiris gradually assumed a form in which it became 
 capable of denoting the nobler idea of generous self-denial. 
 
 But the cultus with visible emblems would, whether with Semitic 
 or with Aryan tribes, be but imperfectly developed without sacrifice ; 
 and although the blood of slain victims might be poured out to 
 appease the power which could restore as well as destroy life, still 
 there remained obviously another sacrifice more in accordance with 
 the origin of the symbols employed to denote that power. It was 
 possible to invest with a religious character either the sensuality 
 to which the Jewish or Phenician idolatry appealed, or the impulse 
 which finds its complete developement in a rigorous asceticism. In 
 the former shape the idea was realised in the rites of the Babylonian 
 Mylitta, and in the vocation of the Hierodouloi of Greek and Hindu 
 temples. 2 In the latter the sacrifice was consummated by a vow 
 of virginity, 8 and the Gerairai and Vestal Virgins of the Athenians 
 and the Romans became the type of the Catholic and Orthodox nun. 
 
 But the true mythology of the subject is connected rather with 
 the Yoni than with the Linga. If the latter serves as a sign of power, 
 the former becomes the image of unbounded wealth and fertility. 
 If the Linga is the sun-god in his majesty, the Yoni is the earth who 
 yields her fruit under his fertilising warmth ; and it thus represents 
 the sum of all potential existence. It is the ark which contains all 
 the living creatures of the earth, while the sun is hidden behind the 
 impenetrable rain-clouds; it is the Argo, which shelters all the 
 Achaian chieftains through the weary darkness of their search for 
 the Golden Fleece. In this form the emblem at once exhibits 
 mysterious properties akin to those of the Linga, and passes into 
 a legion of shapes, all closely resembling the original form, all 
 
 1 "The learned and still living Mgr. 
 Gaume (Traits dti Saint Esprit) joins 
 Camerarius in the belief that serpents 
 bite women rather than men." — Burton, 
 Tales of Indian Devilry, preface, p. xix. 
 The facts already cited account for the 
 superstition. The confusion between 
 the Phallic or life-giving and the de- 
 stroying or venomous serpent may be 
 seen in the legends of Madagascar. — 
 Malagasy Folklore, Folklore Record, vol. 
 ii. p. 20. It may be well to note that in 
 some of the valleys of the Himalayas 
 there are temples dedicated exclusively 
 
 to the worship of the serpent. — Har- 
 court, Himalayan District of Kooloo, 
 Lahotii, and Spiti. 
 
 - Herod, i. 199. The passage is 
 translated by Mr. Rawlinson, Ancient 
 Eastern Monarchies, iii. 465. 
 
 3 In this case, they were devoted to 
 the service of Sacti, the female power : 
 in the former they were the ministers 
 of Aphrodite. That the institution of 
 the virgin priestesses of Vesta and of 
 the female devotees of Mylitta or Sacti 
 had this origin, will probably be con- 
 ceded by all. 
 
THE SHIP 07 ISIS. 35: 
 
 possessing in greater or less degree a talismanic power, but all chap. 
 manifesting the presence of the essential idea of bounaUess fertility — — '■ — 
 which the symbol was specially adopted to denote. The Argo itself 
 is divine. In was the work of a being akin to, if not identical with, 
 Argos Panoptes, the all-seeing, who guards the heifer 16. In its 
 prow Athene, the dawn-goddess, herself places a piece of wood 1 from 
 the speaking oaks of Dodona, and the ship is thus endowed with 
 the power of warning and guiding the chieftains who form its crew. 
 This mystic vessel reappears in the shell of AphroditS, and in the 
 ship borne in solemn procession to the Parthenon on the great 
 Panathenaic festival, 2 as the phallos was carried before the god in 
 the great feasts of Dionysos. Over this ship floated the saffron- 
 coloured robe woven for it by the hands of Athenian maidens, as the 
 women in the temple of Jerusalem wove hangings for the Ashera 
 of Baal. This ship again is the bark or boat-shaped vessel of which 
 Tacitus speaks as the symbol employed by the Suevi in the worship 
 of Isis. Whether this goddess is to be identified with the Teutonic 
 Ziza worshipped in the country about Augsburg is an indifferent 
 matter. It is more likely that the name is given from a resemblance 
 of attributes, as he calls Wuotan Mercury and Thor Mars. But it 
 is strange that Tacitus should have satisfied himself with the remark 
 that the sign pointed simply to a foreign cultus brought across the 
 sea, when not only was the same symbol used in the Athenian 
 processions of his own day, but the voyage of Isis was marked in the 
 Roman rustic calendar on the 5th of March. 3 This ship of Isis was, 
 however, nothing more nor less than the vehicle of the earth-goddess 
 Herth or Aerth, whose sacred island Tacitus mentions in the same 
 treatise. 4 Here too, as with the Ashera at Jerusalem and the ship of 
 
 1 Seemingly the Phallos, which gave * The parallelism of these myths 
 
 her title of Pallas. In the issue this was pointed out with singular accuracy 
 
 piece of wood, or pole, is as fatal to by Mr. Richard Price in his introduction 
 
 Iason as the Stauros to Osiris, or the to Warton's History of English Poetry. 
 
 Mistletoe to Baldur. It is impossible for any student of 
 
 8 The connexion of the robe or veil comparative mythology to read this 
 
 with the Phallic emblem is brought out, remarkable treatise, written some fifty 
 
 as we might expect, with great promi- years ago, without feeling that, here as 
 
 nence in the Phrygian or Eastern my- elsewhere, other men have laboured, 
 
 thology. " Nun erz'ahlt Arnobius, and we enter into their labours. 
 
 Cybelehabemitihrem Kleideden abge- * Mr. Gould having quoted the 
 
 schnittenen Phallus des Attes bedeckt, passage from Appuleius in which the 
 
 ein Gebrauch, welcher in den Mysterien goddess says, that yearly her priests 
 
 der Isis gleichfalls vorkam, denn zu dedicate to her a new ship laden with 
 
 Byblos wurde im Tempel der Baaltis the firstfruits of spring, adds that the 
 
 (G6ttermutter)dasheiligeHolz(4>aAA<fe, carrying in procession of ships, in 
 
 palus) von der Isis mit Leinwand be- which the Virgin Mary takes the place 
 
 deckt. — Plut. de Is. c. 16. Nun wird of Aphrodite or Astarte, has not yel 
 
 auch die Bibelstelle (Ezech. xvi. 17) wholly gone out of use, and notices the 
 
 ldar."— Nork, s.v. "Attes." prohibitions issued at different times 
 
356 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The Lotos. 
 
 Goblets 
 and horns. 
 
 Athene, the vehicle was carefully covered with a robe wjiich no 
 profane hand might touch, and carried in procession drawn by- 
 cows. 1 
 
 Scarcely altered, this vessel reappears in the Lotos of Hindu and 
 Egyptian mythology, the symbol of the earth and its fecundation. 
 In this form it is the seat of the child Harpichruti (Harpokrates) 
 and of Bhayanana or Mahakali, the sanguinary deity of later Hindu 
 worship and the patron goddess of the Thugs. The eating of the 
 lotos is thus ' the eating of the forbidden fruit, and the Lotophagoi 
 of the Odyssey are an example of unrestrained sensuality, and 
 a warning to all who care for higher things not to imitate their selfish 
 pleasures, and so forget their children and their home, 2 
 
 In the folk-lore of the Deccan the vessel is represented by the can 
 of the milkwoman, the kindly Demeter, into which the beautiful 
 Surya. Bai falls in the form of a mango when the fruit is ripe. As a 
 cup, this sign reappears in a vast number of myths. It is the golden 
 cup into which Helios sinks when his journey is done. It is the 
 crater or mixing bowl in which the Platonists spoke of the Demiourgos 
 as mingling the materials of the future Kosmos. It is the horn of 
 Amaltheia, the nurse of Zeus, who gave to it the power of supplying 
 
 against the carrying about of ploughs 
 and ships on Shrove Tuesday or other 
 days. — Curious Myths, ii. 68, 69. The 
 plough is only one of the many forms 
 of the Phallos, and carries us at once 
 to the metaphor of .(Eschylos, Septem c. 
 Th. 754, and of Sophokles, O. T. 1257, 
 and to the gardens of Adonis. The 
 mode in which the advent of this ship 
 was greeted may be seen in a passage 
 quoted at length by Grimm (D. M. 
 237) from the chronicle of Rudolph of 
 St. Trudo, given in the Spicilegium of 
 DAchery. The rites were Bacchic 
 throughout, and at the end the writer 
 adds " quae tunc videres agere, nostrum 
 est tacere et deflere, quibus modo 
 contingit graviter luere. Not less 
 significant as to the meaning of the 
 plough carried about after a like sort, is 
 the statement of another chronicler, 
 " Mos erat antiquitus Lipsiae ut Libera- 
 libus(um Bacchusfest, d. i. Fassnachts) 
 personati juvenes per vicos oppidi 
 aratrum circumducerent, puellas obvias 
 per lasciviam ad illius jugum accedere 
 etiam repugnantes cogerent, hoc veluti 
 ludicro pcenam expetentes ab iis quae 
 innuptas ad eum usque diem mansissent. " 
 — Grimm, id. 243. 
 
 1 These ships, chests, or boats are 
 the kZ<tt«i fiuo-TiKol of the Mysteries, and 
 
 we see them in the chest or coffin of 
 Osiris, "das Grab des verstorbenen 
 Jahrgotts, der aber in der Idee nur 
 stirbt, weil er vom Tode wieder aufer- 
 steht," in the Korykian cave in which 
 Zeus is bound till Hermes (the breath 
 of life) comes to rescue him, and in the 
 boats in which the bodies of Elaine and 
 Arthur are laid in the more modern 
 romance. — Nork, s.v. "Arche." 
 
 2 This prohibition to eat the lotus, 
 suggests a comparison with the so-called 
 Pythagorean precept to abstain from 
 beans. Whether the word Kva/ios be- 
 longs to the same root which has yielded 
 nia, kvw, Kirifia, Kvpa, or not, the word 
 <p£.OT\\os shows clearly enough how 
 readily the shape of the bean brought 
 up the idea of a boat, or a boat-shaped 
 vessel. Nor can we well omit to note 
 the prohibition, also attributed to Py- 
 thagoras, to abstain from fish, in con- 
 nexion with the purpose especially as- 
 cribed to him, and the ascetic discipline 
 which he is said to have established. 
 It will scarcely be maintained that these 
 precepts, in a peculiarly esoteric system, 
 are to be interpreted literally. The 
 technical meanings acquired by the 
 words Kva/xos and Kvanlfa seem to point 
 in the same direction. 
 
CUPS AND MIRRORS. 357 
 
 to its possessor all that he could desire to have. This horn reappears CHAP. 
 
 in the myths of Bran, and Ceridwen, and Huon of Bordeaux, to whom • ' 
 
 Oberon gives a horn which yields the costliest wine in the hands of 
 
 a good man only. 1 The talismanic power of this horn is still further 
 
 shown in the prose romance of Tristram, when the liquor is dashed 
 
 over the lips of any guilty person who ventures to lift it to his mouth, 
 
 and in the goblet of Tegan Euroron, the wife of Caradoc of the strong 
 
 arm. 3 It is seen again in the inexhaustible table of the Ethiopians, 
 
 in the dish of Rhydderch the Scholar, in the basket of Gwyddno, in 
 
 which food designed for one becomes an ample supply for a hundred; 
 
 in the table round which Arthur and his peers hold high revelry; in 
 
 the wishing-quern of Frodi; 3 in the lamp of Allah-ud-deen, which 
 
 does the bidding of its owner through the Jin who is its servant; in 
 
 the purse of Bedreddin Hassan, which the fairy always keeps filled 
 
 in spite of his wastefulness ; in the wonderful well of Apollon Thyrxis 
 
 in Lykia, 4 which reveals all secrets to those who look into it; in the 
 
 magic cauldron which Thor got for Oegir, whose savoury contents 
 
 went spontaneously to each guest, as he might wish for them. This 
 
 mysterious mirror is the glass vessel of Agrippa, and of the cruel 
 
 stepmother in the German tale of Little Snow-white, who, like 
 
 Brynhild, lies in a death-like sleep, guarded under a case of ice by 
 
 dwarfs until the piece of poisoned apple falls from between her lips; 
 
 and we see it again in the cups of Rhea and Demeter, the milkwoman 
 
 or the gardener's wife of Hindu folk-lore, and in the modios of 
 
 Serapis. It becomes the receptacle of occult knowledge. Before the 
 
 last desperate struggle with the Spartans, Aristomenes buried in the 
 
 most secret nook of mount Ithome a treasure which, if guarded 
 
 carefully, would insure the restoration of Messene. When the battle 
 
 ' Price, Introd, to Wartoris Hist. proclaimed his peace, he set two women 
 
 En%. Poetry, 66. slaves to grind gold, peace, and pros- 
 
 2 lb. 59. This goblet reappears in perity from the wonderful quern, allow- 
 
 the Scottish ballad of the Luck of ing them no sleep longer than while the 
 
 Edenhall. When it was seized by one cuckoo was silent. At length they 
 
 of the family of Musgrave, the fairy ground a great army against Frodi, and 
 
 train vanished, crying aloud, a sea king slew him, carrying off great 
 
 , , ... booty, and with it the quern and the 
 
 " If this glass do break or tail, ^ twQ slaves . These wer e now made to 
 
 Farewell the luck of Edenhall. grind white salt in the shipSj tiu they 
 
 The goblet, it is said, narrowly escaped sank in Portland Firth There is ever 
 
 being broken, when it fell from the since a whirlpool where the sea falls 
 
 hands of the Duke of Wharton. Of into the querns eye. As the quern 
 
 course it was caught in its fall by his roars so does the sea roar, and thus it 
 
 butler, and the old idea of its inherent was that the sea first became salt - 
 
 fertility remained in the fancy that ' ' the Thorpe, Translat.oiiof SamundsEdda, 
 
 lees of wine are still apparent at the 11. 150. See also the story Why the 
 
 bottom "—Scott, Border Minstrelsy, ii. Sea is Salt, in Dasent s Norse Tales. 
 
 277. 
 
 • " When Fr6di, the Norse king, 
 
 Paus. vii. 21,6. 
 
358 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book f Leuktra justified the hopes of Aristomenes, the Argive Epiteles 
 ■ - 1 ' saw a vision which bade him recover the old woman who was well- 
 nigh at her last gasp beneath the sods of Ithome. His search was 
 rewarded by the discovery of a water-jar, in which was contained 
 a plate of the finest tin. On this plate were inscribed the mystic 
 rites for the worship of the great gods. 1 The same wonderful ewer 
 or goblet of the sun was bestowed in the Persian legend on Jemshid, 
 and explained the glories of his magnificent reign. The same vessel 
 is the divining cup of Joseph; 2 and in late traditions it reappears in 
 the tale which relates how Rehoboam inclosed the book containing 
 hts father's supernatural knowledge in an ivory ewer and placed it in 
 his tomb. The fortunes of this vessel are related by Flegetanis, who> 
 is said to have traced up his genealogy on the mother's side to 
 Solomon; nor need it be a " matter of surprise to those who remember 
 the talismanic effect of a name in the general history of fiction, that 
 a descendant of this distinguished sovereign should be found to write 
 its history, or that another Joseph should be made the instrument of 
 conveying' it to the kingdoms of Western Europe." 3 This mystic 
 vessel, the Sangreal of Arthurian legend, is at once a storehouse of 
 food as inexhaustible as the table of the Ethiopians, and a talismanic 
 test as effectual as the goblets of Oberon and Tristram. The good 
 Joseph of Arimathsea, who had gathered up in it the drops of blood' 
 which fell from the side of Jesus when pierced by the centurion's 
 spear, was nourished by it alone through his weary imprisonment of 
 two and forty years; and when at length, having either been brought 
 by him to Britain, or preserved in heaven, it was carried by angels to 
 the pure Titurel and shrined in a magnificent temple, it supplied 
 to its worshippers the most delicious food, and preserved them in 
 perpetual youth. As such, it differs in no way from the horn of 
 
 1 Paus. iv. 20, 26. With this may heir, and even raised the dead. It was 
 be compared the legend of the great in fact the counterpart of the Sangreal. 
 wizard Michael Scott. In this case the The cruder form of the myth is seen in 
 Mighty Book is found not in an ewer, the legend of the Caldron of Ceridwen, 
 but in the hand of the magician. Still the Keltic Demete"r. This story is given 
 the boat-shaped vessel is not wanting. by Mr. Gould (Curious Myths, ii. 335), 
 The magic lamp (it is a lamp in the who adds that " this vessel of the liquor 
 htory of Allah-ud-deen) is at his knee ; of wisdom had a prominent place in 
 and as the sepulchre is opened, the light British mythology. Sir Walter Scott 
 bursting forth, remarks, that in niany Scottish legends 
 Streamed upward to the chancel roof, a driving horn will prove a cornu- 
 And through the galleries far aloof. C0 P lse of S ood fortune to any one who 
 No earthly flame blazed e'er so bright, ? an sna tch it from the fairies and bear 
 It shone like heaven's own blessed light. ll acros s a running stream. As an 
 
 emblem this cup is combined with the 
 Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel, ii. 18. serpent in the representations of St. 
 
 2 The same vessel in Taliesin imparts John. 
 
 to its possessor the wisdom of Iamos. 3 lntrod. to Warlori 's Hist, of En? 
 
 It healed all the evils to which flesh is Poetry, 
 
THE SANGREAL. 359 
 
 Amaltheia, or any other of the oval vessels which can be traced back chap. 
 
 to the emblem of the Hindu Sacti. We should be prep*ed, there- '■ ' 
 
 fore, to find in the many forms assumed by the Arthurian myth some 
 traces of its connexion with the symbol of the fecundating power in 
 nature; nor is this expectation disappointed. The symbol of the 
 sun has already appeared as a lance, spear, or trident in the myths of 
 Abaris and Poseidon ; and in this form it is seen again in the story 
 of the Holy Grail, when Sir Galahad is to depart with it from the 
 Logrian land. As with his comrades he sups in the palace of King 
 Pelles, he sees a great light, in which he beheld four angels supporting 
 an aged man clad in pontifical garb, whom they placed before a table 
 on which lay the Sangreal. "This aged prelate was Joseph of 
 Arimathaea, 'the first bishop of Christendom.' Then the other 
 angels appeared bearing candles and a spear, from which fell drops, 
 of blood, and these drops were collected by angels in a box. Then 
 the angels set the candles upon the table, and ' the fourth set the 
 holy speare even upright upon the vessel,' as represented on an 
 ancient churchyard crucifix, in rude sculpture, at Sancreed in Corn- 
 wall." 1 This mysterious spear is constantly seen throughout the 
 legend. When Sir Bors had seen the Sangreal in the house of Pelles, 
 he was led into a fair chamber, where he laid himself in full armour 
 on the bed "And right as he saw come in a light that he might 
 wel see a speare great and long which come straight upon him point- 
 long." 2 Indeed the whole myth exhibits that unconscious repetition! 
 and reproduction of the same forms and incidents which is the special! 
 characteristic of the Greek dynastic legends. Perceval, in the episode- 
 of Pecheur, the Fisher-king, answers to Sir Galahad in the quest of 
 the Sangreal. In both cases the work can be done only by a pure- 
 minded knight, and Perceval as well as Galahad goes in search of 
 a goblet, which has been stolen from the king's table. The sick king, 
 whom he finds lying on his couch, has been wounded while trying to 
 mend a sword broken by his enemy Pertinax, and Perceval alone 
 can make it sound, as Theseus only can recover the sword and 
 sandals of his father Aigeus. The title of the Fisher-king suggests 
 a comparison with that of Bheki in the Hindu legend and the Frog- 
 prince of the German story. The latter denotes the sun as it rests 
 upon the water ; and as Bheki cannot reappear in her former beauty 
 until the night is spent, so the Fisher-king cannot regain his health 
 until Pertinax has been slain. He is avenged by Perceval, who bears 
 away the holy vessel and the bleeding lance as the reward of his 
 
 1 Mr. Gould, from whom these words emblem. — Curious Myths, ii. 348. 
 are quoted, gives a drawing of this * Morte d'Arthure. Gould, ii. 340. 
 
360 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK prowess. An earlier heathen version of this story is found in the 
 
 ' ' legend of Pheredur, in which the boat-shaped vessel appears with 
 
 the head of a man swimming in blood — a form which carries us to 
 the repulsive Maha Kali of later Hindu mythology. 
 Gradual i n the myth of Erichthonios we have a crucial instance of a coarse 
 
 of the and unseemly story produced by translating into the language of 
 myth ' human life phrases which described most innocently and most 
 vividly some phenomena of nature. In the myth of the Sangreal we 
 see in the fullest degree the working of the opposite principle. For 
 those who first sought to frame for themselves some idea of the great 
 mystery of their existence, and who thought that they had found it 
 in the visible media of reproduction, there was doubtless far less of 
 a degrading influence in the cultus of the signs of the male and female 
 powers and the exhibition of their symbols than we might be disposed 
 to imagine. But that the developement of the idea might lead to 
 the most wretched results, there could be no question. No degrada- 
 tion could well be greater than that of the throngs who hurried to 
 the temples of the Babylonian Mylitta. But we have seen the myth, 
 starting from its crude and undisguised forms, assume the more harm- 
 less shape of goblets or horns of plenty and fertility, of rings and 
 crosses, of rods and spears, of mirrors and lamps. It has brought 
 before us the mysterious ships endowed with the powers of thought 
 and speech, beautiful cups in which the wearied sun sinks to rest, 
 the staff of wealth and plenty with which Hermes guides the cattle of 
 Helios across the blue pastures of heaven, the cup of Dem£ter into 
 which the ripe fruit casts itself by an irresistible impulse. We have 
 seen the symbols assume the character of talismanic tests, by which 
 the refreshing draught is dashed from the lips of the guilty; and, 
 finally, in the exquisite legend of the Sangreal the symbols have 
 become a sacred thing, which only the pure in heart may see and 
 touch. To Lancelot who tempts Guenevere to be faithless to Arthur, 
 as Helen was unfaithful to Menelaos, it either remains invisible, or is 
 seen only to leave him stretched senseless on the earth for his pre- 
 sumption. The myth which corrupted the worshippers of Tammuz 
 in the Jewish temple has supplied the beautiful picture of unselfish 
 devotion which sheds a marvellous glory on the career of the pure 
 Sir Galahad. 1 
 
 1 In the Arabian story the part of tellers were not very careful about the 
 
 Sir Galahad is played by Allah-ud-deen, consistency of their legends. The 
 
 who is told by the magician that no one magician, it is true, singles out the boy 
 
 in the whole world but he can be per- for his "simplicity and artlessness ; 
 
 mitted to touch or lift up the stone and but the portrait drawn of the child at 
 
 go beneath it. The Eastern story- the outset of the tale is rather that of 
 
MYSTERIES. 36 1 
 
 No idea is, however, more prominent in most of the shapes which CI ? T AP - 
 
 the myth connected with the Linga and Yoni have assumed rtian that : ' 
 
 of a mysterious knowledge ; nor has any feature in the ancient world Semitic" 1 
 attracted more attention than the great Mysteries in which a knowledge mvsterie s. 
 hidden from the profane was supposed to be imparted to the initiated. 
 Is the knowledge to which the myths refer the sum and substance of 
 the knowledge conveyed in the mysteries ? That it has been and is 
 so throughout India, no one probably will deny or dispute. The 
 wailing of the Hebrew women at the death of Tammuz, the death and 
 resurrection of Osiris, the adoration of the Babylonian Mylitta, the 
 Sacti ministers of Hindu temples, the cross and crescent of Isis, the 
 rites of the Jewish altar of Baal-Peor, wholly preclude all doubt of the 
 real nature of the great festivals and mysteries of Phenicians, Jews, 
 Assyrians, Egyptians, and Hindus. Have we any reason for suppos- 
 ing that the case was essentially different in more western countries, 
 and that the mysteries of the Hellenic tribes were not substantially 
 identical with those of other Aryan and Semitic tribes ? It may be 
 doubted whether the Greek mysteries were ever used for the exposi- 
 tion of theological doctrines differing from the popular creed, or 
 even whether any recondite doctrine, religious or philosophical, was 
 attached to the mysteries, or contained in the holy stories of any 
 priesthood of the ancient world. If by this recondite teaching be 
 meant doctrines relating to the nature of God and the Divine govern- 
 ment of the world, the judgments of historians like Thirl wall and 
 Grote may perhaps be in accordance with fact ; but it can scarcely 
 be denied that the thoughts aroused by the recognition of the differ- 
 ence between man and woman are among the most mysterious 
 stirrings of the human heart, and that a philosophy which professed 
 to reconcile the natural impulses of the worshippers with the sense 
 of right and duty would carry with it a strange and almost irresistible 
 fascination. The Corinthian Aphrodite 1 had her Hierodouloi, the 
 pure Gerairai ministered to the goddess of the Parthenon, and 
 the altar of the Latin Vesta was tended by her chosen virgins. A 
 system which could justify these inconsistencies in the eyes of the 
 initiated, and lead them to discern different forms of the same 
 sacrifice in the purity of the one and the abandonment of the other, 
 might well be said to be based on a recondite, though not a wholesome, 
 
 Boots or Cinderella. The treasure is finger is the ring of Gyges.— Plato, 
 
 a lamp in which burns a liquid which Polit. 359. If it does not make himself 
 
 is not oil; with the possession of it are invisible, the visibility of the minister 
 
 bound up wealth, happiness, and splen- of the ring depends upon the way in 
 
 dour : it is, in short, the Sangreal. The which it is handled, this being in both 
 
 ring which the magician places on his stories the same. 
 
362 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book doctrine. Nor, indeed, is it supposed that the character of the 
 
 ' • Hellenic mysteries was less dramatic than those of Egypt or Hindustan. 
 
 Every act of the great Eleusinian festival reproduced the incidents of 
 the myth of Demeter, and the processions of Athen6 and Dionysos 
 exhibited precisely the same symbols which marked the worship of 
 Vishnu and Sacti, of the Egyptian Isis and the Teutonic Hertha. 
 The substantial identity of the rites justifies the inference of a sub- 
 stantial identity of doctrines. 1 It is no accident which has given to 
 Iswara Arghanautha, the Hindu Dionysos, an epithet which makes 
 him the lord of that divine ship which bore the Achaian warriors 
 from the land of darkness to the land of the morning. The testimony 
 of Theodoret, Arnobios, and Clement of Alexandria, that an emblem 
 similar to the Yoni was worshipped in the mysteries of Eleusis needs 
 no confirmation, when we remember that the same emblem was 
 openly carried in procession at Athens. The vases in the Hamiltonian 
 collection at the British Museum leave us as little in doubt that 
 the purification of women in the Hellenic mysteries agreed closely 
 with that of the Sacti in the mysteries of the Hindus. That ornaments 
 in the shape of a ves'^a have been popular in all countries as pre- 
 servatives against dangers, and especially from evil spirits, can as little 
 be questioned as the fact that they still retain some measure of their 
 ancient popularity in England, where horse-shoes are nailed to walls as 
 a safeguard against unknown perils, where a shoe is thrown by way 
 of good luck after newly married couples, and where the villagers 
 have not yet ceased to dance round the Maypole on the green. 
 Real It may be confidently said that the facts now stated furnish a clue 
 
 tree and which will explain all the phenomena of tree and serpent worship. 
 serpent The wno i e question is indeed one of fact, and it is useless to build on 
 
 worship. ^ . ' 
 
 hypothesis. If there is any one point more certain than another, it is 
 that, wherever tree and serpent worship has been found, the cultus of 
 the Phallos and the Ship, of the Linga and the Yoni, in connexion 
 with the worship of the sun, has been found also. It is impossible to 
 dispute the fact ; and no explanation can be accepted for one part of 
 the cultus which fails to explain the other. It is unnecessary, 
 therefore, to analyse theories which profess to see in it the worship of 
 
 ' " In den Eleusinischen Mysterien mann also to Upk ZtinvvaBtu nannte. 
 
 wurde ein Phallus entblosst und den Vgl. Lobek. Aglaoph. p. 49." — Nork, 
 
 Eingeweihten gezeigt (Tert. ad Valent. iv. 53. The form of dismissal at the 
 
 p. 289): und Demeter wird dadurch, Eleusinian mysteries, nbyZ o/nra£, has 
 
 class Baubo ihre kt«1j entblosst, zur been identified by some with the 
 
 Heiterkeit gestimmt. Clem. Al. Protr. " Cansha Om Pacsha," with which the 
 
 p. 16; Arnob. adv. Gent. v. p. 218. Brahmans close their religious services. 
 
 Dieslasstvoraussetzen, dass desgleichen — Nork, i. vii. 
 in den Eleusinien wirklich geschah, was 
 
PHALLIC TREES AND SERPENTS. 363 
 
 the creeping brute or the wide-branched tree. A religion based on chap. 
 
 the .worship of the venomous reptile must have been a religion of ' — 
 
 terror ; in the earliest glimpses which we have of it, the serpent is a 
 symbol of life and of love. Nor is the Phallic cultus in any respect 
 a cultus of the full-grown and branching tree. In its earliest form the 
 symbol is everywhere a mere stauros, or pole; and although this 
 1 stock or rod budded in the shape of the thyrsos and the shepherd's 
 staff, yet even in its latest developements the worship is confined to 
 small bushes and shrubs and diminutive plants of a particular kind. 
 Nor is it possible again to dispute the fact, that every nation at some 
 stage or other of its history has attached to this cultus precisely that 
 meaning which the Brahman now attaches to the Linga and the Yoni. 
 That the Jews clung to it in this special sense with vehement tenacity 
 is the bitter complaint of the prophets ; and the crucified serpent, 
 adored for its healing powers, stood untouched in the temple until it 
 was removed and destroyed by Hezekiah. This worship of serpents 
 "void of reason," condemned in the Wisdom of Solomon, probably 
 survived even the Babylonish captivity. Certainly it was adopted by 
 the Christians who were known as Ophites, Gnostics, and Nicolaitans. 
 In Athenian mythology the serpent and the tree are singularly promi- 
 nent. Kekrops, Erechtheus, and Erichthonios, are each and all 
 serpentine in the lower portion of their bodies. The sacred snake of 
 Athene had its abode in the Akropolis, and her olive-tree secured for 
 her the victory in her rivalry with Poseidon. The health-giving 
 serpent lay at the feet of Asklepios, and snakes were fed in his temple 
 at Epidauros and elsewhere. 1 That the ideas of mere terror and death, 
 suggested by the venomous or the crushing reptile, could never have 
 given way thus completely before those of life, healing, and safety, is 
 obvious enough ; and the latter ideas alone are associated with the 
 
 1 It is, in fact, the healer, under the was practically identical with that of 
 many names, Iason, Iasion, &c, which the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis. The 
 bear the equivocal meaning of saving or epithet Sabazios, which, like the words 
 destroying life, as they are referred to Adonai and Melkarth, was imported 
 lis, poison, or Ho/uu, to heal. It is the into Greek mythology, is applied not 
 means by which the waste caused by less to Dionysos than to Zeus; but the 
 death is repaired. " Daher die Phallus- stories told of this deity remained vague 
 schlange, auch die Heilschlange 'Ayaflo- and shadowy. Sometimes he is a son 
 Saijiw. daher der mit Schlangen urn- of Zeus and Persephone 1 , and is nursed 
 giirtete Phallusstab in der Hand des by the nymph Nyssa, whose name re- 
 Hermes Wv<pa\\iKis, und des Aesculap, appears in Dionysos: sometimes Dio- 
 dessen weibliche Halfte Hygiea ihm nysos is himself the father of Sabazios, 
 die Schale entgegen tragt, welche ein who is, again, a child also of Kabeiros 
 Symbol des Mutterbeckensist."— Nork, or of Kronos. Mr. Brown (Great 
 s.v. "Arzt." This shell is the shell of Dionysiak Myth, ii. 32) speaks of the 
 Aphrodite.' word Sabos as becoming an equivalent 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to add that for madman, and so explains the 
 
 serpents played a prominent part in the witches' Sabbat. 
 rites of Zeus Sabazios, whose worship 
 
■>M 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 The edu- 
 cation of 
 man. 
 
 serpent as the object of adoration. The deadly beast always was, and 
 has always remained, the object of the horror and loathing which is 
 expressed for Ahi, the choking and throttling snake, the Vritra whom 
 Indra smites with his unerring lance, the dreadful Azidahaka of the 
 Avesta, the Zohak or biter of modern Persian mythology, the serpents 
 whom Herakles strangles in his cradle, the Python, or Fafnir, or 
 Grendel, or Sphnix, whom Phoibos, or Sigurd, or Beowulf, or Oidipous, 
 smite and slay. That the worship of the serpent has nothing to do 
 with these evil beasts is abundantly clear from all the Phallic monu- 
 ments of the East or West. In the topes of Sanchi and Amravati the 
 disks which represent the Yoni predominate in every part of the 
 design ; the emblem is worn with unmistakeable distinctness by every 
 female figure carved within these disks, while above the multitude are 
 seen, on many of the disks, a group of women with their hands resting 
 on the linga, which they uphold. It may, indeed, be possible to trace 
 out the association which connects the Linga with the bull in Sivaism, 
 as denoting more particularly the male power, while the serpent in 
 Jainaism and Vishnavism is found with the female emblem the Yoni. 
 So again in Egypt, some may discern in the bull Apis or Mnevis the 
 predominance of the male idea in that country, while in Assyria or 
 Palestine the serpent or Agathos Daimon is connected with the altar 
 of Baal. These are really questions of no moment. The historical 
 inquiry is ended when the origin of the emblems has been determined. 
 For the student who is willing to be taught by the facts which he 
 regards as ascertained, this chapter in the history of human thought 
 will involve no more perplexity than the fact that there was a time 
 when human speech had none but sensuous words, and mankind, 
 apparently, none but sensuous ideas. If from these sensuous words 
 have been evolved terms capable of expressing the highest concep- 
 tions to which the human mind has yet risen, he may be well content 
 to accept, as a necessary stage in the education of man, the condition 
 of thought which fastened on the processes of natural reproduction. 
 If our limbs are still shackled and our movements hindered by ideas 
 which have their root in the sensuousness of the ancient language, we 
 shall do well to remember that a real progress for mankind might in 
 no other way have been possible. If the images of outward and 
 earthly objects have been made the means of filling human hearts 
 and minds with the keenest yearnings for Divine truth, beauty, and 
 love, the work done has been the work of God. 
 
( 36S ) 
 
 Section XIII.— THE SUN-GODS OF LATER HIMDU 
 MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 If it be urged that the attribution to Krishna of qualities or chap 
 powers belonging to other deities is a mere device by which his H. 
 devotees sought to supersede the more ancient gods, the answer must Vishnu a* 
 be that nothing is done in his case which has not been done in the Krlshna - 
 case of almost every other member of the great company of the gods, 
 and that the systematic adoptipn of this method is itself conclusive 
 proof of the looseness and« flexibility of the materials of which the 
 cumbrous mythology of the Hindu epic poems is composed. As 
 being Vishnu, Krishna performs all the feats of that god. 
 
 " And thou, Krishna, of the Yadava race, having become the son 
 of Aditi and being called Vishnu, the younger brother of Indra, the 
 all-pervading, becoming a child, and vexer of thy foes, hast by thy 
 energy traversed the sky, the atmosphere, and the earth in three 
 strides." 1 
 
 He is thus also identified with Hari or the dwarf Vishnu, a myth Parentage 
 which carries us to that of the child Hermes as well as to the story ° 
 of the limping Hephaistos. As the son of Nanda, the bull, he is 
 Govinda, a name which gave rise in times later than those of the 
 Maha.bha.rata to the stories of his life with the cowherds and his 
 dalliance with their wives ; but in the Mahabharata he is already the 
 protector of cattle, and like Herakles slays the bull which ravaged 
 the herds. 2 His name Krishna, again, is connected with another 
 parentage, which makes him the progeny of the black hair of Hari, 
 the dwarf Vishnu. 3 But he is also Hari himself, and Hari is Nara- 
 yana, "the god who transcends all, the minutest of the minute, the 
 vastest of the vast, the greatest of the great." In short, the inter- 
 change or contradiction is undisguised, for " he is the soul of all, the 
 omniscient, the all, the all-knowing, the producer of all, the god 
 whom the goddess Devaki bore to Vishnu. 4 Elsewhere Krishna 
 speaks of himself as the maker of the Rudras and the Vasus, as both 
 the priest and the victim, and adds, 
 
 "Know that Dharma (righteousness) is my beloved firstborn 
 mental son, whose nature is to have compassion on all creatures. In 
 his character I exist among men, both present and past, passing 
 through many varieties of mundane existence. I am Vishnu, Brahma, 
 Indra, and the source as well as the destruction of things, the creator 
 
 1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 118. * lb. 206. 
 
 8 lb. 221. * /*. 224. 
 
366 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and the annihilator of the whole aggregate of existences. While all 
 s — — '■ — ' men live in unrighteousness, I, the unfailing, build up the bulwark of 
 righteousness, as the ages pass away." 1 As such he is not generated - 
 by a father. He is the unborn. 
 
 Krislina J . 
 
 and Rudra The character of Rudra, thus said to be sprung from Krishna, is 
 
 not more definite. As so produced, he is Time, and is declared by 
 
 his father to be the offspring of his anger. 2 But in the character of 
 
 Mahadeva, Rudra is worshipped by Krishna, and the necessary 
 
 explanation is that in so adoring him Krishna was only worshipping 
 
 himself. 8 Rudra, however, is also Narayana, and Siva the destroyer. 
 
 There is no difference between Siva who exists in the form of Vishnu, 
 
 and Vishnu who exists in the form of Siva, just as in the form of Hari 
 
 and Hara Vishnu and Mahadeva are combined. " He who is 
 
 Vishnu is Rudra ; he who is Rudra is Pitamaha (Brahma, the great 
 
 father) ; the substance is one, the gods are three, Rudra, Vishnu, 
 
 and Pitamaha. . . . Just as water thrown into water can be nothing 
 
 else than water, so Vishnu entering into Rudra must possess the 
 
 nature of Rudra. And just as fire entering into fire can be nothing 
 
 else but fire, so Rudra entering into Vishnu must possess the nature 
 
 of Vishnu. Rudra should be understood to possess the nature of fire : 
 
 Vishnu is declared to possess the nature of Soma (the Moon) ; and 
 
 the world, moveable and immoveable, possesses the nature of Agni 
 
 and Soma" 4 
 
 Vishnu it i s the same with Rama, who is sometimes produced from the 
 
 and Rama. -...,■• i • -i i • i » t. 
 
 half of Vishnu s virile power, and sometimes addressed by Brahma as 
 " the source of being and cause of destruction, Upendra and Mahen- 
 dra, the younger and the elder Indra." 6 He is Skambha, the sup- 
 porter, and Trivikrama, the god of three strides. 6 But the story of his 
 wife Sita who is stolen away and recovered by Rama after the slaughter 
 of Ravana runs parallel with that of Sarama. and Pani, of Paris and 
 Helen. 
 Hindu This cumbrous mysticism leads us further and further from the 
 
 simpler conceptions of the oldest mythology, in which Rudra is 
 scarcely more than an epithet, applied sometimes to Agni, sometimes 
 to Mitra, Varuna, the Asvins, or the Maruts. 
 
 "Thou, Agni, art Rudra, the deity of the great sky. Thou art the 
 host of the Maruts. Thou art lord of the sacrificial food. Thou, 
 who hast a pleasant abode, movest onwards with the ruddy 
 winds." 7 
 
 1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, pt. iv. p. • lb. 151. 
 235- ' -ff. V. ii. 1, 6; Muir, Sanskrit 
 
 » Jb. 205. • lb. 225. Texts, pt. iv. p. 257. 
 
 * lb. 237. c lb. 146, 250. 
 
THE BIRTH OF KRISHNA. 307 
 
 It was in accordance with the general course of Hindu mythology CHAP, 
 that the greatness of Rudra, who is sometimes regarded as self- "— — '■ — ■ 
 existent, should be obscured by that of his children. 
 
 The two opposite conceptions, which exhibit Herakl£s in one T f ll , e r S - t0 1 ' y 
 aspect as a self-sacrificing and unselfish hero, in another as the 
 sensual voluptuary, are brought before us with singular prominence 
 in the two aspects of Krishna's character. The being who in the one 
 is filled with divine wisdom and love, who offers up a sacrifice which 
 he alone can make, who bids his friend Arjuna look upon him as 
 sustaining all worlds by his inherent life, is in the other a being not 
 much more lofty or pure than Aphrodite or Adonis. If, like the 
 legends of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, the myth seems to lend itself 
 with singular exactness to an astronomical interpretation, it also links 
 itself with many stories of other Aryan gods or heroes, and thus throws 
 on them a light all the more valuable from the independent develope- 
 ments of these several myths from a common germ. Thus if 
 Pausanias speaks of Dionysos Antheus, Krishna also is Vanamali, the 
 flower-crowned. If Herakl£s smites Antaios, Krishna overthrows the 
 giant Madhu, and the cruel tyrant of Madura. Like Oidipous, 
 Romulus, Perseus, Cyrus, and others, he is one of the fatal children, 
 born to be the ruin of their sires ; and the king of Madura, like Laios, 
 is terrified by the prediction that his sister's son shall deprive him of 
 his throne and his life. It is but the myth of Kronos and Zeus in 
 another form. The desire of Kamsa is to slay his sister, but her 
 husband promises to deliver all her children into the hands of the 
 tyrant. But although six infants were thus placed in his power and 
 slain, he shut up the beautiful Devaki and her husband in a 
 dungeon ; and when the seventh child was about to be born, Devaki 
 prays, like Rhea, that this one at least may be spared. In answer to 
 her entreaty, Bhavani, who shields the newly-born children, comes to 
 comfort her, and taking the babe brings it to the house of Nanda, 
 to whom a son, Balarama, had been bom. When Devaki was to 
 become for the eighth time a mother, Kamsa was again eager to 
 destroy the child As the hour drew near, the mother became more 
 beautiful, her form more brilliant, while the dungeon was filled with a 
 heavenly light as when Zeus came to Danae in a golden shower, and 
 the air was filled with a heavenly harmony as the chorus of the gods, 
 with Brahma and Siva at their head, poured forth their gladness in 
 song. 1 All these marvels (which the Bhagavata Purana assigns to the 
 
 1 This song would of itself suffice to names, denotes the mere conception of 
 prove how thoroughly Krishna, like the One True God, who is but feebly 
 Dyu, Indra, Varuna, Agni, or any other shadowed forth under these titles and 
 
368 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK birth of the child) are reported to Kamsa by the warders, and his 
 
 • I1- jealousy and fear are still more vehemently excited. But the fatal 
 
 hour draws nigh, and in a cave, like Zeus and Mithras, Krishna, 
 as the incarnation of Vishnu, is born with four arms and all the 
 attributes of that god. " On the day of his birth the quarters of the 
 horizon were irradiate with joy, as if more light were diffused over 
 the whole earth. The virtuous experienced new delight ; the strong 
 winds were hushed, and the rivers glided tranquilly when Janarddana 
 was about to be born. The seas with their melodious murmurings 
 made the music, while the spirits and the nymphs of heaven danced 
 and sang." 1 For a moment he takes away from the eyes of his 
 earthly parents the veil which prevents them from seeing things as 
 they are, and they behold the deity in all his majesty. But the mists 
 are again suffered to fall upon them, and they see only the helpless 
 babe in his cradle. Then the voice of an angel sounds in the father's 
 ears, bidding him take the child and go into Gokala, the land of 
 cows, to the house of Nanda, where he should find a new-born 
 maiden. This child he must bring back, leaving Krishna in her 
 place. This he is at once enabled to do, for the fetters fall from his 
 hands and the prison doors open of their own accord; and guided by 
 a dragon or snake, who here plays the part of the dragons or snakes in 
 the myths of Iamos or Medeia, he reaches the house of Nanda. Nanda 
 himself is in profound sleep, and his wife prostrate from pain when 
 Krishna is left under their roof. As the husband of Devaki re-enters 
 the prison, the doors close again and the chains fasten themselves on 
 
 by the symbolism of these myths. "As Swadha: thou art wisdom, ambrosia, 
 Aditi," say the gods to Devaki the light, and heaven. Thou hast de- 
 mother of the unborn Krishna, "thou scended upon earth for the preserva- 
 art the parent of the gods; as Diti, tion of the world. "— Vishnu Purana, 
 thou art the mother of the Daityas, H. H. Wilson, p. 501. The same idea 
 their foes. . . . The whole earth, deco- animates much of the devotion ad- 
 rated with oceans, rivers, continents, dressed to the Virgin Mary, as in the 
 cities, villages, hamlets, and towns; all Litany of Loretto and in many among 
 the fires, waters, and winds; the stars, the authorised hymns of the Breviary. 
 astensms, and planets; the sky crowded > Vishnu Purana, H. H. Wilson, 
 with the variegated chariots of the gods, 503. Milton was led into the same strain 
 and ether that provides space for all of thought as he wrote his Christmas- 
 
 substance ; the several spheres of earth, Hymn : 
 
 sky, and heaven, of saints, sages, 
 
 ascetics, and of Brahma ; the whole egg " Peaceful was the night 
 
 of Brahma with all its population of Wherein the Prince of Light 
 
 gods, demons, spirits, snake-gods, fiends, His reign of peace upon the earth 
 
 ghosts and imps, men and brutes, and began : 
 
 whatever creatures have life, comprised The winds with wonder whist, 
 
 in him who is their eternal lord and Smoothly the waters kissed, 
 
 the object of all apprehension ; whose Whispering new joys to the mild 
 
 real form, nature, names, and dimen- Ocean, 
 
 sions are not within human appre- Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
 
 hension,— are now with that Vishnu While birds of calm sit brooding on 
 
 in thee. Ihou art Swaha; thou art the charmed wave." 
 
KRISHNA AND THE GOPIAS. 369 
 
 his wrists, while the cry of the infant rouses the warders, who in their CHAP, 
 turn carry the tidings to the king. At midnight Kamsa enters the • - ■ ' ■ • 
 dungeon, and Devaki entreats his mercy for the babe. She prays in 
 vain ; but before Kamsa can accomplish his will, the child slips from 
 his grasp, and he hears the voice of Bhavani, telling him that his de- 
 stroyer is born and has been placed beyond his reach. Mad with rage, 
 the tyrant summons his council and asks what should be done. The 
 answer is that, as they know not where the child is, he should order all 
 the newly-born infants or all children under two years to be slain. 
 More assured than ever that his great enemy was his sister's child, he 
 sets everything in motion to insure his destruction. But the demon 
 Putana, who assaults the child in his cradle, is dealt with as sum- 
 marily as the dragons who seek to strangle the infant Herakles. 
 This demon, finding Krishna asleep, took him up and gave him 
 her breast to suck, the doom of all who do so suck being instant 
 death ; but Krishna strains it with such violence as to drain Putana 
 of all life. As Krishna grew up, he became the darling of the milk- 
 maidens, in whom some have seen the stars of the morning sky, — an 
 inference which seems to be here warranted by the myth that Krishna 
 stole their milk, seemingly as the sun puts out the light of the stars ; 
 and this inference is strengthened by the story which connected the 
 formation of the milky way with the nursing of Herakles by Here. 1 
 When the maidens complained of the wrong, Krishna opened his 
 mouth, and therein they saw revealed his full splendour. They now 
 beheld him seated in the midst of all created things, receiving adora- 
 tion from all. But from this glimpse of his real glory the legend returns 
 to the myths told of swan-maidens and their lovers. In the nine 
 days' harvest feast of Bhavani (the nine days' festival of Demeter) the 
 Gopias, each and all, pray to the goddess that they may become the 
 brides of Krishna. 3 As they bathe in a stream, Krishna takes their 
 clothes and refuses to surrender them unless each comes separately 
 for her raiment Thus the prayer is fulfilled, and Krishna, playing on 
 his flute among the Gopias, becomes the Hellenic Apoll6n Nomios, a 
 
 1 See page 289. Tylor, Primitive gloaming, as it were by a more serene 
 Culture, i. 325. repetition of the dawn. The Dawn her- 
 
 2 This myth is in strict accordance self is likewise called the wife ; but the 
 with the old Vedic phrase addressed to expression ' husband of the wives ' is in 
 the Sun as the horse: "After thee is another passage clearly applied to the 
 the chariot ; after thee, Arvan, the man; sinking sun, R. V. ix. 8b, 32: 'The 
 after thee the cows ; after thee, the host husband of the wives approaches the 
 of the girls." Thus, like Agni, Indra, end.' "—Lectures, second series, 513. 
 and Yama, he is the husband of the 3 The parallel is exact. Phoibos 
 wives, an expression which, in Professor giving to Hermes charge over his cattle 
 Max Muller's opinion, was probably is represented by Indra, who says to 
 " meant originally for the evening sun Krishna, ' ' I have now come by desire of 
 as surrounded by the splendours of the the cattle to install you as Upendra, and 
 
 2 B 
 
37° 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 whose harp is the harp of Orpheus, rousing all things into life and 
 ■• energy. With these maidens he dances, like Apollon with the Muses, 
 each maiden fancying that she alone is his partner (an idea which we 
 find again in the story of the sorcerer Naraka). Only Radha, who 
 loved Krishna with an absorbing affection, saw things as they really 
 were, and withdrew herself from the company. In vain Krishna 
 sent maidens to soothe her and bring her back. To none would she 
 listen, until the god came to her himself. His words soon healed the 
 wrong, and so great was his joy with her that he lengthened the night 
 which followed to the length of six months, an incident which has but 
 half preserved its meaning in the myth of Zeus and Alkmene, but 
 which here points clearly to the six months which Persephone spends 
 with her mother Demeter. The same purely solar character is im- 
 pressed on the myth in the Bhagavata Purana, which relates how 
 Brahma, wishing to prove whether Krishna was or was not an 
 incarnation of Vishnu, came upon him as he and Balarama were 
 sleeping among the shepherd youths and maidens. All these Brahma 
 took away and shut up in a distant prison, and Krishna and his 
 brother on awaking found themselves alone. Balarama proposed to 
 go in search of them. Krishna at once created the same number of 
 youths and maidens so precisely like those which had been taken 
 away that when Brahma returned at the end of a year, he beheld 
 to his astonishment the troop which he fancied that he had broken 
 up. Hurrying to the prison he found that none had escaped from it, 
 and thus convinced of the power of Krishna, he led all his prisoners 
 back to him, who then suffered the phantasms which he had evoked 
 to vanish away. Here we have the sleep of the sun-god which in other 
 myths becomes the sleep of Persephone 1 and Brynhild, of Endymion or 
 Adonis, — the slumber of autumn when the bright clouds are imprisoned 
 in the cave of Cacus or the Panis, while the new-created youths and 
 maidens represent merely the days and months which come round again 
 as in the years that had passed away. In his solar character Krishna 
 must again be the slayer of the Dragon or Black Snake, Kalinak, the 
 old serpent with the thousand heads, who, like Vitra or the Sphinx, 
 poisons or shuts up the waters. 1 In the fight which follows, and 
 
 as the Indra of the cows thou shalt be many bruises were inflicted on the hood 
 
 called Govinda." — Vishnu Purana, H. by the pressure of the toes of Krishna. 
 H. Wilson, 528. Among the many foes conquered by 
 
 1 The Vishnu Purana (Wilson, 514) Krishna is Naraka, from whom he 
 
 tells us how, stirred up by the incite- rescues elephants, horses, women, &c. 
 
 ments of Nanda, Krishna lays hold of "At an auspicious season he espoused 
 
 the middle hood of the chief of the all the maidens whom Naraka had 
 
 snakes with both hands, and, bending carried off from their friends. At one 
 
 it down, dances upon it in triumph. and the same moment he received the 
 
 Whenever the snake attempted to raise hands of all of them, according to the 
 
 his head, it was again trodden down, and ritual, in separate mansions. Sixteen 
 
THE DEATH OF KRISHNA. 
 
 371 
 
 which Hindu art has especially delighted in symbolising, Krishna 
 freed himself from the coils of the snake, and stamped upofi his heads ■ 
 until he had crushed them all. The sequel of the myth in its more 
 recent form goes on to relate his death, — how Balarama lay down to 
 sleep beneath the Banyan tree, — how from his throat issued a monstrous 
 snake, like the cobra of Vikram in the modern Hindu story, — how 
 Krishna himself became sorely depressed, — how, as he lay among 
 the bushes with his foot so placed that his heel, in which alone he, 
 like so many others, was invunerable, was exposed, a huntsman, 
 thinking that he was aiming at a gazelle, shot him with an arrow, and 
 the ground was bathed with his blood, — incidents which are at once 
 explained by a reference to the myths of Baldur, Adonis, or Osiris. 1 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 II. 
 
 Section XIV.— THE MOON. 
 
 As Endymion sinks into his dreamless sleep beneath the Latmian Selene and 
 hill, the beautiful Selene comes to gaze upon the being whom she an ' 
 loves only to lose. The phrase was too transparent to allow of the 
 growth of a highly developed myth. In the one name we have the sun 
 sinking down into the unseen land where all things are forgotten — 
 in the other the full moon comes forth from the east to greet the 
 sun, before he dies in the western sky. Hence there is little told 
 of Selene which fails to carry with it an obvious meaning. She is 
 
 thousand and one hundred was the 
 number of the maidens; and into so 
 many forms did the son of Madhu mul- 
 tiply himself, so that every one of the 
 damsels thought that he had wedded 
 her in her single person." — Vishnu Pa- 
 rana, ib. 589. This myth is beyond all 
 doubt simply that of Prokris in another 
 form. The dew becomes visible only 
 when the blackness of the night is dis- 
 pelled, and the same sun is reflected in 
 the thousands of sparkling drops: but 
 the language of the Furana is in sin- 
 gular accordance with the phraseology 
 in which Roman Catholic writers delight 
 to speak of nuns as the brides of Christ. 
 In Slavonic traditions, cited by Afana- 
 sief, the place of Naraka is taken by 
 a seven-headed snake, which carries off 
 a girl (Kore, Persephone) as she is 
 taking food to her two brothers in the 
 forest. These two brothers go in search 
 of her, and find her in the snake's dwell- 
 ing; but failing to eat the iron bread 
 given to them for food, they are killed 
 by the snake, who plucks out their eyes 
 and hangs their bodies on a beam. As 
 their mother is weeping one day (the 
 mourning DSmeter), she sees a pea come 
 
 rolling along, and eating it becomes the 
 mother of their deliverer, who devours 
 the iron food in the snake's house, turns 
 the huge beam into dust and ashes with 
 a touch of his finger, and slays the snake 
 himself. — Ralston, Songs of the Russian- 
 People, 177. 
 
 1 It is, of course, true that these 
 myths have been crystallised round the 
 name of Krishna in ages subsequent to 
 the period during which the earliest 
 Vedic literature came into existence ; 
 but the myths themselves are found in 
 this older literature associated with 
 other gods, and not always only- in 
 germ. Krishna as slaying the dragon 
 is simply Indra smiting Vritra or Ahi, 
 or Phoibos destroying the Python. 
 There is no more room for inferring 
 foreign influence in the growth of any 
 of these myths than, as Bunsen rightly 
 insists, there is room for tracing Chris- 
 tian influence in the earlier epical lite- 
 rature of the Teutonic tribes. Practi- 
 cally the myths of Krishna seem to 
 have been fully developed in the days of 
 Megasthenes, who identifies him with 
 the Greek Herakles. — Nork, s.v. 
 Krishna, 398. 
 
372 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 16 the 
 heifer. 
 
 the beautiful eye of night, the daughter of Hyperion, of Pallas, or of 
 ' Helios, the sister of Phoibos Apollon. Like the sun, she moves 
 across the heaven in a chariot drawn by white horses from which her 
 soft light streams down to the earth ; or she is the huntress, roving 
 like Alpheios, over hill and dale. She is the bride of Zeus, and the 
 mother of Pandia, the full orb which gleams in the nightly sky ; l 
 or as loving, like him, the crags, the streams, and the hills, she is 
 beloved by Pan, who entices her into the dark woods under the 
 guise of a snow-white ram. 2 In other words, the soft whispering 
 wind, driving before it the shining fleecy clouds, draws the moon 
 onwards into the sombre groves. In another version, she is 
 Asterodia, the wanderer among the stars, the mother of the fifty 
 daughters of Endymion, the Ursula of modern legend with her 
 many virgins. 3 In short, the moon may be spoken of as the king of 
 the realm of night, and the father, brother, or husband of the sun 
 which springs from it. Or, if it be regarded as feminine, it may be 
 his mother, his nurse, his sister, or his bride. It may be friendly to 
 him, as is Iao, or hostile, as is the Unicorn. It may chase him, as 
 he sinks in the western sea, or may seek to hide herself from his 
 blinding splendour, as he rises in the east. 4 
 
 In the story of 16, the moon appears in connexion with the 
 myths of Hermes, Prometheus, and other tales. 16 is pre-eminently 
 the horned being, 6 whose existence is one of brief joy, much suffering, 
 
 the sun brings on him the wrath of Per- 
 kunas, as the song tells us : 
 
 1 "Pandia, d. h. die ganz leuch- 
 tende." — Preller, Gt. Myth. i. 347. 
 
 2 Virg. Georg. iii. 391. 
 
 3 Preller regards the number 50 here 
 as denoting the fifty moons of the Olym- 
 pian Festal Cycle. — Gr. Myth. i. 348. 
 But the myth must be taken along with 
 the legends of the fifty sons or daughters 
 of Aigyptos, Danaos, or Priam. It 
 must not be forgotten, however, that 
 the moon is more commonly masculine 
 than feminine. It is not easy for English- 
 men to understand why some of the 
 branches of the Teutonic race should 
 have retained a fashion which to us 
 seems strange, and which we do not 
 find among Greeks, although we hear 
 of Lunus among the Romans. But the 
 masculine character of the moon is at 
 once explained, by a reference to the 
 idea that "as chaos preceded order, so 
 night preceded day, and the enthrone- 
 ment of the moon as the Night-king 
 marks the commencement of the annals 
 of kosmic order." 
 
 4 Brown, The Unicorn, 69. In 
 Slavonic, as in the Teutonic mythology, 
 the moon is male. His wedding with 
 
 The Moon wedded the Sun 
 
 In the first spring. 
 
 The Sun rose early ; 
 
 The Moon departed from her. 
 
 The Moon wandered alone ; 
 
 Courted the Morning Star. 
 
 Perkunas, greatly wroth, 
 
 Cleft him with a sword. 
 
 " Wherefore dost thou depart from 
 
 the Sun, 
 Wandering by night alone, 
 Courting the Morning Star ? " 
 
 5 This horned being becomes at 
 length the Unicorn of Heraldry, whose 
 history Mr. Brown has traced in his very 
 valuable monograph on "The Uni- 
 corn," 1881. It is scarcely necessary 
 to say that this Unicorn is more the 
 Rhinocerosthan the serpent, which bites 
 women (note >, p. 345) ; is an adder or 
 a cobra. It is endowed, as Garcias 
 says, with " a wonderful horn, which it 
 would sometimes turn to the left and 
 right, at others raise, and then again 
 depress. " The changes of the moon are 
 
THE WANDERINGS OF l6. 373 
 
 and many changes and wanderings ; in other words, her life is the life CHAP. 
 
 of the moon in its several phases, from full to new, and thence back >- 
 to the full again. She is the pure priestess of the great queen of 
 heaven, on whom Zeus, the lord of the untroubled ether, looks down 
 with unfailing love. 1 But Here is the wife of Zeus, and thus at once 
 she is jealous of 16, whom Zeus vainly changes into a heifer 2 (the well- 
 known symbol of the young or horned morn) in the hope of saving 
 her from Here. Here gains possession of the heifer, and places her 
 in the charge of Argos Panoptes, the being with a thousand eyes, 
 some of which he opens when the stars arise, while others he closes 
 when their orbs go down. Whether these eyes are, as in some 
 versions, placed on his brow and on the back of his head, or, as in 
 others, scattered all over his body, Argos is the star-illumined sky 
 watching over the moon as she wanders 
 
 Pale for very weariness 
 Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, 
 
 Wandering companionless 
 Among the stars that have a different birth. * 
 
 In this aspect Argos appears in the Cretan myth as Asterion, or 
 the Minotauros, the guardian of the Diadalean labyrinth, the mazes 
 of the star-clothed heavens. 
 
 From this terrible bondage she is rescued at the bidding of Zeus Argos 
 by Hermes, who appears here as a god of the morning-tide. By the Pano P tes ' 
 power of his magic rod, and by the music of his flute, the soft whisper 
 of the morning breeze, he lulls even Argos himself into slumber, and 
 then his sword falls, and the thousand eyes are closed in death, as the 
 stars go out when the morning comes, and leave the moon alone. 4 
 This rescue of 16 by Hermes is, in the opinion of Preller, the tem- 
 porary disappearance of the moon, during her wanderings in unknown 
 regions until she appears as Pandia, the full moon, in the eastern 
 
 here as clearly described as the effects 3 It is not likely that Shelley was 
 
 of wind in the myth of Hermes. — thinking of the myth of Argos Panoptes 
 
 Brown, The Unicorn, 12. when he wrote these lines ; but he has 
 
 1 16 becomes a mother i\ iirnrvoias singularly reproduced this idea of the 
 
 Ai6s, jEsch. Supp. 1 8 ; a myth which antagonism between the moon and the 
 
 may be compared with the story of the stars. 
 mares of Diomedes. * The myth is thus explained which 
 
 1 In the Norse story of Tatterhood, makes Hermes the father of Autolykos, 
 
 the younger of the two sisters who who in the Odyssey is the grandfather 
 
 answer to the Dioskouroi is changed into of Odysseus and the craftiest of men — a 
 
 a calf, and the tale immediately con- character which, as Preller remarks, is 
 
 nects the transformation with the voyage simply reflected from Hermes. Gr. 
 
 of Isis. The same incidents are found Myth. i. 305. The name Autolykos is 
 
 in the Arabian Aights in the story of as transparent as that of Argos Pa- 
 
 theOld Man and the Hind, where the noptes. The eyes of the dead Argos are 
 
 transformation is precisely owing to the placed by H£re in the peacock's tail ; 
 
 jealousy of Here for 16 and her off- but this was only another symbol for 
 
 spring. the starry heavens. Preller, ib. ii. 41. 
 
374 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK heaven. 1 This time was naturally conceived as one of trouble and 
 
 *— ' toil, and so the myth went that 16 was driven from one place to 
 
 another by a gadfly sent by Here, who suffers her neither to rest by 
 day nor to sleep by night. 
 16 and These wanderings have been related by ^Eschylus in his immortal 
 
 th°us. e ~ drama of the bound Prometheus. They carry her over regions, some 
 of whose names belong to our earthly geography ; but any attempts 
 to fix her course in accordance with the actual position of these regions 
 is mere labour lost. That for such accuracy ^Eschylus cared nothing 
 is plain from the fact that the course which 16 takes in his play of the 
 Suppliants cannot be reconciled with the account given in the Pro- 
 metheus. It is enough to note that the poet takes his moon from 
 the West towards the North, gradually approaching the East and the 
 South, until in the beautiful Aigyptos she is suffered to resume her 
 proper form, or in other words, appear as the full moon, 2 the shape in 
 which she was seen before Zeus changed her into the horned heifer 
 or new moon. This mention of Egypt, or the land of the Nile, as 
 the cradle of her child Epaphos, naturally led the Greeks to identify 
 16 with the Egyptian Isis, and her son with the bull Apis, 3 — an 
 identification to which no objection can be raised, so long as it is not 
 maintained that the Hellenic names and conceptions of the gods were 
 borrowed from those of Egypt. The great Athenian poet would 
 naturally introduce among the places visited by 16, places and peoples 
 which excited his curiosity, his wonder, or his veneration. She from 
 whom was to spring the deliverer of Prometheus must herself learn 
 from the tortured Titan what must be the course of her own sufferings 
 and their issue. She must cross the heifer's passage, or Bosporos, 
 which bears her name : she must journey through the country of the 
 Chalybes, beings akin to the Kyklopes who forge the thunderbolts' of 
 Zeus ; she must trust herself to the guidance of the Amazons who will 
 lead her to the rocks of Salmydessos, rocks not unlike the Symplegades 
 in the Argonautic story : she must encounter the Graiai and the 
 Gorgons in the land of the gloaming and the night, and finally she is 
 to see the end of her sorrows when she reaches the well or fountains 
 of the sun. There her child will be born, and the series of genera- 
 
 1 Gr. Myth. ii. 39. tached to a central orb. 
 
 * Mr. Brown {The Unicorn, p. 27) 3 This calf-god was supposed to 
 
 cites some Mardian coins as furnishing manifest himself from time to time in a 
 
 the eailiest known instances of the lunar bull, which, being recognised by certain 
 
 emblem which exhibits three crescent signs, was consecrated and received high 
 
 moons issuing from the full moon, in worship. It was not suffered to live 
 
 connexion with the unicorn. This more than twenty-five years, and his 
 
 emblem explains at once the three- burial was followed by a general moum- 
 
 legged unicorn ass of the Bundahish, ing until a new calf, with the proper 
 
 and also the arms of the Kingdom of mark, was discovered. Apis, deified 
 
 Man, in which we see three legs at- after death, became Serapis. 
 
hekatI: and phoibos. 375 
 
 tions will roll on, which are to end in the glorious victories of her chap. 
 
 descendant, Herakles. 1 # ' '■ — ' 
 
 To Phoibos, as Hekatos, the far-shooting lord of light, Hekate Hekate. 
 stands in the relation which Diana holds towards Dianus or Janus. 
 She falls, in short, into the ranks of correlative deities with the Asvins 
 and the Dioskouroi, Surya. and Savitri, and many others already 
 named. Her keenness of hearing and sight is second only to that of 
 Helios, for when Demeter is searching in agony for her lost child, it 
 is Hekate alone who says that she has heard her cries, while Helios 
 is further able to tell her whither Hades has departed with the maiden. 
 She is then the queen of the night, the moon, and as such she may 
 be described as sprung either from Zeus and Here, or like Phoibos 
 himself, from Leto, or even from Tartaros, or again, from Asteria, the 
 starlit night. 2 In a comparison of offices and honours it is hard to 
 see whether Phoibos or Hekate stands higher ; and all that can be 
 said is that the Hesiodic poet could hardly have spoken of her in a 
 strain so highflown if the thought of Apollon and his wisdom, incom- 
 municable even to Hermes, had at the moment crossed his mind, just 
 as the worshipper of Brahma or Vishnu must have modified his 
 language, had he wished to bring it into apparent consistency with 
 what he may have said elsewhere in his devotions to Varuna, Dyaus, 
 or Soma. She is the benignant being, ever ready to hear those who 
 offer to her a holy sacrifice. Nor has she fallen from the high estate 
 which was hers before Zeus vanquished the Titans ; but she remains 
 mighty as ever, in the heavens, on the earth, and in the sea. She is 
 the giver of victory in war, the helper of kings in the ministration of 
 justice, the guardian of the flocks and of the vineyards ; and thus she 
 is named pre-eminently Kourotrophos, the nurse and the cherisher of 
 men. But these great powers could scarcely fail to throw over her an 
 air of mystery and awe. She would be sometimes the solitary in- 
 habitant of a dismal region, caring nothing for the sympathy or the 
 love of others ; and the very help which with her flaming torch she 
 gives to Demeter would make her a goddess of the dark nether world 
 to which she leads the sorrowing mother. Her ministers therefore 
 must be as mysterious as herself, and thus the Kouretes and Kabeiroi 
 become the chosen servants of her sacrifices. Like Artemis, she is 
 accompanied by hounds, not flashing-footed like that which Prokris 
 received from the twin-sister of Phoibos, but Stygian dogs akin to 
 
 1 It is of course, quite possible that or a horned maiden. Both alike lose 
 
 with this particular myth of Io some their children and search for them as 
 
 features borrowed from Semitic mytho- Demeter searched for Persephone. — 
 
 logy may have been designedly blended. Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 44. 
 The Phenician Astarte, Ashtaroth, was a Hes. Theog. 411. 
 
 also represented as a wandering heifer, 
 
376 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Artemis. 
 
 Kerberos and the awful hounds of Yama. Only one step more 
 ■ was needed to reach that ideal of witchcraft which is exhibited in its 
 most exalted form in the wise woman Medeia. It is from a cave, like 
 that in which Kirke and Kalypso dwell, that she marks the stealing 
 away of PersephonS, and her form is but dimly seen as she moves 
 among murky mists. She thus becomes the spectral queen who 
 sends from her gloomy realm vain dreams and visions, horrible demons 
 and phantoms, and who imparts to others the evil knowledge of which 
 she has become possessed herself. Her own form becomes more and 
 more fearful. Like Kerberos, she assumes three heads or faces, 
 which denote the monthly phases of the moon — the horse with its 
 streaming mane being the crescent moon, the snake denoting the rays 
 of light from the circular or full moon, and the dog, who is only 
 partially visible, representing the half-moon. 1 
 
 In some traditions Artemis is the twin-sister of Phoibos, with 
 whom she takes her place in the ranks of correlative deities. In 
 others she is born so long before him that she can aid Leto her 
 mother at the birth of Phoibos — a myth which speaks of the dawn 
 and the sun as alike sprung from the night. Thus her birthplace is 
 either Delos or Ortygia, in either case the bright morning land, and 
 her purity is that of Athene and Hestia. Over these three deities 
 alone Aphrodite has no power. Love cannot touch the maiden whose 
 delight is in the violet tints of dawn or in the arrows which she sends 
 forth with never failing precision, 2 and which seal the doom, while 
 they are given to avenge the wrongs, of Prokris. Like Phoibos, she 
 has the power of life and death ; she can lessen or take away the 
 miseries and plagues which she brings upon men, and those who 
 honour her are rich in flocks and herds and reach a happy old age. 
 From those who neglect her she exacts a fearful penalty ; and the 
 Kalydonian boar ravages the fields of Oineus only because he had for- 
 gotten to include her among the deities to whom he offered sacrifice. 8 
 In a word, the colours may be paler, but her features and form generally 
 are those of her glorious brother. With him she takes delight in song, 4 
 
 x Brown, The Unicorn, 44-46. 
 
 ' trap84i/os iox^aipa. 
 
 ' Grote remarks that in the hunt 
 which follows for the destruction of the 
 boar, Artemis, who is sometimes con- 
 founded even with her attendant 
 nymphs, reappears in the form of Ata- 
 lante.— Hist. Gr. i. 76. The name of 
 Camilla, the counterpart of Atalante in 
 the Aineid, is, according to M. Maury, 
 that of a Gallic divinity, being the 
 feminine form of Camulus (Camillus). 
 — Croyances et Ugendes de t ' Antiqitile, 
 
 229, et seq. 
 
 * Hymn to Aphrodite, 19. Preller 
 [Gr. Myth. i. 228) adopts the explana- 
 tion which connects her name with the 
 word ctpTC|U^s, and regards the epithet 
 as denoting her unsullied purity as well 
 as her physical vigour. Her kindly and 
 indignant aspects are with him the 
 varying, yet constantly recurring, effects 
 produced by the moon on the pheno- 
 mena of the seasons, and, as was sup- 
 posed, of human life. For the Ephesian 
 Artemis, see note 3 , p. 309. 
 
THE ASIATIC ARTEMIS. 377 
 
 and as Phoibos overcomes the Python, so is she the slayer of CHAP. 
 Tityos. 1 • ■ .. "^ - 
 
 It seems unnecessary to draw any sharp distinction between the The Ar- 
 Arkadian and the Delian Artemis. If she is no longer the mere Delia" *"' 
 reflexion of Phoibos, she still calls herself a child of L£t6, a and Artemis - 
 appears as the glorious morning roving through the heaven before 
 the birth of the sun. This broad-spreading light is represented by 
 her wanderings among the glens and along the mountain summits of 
 Arkadia. Like Athene and Aphrodite, she belongs to or springs 
 from the running waters, and she demands from Zeus an attendant 
 troop of fifty Okeanid and twenty Amnisiad, or river, nymphs. 8 With 
 these she chases her prey on the heights of Erymanthos, Mainalos, 
 and Taygetos. Her chariot is fashioned by the fiery Hephaistos, 
 and Pan, the breeze whispering among the reeds, provides her with 
 dogs, the clouds which speed across the sky driven by the summer 
 winds. Here, like Arethousa, she is loved and pursued by Alpheios, 
 who fails to seize her. 
 
 But the cultus of the Spartan Artemis, whose epithet Orthia Artemis 
 would seem to denote a phallic deity, is marked by features so and Tauro- 
 repulsive, and so little involved in the myth of the Delian sister of pola- 
 Phoibos, that the inference of an earlier religion, into which Aryan 
 mythical names were imported, becomes not unwarrantable. 4 Whether 
 or not this Artemis be the same as the Artemis known by the epithets 
 Taurica or Tauropola, 5 she is a mere demon, glutted with the human 
 sacrifices which seem to have formed a stage in the religious develope- 
 ment of every nation on the earth. We have here manifestly the 
 belief that the gods are all malignant powers, hungering for the blood 
 of human victims, and soothed by the smoke of the fat as it curls up 
 heavenwards. 6 But the prevalence of this earlier form of faith or 
 
 1 Kallim. Hymn to Artemis, no. worship. 
 
 2 lb. Kal yap iydi Anraias ei/i.1. 5 For Mr. Brown's interpretation of 
 She desires to be worshipped under this epithet, see his Great Dionysiak 
 many names, that she may not need to Myth, ii. 136. His conclusion is that 
 fear the rivalry of Apollon, 7. the word denotes " the Kosmos con- 
 
 3 lb. 20 &c. sidered as alive and animated, replete 
 * There is something altogether non- with motive life-power. " 
 
 Hellenic in the worship of Artemis gen- " The extent to which these horrible 
 erally, as in that of Zeus under some of superstitions prevailed among the his- 
 his many epithets. The phallic nature torical Greeks as well as among other 
 of this worship is indicated by the state- races and tribes has been excellently 
 ments of Pausanias that Zeus Meilichios traced by Mr. Paley in a paper on 
 was worshipped at Sikyon in the form " Chthonian Worship" {Journal of 
 of a pyramid, and Artemis Patroa in Philology, No. I. June, 1868). His con- 
 that of a column. The cruelty of the elusion is that, as " the propitiation of 
 ritual led Bunsen to suppose that the malignant powers rather than the adora- 
 epithet Meilichios was used in irony ; tian of a supreme good seems to have 
 but it is clear that Meilichios repre- formed the basis of the early religions 
 sents the Semitic Moloch, and thus the of the world, " so a large part of the early 
 name accounts for the character of the religious systems of the Greeks exhibits 
 
378 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK practice would tend to prove only that the mythology of the Greeks 
 
 II. 
 
 was not necessarily their religion, and was certainly not commensurate 
 with it. Still, although there is not much in the phenomena of 
 morning, or in the myth of the Delian Artemis, to suggest the 
 practice of slaying youths and maidens, or scourging them until the 
 blood ran in streams to glut the angry demon, there are not wanting 
 mythical phrases which, if translated into the conditions of human 
 life, would point to such revolting systems. 1 Adonis cannot rise to 
 the life of the blessed gods until he has been slain. The morning 
 cannot come until the Eos who closed the previous day has faded 
 away and died in the black abyss of night So it is also with 
 Memnon and Sarpedon, with Endymion and Narkissos. But all 
 these are the children of Zeus or Phoibos, or some other deity of 
 the heaven or the sun ; and thus the parents may be said to sacrifice 
 their children, as Tantalos placed the mangled Pelops on the banquet- 
 table of Zeus. It is thus seemingly that Iphigeneia must die before 
 Helen can be brought again from Ilion : but Helen is herself 
 Iphigeneia, and thus the return of Helen is the resurrection of the 
 victim doomed by the words of Kalchas and the consent of Aga- 
 memnon, and Iphigeneia becomes the priestess of Artemis, whose 
 wrath she had been slain to expiate. With an unconscious fidelity to 
 the old mythical phrases, which is still more remarkable, Iphigeneia 
 is herself Artemis, and thus the story resolves itself into the saying 
 that the evening and the morning are the same, but that she must die 
 at night before she can spring into life again at dawn. Nor must it 
 be forgotten that Helen stolen away from the Argive or gleaming land 
 
 this character of devil-worship, in which not called upon to reconcile them. We 
 
 streams of human blood were the only are not building up questionable theories, 
 
 effectual offerings. The unsatisfied but expounding unquestionable matters 
 
 shades or ghosts of heroes became hate- of fact ; and it is a perfectly open subject 
 
 ful demons, going about with wide- of discussion whether the pagan idea of 
 
 stretched mouths for anything which sacrifice is a corruption of a revealed 
 
 might serve as a prey. These are the obligation of man to his Creator, or 
 
 Latin Manduci and Lemures, the Greek whether it was (as many will think more 
 
 Lamyroi, and Char6n, the gaper, words probable) independently derived and 
 
 "all pointing to swallowing and devour- developed from the materialistic and 
 
 ing, as our goblin is supposed to do," sensuous notions of the untutored races 
 
 p. 7. The general proposition is indis- of antiquity about the nature, condition, 
 
 putable, but the English goblin seems and wants of beings, infernal and super- 
 
 to represent etymologically the Teutonic nal," p. 13. 
 
 Kobold and the Greek Kobalos, beings ' Mr. Brown (Great Dionysiak 
 
 doubtless of closely kindred character. Myth, i. 135) regards the version of the 
 
 If this be so, the idea of sacrifice is myth which speaks of the substitution 
 
 traced back to an utterly revolting source of the stag for Iphigeneia at the moment 
 
 in the thoughts of the still savage man. of sacrifice, as being, like the similar 
 
 To the question which asks how this substitution in the case of Isaac, an 
 
 conclusion " can be reconciled with the instance "of disapprobation of the 
 
 Jewish doctrine of sacrifice and all its bloody cult peculiar to Kanaanite, Phe- 
 
 momentous consequences," he answers, nician, and Karthaginian." 
 " I think we may fairly reply, we are 
 
ARTEMIS AND IPHIGENEIA. 379 
 
 CHAP. 
 II. 
 
 of the West is the golden light stolen away in the evening. The 
 
 weary voyage from the Achaian shores is the long journey of the sun- ■ '— — 
 
 children for the stolen treasure, beginning just when the twilight is 
 deepening into night, and when the lagging hours seem likely never 
 to pass away. Iphigeneia is slain at the beginning of this dismal 
 journey — in other words, she dies in the evening that Helen may 
 come back in the morning, when, after ten long hours of mortal strife, 
 the walls of Ilion have fallen. But when Artemis, Helen, and Iphi- 
 geneia, had received each her own distinct personality, it was easy to 
 say that the anger of Artemis, offended for some supposed neglect 
 or affront of Agamemnon, was the cause of the death of Iphigeneia. 
 
 The distinction between Artemis and Britomartis is as slight as Iphigeneia 
 that which separates her from Iphigeneia. Whatever be the origin martis?' " 
 of the name, Britomartis is spoken of as a daughter of Leto, or of 
 Zeus and Karme, and as flying from the pursuit of Minos as Artemis 
 flies from that of Alpheios. 1 From this pursuit she escapes, like 
 Arethousa and Daphne, only by throwing herself into the sea — as 
 some said, because she leaped from the heights of Diktynnaion, or, 
 as others would have it, because she fell into the nets (SCktvo) of 
 the fishermen. Rescued from the water she goes to Aigina, and is 
 reverenced there under the name of Aphaia. The wanderings of 
 Britomartis are simply the journey of the day acrpss the heaven, and 
 the story of the nets must clearly be compared with that of Danae 
 and the kindly treatment of Diktys of Seriphos, who is contrasted 
 with his gloomy brother Polydektes — a mere reflexion of Hades 
 Polydegmon. When the name of Diktys is further compared with 
 the myth of the Diktaian cave, we can no longer doubt that Artemis 
 Diktynna is simply Artemis the light-giving, and that the nets were 
 brought into the myths by an equivocation similar to that which 
 converted Arkas and Kallisto into bears and Lykaon into a wolf. a 
 
 Section XV.— THE HUNTERS AND DANCERS OF THE 
 
 HEAVENS. 
 
 No one will claim a distinctively Hellenic character for such Orion, 
 beings as Astarte, Adonis, or Melikertes ; and few, after examining 
 their characteristics, will hesitate to assert that the ideas expressed in 
 these beings belong to the ordering of the Kosmos quite as much as 
 
 1 Kallim. Hymn. Art. 192, &c. the East. This arch is the Diktaian 
 
 2 As the' dawn springs fully armed cave in which the infant Zeus is nour- 
 from the forehead of the cloven sky, so ished until he reaches his full strength 
 the eye first discerns the blue of heaven —in other words, until the day is fully 
 as the first faint arch of light is seen in come. 
 
38o 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Orion 
 
 and 
 
 Kedalion. 
 
 to the phenomena of the seasons. Every night may be seen the 
 ' majestic movement of the stars across the heavens ; and in the 
 measured steps of the great procession it would need no very vivid 
 imagination to see a mystic dance regulated by the movements 
 of the spheres. It is quite certain that Greek mythology brings 
 before us a number of names which are no more Greek, or even 
 Aryan, than are the names Athamas, or Harpokrates, or Osiris ; and 
 whatever else they may be, it is not less certain that these names 
 describe generally beings who are pre-eminently hunters and dancers. 
 At the head of these are the forms of Dionysos and Orion ; and 
 among their attendants are the groups of Kouretes, Korybantes, 
 Telchines, and Daktyloi. If these are neither Greek nor Aryan, 
 the suspicion is justified that they may be creatures who found their 
 way into Hellas by the same road which brought Kadmos and his 
 sister to their Theban home. 
 
 Orion is pre-eminently the mighty hunter. But is Orion Greek, 
 or is he even Aryan ? In Boiotia, the land where Phenician influence 
 was strongest, he was known not only as Orion, but also as Kandaon, 
 and Kandaon is closely akin to Kandalos, one of the seven children 
 of Helios and Rhodos, and brother of Makar, that is of Melkarth or 
 Bacchus ; 1 and he thus takes his place in the group to which 
 Kadmos and other undoubtedly Phenician strangers belong. In 
 the Greek versions of the myth, he is sprung from the earth or the 
 waters, as a son whether of Poseidon and Euryale, or of Oinopion. 
 He grows up a mighty hunter, doomed to be smitten down in his full 
 strength, and to rise with renewed splendour after his imprisonment 
 in the land of darkness. In short, Orion is the sun, the racer through 
 the heavens, who wanders alone through the boundless Olympos, in 
 ceaseless pursuit of the beasts whose abode is in the high heaven, and 
 follows the phantoms of the same beasts in his nightly journey across 
 the under world, armed with his mighty club, the glowing torch-mace 
 which is soon to flame with the splendour of the coming day. 2 At 
 Chios he sees the beautiful Aero ; but when he seeks to make her his 
 bride, he is blinded by her father, who, on the advice of Dionysos, 
 comes upon him in his sleep. Orion is now told that he may yet 
 recover his sight if he would go to the east and look toward the rising 
 sun. Thither he is led by the help of Hephaistos, who sends Ke- 
 
 1 See p. 326. Mr. Brown (Great 
 Dionysiak Myth, ii. 278, 281) regards 
 the name as containing the Semitic 
 root ur, light, whence the Assyrian aon, 
 Heb. aor, the light of day, which shines 
 in the land of Ur. 
 
 2 I have borrowed the words of Mr. 
 
 Brown's eloquent description of the 
 characteristics of Orion ( Great Dionysiak 
 Myth, ii. 275). The whole section on 
 the myth of Orion is marked by singular 
 ability, and must carry conviction to 
 every impartial mind as to the origin 
 and significance of the tale. 
 
THE DEATH OF ORlON. 38 1 
 
 dalion as his guide. On his return he vainly tries to seize and punish CHAP. 
 
 the man who had blinded him, and then wandering onwardi meets ' •- — ■ 
 
 and is loved by Artemis. Of his death many stories were told. In 
 the Odyssey he is slain in Ortygia, the dawn land, by Artemis, who is 
 jealous of her rival Eos. In another version Artemis slays him un- 
 wittingly, having aimed at a mark on the sea which Phoibos had 
 declared that she could not hit. This mark was the head of Orion, 
 who had been swimming in the waters. Asklepios, we are further 
 told, seeks to raise him from the dead, and thus brings on his own 
 doom from the thunderbolts of Zeus. 
 
 Like Andromeda, Ariadne, and other mythical beings, Orion was Seirios. 
 after his death placed among the constellations, and his hound 
 became the dog-star Seirios, 1 who marks the time of yearly drought. 
 He is thus the deadly star 2 who burns up the fields of Aristaios and 
 destroys his bees, and is stayed from his ravages only by the moisten- 
 ing heaven. 8 The word Seirios itself springs from the same root with 
 the Sanskrit Surya and the Greek Helios, Here, and Herakles ; and 
 with Archilochos and Suidas it was still a name for the sun. 4 Orion, 
 then, and Seirios, if not altogether Semitic, are at least only super- 
 ficially coloured by Aryan thought. Like Dionysos, these are rather 
 Kosmical gods than beings who owe their origin to phrases describing 
 the phenomena of the summer and winter, light and darkness. They 
 are conspicuous members of that mysterious band which moves in 
 march or dance across the heavens, and whose names were for the 
 , most part uncouth sounds in Hellenic ears. Some of these names 
 have been so far softened down as to wear an Aryan look ; others, 
 like the Kouretes, Telchines, and Kabeiroi, are scarcely hidden by 
 the thin disguise. These creatures have no legitimate title to be 
 ranked amongst the mythical creations of the Aryan world ; and we 
 can do no more than take some notice of them, as they come before 
 us in the several parts of the Hellenic mythology into which they 
 have been introduced. 
 
 1 Mr. Brown regards this name as i. 358. 
 
 merely a transliteration of the Egyptian 4 In support of his assertion that 
 
 Osiris. It may be so ; but I cannot Seirios was a name for any glittering 
 
 venture to speak positively on this point. orb or star, Preller quotes Hesychios : 
 
 As to Aristaios, he regards him as ^eiplovKvv})sSiKr}i/^o<poK\rjsrbv cwrpyov 
 
 springing from the Horned -sun, the iciva, u Si 'ApxfaoxosTbvri\uiii,"lf}vKos 
 
 general account being that he is the Si Trdvra to &<rTpa } and adds ' ' Suidas 
 
 child of Apoll6nand the Libyan nymph kertnt die Form Seir fur Sonne. Arat. 
 
 i-'yrene (Ku-re-ne, or Horn). — Great Phoin. 331 : 8s fafuiAurTa'Ofdao-eiptdei, 
 
 Dionysiak Myth, 402. Kai fiiv KaAeouo"' &vdpuiroi Sztpiov." — Gr. 
 
 2 oiiAios aa-r-fip. Myth. i. 355. 
 8 Zeus iKfituos. Preller, Gr. Myth. 
 
382 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LOST TREASURE. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The myth 
 
 of stolen 
 
 treasure 
 
 found 
 
 among 
 
 the Aryan 
 
 nations. 
 
 Section L— THE GOLDEN FLEECE. 
 
 The idea of wealth is one of the most prominent characteristics in 
 the legends of Helios, Ixion, Sisyphos, and Tantalos. The golden 
 palace of Helios, blazing with intolerable splendour, is reflected in the 
 magnificent home of the Phrygian and Corinthian kings. So dazzling 
 indeed is the brilliance of this treasure-house that none may look 
 closely upon it and live. Hence Dia the beautiful wife of Ixion has 
 never seen her husband's wealth, as the Dawn may never see the 
 sun when high in the heavens : and her father Hesioneus who insists 
 on being put into possession of all the glorious things which Ixion 
 said should follow his union with Dia, the radiant morning, finds 
 himself plunged into a gulf of fire. These treasures, in the myth 
 of Prokris, Eos herself bestows on Kephalos that he may beguile the 
 gentle daughter of the dew. They are the beautiful flowers which 
 bloom in the Hyperborean gardens, the wonderful web wrought and 
 unwrought by Penelopg, the riches which the suitors waste in the 
 absence of Odysseus, the herds of cattle which are fed by the glisten- 
 ing nymphs who rise from the ocean stream. They are the light 
 of day in all its varied aspects and with all its wonderful powers. 
 With them is bound up the idea of life, health, and joy : and hence, 
 when these treasures are taken away, the very blackness of desolation 
 must follow. What can the sons of men do, when the bright being 
 who has gladdened their eyes is taken from their sight? Must they not 
 either sit still in utter despair or wait with feverish impatience until 
 they see his kindly face again ? What again must be the drama of 
 those dark and dreary hours which pass between the setting of the 
 sun and its rising? What must be the history of the silent time 
 ending in the battle which precedes the defeat of the powers of 
 darkness ? That mighty conflict they might see every morning in 
 the eastern heavens, as the first light flickers faintly across the sky, 
 only to be driven back, as it would seem, until it returns with fresh 
 
THE NIGHTLY SEARCH AND BATTLE. 383 
 
 strength and aided by new friends : but the incidents which went CHAP. 
 
 before this strife they could not see. All that was before their eyes ^ — ■ 
 
 reminded them of the hosts of vapours, some bright, some murky, 
 which had been marshalled round the dying sun; and the same 
 forms are now seen, the dark clouds being gradually driven away 
 or being even changed from foes into friends as the sunlight turns 
 their blackness into gold. But the bright clouds, sailing along in 
 unsullied purity, are especially the children of Helios, the offspring 
 of the union of Ixi6n and the lovely Nephele. These then have 
 sought him through the long hours of the night, and at length 
 have rescued him from the gloomy prison-house. There is thus 
 the daily taking away in the West of all that gives life its value, of 
 all on which life itself depends; and it must be taken away by robbers 
 utterly malignant and hateful. Thus there is also the nightly search 
 for these thieves, — a search which must be carried on in darkness 
 amidst many dangers and against almost insurmountable obstacles ; 
 and this search must end in a terrible battle, for how should the demons 
 yield up their prey until their strength is utterly broken ? But even 
 when the victory is won, the task is but half achieved. The beautiful 
 light must be brought back to the Western home from which the 
 plunderers had stolen it ; and there will be new foes to be encoun- 
 tered on the way, storm-clouds and tempests, black vapours glaring 
 down with their single eye, fierce winds, savage whirlpools. But at 
 length all is done, and the radiant maiden, freed from all real or 
 fancied stains of guilt, gladdens her husband's house once more, 
 before the magic drama of plunder, rescue, and return is acted over 
 again ; and it is precisely this magic round which furnishes all the 
 materials for what may be called the mythical history not only of 
 Greece but of all the Aryan nations. If the features are the same 
 in all, if there is absolutely no political motive or interest in any one 
 which may not be found more or less prominent in all the rest, if it 
 is everywhere the same tale of treasure stolen, treasure searched for 
 andr fought for, treasure recovered and brought back, why are we to 
 suppose that we are dealing in each case with a different story ? Why 
 are we to conjure up a hundred local conflicts each from precisely 
 the same causes, each with precisely the same incidents and the same 
 results ? Why are we to think that the treasures of Eos are not the 
 treasures of Helen, that Helen's wealth is not the wealth of Brynhild, 
 and that Brynhild's riches are not the dower of the wife of Walthar 
 of Aquitaine ? Why, when myth after myth of the Hellenic tribes 
 exhibits the one ceaseless series of precious things taken away and 
 after fearful toils recovered, and after not less terrible labours brought 
 
3^4 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Repetition 
 of this 
 myth 
 under dif- 
 ferent 
 forms. 
 
 The 
 
 Golden 
 
 Fleece. 
 
 back, are we to believe that the errand on which the Achaian chief- 
 tains depart from Hellas is in every case different ? If it be urged 
 that such movements are those of a squirrel in its cage, and that such 
 movements, though they may be graceful, yet must be monotonous, 
 the answer is that not only is the daily alternation of light and dark- 
 ness thus proved to be monotonous, but all the incidents and the whole 
 course of human life may be invested with the same dull colouring. 
 Men are married, love and hate, get wealth or struggle in poverty, 
 and die; and the monotony is broken only when we have distinguished 
 the toils and acts of one man from those of another and learnt to see 
 the points of interest which meet us everywhere on the boundless 
 field of human life, as they meet us also in all the countless aspects 
 of the changing heavens. There is, in short, no dulness except in 
 those who bring the charge ; and the story of Daphne and Echo 
 does not lose its charm because it is all told over again in the legends 
 of Arethousa and Selene. 
 
 The taking away of precious things, and the united search of 
 armed hosts for their recovery, come before us first in the great myth 
 of the Argonautic Voyage. The tale is repeated in the stealing of 
 Helen and her treasures, and is once more told in the banishment 
 of the Herakleidai and their efforts, at last successful, to recover their 
 lost inheritance. These myths fall into a regular series, and are 
 repeated until we find ourselves on the confines of genuine history, 
 which cuts the threads of the mythical drama just where it happens 
 to meet them; and we leave the subject in the full confidence that 
 the radiant maiden would have been stolen and the children of the 
 sun banished from the west yet many times more under different 
 names and with circumstances sufficiently varied, had not men been 
 awakened to the need of providing in contemporary writing a sure 
 means for the preservation of historical facts. 
 
 Into the Argonautic story, as into the mythical histories or sagas 
 which follow it, a number of subordinate legends have been inter- 
 woven, many of which have been already noticed as belonging to 
 the myths of the heavens and the light, clouds, waters, winds, and 
 darkness ; and we have now only to follow the main thread of the 
 narrative from the moment when Phrixos, 1 the child of the mist, has 
 reached the Kolchian land and the home of king AiStgs. Helle, the 
 warm and brilliant-tinted maiden, has died by the way, and the cold 
 light only remains when the golden-fleeced ram, the offspring of 
 
 1 The name belongs apparently to corn being the result of frost not less 
 
 the same root with Prokris,note 2 , p. 240, surely than of drought, with which the 
 
 and is thus connected with tppitr<rw, form Phryxos led the Greek to connect 
 
 our freeze, the story of the spoiling of the it. 
 
ORPHEUS AND THE ARGONAUTAI. 385 
 
 Poseidon and TheophanS, the lord of the air and the waters, and the 
 bright gleaming sky, reaches its journey's end. The treasures of the 
 day, brought to the east, are now in the words of Mimnermos repre- 
 sented by " a large fleece in the town of Ai£t£s, where the rays of 
 Helios rest in a golden chamber." These treasures must be sought 
 out so soon as the man destined to achieve the task is forthcoming. 
 He is found by the same tokens which foretold the future greatness 
 of Oidipous, Perseus, Telephos, Romulus, or Cyrus. Pelias, the 
 chief of Iolkos, who had driven away his brother Neleus, had been 
 told that one of the children of Aiolos would be his destroyer, and 
 decreed therefore that all should be slain. Iason only (a name which 
 must be classed with the many others, Iasion, Iamos, Iolaos, Iaso, 
 belonging to the same root) is preserved, and brought up like Achil- 
 leus by the wise Kentaur Cheiron, the son or descendant of Ixion 
 and Nephele, the sun and the cloud. The child grows up : Pelias 
 receives another warning to be on his guard against the one-sandalled 
 man ; and he discerns his enemy when Iason appears with one foot 
 only shod, having dropped the other slipper into the stream Anauros. 
 There is nothing, however, that he can do beyond putting him to 
 the performance of impossible tasks ; and thus as Eurystheus sent 
 Herakles on hopeless errands, so Pelias thinks to be rid of Iason by 
 bidding him bring the golden fleece back to Iolkos. 1 The journey 
 is too long and across seas too stormy, and the toil is too great for 
 any one man, be he ever so mighty ; and as all the kinsfolk of Helle" 
 are equally sufferers by the robbery, so all must unite to avenge her 
 wrongs and regain her wealth. From all parts they come together, 
 fifty in number, like the children of Danaos and Aigyptos, of Thestios 
 and Asterodia, to the building of the great ship Argo, which Athene' 
 endows with the gift of speech and the power, possessed also by the 
 Phaiakian barks, of understanding the thoughts of men. But before 
 they could leave their own land there was need of yet further help to 
 enable them to tame the fury of savage beasts, birds, and creeping 
 things ; and thus Iason betakes himself to the harper Orpheus, whose 
 sweet tones no living thing can withstand. He alone can find his 
 way to the utmost bounds of darkness and return in safety ; and the 
 tidings that Orpheus would accompany them scattered the gloom 
 which was gathering thickly on the hearts of the Argonautai. His 
 
 1 It is scarcely necessary to notice the assumed the form of an old woman, that 
 
 many versions of this myth. In some so she may be borne in his arms. 
 
 we have the Enlpeus or the Evenos in- Others make Pelias declare himself 
 
 stead of the Anauros ; in others Iason ready to yield up his place and power 
 
 loses his sandal while carrying across to Iason, only he must first bring back 
 
 the stream Here, who loves him and has the lost treasure. 
 
 2 C 
 
 CHAP. 
 III. 
 
3 8 6 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 B( r? K power is soon shown. In spite of all efforts to dislodge her, the Argo 
 1 ' remained fast fixed to the spot on which she was built ; but at the 
 sound of the harp of Orpheus it went down quickly and smoothly 
 into the sea. Before she sets out on her perilous voyage, Cheiron 
 gives them a feast, and a contest in music follows between the 
 Kentaur, who sings of the wars with the Lapithai, and Orpheus, who, 
 like Hermes, discourses of all things from Chaos downwards, of Eros 
 and Kronos and the giants, like the song of the winds which seem to 
 speak of things incomprehensible by man. 
 The Argo- Setting out from Iolkos, the confederate chiefs reach Lemnos, 
 
 n mi tic ■ 
 
 Voyage, while the island is seemingly suffering from the plagues which pro- 
 duced the myths of the Danaides in Argos. Like them, the Lemnian 
 women all kill their husbands, one only, Thoas, being saved, like 
 Lynkeus, by his daughters and his wife HypsipylS. These women 
 yield themselves to the Argonautai, as the Danaides take other 
 husbands when they have slain the sons of Aigyptos. 1 In the country 
 of the Doliones they are welcomed by the chief Kyzikos, who, how- 
 ever, is subsequently slain by them unwittingly and to their regret. 
 In Amykos, the king of the Bebrykes, or roaring winds, they encounter 
 Namuki, one of the Vedic adevas or enemies of the bright gods, 2 who 
 slays Polydeukes, the twin brother of Kastor. In the Thrakian 
 Salmydessos they receive further counsel from Phineus the seer, who 
 suffers from the attacks of the Harpyiai, a foe akin to the Bebrykes. 
 In gratitude for his deliverance from these monsters, Phineus tells 
 them that if they would avoid being crushed by the Symplegades, or 
 floating rocks, which part asunder and close with a crash like thunder, 
 they must mark the flight of a dove, and shape their course accord- 
 ingly. The dove loses only the feathers of its tail ; and the Argo, 
 urged on by the power of Here, loses only some of its stern orna- 
 ments, and henceforth the rocks remain fixed for ever. 3 The inci- 
 
 * That this incident is precisely the in the ages during which the myth was 
 
 same as the story of the sojourn of developed were seen in the Black Sea, 
 
 Odysseus in the land of the Lotophagoi, and which melted away at the mouth of 
 
 is manifest from the phrase used in the the Bosporos. In support of the posi- 
 
 Argonautics. They all, we are told, tion that the myth thus points to phy- 
 
 forgot the duty set before them, nor sical phenomena now no longer known 
 
 would they have left the island, but for in that sea, Mr. Paley remarks that 
 
 the strains of Orpheus which recalled their name Kyaneai is very significant, 
 
 them to their sense of right and law, and that "they are described as rolling 
 
 490. Thus this incident throws light and plunging precisely as icebergs are 
 
 on the nature of the enjoyments signi- often seen to do. " " When the Pontus 
 
 fied by the eating of the lotos. See was a closed lake, as even human tradir 
 
 P- 35 6 - tion distinctly states that it once was 
 
 2 Max Muller, Chips, &c, ii. 18& (Diod. S. v. 47), it was very likely in- 
 
 3 It has been supposed that tne deed, especially towards the close of a 
 Symplegades represent icebergs which glacial period, that a great accumulation 
 
MEDEIA AND ABSYRTOS. 387 
 
 dents which follow their arrival in Kolchis repeat in part the myth of CI ,^ P ' 
 
 Kadmos at Thebes ; and indeed the teeth of the dragon which Aietes ' ' 
 
 bids him sow are the very teeth which Kadmos had not needed to 
 use. The men who spring from them fight with and slay each other 
 as in the Theban legend, and by the aid of Medeia Iason also tames 
 the fire-breathing bulls, beings which answer to the Minotauros of 
 Crete and the brazen bull in which Phalaris is said to have burnt his 
 victims. 1 Dangers thicken round them. While Iason is thus doing 
 the bidding of the chieftain, Aietes is forming a plan to burn the 
 Achaian ships, and is anticipated only by Medeia, who has lavished 
 her love on Iason with all the devotion of Eos for Orion. She hastens 
 with her lover on board the Argo, and hurriedly leaves Kolchis, taking 
 with her her brother Absyrtos. But Aietes is not yet prepared to 
 yield. The Gorgon sisters cannot rest without at the least making an 
 effort to avenge Medousa on her destroyer Perseus. Aietes is fast 
 overtaking the Argo when Medeia tears her brother's body limb from 
 limb, and casts the bleeding and mangled members into the sea — an 
 image of the torn and blood-red clouds reflected in the blue waters, 
 as the blood which streams from the body of Herakles represents the 
 fiery clouds stretched along the flaming sky. 3 But Absyrtos is as 
 dear to Aietes as Polyph£mos to Poseidon ; and as he stops to gather 
 up the limbs, the Argo makes her way onward, and the Kolchian 
 chief has to return home discomfited. The Achaians are now pos- 
 sessed of the golden fleece, but Zeus also is wroth at the death of 
 Absyrtos, and raises a storm, of which the results are similar to those- 
 of the tempest raised by Poseidon to avenge the mutilation of Poly- 
 phemos. In fact, the chief incidents in the return of Odysseus we- 
 
 of ice should have been formed in so the Phenician Moioch. The iniquities- 
 vast a basin, borne down from the attributed to him are the horrid holo- 
 Northern rivers. When the lake burst causts which defiled the temples of" 
 its barriers, they would be carried by Carthage and the valley of Hinnom. 
 the current towards the entrance of the His name is probably connected with 
 straits, and there become stranded, as Pales, Palikoi, Pallas, Palatium, and 
 the story says that in fact they did." — Phallos, and would thus point to the 
 Pindar, introd. xxiv. Among other cruel forms which the worship of Aph- 
 myths pointing to physical facts of a rodite, Artemis, and the Light deities of 
 past age Mr. Paley cites the story of the the Phenicians generally, often assumed, 
 rising of Rhodes from the sea, compar- s The same fate is allotted to Myr- 
 ing with it the fact of the recent up- tilos, whom Pelops throws into that 
 heaval of part of -Santorin, the ancient portion of the Egean sea which was 
 Thera, and the old legend of the up- supposed to bear his name. It is, in 
 heaving of Delos, as all showing that fact, half the myth of Pelops himself 
 these islands lie "within an area of the difference being that while all are 
 known volcanic disturbance." See also thrown into the water, Pelops is brought 
 Tylor, Primitive Citlturc, i. 315. to life again— the difference, in other 
 1 Of any historical Phalaris we know words, between Sarpedon in the com- 
 absolutely nothing ; and the tradition mon version and Memnon, between 
 simply assigns to him the character of Asklepios and Osi,is and Baldur. 
 
388 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 II. 
 
 Iasdn and 
 Medeia. 
 
 find here also, in the magic songs of the Seirens, and the wisdom of 
 Kirke, in Skylla and Charybdis and the Phaiakian people. From the 
 Seirens they are saved by the strains of Orpheus, strains even sweeter 
 than theirs, which make the stuffing of the sailors' ears with wax a 
 work of supererogation. It is useless to go into further detail. The 
 accounts given of the cause of the voyage vary indefinitely in the 
 different mythographers, each of whom sought to describe a journey 
 through countries and by tracks least known to himself, and therefore 
 the most mysterious. The geography, in short, of the Argonautic 
 voyage is as much and as little worth investigating as the geography 
 of the travels of 16 and the sons and daughters of her descendants 
 Danaos and Aigyptos. 
 
 The prophecy uttered long ago to Pelias remained yet unfulfilled ; 
 and when Iason returned to Iolkos, he found, like Odysseus on his 
 return to Ithaka, according to some versions, that his father Aison 
 was still living, although worn out with age. The wise woman Medeia 
 is endowed with the powers of Askl£pios by virtue of the magic robe 
 bestowed on her by Helios himself, and these powers are exercised 
 in making Aison young again. Pelias too, she says, shall recover all 
 his ancient strength and vigour, if his daughters will cut up his limbs 
 and boil them in a caldron ; but when they do her bidding, Medeia 
 suffers the limbs to waste away without pronouncing the words which 
 would have brought him to life again. Thus is Iason, like Oidipous 
 and Perseus, Cyrus and Romulus, one of the fatal children whose 
 doom it is to slay their sires. The sequel of the myth of Iason has 
 few, if any, features peculiar to itself. Iason can no more be con- 
 stant to Medeia than Theseus to Ariadne or Phoibos to Koronis. 
 At Corinth he sees the beautiful Glauke, another of the bright beings 
 whose dwelling is in the morning or evening sky ; but the nuptials 
 must be as fatal as those of Iole and Herakles. The robe of Helios, 
 which has been thus far only the golden fleece under another name, 
 now assumes the deadly powers of the arrows of Herakles, Achilleus, 
 or Philoktet£s, and eats into the flesh of Glauke and her father Kreon, 
 as the robe bathed in the blood of the Kentaur Nessos consumed the 
 body of Herakles. In the murder of the children of Iason by their 
 mother Medeia we have only another version of the slaughter of Pelops 
 by Tantalos, while the winged dragons which bear away her chariot are 
 not the dragons of the night, like the snakes which seek to strangle the 
 infant Herakles, but the keener-eyed serpents of the morning, which 
 feed the babe Iamos with honey in the violet beds. But this portion 
 of the story may be told, and is told, in a hundred different ways. 
 In one version she goes to Thebes, and there cures Herakles of his 
 
THE CHILDREN OF MEDEIA. 3^9 
 
 poisoned wound ; in another she is reconciled to Iason ; in another C n^ P ' 
 
 she becomes the wife of Aigeus, king of Athens, and trie enemy of ' — ' 
 
 his son Theseus. Others again carry Iason back with Medeia to 
 Kolchis, or make him die, crushed beneath the timber-head of the 
 Argo. 
 
 Section II.— HELEN. 
 
 There was, however, no need to carry Iason and Medeia with her The 
 golden robe back again to the eastern land. The treasure brought Helen, 
 back from that distant shore could not remain long in the west ; and 
 in the stealing away of Helen and her wealth we have an incident 
 which, from the magnificent series of myths to which it has given 
 birth or with which it is interwoven, seems to dwarf almost every other 
 feature in the mythical history of the Aryan nations. The story has 
 been complicated with countless local traditions; it has received a 
 plausible colouring from the introduction of accurate geographical 
 details, of portraits which may be true to national character, of 
 accounts of laws, customs, and usages, which doubtless prevailed at 
 the time when the poet wrote. Yet in spite of epithets which may 
 still be applied to the ruins of Tiryns and Mykenai, in spite of the 
 cairns which still bear the names of Achilleus or of Aias on the shores 
 of the strong-flowing Hellespontos, Helen is simply the radiant light, 
 whether of the morning or the evening. 1 As SaramS., the dawn which 
 peers about in search of the bright cows which the Panis have stolen 
 from Indra, we have seen her already listening, though but for a moment, 
 to the evil words of the robbers. These evil words are reproduced in 
 the sophistry of the Trojan Paris, who is only a little more successful 
 than the thief of the Vedic hymns, and the momentary unfaithfulness 
 of the one becomes the long-continued faithlessness of the other. 
 But it is a faithlessness more in seeming than in fact. Helen is soon 
 awakened from her evil dream, and her heart remains always in 
 beautiful Argos, in the house of her husband who never showed her 
 anything but kindness and love. Though Paris is beautiful, she yet 
 feels that she has nothing in common with him, and thus she returns 
 with a chastened joy to the home from which she had been taken away. 
 
 But to be stolen or persecuted for her beauty was the lot of Helen The steal- 
 almost from her cradle. In the myth of Theseus she is brought into Helen and 
 Attica, and guarded in early youth by Aithra in the stronghold of her 
 Aphidnai until she is delivered by her brothers, the Dioskouroi ; and 
 
 ' This is fully recognised by Preller, Mater Matuta of the Latins. — Gr. Myth, 
 who compares her, as such, with the ii. 108. 
 
390 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK when she had been stolen by Paris, and spent ten weary years in 
 ' Troy, she is said in some versions to have become the wife of 
 Deiphobos, another son of Priam, and another representative of the 
 dark beings who own kinship with the Vedic Vritra. When Paris is 
 slain, the brother of the seducer will not suffer Helen to be given up 
 to the Achaians ; and thus, on the fall of Ilion, his house is the first 
 to be set on fire. Even after her death the fate of Helen is not 
 changed. In Leuk§, the white island of the dawn, she is wedded to 
 Achilleus, and becomes the mother of Euphorion, the winged child 
 who is first loved and then smitten by the thunderbolts of Zeus in 
 Melos. 1 Throughout she is a being not belonging to the land of 
 mortal men. She is sprung from the egg of Leda, the being to whom 
 Zeus comes in the form of a swan, and her brothers are the 
 Dioskouroi, or Asvins. When the time for her marriage draws nigh, 
 suitors come thronging from all parts of Hellas, their numbers being 
 one for each day of the lunar month — a myth which simply tells us that 
 every day the sun woos the dawn. In the Iliad she is never spoken 
 of except as the daughter of Zeus ; and Isokrates notices the sacrifices 
 offered in Therapnai to her and to Menelaos, not as heroes but as 
 gods. 2 She is worshipped by the women of Sparta as the source of all 
 fruitfulness, and in Argos as the mother of Iphigeneia, the child of 
 Theseus, and as having dedicated a temple to Eileithyia. 3 In Rhodes 
 she is Helene Dendritis, and a wild legend was invented to account 
 for the name. 4 Lastly, the myth of her journey to Ilion and her return 
 is in its framework simply the myth of AugS, the mother of Telephos, 
 like her, taken away to the same land, and, like her, brought back 
 again when all enemies have been overcome. 8 
 
 1 But Achilleus has Iphigeneia and dawn rising like Aphrodite 1 from the 
 Medeia also as his brides in this bright sea; and it preserves the recollection of 
 island : and these are simply other the Erinyes as dawn-goddesses, while it 
 names for the dawn or the evening mingles with it the later notion which 
 light. represented them as Furies. The tree 
 
 2 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. IC9-110; //. points probably to her connexion with 
 iii. 426 ; Od. iv. 1 84, &c. ; Isokr. Helen. the sun, and thus carries us back to the 
 £nkom. 63. special form of worship paid to her 
 
 3 Paus. ii. 22, 7. at Sparta, as well as to the myth of 
 
 4 Id. ii. 19, 10. This story relates Wuotan. See pp. 189, 240. The myth 
 that Helen, being persecuted by Mega- of Helene Dendritis must be compared 
 penthes and Nikostratos after the death with the story of the death of Ophelia 
 of Menelaos, took refuge at Rhodes in in Hamlet, and with that of Wuotan or 
 the house of Polyx6, who, being angry Odin on the world-tree Yggdrasil. See 
 with Helen as the cause of the Trojan also Brown, The Unicorn, 91. 
 war and thus of the death of her 5 This myth is to Preller " eine 
 husband Tlepolemos whom Sarped6n Vorstellung welche urspriinglich hbchst 
 slew, sent some maidens, disguised as wahrscheinlich auch mit ihrer Bedeutung 
 Erinyes, who surprised Helen while im Naturleben zusammenhing " (Gr. 
 bathing, and hung her up to a tree. Myth. ii. no): and he draws between 
 This myth is simply a picture of the the stories of Helen and Auge a parallel 
 
THE GUARDED FORTRESS. 39 1 
 
 This is, practically, the Gaelic story of Conall Gulban, which may C "^ R 
 be fairly regarded as embodying a whole cycle of mythicml tradition. ^ he story ' 
 The materials of which it is made up carry us to a vast number of of Conall 
 legends in Aryan mythology ; but the main story is that of Herakles, 
 Achilleus, and Helen. Conall himself is the solar hero, despised at 
 first for his homely appearance and seeming weakness, but triumphant 
 in the end over all his enemies. Nay, as he becomes an idiot in 
 the Lay of the Great Fool, so here he is emphatically Analkis, the 
 coward. But he is resolved nevertheless to make the daughter of 
 the King of Laidheann his wife, although, like Brynhild and Briar 
 Rose and Surya Bai, she is guarded within barriers which the knight 
 who would win her must pass, at the cost of his life if he fails. The 
 fortress had a great wall, with iron spikes within a foot of each other, 
 and a man's head upon every spike but the one spike which had 
 been left for his own, although it was never to be graced by it It is 
 the hedge of spears of the modern Hindu legends, the fiery circle 
 which Sigurd must enter to waken the maiden who sleeps within 
 it As he draws nigh to the barrier, one of the soldiers says, "I 
 perceive that thou art a beggar who was in the land of Eirinn ; what 
 wrath would the king of Laidheann have if he should come and find 
 his daughter shamed by any one coward of Eirinn ? " At a window 
 in this fastness stands the Breast of Light, the Helen of the tale. 
 " Conall stood a little while gazing at her, but at last he put his palm 
 on the point of his spear, he gave his rounded spring, and he was in 
 at the window beside the Breast of Light," a name which recalls the 
 Europe, Euryganeia, and Euryphassa of Hellenic myths. The maiden 
 bids him not make an attempt which must end in his death, but he 
 leaps over the heads of the guards. " Was not that the hero and the 
 worthy wooer, that his like is not to be found to-day ? " Yet she is 
 not altogether pleased that it is " the coward of the great world " that 
 has taken her away ; but Conall is preparing to take a vengeance like 
 ■that of Odysseus, and all the guards and warriors are slain. The 
 insult is wiped out in blood ; but with marvellous fidelity to the old 
 mythical phrases, Conall is made to tell the Breast of Light "that he 
 had a failing, every time that he did any deed of valour he must sleep 
 before he could do brave deeds again." The sun must sleep through 
 the night before he can again do battle with his foes. The sequel is 
 as. in the Lay of the Great FooL Paris comes while Menelaos 
 slumbers, or heeds him not, or is absent He has a mirror in his ship 
 which will rise up for none but the daughter of the king of Laidheann, 
 
 which may be exhibited in the following AugS : Teuthras : : Helene" : Paris, 
 equation : — Tegea : Mysia : : Sparta : Ilion. 
 
392 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The voy- 
 age of the 
 Achaians 
 to Ilion. 
 
 and as it rises for her, he knows that he has found the fated sister of 
 • the Dioskouroi, and with her he sails straightway to his home across 
 the wine-faced sea. But the seducer has sworn to leave her free for a 
 year and a day, if Conall has so much courage as to come in pursuit 
 of her. Like Helen, she is shut up in the robber's stronghold, 
 " sorrowful that so much blood was being spilt for her ; " but Conall 
 conquers in the struggle and rescues her " out of the dark place in 
 which she was," the gloomy cave of the Panis. Then follow more 
 wanderings answering to the Nostoi, and, like Odysseus, Conall 
 appears in worn-out clothes in order to make his way into the king's 
 fortress, and again a scene of blood ensues, as in the hall of slaughter 
 in the courts of the Ithakan and Burgundian chieftains. The story 
 now repeats itself. The king of the Green Isle has a daughter who, 
 like Danae, is shut up in a tower, and the other warriors try in vain to 
 set her free, till Conall " struck a kick on one of the posts that was 
 keeping the turret aloft, and the post broke and the turret fell, but 
 Conall caught it between his hands before it reached the ground. A 
 door opened and Sunbeam came out, the daughter of the king of the 
 Green Isle, and she clasped her two arms about the neck of Conall, 
 and Conall put his two arms about Sunbeam, and he bore her into 
 the great house, and he said to the king of the Green Isle, Thy 
 daughter is won." The myth is transparent. Sunbeam would 
 marry Conall, but he tells her that he is already wedded to Breast 
 of Light, and she becomes the wife of Mac-a-Moir, the Great Hero, 
 the son of the king of Light. 
 
 The stealing away of Helen and all her treasures is the cause of 
 another expedition which, like the mission of the Argonautai, brings 
 together all the Achaian chieftains ; and the mythical history of these 
 princes, interwoven with the old tale of the death or the taking away 
 of the day, has grown up into the magnificent poems which make up 
 the storehouse of Greek epical literature. But the main thread of 
 the story remains clear and simple enough. If the search and the 
 struggle which end it represent the course of the night, they must last 
 for something like ten hours, and thus we get the ten years of the 
 war. The journey is accomplished during the dark hours: but it 
 cannot begin until the evening is ended, or in other words, until 
 the twilight has completely faded away. Hence the calm which stays 
 the Achaian fleet in Aulis cannot end until Iphigeneia has been 
 offered as a victim to the offended Artemis, the goddess of the moon 
 or the night It is vain to resist. The sin of Agamemnon is 
 brought back to his mind, as he remembers how he promised before 
 the birth of his child that he would offer up the most beautiful thing 
 
IPHIGENEIA AND ACHILLEUS. 393 
 
 which that year might produce, and how he had failed to fulfil his c "^ p - 
 
 vow. But now the evening must die if the light of morning is to be • ' 
 
 seen again : and Iphigeneia is slain that Helen may come back to 
 Sparta. But although her blood flows to the grief and agony of her 
 father and her kinsfolk, the war must still last for ten years, for so it 
 had been decreed by Zeus, who sent the snake to eat up the sparrow 
 and her young ; 1 and thus room was given for the introduction of 
 any number of episodes, to account for, or to explain the lengthening 
 out of the struggle ; and the machinery of a thousand myths was 
 obviously available for the purpose. Like Hippodameia or Atalante, 
 Helen was beautiful, but many must fail while one alone could win 
 her. Sigurd only can waken Brynhild ; and the dead bodies of the 
 unsuccessful knights lie before the hedge or wall of spears in the 
 Hindu folk-lore. Thus with the introduction of Achilleus, as the great 
 hero without whom the war can never be brought to an end, the 
 whole framework of the epic poem was complete. It only remained 
 to show what the others vainly attempted, and what Achilleus alone 
 succeeded in doing. That the life of Achilleus should run in the 
 same magic groove with the lives of other heroes, mattered nothing. 
 The story which most resembled that of Achilleus is indeed chosen 
 by the poet to point to him the moral which he needed most of all 
 to take to heart. 
 
 This story is the life of Meleagros, and it is recited to Achilleus Meleagros 
 by Phoinix, the teacher of his childhood, the dweller in that purple pa tra . eo ~ 
 land of the east from which Europe was taken to her western home. 
 It is the picture of the short-lived sun, whose existence is bound up 
 with the light or the torch of day, who is cursed by his mother for 
 killing her brothers, the clouds which are scattered by his spear rays, 
 who moves on his way moodily and sullenly, as the clouds pass across 
 his face, and appears at intervals to the terror of all his enemies. He 
 is a son of Oineus or Ares, and Althaia the nourishing Demetgr ; and 
 he proves his skill in the use of the javelin by bringing down the 
 monstrous boar which the chieftains assembled at Kalydon had failed 
 to kill. But the interest of his life lies in the burning torch and the 
 prophecy of the Moirai, that with its extinction his own life must 
 come to an end. His mother therefore snatches it from the fire, and 
 carefully guards it from harm. But the doom must be accomplished. 
 Artemis stirs up strife between the men of Kalydon and the Kouretes 
 for the spoils of the boar, and a war follows in which the former are 
 
 1 This incident, I!, ii. 300, is related and not at all as the cause of the length 
 simply as a sign of the number of years of the struggle. 
 which must • precede the fall of Ilion, 
 
394 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK always conquerors whenever Meleagros is among them. But the 
 *-— — — ■ Kouretes are, like the Korybantes and the Idaian Daktyloi, the mystic 
 dancers who can change their forms at will, and thus their defeat is 
 the victory of the sun who scatters the clouds as they wheel in their 
 airy movements round him. These clouds reappear in the brothers 
 of Althaia, and when they are slain her wrath is roused, like the anger 
 of Poseidon when Polyphemos is blinded, or the rage of Zeus when 
 the Kylope's are slain. The curse now lies heavy on Meleagros. 
 His voice is no more heard in the council ; his spear is seen no more 
 in the fight. He lies idle in his golden chambers with the beautiful 
 Kleopatra ; Kephalos is taking his rest with Eos behind the clouds 
 which hide his face from mortal men, and he will not come forth. 
 Wearied out at last, his mother brings forth the fatal brand and 
 throws it into the fire, and as its last spark flickers out, Meleagros 
 dies. With him die his wife and his mother ; Deianeira and Oinone 
 cannot live when Herakles and Paris are gone. 1 So passes away the 
 hero who can only thus be slain, and his sisters who are changed into 
 guinea-hens weep for his death, as the sisters of Phaethon, the bright 
 fleecy clouds, shed tears of amber over their brother's grave. 
 Thetis and In this story Phoinix tells Achilleus that he may see a reflexion of 
 himself; and the parallel is closer than perhaps the poet imagined 
 Like Meleagros, he is a being in whose veins flows the blood of the 
 gods. His mother is the sea-nymph Thetis, for, like Kephalos and 
 AphroditS, like Athene and Iamos, the sun-god must rise from the 
 waters ; and in- the life of his father Peleus the threads of a large 
 number of myths are strangely ravelled together. The tale of his 
 sojourn in Iolkos repeats the story of Bellerophon and Anteia ; and 
 as Proitos sends Bellerophon that he may be put to death by other 
 hands than his own, so Akastos, the husband who thinks himself 
 injured, leaves Peleus without arms on the heights of Pelion, that the 
 wild beasts may devour him. He is here attacked by Kentaurs, but 
 saved by Cheiron, who gives him back his sword. Here also he 
 becomes the husband of Thetis, at whose wedding-feast the seeds of 
 the strife are sown which produce their baleful fruits in the stealing 
 away of Helen and all its wretched consequences. But the feast 
 itself is made the occasion for the investiture of Peleus with all the 
 insignia of Helios or Phoibos. His lance is the gift of Cheiron : from 
 Poseidon, the god of the air and the waters, come the immortal horses 
 Xanthos and Balios, the golden and speckled steeds which draw the 
 
 1 In the Iliad Meleagros does not heard the curse of Althaia overtake 
 return home from the fight with the him. This is only another form of the 
 Kouretes, for the Erinyes who have myth of Helene" Dendrite. 
 
 Achilleus. 
 
ACHILLEUS IN WOMAN'S GARB. 395 
 
 chariot of the sun through the sky, or the car of Achilleus on the c "£ p - 
 
 plains of Ilion. For her child Thetis desires, as she herself possesses, ' ' 
 
 the gift of immortality, and the legend, as given by Apollodoros, here 
 introduces almost unchanged the story of Demeter and Triptolemos. 
 Like the Eleusinian goddess, Thetis bathes her babe by night in fire, 
 to destroy the mortality inherited from his father. Peleus, chancing 
 one day to see the act, cries out in terror, and Thetis leaves his house 
 for ever. 1 Of the many stories told of his later years, the myth of the 
 siege of Iolkos and the death of Astydameia repeats that of Absyrtos 
 and has probably the same meaning. The involuntary slaughter of 
 Eurytion finds a parallel in the death of Eunomos, who is unwittingly 
 killed by Herakles ; and the flocks which he offers in atonement to 
 Iros the father, are the flocks which appear in all the legends of 
 Phoibos and Helios. Iros refuses to receive them, and Peleus suffers 
 them to wander untended until they are devoured by a wolf, — a 
 phrase which betrays the nature both of the herds and their destroyer, 
 and carries us to the death of the gentle Prokris. 
 
 When Thetis had vanished away, Peleus carried the child to the The wo 
 wise Kentaur Cheiron, who taught him how to ride and shoot, — a Achilleus. 
 myth which at once explains itself when we remember that the Ken- 
 taurs are the offspring of Ixion and Nephele. In his earlier years 
 Achilleus resembles the youthful Dionysos, Theseus, and Phoibos, in 
 the womanly appearance of his form, — the gentler aspect of the new 
 risen sun when the nymphs wash him in pure water and wrap him in 
 robes of spotless white. But while his limbs yet showed only the 
 rounded outlines of youth, Kalchas the prophet could still foresee that 
 only with his help could the stronghold of the seducer of Helen be 
 taken, and that none but Achilleus could conquer Hektor. Only the 
 death of his enemy must soon be followed by his own. The night 
 must follow the blazing sunset in which the clouds pour out their 
 streams of blood-red colour, like the Trojan youths slain on the great 
 altar of sacrifice. To avert this doom, if it be possible to do so, 
 Thetis clothed the child, now nine years old, in girlish rairrient and 
 placed him in Skyfos among the daughters of Lykomedes, where from 
 his golden locks he received the name of Pyrrha. But he could not 
 long be hid : and the young boy who had in his infancy been called 
 Ligyron, the whining, was recognised by Odysseus the chieftain of 
 Ithaka as the great champion of the Achaian armies. 
 
 Thus was Achilleus engaged in a quarrel which was not his own ; The career 
 and on this fact we can scarcely lay a greater stress than he does him- ufn£ chl1 " 
 self. The task is laid upon him, as it was on Herakles or on Perseus ; 
 1 Apollod. iii. 13, 6. 
 
396 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and the sons of Atreus are to him what Polydektes and Eurystheus 
 ' - . ' — • had been to the sons of Danae and Alkmenk The men of Ilion had 
 never ravaged his fields or hurt his cattle ; and not only were his ex- 
 ploits made to shed lustre on the greedy chiefs who used him for a 
 tool, but in every battle the brunt of the fight fell upon him, while 
 almost all the booty went to them. It is the servitude of Phoibos : but 
 the despot is here a harsher master than Admetos, and the grief which 
 Achilleus is made to suffer is deeper than that of Apollon when 
 Daphng vanishes from his sight, or of Herakles when Eurytos refuses 
 to perform the compact which pledged him to make Iole the bride of 
 the hero. The Achaian camp is visited with a terrible plague. First 
 the beasts die, then the men, and the smoke of funeral pyres ascends 
 up everywhere to heaven. At length they learn from Kalchas that 
 the wrath of Phoibos has been roused by the wrong done to the priest 
 ChrysSs who had in vain offered to Agamemnon a splendid ransom 
 for his daughter, and that not until the maiden is given up will the 
 hand of the god cease to lie heavy on the people. At length the king 
 is brought to submit to the will of the deity, but he declares that in 
 place of the daughter of Chryses, Briseis, the child of the Vedic 
 Brisaya, shall be torn away from the tents of Achilleus, and thus the 
 maiden on whom Achilleus had lavished all his love passes away into 
 the hands of the man whom he utterly despises for his cowardice and 
 his greed For him the light is blotted out of the sky as thoroughly 
 as the first beauty of the day is gone when the fair hues of morning 
 give way before the more monotonous tints which take their place. 
 Henceforth his journey must be solitary, but he can take that ven- 
 geance on his persecutor which the sun may exact of those who have 
 deprived him of his treasure. He may hide himself in his tent, or 
 sullenly sit on the sea-shore, as the sun may veil his face behind the 
 clouds, while the battle of the winds goes on beneath them. Then, 
 in the sudden outburst of his grief, he makes a solemn vow that when 
 the Achaians are smitten down by their enemies his sword shall not 
 be unsheathed in their behalf; and when his mother comes from her 
 coral caves to comfort him, he beseeches her to go to Zeus and pray 
 him to turn the scale of victory on the Trojan side, that the Argives 
 may see what sort of a king they have, and Agamemnon may rue the 
 folly which dishonoured the best and bravest of all the Achaian chief- 
 tains. So Thetis hastens to Olympos, and Zeus swears to her that 
 Ilion shall not fall until the insult done to her son has been fully 
 atoned. But to this Agamemnon will not yet stoop. His chieftains 
 stand around him in unimpaired strength, and the men whom they 
 lead are eager for the conflict. 
 
THE WRATH OF ACHILLEUS. 397 
 
 It was obviously the point at which the poet might pass from the chap 
 story of Achilleus to the exploits of other chieftains, and accordingly ^— — : — - 
 many books of the Iliad are taken up with narratives showing what The Iliad. 
 those chiefs could and could not do without Achilleus. Whether 
 these narratives formed part of the Iliad in its earliest form, is a point 
 which we need not examine here; but they are so arranged as to 
 lead to the humiliating confession of Agamemnon that he has lost 
 too many men to be able to continue the struggle with any hope of 
 success — a confession which only admits in other words that the 
 conqueror of Ilion is not now in their assembly. The answer is 
 obvious. Briseis must be restored, and Agamemnon must express 
 his sorrow for all his evil words and evil deeds. If then any attempts 
 were made to appease the wrath of Achilleus before the final reparation 
 which he accepted, it follows that those attempts did not fulfil the 
 conditions on which he insisted, and hence that the ninth of the books 
 of the Iliad, as it now stands, could not possibly have formed part of 
 the original Achilleis or Uias. The apology which is here rejected is 
 word for word the same as that which is afterwards held to suffice, 
 and the reparation offered after the death of Patroklos is in no way 
 larger than that which had been offered before. The rejection of a less 
 complete submission is, however, in thorough accordance with the spirit 
 of the old myth, and the mediation of Phoinix serves well to exhibit 
 Achilleus to himself in the mirror of the character of Meleagros. 
 
 But taking the story as it now stands, we may well stand amazed The char- 
 at the unbounded savagery of the picture. There is not only no Achillea, 
 pausing on the part of Achilleus to reflect that Agamemnon has a 
 heart to feel as well as himself, and that the loss of Chryseis might at 
 least weigh something against that of the daughter of Brises, but there 
 is not the slightest heed to the sufferings of his countrymen and the 
 hopeless misery of the protracted struggle. The one redeeming 
 feature is his truthfulness, if this can be held to redeem a character 
 which Patroklos describes 1 as fit only for one who is the child of the 
 rugged rocks and the barren sea If the tears of Patroklos are of any 
 avail, it is not because he tells him of the wretched plight of the 
 Achaian hosts, but because he is his friend, and his friendship is part 
 of himself, his own selfish and personal concern ; and thus when that 
 friend prays him, if he will not go forth himself, to let him have his 
 horses his armour, and his Myrmidons, Achilleus tells him that all 
 his rage is because Agamemnon had taken from him- the prize of his 
 bow and spear, and that even now he would not have yielded a jot of 
 his vow, if the war had not at length touched his own ships. 2 When 
 1 77. xvi. 34. * M- xvi. 63. 
 
39S 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II, 
 
 Power of 
 mythical 
 tradition. 
 
 further, his friend has fallen by the hand of Hektor, and Achilleus 
 - makes his deadly oath that the funeral rites shall not be performed over 
 his body until the head and the arms of Hektorcan be placed by its 
 side, the submission of the Argive chiefs is accepted not from any 
 notion that his inaction has sprung from an exorbitant selfishness, but 
 because his own grief and unbounded fury for the loss of his friend drive 
 him to do the things to which the chiefs would urge him by the less 
 exciting arguments of a cooler patriotism. Now that his wrath is thus 
 kindled, the strife shall indeed be ended in the blood of his enemies. 
 Hektor shall die, though the death of Achilleus may follow ever so 
 closely upon it, and the blood of twelve human victims, deliberately 
 reserved for the frightful sacrifice, shall stream on the pyre of Patroklos. 
 As the portrait of a human being, the picture is from first to last 
 inexpressibly revolting; and it is only when we take the story to 
 pieces and trace the origin of its several portions, that we begin 
 to see how there lay on the poet a necessity not less constraining 
 than that which forced Achilleus to his fitful fury and his early 
 doom, a necessity which compelled him to describe under the guise 
 of human warriors the actions of the hosts which meet for their great 
 battle every morning in the heavens. Regarded thus, there is scarcely 
 a single feature, utterly perplexing though it may be on the supposition 
 that we are dealing with a human portrait, which is not seen to be 
 full of life and meaning. We are no longer perplexed to know why 
 Patroklos, who can move in the armour of Achilleus, yet cannot wield 
 his spear, why the horses which Zeus gave to Peleus are the offspring 
 of the west-wind and the happy Podarge, and why their mother feeds 
 in a meadow by the side of the ocean stream. 1 All is now plain. 
 The Myrmidons must be compared with the wolves which appear 
 almost everywhere in the myths of Phoibos Apollon ; their tongues 
 and their cheeks must be red as with blood. We see at once why 
 Patroklos can return safe from the fight only if he does strictly the 
 bidding of Achilleus, for Patroklos is but the son of Klymene, who 
 must not dare to whip the horses of Helios. When at length Patro- 
 klos goes forth and encounters Sarpgdon, it is curious to trace the 
 inconsistencies which are forced upon the poet as he interweaves 
 several solar myths together. On the one side is the Zeus who has 
 sworn to Thetis that he will avenge the wrongs done to Achilleus,— a 
 promise which cannot be fulfilled by allowing his friend to be slaugh- 
 tered, on the other the Zeus whose heart is grieved for the death of 
 his own child Sarpedon. His vow to Thetis binds him to shield 
 Patroklos from harm; his relation to the brave Lykian chieftain 
 
 1 //. xvi. 150. 
 
ACHILLEUS AND THETIS. 399 
 
 makes him look upon the son of Menoitios as he looked on Phaefhon chap. 
 
 in 
 
 ■while doing deadly mischief in the chariot of Helios. So here Zeus '■ — • 
 
 takes counsel whether he shall smite him at once or suffer him to go 
 on a little longer in his headlong course. But each story remains 
 perfectly clear. Sarpedon falls by the same doom which presses not 
 only on the man who slays him, but on Achilleus, on Bellerophon, on 
 Kephalos and a hundred others. The Lykian chief dies, like his 
 enemy, in the prime of golden youth and in the far west, for his Lykia 
 lay far away to the east of Ilion, where the sun comes up, and the 
 Dawn is greeting the earth when the powers of sleep and death bear 
 their beautiful burden to the doors of his golden home. By the same 
 inconsistency the eastern tradition made Apollon the enemy of Patro- 
 klos, as it afterwards associates him with Paris in the death of Achil- 
 leus ; yet J:he power by which he preserves the body of Hektor from 
 decay is employed by Thetis to preserve that of Patroklos. But the 
 terrible fight over the dead Patroklos is fought over again when 
 Achilleus is smitten, as it is fought out by the clouds which do battle 
 together over the dying Herakles. 
 
 From this point all is transparent. The grief of Achilleus when The . 
 
 r t- o mourning 
 
 he learns that his friend is dead is the darkening of the sky when of 
 the sun. which had been shining through the cloud-rifts withdraws c 
 his light; and in the tearing of his hair, in the defilement of his 
 beautiful robe and the tossing of the sand over his head and face, 
 we see the torn vapours hurrying hither and thither in a thousand 
 shapeless forms. Henceforth the one thought which fills his 
 heart is that of vengeance, nor is his burning desire weakened when 
 Thetis tells him that the death of Hektor must soon be followed by his 
 own, as the sunset is not far off when the sun wins his final victory 
 over the clouds which have assailed him throughout his journey. 
 Herakles himself met boldly the doom brought upon him by the 
 wrath of Here ; and Achilleus is content to die, if only he may first 
 give his enemies sufficient cause for weeping. Then follows the 
 incident in which Thetis and Hephaistos play precisely the part of 
 Hjordis and Regin in the Volsung tale. The arms of Achilleus are in 
 the hands of Hektor, but when the morning comes, Thetis will return 
 from the east bringing a goodly panoply from the lord of fire. At 
 what other time could the sun receive the new armour which is to 
 replace that of which he had been robbed by the powers of darkness ? 
 We can scarcely lay too much stress on these points of detail in which 
 the poet manifestly follows a tradition too strong to be resisted. This 
 story of the evening which precedes the return of Achilleus to the 
 battle-field is a vivid picture of the sun going down angrily and be- 
 
40o 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The arm- 
 ing and 
 vengeance 
 of Achil- 
 lea. 
 
 tokening his appearance in fiercer strength on the morrow. When to 
 - the bidding of Iris, that he should go forth to avenge his friend, he 
 replies that he has no arms, the goddess bids him show himself in the 
 trenches without them. Like the sudden flash of the sun, when as he 
 approaches the horizon his light breaks from behind the dense veil of 
 vapours, is the shout of Achilleus ringing through the air. It is 
 absurd to think of any human warrior, or to suppose that any hyper- 
 bole could suggest or justify the poet's words, as he tells us how the 
 dazzling light thrown from his face reached up to the high ether of 
 Zeus, and how the horses of the Trojans felt the woes that were 
 coming, and their drivers were astonished, as they beheld the awful 
 fire kindled on the head of the great-hearted son of Peleus by the 
 dawn-goddess Pallas Athene. But for the present there is the blaze 
 of light, and nothing more. At the bidding of Here the.sun goes 
 down, and the strife is stayed. But as the hours of the night wear 
 on, the fire-god toils on the task which Thetis prays him to undertake; 
 and when the mighty disk of the shield and the breastplate more 
 dazzling than the fiercest fire are ready, Thetis flies with them to her 
 son like a hawk winging its way from the snow-clad Olympos. 
 
 The hour of vengeance is now indeed come. As his mother lays 
 before him the gifts of Hephaistos, his eyes flash like the lightning, and 
 his only fear is that while he is fighting, the body of Patroklos may 
 decay. But Thetis bids him be of good cheer. No unseemly thing 
 shall come near to mar that beautiful form, though it should lie un- 
 heeded the whole year round. There can be now no delay, and no pause 
 in the conflict. The black clouds have hidden the face of Achilleus 
 long enough ; but now he will not eat before his deadly task is done. 
 He is braced for the final struggle by a sight which he had scarcely 
 hoped to see again. The Achaian chiefs appear to make the sub- 
 mission of Agamemnon, and like Iole coming to Herakles, or Antigone" 
 to the dying Oidipous, Briseis is restored to him unscathed as when 
 she was torn away from his tent. In her grief for Patroklos, whom 
 she had left full of life, we have the grief of the dawn for the death of 
 the sun in his gentler aspect. In him there had been no fierceness, 
 and if his gentler temper went along with a lack of strength, like that 
 of Phaethon in the chariot of Helios, he was none the less deserving 
 ■of her love. In the arming which follows we have, as plainly as words 
 can paint it, the conflagration of the heavens : and the phrases used 
 by the poet, if regarded as a description of any earthly hero and any 
 earthly army, might be pronounced a series of monstrous hyperboles 
 with far greater justice than the hundred-headed narcissus to which 
 Colonel Mure applies the term when speaking of the myth of Per- 
 
THE DEATH OF ACHILLEUS. 401 
 
 sephong. The shield flashing like a beacon-fire far away on the deep c ^ p - 
 
 sea, the helmet crest gleaming like a star, the armour whicfi bears up ■ 
 
 the hero as on the pinions of a bird, the spear which Cheiron cut on 
 the heights of Pelion, the undying horses gifted with the mind and 
 the speech of man, all belong to no earthly warfare. We need not 
 follow the mighty conflict in its details; but it is scarcely pos- 
 sible to lay too much stress on the singular parallelism between the 
 several stages in this fatal contest, as compared with the battle between 
 Odysseus and the suitors. The hero with the irresistible weapons 
 which no other arm can wield, filled with the strength of Athene her- 
 self, fighting with enemies who almost overpower him just when he 
 seems to be on the point of winning the victory,— the struggle in 
 which the powers of heaven and hell take part, — the utter discomfiture 
 of a host by the might of one invincible warrior, — the time of placid 
 repose which follows the awful turmoil, — the doom which in spite of 
 the present glory still awaits the conqueror, all form a picture, the 
 lines of which are in each case the same, and in which he see reflected 
 the fortunes of Perseus, Oidipous, Bellerophon, and all the crowd of 
 heroes who have each their Hektor to vanquish and their Ilion to 
 overthrow, whether in the den of Chimaira, the labyrinth of the 
 Minotaur, the cave of Cacus, the frowning rock of the Sphinx, or the 
 stronghold of the Panis. Nor is the meaning of the tale materially 
 altered whether we take the myth that he fell in the western gates by 
 the sword of Paris aided by the might of Phoibos, or the version of 
 Diktys of Crete, that in his love for Polyxena the daughter of Priam 
 he promised to join the Trojans, and going unarmed into the temple 
 of Apollon at Thymbra, was there slain by the seducer of Helen. As 
 the sun is the child of the night, so, as the evening draws on, he may 
 be said to ally himself with the kindred of the night again ; and his 
 doom is equally certain whether the being whom he is said to love 
 represent the dawn or the sister of the night that is coming. With 
 all the ferocity which he shows on the loss of Briseis, Achilleus none 
 the less resembles Herakles ; but the pity which he feels for the 
 amazon Penthesileia, when he discovers her beauty, explains the 
 myths which make him the lover of Diomede and Polyxena, and the 
 husband of Medeia, or Iphigeneia, or of Helen herself on the dazzling 
 isle of Leuke. We are dealing with the loves of the sun for the dawn, 
 the twilight, and the violet-tinted clouds. 
 
 But if the myth of Achilleus is, as Phoinix himself is made to say, The 
 only another form of the tale of Meleagros, the story of the sun Nost °i- 
 doomed to go down in the full brightness of his splendour after a 
 career as brief as it is brilliant— if for him the slaughter of Hektor 
 
 2 D 
 
402 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK marks the approaching end of his own life, the myth of Helen carries 
 
 " -• — us back to another aspect of the great drama. She is the treasure 
 
 stolen from the gleaming west, and with her wealth she is again the 
 prize of the Achaians when Paris falls by the poisoned arrows of 
 Philoktetis. 1 This rescue of the Spartan queen from the seducer 
 whom she utterly despises is the deliverance of Sarami from the 
 loathsome Panis ; but the long hours of the day must pass before her 
 eyes can be gladdened by the sight of her home. Thus the ten 
 hours' cycle is once more repeated in the Nostoi, or return of the 
 heroes, for in the Mediterranean latitudes, where the night and day 
 may be roughly taken as dividing the twenty-four hours into two 
 equal portions, two periods of ten hours each would represent the 
 time not taken up with the phenomena of daybreak and sunrise, sun- 
 set and twilight. Thus although the whole night is a hidden struggle 
 with the powers of darkness, the decisive exploits of Achilleus, and 
 indeed the active operations of the war, are reserved for the tenth 
 year and furnish the materials for the Iliad, while in the Odyssey the 
 ten years' wanderings are followed by the few hours in which the 
 beggar throws off his rags and takes dire vengeance on his enemies. 
 Hence it is that Odysseus returns, a man of many griefs and much 
 bowed with toil, in the twentieth year from the time when the Achaian 
 fleet set sail from Aulis. 
 Odysseus The interest of the homeward voyage of the treasure-seekers is 
 
 and Auto- .... ^ 
 
 lykos. centred in the fortunes of Odysseus, the brave and wise chieftain 
 whose one yearning it is to see his wife and child once more before 
 he dies. He has fought the battle of the children of the sun against 
 the dark thieves of night, and now his history must be that of the 
 lord of day as he goes on his journey through the sky in storm and 
 calm, in peace or in strife. This transparency of meaning marks not 
 only the myth of Odysseus ; it is seen in all that is related of his kins- 
 folk. The character of his parents merely reflects his own. His 
 grandfather is Autolykos, the true or the absolute light which kindles 
 the heavens at dawn. But Autolykos, who is endowed with a wisdom 
 which coming from Helios passes into a craft like that of Medeia, is 
 a child of Hermes, the morning breeze, and Telauge the far-shining. ■ 
 His bride is Neaira, the early dawn, whose daughters feed the cattle ' 
 of Helios in Thrinakia." His child is Antikleia, a name which sug- 
 gests a comparison with Antigone and Antiope ; and Antikleia is the 
 wife of Laertes, a being akin to the Laios of Theban tradition, or of 
 
 ^ ^ The story of the wound of Philok- 2 He is also called the husband of 
 
 tetes is repeated precisely in the romance Amphithea, the light which gleams all 
 of Tristram. round the heaven. 
 
403 
 
 Sisyphos, whose story is that of the sun toiling to the uppermost C **AP- 
 
 heights of the heaven with his huge orb, only to see it roll down ' — - * 
 
 again to the sea. From these springs Odysseus, whose name, in the 
 belief of the poet, 1 indicated the wrath or hatred of his grandsire 
 Autolykos, but which through the form Olyseus, the Latin Ulyxes 
 or Ulysses, may possibly represent the Sanskrit ulukshaya, the 
 Eurykreion or widely ruling king of the Greeks. With the abode of 
 Autolykos on Parnassos is connected the story of the boar's bite, by 
 whose mark Eurykleia the old nurse recognises Odysseus on his 
 return from Ilion ; nor can we doubt that this boar is the beast whose 
 tusk wrought the death of Adonis. It is true indeed that in Autolykos 
 the idea suggested by the penetrating powers of sunlight has produced 
 a character far lower than that of Odysseus : but it must not be for- 
 gotten that the latter can lie, or steal, or stab secretly when it suits 
 his purpose to do so. If the splendour of the sun is in one sense an 
 image of absolute openness and sincerity, the rays which peer into 
 dark crannies or into the depths of the sea may as naturally indicate 
 a craft or cunning which must suggest the forms assumed by the myth 
 in the stories of Medeia, Autolykos, and Sisyphos. The process is 
 the same as that which converted the flashing weapon of Chrysaor 
 into the poisoned arrows of Herakles, Odysseus, and Philoktetes. 
 
 But Odysseus, the suitor of Helen, is known especially as the Odysseus 
 husband of Penelope, who weaves by day the beautiful web of cirri j^ Pene " 
 clouds which is undone again during" the night ; and it is as the 
 weaver that she defeats the schemes of the suitors in that long contest 
 which runs parallel to the great conflict at Ilion. For the departure 
 of the Achaian chieftains at Troy is the departure of the light after 
 sundown ; and the powers of darkness as necessarily assail Penelope 
 as they fight to retain Helen in the city of Priam and Paris. How 
 then could she withstand their importunities except by devising some 
 such condition as that of the finishing of a web which cannot be seen 
 completed except by the light of the sun, — in other words, until 
 Odysseus should have come back ? Regarded thus, Penelope is the 
 faithful bride of the sun, pure and unsullied in her truthfulness as 
 Athene herself, and cherishing the memory of Odysseus through 
 weary years of sorrow and suffering. As such, the poet of the 
 Odyssey has chosen to exhibit her ; but there were legends which 
 spoke of Pan as the offspring of Penelope and Hermes, or of Penelope 
 and all the suitors together. Of this myth, which simply exhibits the 
 evening twilight and the darkness as the parents of the breeze which 
 murmurs softly in the night, it is enough to say that we have no right 
 
 1 Od. xix. 410. 
 
404 MYTHOLOGY "OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK to put it down as necessarily of later growth than the myth which 
 
 • ^ — • forms the subject of the Odyssey. There is nothing to be urged 
 
 against, there is much to be urged for, the priority of such myths 
 9S Kephalos and Prokris, Demeter and Persephone, over by far 
 the larger number of legends noticed or narrated in our Homeric 
 poems ; and if one story is to be pronounced of later growth than 
 another, the verdict must be based on other and more conclusive 
 evidence than the mere fact that it happens not to be mentioned in 
 our Iliad or Odyssey. Penelope indeed is only the dawn or the 
 evening light : and Aphrodite is but another aspect of Athene 1 . As 
 such, Penelope 1 is thrown by her parents into the sea at her birth, and 
 she becomes Anadyomene when the sea-birds, from which she was 
 also said to have her name, raise her up on their cloud-like wings. 
 As such also, when Odysseus has been slain by Telegonos, 1 she 
 becomes the wife of his murderer, either in Aiaia or in Leuke where 
 Helen is also wedded to Achilleus. 
 The wo- To the success of the Trojan expedition Odysseus is only less 
 
 Odysseus, necessary than the great chieftain of Phthia ; and hence we have the 
 same story of his unwillingness to engage in it which we find in the 
 story of Achilleus. In this case as in the other it is a work to be 
 done for the profit of others, not his own. It is, in short, a task 
 undertaken against his will ; and it answers strictly to the servitude of 
 Phoibos in the house of Admetos, or the subjection of Heraklgs to 
 the bidding of Eurystheus. With the idea of the yoke thus laid upon 
 them is closely connected that notion of weakness to which the 
 Homeric hymn points when it speaks of the nymphs as wrapping 
 Phoibos in the white swaddling-clothes before he became Chrysaor. 
 This raiment becomes a disguise, and thus the workmen jeer at 
 Theseus for his girlish appearance, and Achilleus is found in woman's 
 garb by those who come to take him to Ilion. The idea of disguise, 
 however, readily suggests that of feigned madness, and as such it 
 comes before us in the story of Odysseus, who is described as sowing 
 salt behind a plough drawn by an ox and an ass. The trick is found 
 out by Palamedes, who, placing the infant Telemachos in his way, 
 makes Odysseus turn the plough aside and avoid him. He is now 
 bound to attempt the rescue of Helen, as he and all her suitors had 
 sworn to do when they sought her hand. At Troy, however, he is 
 
 1 This name, like Telemachos, Tele- the sun, it follows that all who die are 
 
 phos and Telephassa, denotes the far- slain by these gods. Hence Odysseus 
 
 reaching spears (rays) of the sun : and not less than his enemies must be slain 
 
 as Helios and Phoibos became the lords by Phoibos or somebody who represents 
 
 of life and death, of the light and him. 
 darkness which depends on the orb of 
 
ODYSSEUS AND HIS COMRADES. 4°S 
 
 but one of many Achaian chieftains, although he is second only to c "^ p - 
 
 Achilleus ; and thus he goes with Menelaos to Uion to demand the '— ' 
 
 surrender of Helen, before the strife is formerly begun. In the long 
 contest which follows he is renowned chiefly for his wisdom and his 
 eloquence. In the council none has greater power ; and his cool 
 unimpassioned sobriety stands out in singular contrast with the fierce 
 impetuosity of Achilleus. He can also serve, if need be, as a spy, 
 and in ambush none are more formidable. With him, according to 
 one tradition, originated that device of the wooden horse which simply 
 reproduces the Argo on dry land. As the ship bears the confederated 
 Achaians who contrive to win a welcome from the Kolchian king, so 
 the wooden horse carries all the bravest of the Argives on their errand 
 of death to the Trojans and of rescue to Helen, whose wealth is the 
 Golden Fleece. 
 
 With the fall of Ilion Odysseus at once appears in another aspect. Odysseus 
 
 „ . , , , ,..,., the Wan- 
 
 He is now the man who longs to see his wife, who cannot tarry derer. 
 
 where he is, and who must go on his way homewards in spite of all 
 
 that may oppose him or seek to weaken the memory of her beauty 
 
 and her love. On this thread the poet of the Odyssey has strung 
 
 together the series of adventures, most of which we have already 
 
 sufficiently examined in the myths under which each naturally falls. 
 
 These adventures are interwoven with wonderful skill ; but they may 
 
 each be traced to some simple phrase denoting originally the 
 
 phenomena of the sun's daily or yearly course through the heaven. 
 
 Among the most remarkable features of the story are the changes in 
 
 the companions of Odysseus. He sets out from Ilion with a gallant 
 
 fleet and a goodly company : he lands in Ithaka from a beautiful bark 
 
 with a noble crew : but of those who had left Troy with him not one 
 
 remained — a vivid image of the sun setting among clouds, but 
 
 the clouds are not the same as those which surrounded him at his 
 
 birth. These must vanish away and die continually, and a stock 
 
 of stories to account for each disaster was the inevitable result. 
 
 The means by which the misfortunes were brought about would also 
 
 be readily suggested by the daily appearances of the sky. Of all 
 
 the clouds which are seen in the heavens the delicate vapours which 
 
 float like islets through the blue seas of air would be the friends of the 
 
 sun ; the black clouds which rudely thrust these aside, or blot them 
 
 out of sight, would be the enemies who devour his men. The same 
 
 phenomena would suggest their features and their raiment, the rough 
 
 shaggy locks and uncouth faces of the beings who represent the dark 
 
 vapours, the pure white robes and heavenly countenances of the 
 
 maidens who dwell in the fair Phaiakian land Thus the enemies 
 
406 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and friends of the sun attend him throughout his journey, and the 
 
 ■ '■ — • times of peace may at any moment be followed by a time of war. 
 
 But these gloomy storm-clouds, which move like giants with clubs as 
 high as a ship's mast, all rise from the sea. In other words, they 
 are sons of Poseidon, and thus is explained that enmity of Poseidon 
 for Odysseus which is partially counteracted by the dawn-goddess 
 Athene. Hence also many of the beings whom he encounters 
 are only old friends or enemies in a new form or dress. There is 
 really no difference in kind between the Kikones, the Laistrygonians, 
 and the Kyklopes, between the Lotos-eaters, Kirke, and the Seirens. 
 It is but a question of the degree of risk and extent of loss in each 
 case. Thus the Kikones gather together, like the leaves of the trees 
 in number, and they gain their victory as the sun goes down in the 
 west. These beings reappear in more formidable shape on the 
 island where the Kyklopes feed their shaggy flocks, the vapours 
 which lie low and seem to browse upon the hills. Necessarily 
 they can but pasture their herds, for vines or cornfields they can 
 have none. It is hard to say how far the details of the story may 
 not be strictly mythical in their origin. Certain it seems that 
 when Odysseus, having left eleven ships in the goat island, approaches 
 the home of the Kyklopes with only one, we see the sun drawing near 
 to the huge storm-cloud with but a single Phaiakian bark by his side. 
 As his orb passes behind the mass of vapour the giant becomes the 
 one-eyed or round-faced Kyklops, who devours one by one the 
 comrades of Odysseus. As the vapours thicken still more, the 
 face of the sun can no longer be seen ; in other words, Polyphemos 
 has been blinded, and his rage is seen in the convulsive movements 
 of the vapours, from beneath which, as from beneath the shaggy- 
 fleeced rams, the white clouds which belong to the Phaiakian regions 
 are seen stealing away, until at last from under the hugest beast of 
 the flock the sun himself emerges, only to draw down on himself 
 another savage attack from the madly rushing storm-cloud. Poly- 
 phemos has been smitten, and as on the discomfiture of Vritra, or the 
 Sphinx, or the Pythian dragon, the mighty waters burst forth, and the 
 ship of Odysseus is well-nigh overwhelmed in the sea. 
 Odysseus The incidents which follow the departure of Odysseus from the 
 
 and Aiolos. .,,,.., . . , ' 
 
 island of Aiolos are a picture of a violent gale followed by profound 
 calm. Aiolos himself gives to Odysseus a bag containing all the 
 winds, from which he might let out the Zephyr to waft him on his 
 way. As he sleeps, his comrades bewail the evil fate which sends 
 them home empty-handed while Odysseus has received from the king 
 of the winds vast treasures which would enrich them all. This notion 
 
THE ENEMIES OF ODYSSEUS. 4°7 
 
 impels them to open the bag, and all the winds of heaven burst forth C ^ P- 
 in wild fury, and carry them back to Aiolia, whence the Tung drives v — ' 
 
 them away as being under the curse of the gods, and says that hence- 
 forth he will not help them more. At once Odysseus is made to relate 
 how his men were now tired out with rowing day and night, because 
 there was not a breath of air to speed them on their voyage. 
 
 In the city of the Laistrygonians, Lamos, a name connected with The 
 the Greek Lamuroi and the Latin Lemures, the seizers and swal- nians.' 
 lowers, we see the awful caves- in which the Vritra hides away the 
 stolen cattle of Indra. It is hard by the confines of Day and Night, 
 and round it rise the rocks sheer and smooth from the sea, while two 
 promontories leave a narrow entrance for ships. Within it there is 
 neither wave nor wind, but an awful stillness broken only by the dull 
 sound when 
 
 Shepherd calls to shepherd, entering through 
 The portals, and the other makes answer due, 1 
 
 like thunder-clouds greeting each other with their mysterious voices. 
 No cheering sight, however, meets the eye ; and when the men of 
 Odysseus are led by the daughter of Antiphates the chief into his- 
 palace, they gaze with horror at his wife, who stands before them huge- 
 as a rock. By Antiphates himself they are necessarily treated like their 
 comrades in the Kyklops' island, and Odysseus escapes after losing 
 many of his men only by cutting the mooring-ropes of his ship and 
 hastening out to sea. 
 
 In the land of the Lotos-eaters Odysseus encounters dangers The Lotos- - 
 of another kind. The myth carries us to the many emblems of the dirks' ani 
 reproductive powers of nature, of which the Lotos is one of the most 
 prominent It here becomes the forbidden fruit, and the eating of it 
 so poisons the blood as to take away all memory and care for home 
 and kinsfolk, for law, right, and duty. The sensual inducements 
 held out by the Lotophagoi are, in short, those by which Venus 
 tempts Tanhauser into her home in the Horselberg; and the 
 degradation of the bard answers to the dreamy indolence of the 
 groups who make life one long holiday in the Lotos land The 
 Venus of the medixval story is but another form of Kirkg, the queen 
 of Aiaia ; but the sloth and sensuality of the Lotos-eaters here turns 
 its victims into actual swine, while the spell is a tangible poison 
 poured by Kirke into their cups. The rod which she uses as the 
 instrument of transformation gives a further significance to the story. 
 From these swinish pleasures they are awakened only through the 
 
 ' Worsley, Odyssey, a. 234. 
 
408 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Odysseus 
 
 and 
 
 Kalypso. 
 
 interference of Odysseus, who has received from Hermes an antidote 
 ' which deprives the charms of Kirke" of all power to hurt him. The 
 Herakles of Prodikos is after all the Heraklds whom we see in the 
 myths of Echidna or of the daughters of Thestios, and thus Odysseus 
 dallies with Kirke as he listens also to the song of the Seirens. True, 
 he has not forgotten his home or his wife, but he is ready to avail 
 himself of all enjoyments which will not hinder him from reaching 
 home at last. So he tarries with Kirke and with the fairer Kalypso, 
 whose beautiful abode is the palace of Tara Bai in the Hindu legend, 
 while she herself is Ursula, the moon, wandering, like Asterodia, 
 among the myriad stars, — the lovely being who throws a veil over 
 the Sun while he sojourns in her peaceful home. 
 
 From the abode of Kirke" Odysseus betakes himself to the regions 
 of Hades, where from Teiresias he learns that he may yet escape 
 from the anger of Poseidon, if he and his comrades will but abstain 
 from hurting the cattle of Helios in the island of Thrinakia — or in 
 other words, as we have seen, if they will not waste time by the way. 
 Coming back to Kirke" he is further warned against other foes in the 
 air and the waters in the Seirens and Skylla and Charybdis. Worse 
 than all, however, is the fate which awaits him in Thrinakia. The 
 storm which is sent after the death of the oxen of Helios destroys all 
 his ships and all his comrades, and Odysseus alone reaches the island 
 of Kalypso, who, like Eos, promises him immortality if he will but 
 tarry with her for ever. But it may not be. The yearning for his 
 home and his wife may be repressed for a time, but it cannot be 
 extinguished ; and Athene" has exacted from Zeus an oath that 
 Odysseus shall assuredly be avenged of all who have wronged him. 
 So at the bidding of Hermes Kalypso- helps Odysseus to build a raft, 
 which bears him towards Scheria, until Poseidon again hurls him from 
 it. But Ino Leukothea is at hand to save him, and he is at last 
 thrown up almost dead on the shore of the Phaiakian land, where 
 Athene brings Nausikaa to his rescue. He is now in the true cloud- 
 land of his friends, where everything is beautiful and radiant ; and in 
 one of the magic ships of Alkinoos he is wafted to Ithaka, and landed 
 on his native soil, buried in a profound slumber. Here the wanderer 
 of twenty years, who finds himself an outcast from his own home, 
 where the suitors have been wasting his substance with riotous living, 
 prepares for his last great work of vengeance, and for a battle which 
 answers to the fatal conflict between Achilleus and Hektor. He is 
 himself but just returned from the search and the recovery of a stolen 
 treasure ; but before he can rest in peace, there remains yet another 
 woman whom he must rescue, and another treasure on which he must 
 
THE VENGEANCE OF ODYSSEUS. 409 
 
 lay his hands. Of the incidents of this struggle it is unnecessary here CHAP. 
 
 to say more than that they exhibit the victory of the poor despised '■ — ■ 
 
 outcast, whether it be Boots, or Cinderella, or Jack the Giant Killer, 
 or the Great Fool, over those who pride themselves on their grandeur 
 and their strength. He stands a beggar in his own hall. Athene 
 herself has taken all beauty from his face, all colour from his golden 
 hair ; but there remains yet the bow which he alone can bend, the 
 gleaming slipper which Cinderella alone can put on. The whole 
 picture is wonderfully true to the phenomena of the earth and the 
 heavens, but as a portrait of human character, it is not more happy 
 than that of Achilleus. There is the same complete disproportion 
 between the offence committed and the vengeance taken, the same 
 frightful delight in blood and torture — the mutilation of Melanthios 
 and" the deliberate slaughter of the handmaidens answering to the 
 insults offered by Achilleus to the body of Hektor, and the cold- 
 blooded murder of the twelve Trojan youths on the funeral pyre of 
 Patroklos. The incidents of the decisive conflict answer com- 
 pletely to those of the battle of Achilleus ; and all that we need say 
 is that Odysseus is united with his wife, to whom Athene' imparts all 
 the radiant beauty of youth in which she shone when Odysseus had 
 left her twenty years ago. The splendid scene with which the 
 narrative ends answers to the benignant aspect in which Achilleus 
 appears when Hektor is dead. 
 
 Section III.— THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN. 
 
 We have thus far traced the second return of the treasure-seekers. The ex- 
 In each case the work to which they had devoted themselves is f^Hera- 
 accomplished. The golden fleece and Helen are each brought back kirids. 
 to the land from which they had been taken ; and though Odysseus 
 may have suffered many and grievous disasters on the way, still even 
 with him the destruction of the suitors is followed by a season of 
 serene repose. But the poet who here leaves him with the bride of 
 >is youth restored to all her ancient beauty, tells us nevertheless that 
 the chieftain and his wife must again be parted ; and myths might 
 be framed from this point of view as readily as from the other. It 
 was as natural to speak of the sun as conquered in the evening by 
 the powers of darkness as it was to speak 6f him as victorious over 
 these same foes in the morning — as natural to describe the approach 
 of night under the guise of an expulsion of the children of Helios or 
 Herakles, as to represent the reappearance of the sunset hues in 
 
4io 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The re- 
 turn of 
 ihe Hera- 
 kleids. 
 
 the west by a myth relating their triumphant return. Such myths 
 • are in fact the germs of those recurring expulsions, and those attempted 
 or successful restorations which form what is commonly called the 
 history of the Herakleidai. The extent to which an element of actual 
 history may be traced in these mythical narratives is a question on 
 which something has been said already, and probably it will not be 
 disputed that even if many of the names may be those of real local 
 chieftains (and some of the incidents may possibly be traditions of 
 real local events), yet the narratives in their main features closely 
 resemble the other epical myths with which they are connected. 
 These stories were altered at will by later poets and myfhographers 
 in accordance with local or tribal prejudices or fancies, and forced 
 into arrangements which were regarded as chronological. Thus, 
 some speak of the Trojan war as taking place in the interval between 
 the death of Hyllos and the return of his son Kleodaios ; but the 
 historical character of all these events has been swept away, and we 
 are left free to reduce the narratives to the simple elements of which 
 they are composed. Thus the story ran that when Herakles died, 
 his tyrant and tormentor Eurystheus insisted on the surrender of his 
 sons, and that Hyllos, the son of Deianeira, with his brothers, hastily 
 fled, and after wandering to many other places at last found a refuge 
 in Athens. This was only saying in 1 other words that on the death 
 of the sun the golden hues of evening were soon banished from the 
 western sky, but that after many weary hours they are seen again in 
 the country of the Dawn, as indeed they could be seen nowhere else. 
 Athens is the only possible refuge for the children cf Herakles ; but 
 their enemies will not allow them to slip from their hands without a 
 struggle. The Gorgon sisters almost seize Perseus as he hurries away 
 after the slaughter of Medousa ; and thus Eurystheus marches with 
 his hosts against Athens. But the dawn must discomfit the dark 
 beings. The Athenians are led on by Theseus, the great solar hero 
 of the land, by Iolaos, the son of Iphikles, the twin brother of 
 Herakles, and by the banished Hyllos. Eurystheus is slain, and 
 Hyllos carries his head to Alkmene. 
 
 If we choose now to follow the ordinary arrangement of these 
 stories, we shall see in them a series which might be indefinitely ex- 
 tended, but of whose mythical origin we can scarcely feel a doubt. 
 If after the defeat of Eurystheus the Herakleids return to the Pelo- 
 ponnesos, we find that thfey cannot maintain their footing there for 
 more than a year, and that then by an irresistible necessity they find 
 their way back to Athens ; and these alternations, which represent 
 simply the succession of day and night, might and would have been 
 
KARMOS AND CHRYS^S. 4 11 
 
 repeated any number of times, if the myths had not at length become CHAP. 
 
 mixed up with traditions of the local settlement of the* country — • — - 
 
 in other words, if certain names found in the myths had not become 
 associated with particular spots or districts in the Peloponnesos. To 
 follow all the versions and variations of these legends is a task 
 perhaps not much more profitable than threading the mazes of a 
 labyrinth ; but we may trace in some, probably in most of them, the 
 working of the same ideas. Thus the version which after the death 
 of Eurystheus takes Hyllos to Thebes makes him dwell by the 
 Elektrian or amber-gates. The next stage in the history is another 
 return of the children of Herakles, which ends in the slaughter of 
 Hyllos in single combat with Echemos — a name connected perhaps 
 with that of Echidna, Ahi, the throttling snake. The night is once 
 more victorious, and the Herakleidai are bound by a compact to 
 forego all attempts at return for fifty or a hundred years, periods 
 which are mere multiples of the ten years of the Trojan war, and of 
 the Nostoi or homeward wanderings of the Achaian chiefs. Once 
 more the children of the dawn goddess give them shelter in Tri- 
 korythos, a region answering to the Hypereia or upper land, in which 
 the Phaiakians dwelt before they were driven from it by the Ky- 
 klopes. The subsequent fortunes of Kleodaios and Aristomachos the 
 son and grandson of Herakles simply repeat those of Hyllos ; but at 
 length in the next generation the myth pauses, as in the case of 
 Odysseus and Achilleus in the Iliad and the Odyssey, at the moment 
 of victory, and the repetition of the old drama is prevented by the 
 gradual awakening of the historical sense in the Hellenic tribes. For 
 this last return the preparations are on a scale which may remind us 
 in some degree of the brilliant gathering of the Achaian chieftains 
 with their hosts in Aulis. A fleet is built at the entrance of the 
 Corinthian gulf, at a spot which hence bore the name of Naupaktos, 
 and the three sons of Aristomachos, Aristodemos, Temenos, and 
 Kresphontes, make ready for the last great enterprise. But Aristo- 
 demos is smitten by lightning before he can pass over into the 
 heritage of his fathers, and his place is taken by his twin sons 
 Eurysthenes and Prokles, in whose fortunes we see that rivalry and 
 animosity which, appearing in its germ in the myth of the Dios- 
 kouroi, is brought to a head in the story of Eteokles and Polyneikes, 
 the sons of Oidipous. The sequel exhibits yet other points of re- 
 semblance to the story of the Trojan war. The soothsayer Chryses 
 reappears as the prophet Kamos, whose death by the hand of 
 Hippotes answers to the insults offered to Chryses by Agamemnon. 
 In either case the wrath of Apollon is roused, and a plague is the 
 
4'12 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 consequence. The people die of famine, nor is the hand of the god 
 lifted from off them, until, as for ChrysSs, a full atonement is made. 
 Hippotes is banished, and the chiefs are then told to take as their 
 guide the three-eyed man, who is found in the Aitolian Oxylos who 
 rides on a one-eyed horse. But as the local myth exhibited Tisa- 
 menos the son of Orestes as at this time the ruler of Peloponnesos, 
 that prince must be brought forward as the antagonist of the returning 
 Herakleids ; and a great battle follows in which he is slain, while, 
 according to one version, Pamphylos and Dymas, the sons of the 
 Dorian Aigimios, fall on the side of the invaders. With the partition 
 of the Peloponnesos among the conquerors the myth comes to an 
 end. Argos falls to the lot of Temenos, while Sparta becomes the 
 portion of the sons of Aristodemos, and Messene that of Kresphontes. 
 A sacrifice is offered by way of thanksgiving by these chiefs on their 
 respective altars ; and as they drew near to complete the rite, on the 
 altar of Sparta was seen a serpent, on that of Argos a toad, on that of 
 MessSne' a fox. The soothsayers were, of course, ready with their 
 interpretations. The slow and sluggish toad denoted the dull and 
 unenterprising disposition of the future Argive people; the serpent 
 betokened the terrible energy of the Spartans ; the fox, the wiliness 
 and cunning of the Messenians. As indications of national character, 
 more appropriate emblems might perhaps have been found ; but it 
 may be noted that the toad or frog reappears in the Hindu legend of 
 Bheki, the frog-sun, and in the German story of the frog-prince ; that 
 the serpent in this legend belongs to the class of dragons which 
 appear in the myths of Helios, Medeia, and Iamos ; and that the 
 Messenian fox is an animal closely akin to the wolf which we meet 
 in the myths of the Lykian Apollon and the Arkadian Lykaon. 1 
 
 Section IV.— THE THEBAN WARS. 
 
 Adrastos 
 and Am- 
 phiaraos. 
 
 In spite of all differences of detail between the legends of the 
 Trojan and the Theban wars, the points of resemblance are at the 
 least as worthy of remark In each case there are two wars and two 
 
 1 The three sons, Aristodemos, 
 Temenos, and Kresphontes, who in this 
 stage of the myth represent the line of 
 Herakles, are seen again in the three 
 sons of the German Mann, the Mannus 
 of Tacitus : but the names in the 
 Teutonic story are more significant. 
 The names of the three great tribes, 
 Ing£evones, Iscaevones, Herminones, 
 
 point to Yng, Askr, and Irmin. To 
 Yng, probably, we may trace the 
 English name : in Askr we see the ash- 
 born man, the race of which the Greek 
 spoke as sprung 4k jutAiny : Irmin is the 
 old Saxon god, whose name is familiar 
 to us under its later form Herman, the 
 Arminius of Tacitus. — Max Miiller, 
 Lectures, second series, 458. 
 
AMPHIARAOS AND ERIPHYLE. 4*3 
 
 sieges ; and if the Argive chiefs under Adrastos are not so successful c ^ p - 
 
 as Herakles with his six ships at Ilion, still the Trojan pftwer was no ■ ■ ' 
 
 more destroyed by the latter than that of Eteokles was crushed by 
 Polyneikes and his allies. In either case also there is a hero whose 
 presence is indispensable to the success of the enterprise. In the 
 Theban story this hero is Amphiaraos, the Achilleus of the Trojan 
 legend in this its most important feature : and as Troy cannot fall 
 unless Achilleus fights against it, so the Argives cannot hope to take 
 Thebes unless Amphiaraos goes with them. But as neither Achilleus 
 nor Odysseus wished to fight in a quarrel which was not their own, 
 so Amphiaraos shrinks from any concern in a contest in which the 
 prophetic mind inherited by him from his ancestor Melampous tells 
 him that all the chiefs engaged in it must die with the one exception 
 of Adrastos. But he had promised the Argive king that in any 
 differences which might arise between them he would abide by the 
 decision of his wife Eriphyle, and Eriphyle had been bribed by 
 Polyneikes with the gift of the necklace and peplos of Harmonia to 
 decide in favour of the expedition. Thus Amphiaraos departs for 
 Thebes with a presentiment of his own coming doom as strong as the 
 consciousness of Achilleus that his career must be brief ; but before 
 he sets out, he charges his sons Amphilochos and Alkmaion to slay 
 their mother, so soon as they hear of his death, and to march against 
 the hated city of Thebes ; and thus the starting-point was furnished 
 not only for the Theban war, but for a new series of woes to be 
 wrought by the Erinyes of Eriphyle. 
 
 The germs of the rivalry, which in the case of the sons of Oidipous The sons oi 
 grew into a deadly hatred, are see,n in the points of contrast afforded 
 by almost all the correlative deities of Greek and Vedic mythology, 
 and the twin heroes whether of the east or the west. 1 Thus there is 
 a close parallel between the Dioskouroi and the sons of Oidipous. 
 The former may not be seen together ; the latter agree to reign over 
 Thebes in turn ; and it was a ready device to account for the sub- 
 sequent feud by saying that the brother whose time was over refused 
 to abide by his compact. Hence Polyneikes became an exile ; but it 
 is not easy to determine precisely to what degree a purely moral 
 element has forced its way into this series of legends from the horror 
 which a union like that of Iokaste and Oidipous, when regarded as a 
 
 1 They are, in short, therival brothers True and Untrue, by Big Peter and 
 
 not only of the royal houses of Sparta, Little Peter in Dasent's Norse Tales. 
 
 but in a vast number of stories in Aryan In the story of the Widow's Son (Dasent) 
 
 folk-lore, and are represented by Ferdi- we have a closer adherence to the type 
 
 nand the Faithful and Ferdinand the of the Dioskouroi in the two princes, one 
 
 Unfaithful in Grimm's collection, by of whom is turned into a horse. 
 
4 r 4 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK f aC (; ; n t}j e jj ves f (; W0 human beings, could not fail to inspire. Here 
 
 * ' ■■ ' also the Erinys might exercise her fatal office, for the blood of Iokaste 
 
 must cry for vengeance as loudly as that of Iphigeneia or Amphiaraos ; 
 and the same feeling which suggested the curse of Amphiaraos on Eri- 
 phyle would also suggest the curse of Oidipous on his children. In 
 the older poems on the subject this curse was pronounced for offences 
 not very grave, if regarded merely from an ethical point of view. 
 His sons had been accustomed to bring him the shoulders of victims 
 offered in sacrifice, and they once brought him a thigh. At another 
 time they put before him the table and the wine-cup of Kadmos, 
 although he had charged them never to do so. But the former of 
 these two acts implied a slight like that which Prometheus put upon 
 Zeus when giving him the choice of the portion for the gods ; and the 
 latter made him think of the golden days when he sat down with 
 Iokaste to banquets as brilliant as those of the long-lived Aithiopians 
 and drank purple wine from the inexhaustible horn of Amaltheia. But 
 to Sophokles, who looked at the matter simply as a moralist, these 
 causes were so inadequate that he at once charged the sons with 
 cruel treatment of their father, whom they drove away from his home 
 to fight with poverty as well as blindness. 
 Tydeus. Polyneikes, when in his turn an exile, betook himself to Argos, 
 
 where he fell in with Tydeus, 1 with whom he quarrels. But it had 
 been shown long ago to Adrastos that he should wed his two daughters 
 to a lion and a hoar ; and when he found these two men fighting, 
 with shields which had severally the sign of the boar and the lion, he 
 came to the conclusion that these were the destined husbands of 
 Argeia and Deipyle. Hence also- he readily agreed to avenge the 
 alleged wrongs of Polyneikes, and the league was soon formed, which 
 in the later Attic legend carried the Seven Argive Chiefs to the walls 
 of Thebes, but which for the poets of the Thebais involved as large 
 a gathering as that of the chieftains who assembled to hunt the 
 Kalydonian boar or to recover the Golden Fleece. How far these 
 poets may have succeeded in imparting to their subject the charm of 
 our Iliad or Odyssey, the scanty fragments of the poem which alone 
 we possess make it impossible to say ; but there was more than one 
 incident in the struggle which might be so treated as fairly to win for 
 the poem a title to the high praise bestowed upon it by Pausanias. 2 
 
 1 This name, like that of Tyndareos, and the Aloadai. Hence Helen, as the 
 
 means apparently the hammerer. The daughter of Tyndareos, is the child of 
 
 two forms may be compared with the Zeus the thunderer. 
 Latin tundo, tutudi, to beat. The idea J ix. 9, 3; Grote, History of Greece, 
 
 conveyed by the word is thus precisely i. 364. 
 that of Thor Miblnir, of the Molionids 
 
THE DEATH OF AMPHIARAOS. 4IS 
 
 Thus the story told by Diomedes of his father Tydeus when sent to C ?.6 P - 
 
 Thebes to demand the restoration of Polyneikes reproduces in part • ■ 
 
 the story of Bellerophon. 1 Victorious in the strife of boxing or wres- 
 tling to which he had challenged the Kadmeians, he is assailed on his 
 way back to the Argive host by an ambuscade of fifty Thebans, all 
 of whom he slays except Maion, who is saved by the special interven- 
 tion of the gods. So too the prophecy of Teiresias that the Thebans 
 should be conquerors in the war if Ares received the youthful Menoi- 
 keus as a victim, must be compared with those utterances of Kalchas 
 which sealed the doom of Iphigeneia and Polyxena ; and finally when 
 the Argives are routed and Periklymenos is about to slay Amphiaraos, 
 we see in his rescue by the earth which receives him with his chariot 
 and horses another form of the plunge of Endymion into the sea or of 
 the leap of Kephalos from the Leukadian cape. It is the vanishing 
 from mortal sight of the sun which can never die, and so the story 
 went that Zeus thus took away Amphiaraos that he might make 
 him immortal. 
 
 This first assault of the Argives against Thebes answers to the The war t 
 ineffectual attempts of the Herakleidai to recover their paternal tlle Epi- 
 
 . gonui, 
 
 inheritance. It was therefore followed by a second attack in the 
 struggle known as the war of the Epigonoi, or the children of the 
 discomfited chiefs of the former expedition. But it must be noted 
 that as the Herakleids find a refuge in Athens after the slaughter of 
 Hyllos by Echemos, so Adrastos, who alone had been saved from 
 the carnage by the speed of his horse Areion, betakes himself to the 
 Attic Eleusis, whence Theseus marches against the Thebans to insist 
 on the surrender and the burial of the dead, — an incident in which 
 the historical Athenians took pride as an actual event in their annals. 
 The doom of Thebes was now come, and the Epigonoi approach like 
 the Herakleidai when their period of inforced idleness is at an end. 
 The Thebans are utterly routed by the Argives under Alkmaion, 
 the son of Amphiaraos ; and Teiresias declares that there is no longer 
 any hope, as the gods have abandoned them. The city is therefore 
 surrendered, and Thersandros, the son of Polyneikes, is seated on the 
 throne of Kadmos. 
 
 Of the remaining incidents connected with these two great struggles Am^nnfi 
 the most remarkable is the doom of Antigone, who is condemned by 5i" on . "*" 
 Kreon to be buried alive because she had performed the funeral rites 
 over the body of Polyneikes, which had been cast forth to the birds 
 and dogs. Of the sentiments which Sophokles puts into her mouth as 
 explaining her motives and justifying her actions, all that we need to 
 
 1 //. iv. 384, et seq. 
 
4i6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Alkmaidn 
 and Eri- 
 phylg. 
 
 BOOK sa y ^efg j s t-hat t h e y De l on g seemingly rather to the Eastern than the 
 — -— - Western world, and may be a genuine portion of the Persian myth 
 which Herodotos has clothed in a Greek garb in the story of the 
 Seven Conspirators. But the dismal cave in which she is left to 
 die seems but the horrid den into which the Panis sought to entice 
 Sarami, and in which they shut up the beautiful cattle of the dawn. 
 It is the cave of night into which the evening must sink and where 
 she must die before the day can again dawn in the east. Nor can 
 we well fail to notice the many instances in which those who mourn 
 for mythical heroes taken away put an end to their own lives by hang- 
 ing. It is thus that Haimon ends his misery when he finds himself 
 too late to save Antigone ; it is thus that Iokaste hides her shame 
 from the sight of the world ; it is thus that Althaia and Kleopatra 
 hasten away from life which without Meleagros is not worth the 
 living for. The death of these beings is the victory of Echidna and 
 Ahi, the throttling or strangling snake ; and the tradition uncon- 
 sciously preserved may have determined the mode in which these 
 luckless beings must die. 
 
 Nor may we forget that after the death of Amphiaraos the fortunes 
 of his house run parallel with those of the house of Agamemnon after 
 his return from Ilion. In obedience to his father's command 
 Alkmaion slays his mother Eriphyle, and the awful Erinys, the 
 avenger of blood, pursues him with the unrelenting pertinacity of the 
 gadfly sent by Here to torment the heifer 16. Go where he will, she 
 is there to torture him by day and scare him by night ; and not 
 until he has surrendered to Phoibos the precious necklace of Har- 
 monia or Kadmos, and found out a spot to dwell in on which the 
 sun had never looked at the time when Eriphyle met her doom, can 
 Alkmaion have any rest. Such a refuge was furnished by the Oiniadai, 
 islands which had grown up at the mouth of the river Acheloos from 
 the deposits brought down by "the stream to the sea. Here he 
 marries Kallirhoe the daughter of the river god, who causes his death 
 at the hands of the sons of Phegeus by insisting on his fetching her 
 the necklace of Eriphyle. But Kallirhoe is, like Leda and L£t6, the 
 mother of twin sons, and she prays that they may at once grow into 
 mature manhood and become the avengers of their father, as Hyllos 
 is avenged by the Herakleids of a later generation. 
 
 This is substantially the story of Orestes, who slays Klytaimn§stra 
 
 taimngstra. for murdering her husband Agamemnon as EriphylS had brought 
 
 about the death of Amphiaraos, and who is therefore chased, like 
 
 Alkmaion, from land to land by the Erinyes of his mother, until at 
 
 last he comes to Athens, the dawn city, and is there by the casting vote 
 
 Orestes 
 and Kly- 
 
ORESTES AND PYLADES. 4*7 
 
 of AtMnS herself acquitted in the court of Areiopagos. Of this myth C ^ AP- 
 there were, as we might expect, many variations : and among these ■ - ■ - ■ 
 we may notice the story which speaks of him and his friend Pylades 
 as slaying Helen when Menelaos refused to rescue them from the 
 angry Argives, and lastly, the legend that Orestes himself, like 
 Eurydike, died from the bite of a snake, the throttling serpent of 
 Vedic mythology. 
 
 2 E 
 
418 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FIRE. 
 
 Section I.— AGNI. 
 
 BOOK When the old Vedic faith had been long overlaid by an elaborate 
 
 *-: — : ■ sacerdotal ceremonialism, Agni still remained, as it had been from the 
 
 heft!* and first, a name for light or heat as pervading all things or as concentrated 
 in the flame of fire. In the Satapatha-Brahmana, Svetaketu tells king 
 Janaka that he sacrifices to two heats in one another which are ever 
 shining and filling the world with their splendour. When the king 
 asks how this may be, the answer is, " Aditya (the sun) is heat : to him 
 , do I sacrifice in the evening in the fire (Agni). Agni is heat : to him 
 do I sacrifice in the morning in the sun (Aditya)." When to Soma- 
 sushma, who says that he sacrifices to light in light, the king puts the 
 same question, the Brahman replies, " Aditya is light ; to him do I 
 sacrifice in the evening in Agni. Agni is light ; to him do I sacrifice 
 in the morning in Aditya." * 
 The ma- Thus Agni, like Indra, is sometimes addressed as the one great 
 
 j^i° god who makes all things, sometimes as the light which fills the 
 heavens, sometimes as the blazing lightning, or as the clear flame of 
 earthly fire. The poets pass from one application of the word to 
 another with perfect ease, as conscious that in each case they are 
 using a mere name which may denote similar qualities in many objects. 
 There is no rivalry or antagonism between these deities. 2 Agni is 
 greatest, Varuna is greatest, and Indra is greatest ; but when the one 
 is so described, the others are for the time unnoticed, or else are 
 placed in a subordinate position. Thus Agni is said to be the creator, 
 who knows all that exists, to comprehend all other gods within him- 
 self, as the circumference of a wheel embraces its spokes ; s and not 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Sanskrit Lit. 421. tant feature in the religion of the Veda, 
 Professor Miiller traces the name to the and has never been taken into considera- 
 root contained in the Greek aicis, the tion by those who have written on the 
 Lat. agilis, the idea first impressed on history of ancient polytheism." — Sanskr. 
 men being that of its quick movement. Lit. 546; 
 
 — Hibbert Lectures, p. 206. 8 Muir, Principal Deities of R. V. 
 
 2 Professor Max Miiller, making this 570. 
 remark, adds, " This is a most impor- 
 
THE PARENTAGE OF AGNI. 4*9 
 
 unfrequently Indra is said to be Agni, and Agni is said to be Indra, C ^AP. 
 while both alike are Skambha, the supporter of the univejse. 1 ' ' 
 
 Hence the character of the god, as we might expect, is almost Physical 
 wholly physical The blessings which his worshippers pray for are Q f Agni. 
 commonly temporal, and very rarely is he asked, like Varuna, to for- 
 give sin. In the earlier hymns, he is generally addressed as the fire 
 which to mortal men is an indispensable boon : in the more developed 
 •ceremonialism of later times he is chiefly concerned with the ordering 
 of the sacrifice. As bearing up the offerings on the flames which 
 mount to the sky, he stands in the place of Hermes as the messenger 
 between gods and men. Like Phoibos and Indra, he is full of a 
 secreUwisdom. He is the tongue (of fire) through which gods and 
 men receive each their share of the victims offered on the altar. Nay, 
 so clearly is his mythical character still understood, that, although he 
 is sometimes the originator of all things, at others he is said to have 
 been kindled by Manu (man), and the expression at once carries us 
 to the legends of Prometheus, Hermes, and Phoroneus, who is him- 
 self the Vedic god of fire Bhuranyu. The very sticks which Manu 
 rubbed together are with his ten fingers called the parents of Agni, 
 who is said to have destroyed them, as Oidipous and Perseus, Cyrus 
 and Romulus are said to have destroyed their fathers. The hymns 
 describe simply the phenomena of fire, which disappears or dies with 
 a hiss or scream when it touches the water, even as the sun's orb is 
 extinguished when it plunges into the seething bosom of the ocean. 
 
 " O Agni, thou from whom, as a new-born male, undying flames 
 proceed, the brilliant smoke-god goes towards the sky, for as messenger 
 thou art sent to the gods. 
 
 " Thou, whose power spreads over the earth in a moment when 
 thou hast grasped food with thy jaws — like a dashing army thy blast 
 .goes forth ; with thy lambent flame thou seemest to tear up the grass. 
 
 " Him alone, the ever youthful Agni, men groom, like a horse in 
 the evening and at dawn ; they bed him as a stranger in his couch ; 
 the light of Agni, the worshipped male, is lighted 
 
 " Thy appearance is fair to behold, thou bright-faced Agni, when 
 like gold thou shinest at hand ; thy brightness comes like the lightning 
 •of heaven ; thou showest splendour like the bright sun." 2 
 
 1 Although in a multitude of passages is ordinary earthly flame, in his highest 
 
 Agni is spoken of in terms which can is identical with Varuna himself, is the 
 
 be predicated only of a supreme deity, Asura, the ultimate source of all light, 
 
 this, it has been well said, proves no heat, life, and energy." — Brown, Re- 
 
 more than that " all the divinities are ligion of Zoroaster, § 31. 
 of the same igneous nature, and that 2 R. V. vii. 3 ; Max Miiller, Sanskr. 
 
 .Agni who in his lowest manifestation Lit. 567. 
 
420 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The in- 
 fant Agni. 
 
 Agni the 
 
 Psycho- 
 
 pompos. 
 
 "Adorable and excellent Agni, emit the moving and graceful 
 ' smoke. 
 
 "The flames of Agni are luminous, powerful, fearful, and not to 
 be trusted : " 1 
 
 phrases which bring before us at once the capriciousness and sullen- 
 ness of Meleagros and Achilleus. Like Indra, Agni is also Vritrahan. 
 
 " I extol the greatness of that showerer of rain whom men cele- 
 brate as the slayer of Vritra : the Agni, Vais'wanara, slew the stealer 
 of the waters." 2 
 
 Like Indra, again, and the later Krishna, he is " the lover of the 
 maidens, the husband of the wives." 3 He is "black-backed" and 
 " many-limbed ; " " his hair is flame," and " he it is whom die two 
 sticks have engendered, like a new-born babe.'' 
 
 "Thou art laid hold of with difficulty," the poet truly says, "like 
 the young of tortuously twining snakes, thou who art a consumer of 
 many forests as a beast is of fodder." 4 
 
 As the infant Hermes soon reaches his full strength, so the flames 
 of Agni, who, puny at his birth, is kept alive by clarified butter, roar 
 after a little while like the waves of the sea. But Agni consumes that 
 which Hermes is constrained to leave untasted, and scathes the forest 
 with his tongue, shearing off the hair of the earth as with a razor. 
 
 As the special guardian and regulator of sacrifices, Agni assumes 
 the character of the Hellenic Hestia, and almost attains the majesty 
 of the Latin Vesta. He is the lord and protector of every house, and 
 the father, mother, brother, and son of every one of the worshippers. 5 
 He is the keeper of hidden treasures, and all blessings proceed from 
 him as the giver. He is Vasu, the lord of light. 6 During life he 
 
 1 H. H. Wilson, Rig VedaS. vol. i. 
 pp. 102-104. 
 
 2 lb. ii. 158. * lb. i. 180. 
 
 4 lb. iii. 253. 
 
 5 Muir, Principal Deities of R. V. 
 
 S69- 
 
 ° Of the existence of the root vas, to 
 shine, there can be, of course, no doubt. 
 It is sufficiently shown by its derivatives 
 <paos, (paivw, <p~opi, <p4iny, for, fatum, &c. 
 Hence Professor Max Muller naturally 
 refers to this root the Sanskrit vasar, 
 Lat. ver (for vesr), the Greek (Tap, cap, 
 i5p, the spring-time, and other words 
 denoting the year, which seem to be 
 akin to it. It is thus the shining 
 gleaming time when nature displays 
 herself in her beauty : but in Mn 
 Peile's judgment the meaning is never- 
 theless very uncertain. " There are 
 three distinct roots," he remarks, " of 
 
 the same form VAS. . . but none gives 
 a satisfactory meaning ; the best perhaps 
 is that which means to clothe, so that 
 spring should be the reclothing of 
 nature ; but this may be thought 
 fanciful." — Introd. to Gr. and Lat. 
 Etymology, 89. Meanwhile we have 
 the facts that other names for one season 
 of the year have been used to denote 
 the year itself. " Man erinnere sich 
 nur an sarad, herbst, Pers. sal, jahr : 
 varshah, regenzeit, oder pravrish im 
 Veda, dann varsha, jahr ; hima, winter, 
 imbimus, zwei wintrig. i.e. zweijahrig." 
 Thus also, Professor Miiller adds, we 
 have the modified form vat in Skr. 
 samvat, as well as in vatsa, vatsara, 
 and samvatsara, and in the Greek, 
 6toj, tiros, the year ; thus too the 
 Sanskrit parat for para-vat, in the 
 previous year, explains the Greek tip- 
 
KALI AND KARALI. 421 
 
 shields men from harm, and at death he becomes the Psj^hopompos, c hap. 
 
 as conveying the " unborn part " of the dead to the unseen world. 1 ■ ■ — • 
 
 But in every phase of his character the appellative force of his The 
 
 J r cr . tongues of 
 
 name remains discernible ; nor are there wanting plain assertions Agni. 
 that Agni is but one of many titles for the One Great Cause of all 
 things. 
 
 " They call (him) Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni ; then he is the 
 well-winged heavenly Garutmat : that which is One, the wise call it 
 many ways : they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan." 2 In India, however, 
 as in the western world, there was a constant tendency to convert 
 names into persons, and then to frame for them a mythical history 
 in accordance with their meaning. Thus two of the ever-flickering 
 tongues of the black-pathed Agni were called Kali, the black, and 
 Karali, the terrific; and these became names of Durga, the wife of 
 Siva, who was developed out of Agni; and a bloody sacrificial worship 
 was the result. 8 
 
 Like Ushas and Eos, Agni never grows old. He is emphatically Agni and 
 the youngest of all the gods, not as being the latest born, but as never t0 j_ p ais " 
 losing his strength and might ; and in this name Yavishtha, which is 
 never given to any other Vedic god, we may recognise the Hellenic 
 Hephaistos. 4 But the name Agni is nowhere found in the west as 
 
 ikt-i for wep-vT-i. This form vat or ut he Hephaistos, he says, became the subject 
 traces back to a time preceding the dis- of myths in the West, precisely because 
 persion of the Aryan tribes ; the term it is not in strict analogy with the 
 ivuunhs answering to sa#zvat, may, he Sanskrit yavishtha, the superlative of 
 thinks, be later. In all this the idea yuvah, Lat. juvenis, young. The kin- 
 certainly seems to be that of brilliance, died form yavan, foynd also in Zend, 
 and so of freshness, passing into that yields yavyS, the name of the Greek 
 of youth : and thus, Professor Miiller Hebe\ The only difficulty is presented 
 adds, we have the Greek Fito\6s, the by the change of the Sanskrit v into the 
 Latin vitulus, meaning literally a year- Greek j8 ; but this change is seen in the 
 ling, as bimus and trimus would denote Greek tripbs for the Sanskrit svas. To 
 creaturestwo or three years old. Hence the objection that the Sanskrit yavishtha 
 vitulus would answer precisely to ought to be represented by the Greek 
 xtfuupa as a winterling, i.e. one winter Hephistos, he replies that the Zend 
 old. Lastly, he remarks, "derSawvat- form stavaesta represents the Sanskrit 
 sara, das Jahr oder die Jahres-sonne, sthavistha, and thus from the analogous 
 aus dem Schoosse der Wasser geboren yavaesta we should reach Hephaistos. 
 wird," a myth which only repeats the Thus, with the exception of Agni, all 
 story of the birth of Aphrodite and every the names of the fire and the fire- 
 other dawn-goddess. god were earned away by the Western 
 1 Brown, Religion of Zoroaster, § 30. Aryans : and we have Prometheus 
 * R. V. i. 164, 46 ; Max Miiller, answering to Pramantha, Phoroneus to 
 Sanskr. Lit. 567. Bhuranyu, and the Latin Vulcanus to 
 ' Muir, Sanskr. Texts, part iv. p. the Skr. ulkah, a firebrand, a word used 
 365, 425. For the worship of Kali by in connection with the flames or sparks 
 the Thugs as the goddess of darkness of Agni. Mr. Brown (Great Dionysiak 
 and death, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, Myth) contents himself with asserting 
 ii. 385. that Hephistos is a Semitic and not an 
 4 Professor Max Miiller thinks that Aryan deity. His lameness and his 
 this identification must be regarded as skill in working metals furnish assuredly 
 scarcely open to doubt. The name no warrant for such a conclusion ; and as 
 
422 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 the name of any deity. In the Greek dialects the word itself seems 
 to have been lost, while the Latin ignis, with which it is identical, 
 is merely a name for fire; nor are any myths associated with the 
 Lithuanian Agni, the Slavonic Ogon, beyond that of his being sprung 
 from Svarog, the heaven. 1 
 
 The Wind 
 and the 
 Fire. 
 
 TheAr- 
 give Pho- 
 roneus. 
 
 Section II.— PHORONEUS AND HESTIA. 
 
 The myth of Hermes brings before us one of the many modes in 
 which men were supposed to have become first possessed of the boon 
 of fire. But although Hermes is there said to have been the first to 
 bestow this gift upon mankind, it is simply as supplying or kindling 
 the materials, not as being himself the fire. The hymn-writer is care- 
 ful to distinguish between the two. He is the fire-giver because he 
 rubs the branches of the forest trees together till they burst into a 
 flame : but the wood thus kindled and the meat which is roasted are 
 devoured not by himself but by the flames. Hermes remains hungry, 
 although he is represented as longing for the food whose savour fills 
 his nostrils. Nothing can show more clearly that we are dealing 
 simply with the wind or with air in motion, in other words, with the 
 bellows not with the fire. Hence with a keen sense of the meaning 
 of the myth, Shelley, ;n his translation of the line, speaks of Hermes 
 as supplying to men " matches, tinderbox, and steel " for the kindling 
 of the flame. 
 
 Another discoverer or bestower of fire is the Argive Phoroneus, 
 who represents the Vedic fire-god Bhuranyu, and whose name is thus 
 seen to be another form of the Greek Pur, the Teutonic feuer and 
 fire. Phoroneus is thus the fire itself, and as such he dwelt on the 
 Astu Phoronikon of Argos, — in other words, he is the Argive Hestia 
 with its holy flame of everlasting fire. 3 In this aspect he was naturally 
 represented as the first of men and the father of all who are subject 
 to death ; and as such, he is also described, in accordance with the 
 myth of the Askingas, as springing from an ash-tree. s To Phoroneus 
 himself more than one wife is assigned. In one version he is the 
 husband of Kerdo, the clever or winsome, a name pointing to the 
 influence of fire on the comfort and the arts of life ; in another of 
 
 Mr. Brown refers us to no Semitic form 
 of the name, we are not justified in 
 surrendering the Aryan interpretation 
 of the word. 
 
 1 The worship of Ogon, Mr. Ralston 
 tells us (Songs of the Russian people, 85), 
 was connected with that of the domestic 
 
 hearth, of which the stove has taken 
 the place. 
 
 2 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 37. 
 
 3 lb. Melia, of course, becomes 3 
 nymph, and is said to be wedded to 
 Inachos, who thus becomes the father 
 of Phoroneus. 
 
phor6neus and niobIi. 423 
 
 Telodike, a word which indicates the judicial powers of the Greek chap. 
 
 Hestia and the Latin Vestia. For the same reason", he is also : — . 
 
 wedded to Peitho, persuasion. Among his children are Pelasgos, 
 Iasos, and Agenor, of whom a later tradition said that after their 
 father's death they divided the kingdom of Argos among themselves. 
 He is thus described as the father of the Pelasgic race, in contrast 
 with Deukalion, who is the progenitor of the Hellenic tribes. But 
 it is unnecessary to enter the ethnological labyrinth from which it 
 seems as impossible to gather fruit as from the barren sea. It is 
 enough to say that Agenor, in this Argive myth, is a brother of 
 Europe, while jn that of the Phoinikian land he is her father, and that 
 Argos and Phoinikia are alike the glistening regions of the purple 
 dawn. The phrase that EuropS, the broad-spreading morning light, 
 is the daughter of Phoroneus, corresponds precisely with the myth 
 which makes Hephaistos cleave the head of Zeus to allow the dawn 
 to leap forth in its full splendour. But from fire comes smoke and 
 vapour, and Phoroneus is thus the father of Niobe, the rain-cloud, who 
 weeps herself to death on Mount Sipylos. 
 
 As gathering to one centre the Argives, who had thus far dwelt Hestia. 
 scattered without a notion of social order and law, Phoroneus 
 discharges the functions of Hestia. Nay, his Astu is Hestia, the 
 inviolable fire on the sacred hearth which may not be moved but 
 stands fast for ever. 1 But no great accretion of myths was possible 
 in the case either of Phoroneus or of Hestia. The legend, such as 
 it is, belongs to that class of transparent stories among which the 
 myths of Endymion, Narkissos, Daphne, Sarp£don, and Memnon are 
 among the most conspicuous; and the beneficial influence of her 
 cultus is perhaps most strongly marked by the almost complete 
 absence of folk-lore in connexion with her name. She is so clearly 
 the fire on the hearth, the symbol and the pledge of kindliness and 
 good faith, of law and order, of wealth and fair dealing, that it was 
 impossible to lose sight of her attributes or to forget their origin; and 
 except under these conditions there can be no full developement of 
 mythology. Of no other deity perhaps was the worship so nearly an 
 unmixed blessing. Falsehood and treachery, fickleness and insin- 
 
 1 The names Astu and Hestia are yielded Vasu as a name for Agni, as. 
 
 both referred by Preller to the Sanskrit well as many names for the year. (See 
 
 vas, to dwell, the cognate Greek forms note", p. 420). Hestia and Vesta would 
 
 being c(a> and ?C»> thus connecting to- thus denote the glistening flame, and 
 
 gether the Latin Vesta and sedes, a would be akin to the names for the hot 
 
 permanent habitation. But on the wind, Euros and Auster, aiwrjjpo's.- 
 
 other hand it is urged that the name Peile, Introduction to Greek and Latin 
 
 Hestia may more reasonably be referred Etymology, 77. 
 to the root vas, to shine, which has 
 
424 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK cerity, were to her things utterly hatefuL Her purity could brook 
 • '■ — • no uncleanness; her youth could know no decay, and thus her sacred 
 
 dwelling became the centre of influences which breathed some life 
 into a society prone to become more and more heartless and selfish. 
 From the horrible devil-worship of Artemis Orthia, or Tauropola, we 
 may turn to the redeeming cultus of Hestia and Asklepios, — the 
 shrines of the one being the stronghold of generosity and sympathy, 
 the temples of the other being devoted to those works of mercy, 
 which we are disposed to regard as the exclusive products of Chris- 
 tianity. 1 
 The sacred Hestia in the common legend is the eldest daughter of Kronos 
 and Rheia, and is wooed both by Phoibos and Poseidon ; but then- 
 suit is vain. Hestia makes a solemn vow that she will never be 
 a bride, and as her reward she receives honour and glory both among 
 gods and among men. As the pure maiden, she is to have her home 
 in the inmost part of every dwelling, and at every sacrifice offered 
 to Zeus and the other deities she is to preside and to receive the 
 first invocation and the first share. As apart from her there can 
 be no surety for truth, peace, and justice, each town, city, and state 
 must have its own Prytaneion, with its central hearth, uniting the 
 citizens in a common faith and in common interests. Here the 
 suppliant should obtain at the least the boon of a fair trial, here 
 should all compacts, whether between states or private men, receive 
 their most solemn sanction; and when it became necessary to lighten 
 the pressure of population at home by sending forth some of the 
 citizens into new countries, from this hearth should the sacred fire 
 be taken as the link which was to bind together the new home with 
 the old. This fire should never be extinguished ; but if by chance 
 such calamity should befall, it was to be lit again, not from common 
 flame but as Hermes kindled fire, by friction, or drawn by burning- 
 glasses from the sun itself. Hands unclean might not touch her 
 altar, and the guardians of her sacred fire should be pure and chaste 
 as herself All this is so transparent that we cannot be said to have 
 entered here on the domain of mythology; and even the great hearth 
 of the Universe is but an extension to the whole Kosmos of the idea 
 which regarded Hestia as the very foundation of human society. 
 
 1 The temples of Asklepios were by physicians whose knowledge raised 
 practically large hospitals, where some- them far above the empirics and spell- 
 thing like the aid of Christian charity mutterers of the Middle Ages, 
 was extended to the sick and afflicted 
 
( 425 ) 
 
 Section III— HEPHAISTOS AND LOKI. 
 
 In Hephaistos, the ever-young, 1 we see an image of fire, not as CHAP. 
 
 the symbol and pledge of faith and honour, of law and equity, but • : — ■ 
 
 like Agni, dark and stunted in its first beginnings but able to do ™? med 
 wonders in its power over earths and metals. He is the mighty Hephais- 
 workman who, at the prayer of Thetis, forges for Achilleus the irresis- 
 tible armour in which he is to avenge the death of Patroklos, as Regin 
 the smith of Hialprek the king of Denmark fashions a new sword 
 for Sigurd which is brought to him by his mother Hjordis. But in 
 spite of all his power he himself is subject to great weakness, the result, 
 according to one version, of his mother's harshness, in another, of the 
 cruelty of Zeus. The former relates that Herd was so horrified by his 
 deformity and limping gait that she cast him forth from Olympos, and 
 left him to find a refuge with the Ocean nymphs Thetis and Eurynome. 
 The other tells how when once he was taking his mother's part in one 
 of her quarrels with her husband, Zeus, indignant at his interference, 
 seized him by the leg and hurled him out of heaven. Throughout 
 the livelong day he continued to fall, and as the sun went down he 
 lay stunned on the soil of Lemnos, where the Sintians took him up 
 and tended him in his weakness." The myth also ran that he had 
 no father, as Athene has no mother, and that he was the child of 
 Here alone, who in like manner is called the solitary parent of 
 Typhon. The mystery of his birth perplexed Hephaistos : and the 
 stratagem in which he discovered it reappears in the Norse story of 
 the Master Smith, who, like Hephaistos, possesses a chair from which 
 none can rise against the owner's will. In the one case it is Here, 
 in the other it is the devil who is thus entrapped, but in both the 
 device is successful. 
 
 The Olympian dwelling of . Hephaistos is a palace gleaming with The forge 
 the splendour of a thousand stars. At his huge anvils mighty bellows phaistos. 
 keep up a stream of air of their own accord; and giant forms, Brontes, 
 Steropes, Pyrakmon (the thunders, lightnings and flames) aid him in 
 
 1 See note *, p. 421. always halting, and so furnishing the 
 
 s The tradition which assigns this gods with a source of inextinguishable 
 
 incident as the cause of his lameness laughter, as they see him puffing and 
 
 refers probably to the weakened powers panting in his ministrations as the cup- 
 
 of fire when either materials or draught bearer. The golden supports which 
 
 fail it. The Vedic hymn speaks of hold him up as he walks are the glitter- 
 
 Agni as clothed or hindered by smoke ing flames which curl upward beneath 
 
 only at his birth; but with a feeling not the volumes of smoke which rise, above 
 
 less true to the phenomena of fire, the them, 
 poets of the Iliad represent him as 
 
426 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Hephais- 
 tos and 
 Ath6n6. 
 
 The Latin 
 Vulcan. 
 
 The fire- 
 god Loki. 
 
 his labours. With him dwells his wife, who in the Iliad, as we have 
 seen, is Charis, in the Odyssey Aphrodite. In its reference to 
 Hephaistos the lay of Demodokos which relates the faithlessness 
 of Aphrodite is worthy of note chiefly as it attributes to him the 
 powers of Daidalos. The thin chains which, catching the eye scarcely 
 more than spiders' webs, entrap ArSs and Aphrodite in a network 
 from which there is no escape, at once suggest a comparison with 
 the tortuous labyrinth made for Pasiphae in the land of Minos. 
 
 In our Homeric poems no children of Hephaistos are mentioned 
 In Apollodoros we have the strange story which makes him and 
 Athene the parents of Erichthonios, and the legend which represents 
 him as the father of the robber Periph£t£s, who is slain by Theseus — 
 myths transparent enough to render any detailed explanation super- 
 fluous. The Christian missionaries converted Hephaistos into a demon, 
 and thus he became the limping devil known in Berkshire tradition 
 as Wayland the Smith. 
 
 Of the Latin Vulcan little more needs to be said than that he too 
 is a god of fire, whose name also denotes his office, for it points to 
 the Sanskrit ulka, a firebrand, and to the kindred words fulgur and 
 fulmen, names for the flashing lightning. 1 Like most other Latin 
 gods, he has in strictness of speech no mythology ; but it pleased the 
 later Roman taste to attribute to him all that Greek legends related 
 of Hephaistos. 
 
 The name Loki, like that of the Latin Vulcanus, denotes the 
 light or blaze of fire, and in such phrases as Locke dricker vand, 
 Loki drinks water, described the phenomena of the sun drinking 
 when its light streams in shafts from the cloud-rifts to the earth or the 
 waters beneath. The word thus carries us to the old verb Huhan, 
 the Latin lucere, to shine, and to Logi as its earlier form, the modern 
 German lohe, glow ; but as the Greek tradition referred the name 
 Oidipous to the two words oTSa and oiSew, to know and to swell, so a 
 supposed connexion with the verb lukan, to shut or lock, substituted 
 the name Loki for Logi, and modified his character accordingly.* 
 He thus becomes the being who holds the keys of the prison-house, 
 like the malignant Grendel in Beowulf, or the English fire-demon 
 Grant mentioned by Gervase of Tilbury, a name connected with the 
 Old Norse grind, a grating, and the modern German grenz, a boundary. 
 
 1 In the Gaelic Lay of Magnus, the 
 smith or forging god appears under the 
 name Balcan, his son being the sailor. 
 This looks as if the Latin name had 
 been borrowed. In this story the twelve 
 ruddy daughters of the King of Light 
 
 marry the twelve foster-brothers of 
 Magnus the hero— the months of the 
 year.— Campbell, iii. 347 ; Gubernatis, 
 Zoological Mythology, i. 326. 
 2 Grimm, D. M. 221. 
 
LOKI AND S^ETERE. 427 
 
 At no time, however, did Loki exhibit the features of the Semitic CHAP. 
 
 devil or the Iranian Ahriman. Like Hephaistos, a god of the fire, ■ ^ — ■ 
 
 he resembles him also in his halting gait and in the uncouth figure 
 which provokes the laughter of the gods ; and if we are not told that 
 like him Loki was hurled out of heaven, yet we see him bound for 
 his evil deeds, and, like Prometheus, he shall be set free, we are told, 
 at the end of the world, and shall hurry in the form of a wolf to 
 swallow the moon, as the deliverance of Prometheus is to be followed 
 by the overthrow of his tormentor. Hence the Norse phrase, " Loki 
 er or bondum,'' answering to the expression, "Der Teufel ist frei 
 gelassen," the devil is loose. 1 
 
 The last day of the week bore, in Grimm's opinion, the name of Loki the 
 this deity. 8 In place of our Saturday we have the Old Norse laugar- 
 dagr, the Swedish logerdag, the Danish loverdag, a word which at a 
 later period was held to mean the day appointed for bathing or wash- 
 ing, but which was more probably used at first in the original sense 
 of brightness attached to Loki's name. When, however, this meaning 
 gave way before the darker sense extracted from the verb lukan, to 
 shut or imprison, Luki became known as Saetere, the thief who sits 
 in ambush. The Christian missionaries were not slow to point out 
 the resemblance of this word to the Semitic Satan and the Latin 
 Saturnus, who were equally described as malignant demons ; and 
 thus the notions grew up that the name of the last day of the week 
 was imported from the old mythology of Italy, or that the Teutonic 
 god was also the agricultural deity of the Latin tribes. 
 
 Section IV.— PROMETHEUS. 
 
 Another and in some versions a very different account of fire is The 
 given in the myths of Prometheus. In the Hesiodic Theogony Pro- a ™ S g° 
 metheus is a son of the Titan Iapetos, his brothers being Epimetheus, 
 Atlas, and Menoitios. But even of these the Hesiodic account 
 cannot easily be reconciled with that of the Odyssey. In the latter, 
 Atlas (Skambha) is the guardian and keeper of the pillars which hold 
 up the heaven above the earth, and he knows all the depths of the 
 sea. 3 In the former he is condemned by Zeus to support the heaven 
 
 1 The root of the two myths of Loki trickles down upon his face. — Tylor, 
 
 and Prometheus is thus precisely the Primitive Culture, i. 329. 
 same. In each case the benefactor of 2 Grimm, D. M. ii. 227. For some 
 
 man is a being as subtle as he is wise, further remarks on week-day names and 
 
 and as such' he is expelled from the the system of week-days, see Max 
 
 family of the gods. The vulture of Muller, Selected Essays, ii. 460, et seq. 
 Prometheus is in the case of Loki re- 3 Odyss. i. 52 ; Grote, Hist. Gr. i. 
 
 placed by a serpent whose venom 101. 
 
428 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK on his head and hands, 1 while Menoitios undergoes a punishment 
 
 ii corresponding to that of Sisyphos or Ixion, and with his father 
 
 Iapetos is consigned to the abyss of Tartaros. In short, if we put 
 
 aside the assertion that in some way or other Prometheus was a giver 
 
 of the boon of fire to men, the story is told with a singular variety of 
 
 inconsistent details. Nothing can be more clear and emphatic than 
 
 the narrative in which ^Eschylos asserts the utter and hopeless savagery 
 
 of mankind before Prometheus came to their aid. They had no 
 
 settled homes, no notion of marriage or of the duties which bind the 
 
 members of a family together ; they burrowed in the ground like the 
 
 digger Indians, and contented themselves with food not much better 
 
 than that of the insect-eating Bushmen, because they knew nothing 
 
 about fire, and hqw far it might raise them above the beasts of the 
 
 field. This wretched state was their original condition, not one to 
 
 which they had fallen from a higher and a better one, and it was from 
 
 mere compassion to their utter helplessness that Prometheus stole fire 
 
 from the house of Zeus, and hiding it in a ferule, imparted it to men, 
 
 teaching them at the same time how to cook their food and build 
 
 houses. With this notion the narrative of the Hesiodic Theogony is 
 
 in complete antagonism. In this legend the existence of man upon 
 
 earth began with a golden age, during which the earth yielded her 
 
 fruits of her own accord, and in which plagues and sicknesses were 
 
 unknown. They were subject indeed to the doom of death; but 
 
 they died as though they were merely going to sleep, and became the 
 
 righteous demons who, wandering like the Erinyes everywhere through 
 
 the air, watch the ways and works of men, to uphold the righteous 
 
 and overturn the wicked The second is the silver age, the men of 
 
 which incurred the wrath of Zeus, and were hidden by him beneath 
 
 the earth for impiously withholding the honours due to the immortal 
 
 gods. Still when they die they are reckoned among the blessed, and 
 
 are not without honours themselves. 2 The brazen age which followed 
 
 1 Hesiod, Theog. 516. of Olympos: but it was easy to assign 
 
 a The portions thus allotted to the to the departed souls of the silver age a 
 
 departed of the golden and silver races lower, or even a positively malignant, 
 
 tended to foster and develope that idea character. They are not called Dai- 
 
 of a moral conflict between good and mones by the Hesiodic poet, but they 
 
 evil which first took distinct shape on have a recognised position and dignity 
 
 Iranian soil. The evil spirits are there in the realm of the air. There was no 
 
 the malignant powers of darkness who reason, therefore, why they should not 
 
 represent both in name and in attributes be represented by others as evil demons ; 
 
 the gloomy antagonist of the sun-god and this step which, as Grote remarks, 
 
 Indra. The Hesiodic myth coincides was taken by Empedokles and Xeno- 
 
 completely with this sentiment, while it krates, led to that systematic distinction 
 
 extends it. Here the spirits of the men of which the Christian teadhers availed 
 
 belonging to the golden age are the themselves for the overthrow or rather 
 
 good demons, these demons being gene- the transformation of the system itself, 
 
 rically different from the blessed gods It only remained for them to insist on 
 
THE HESIODIC AGES. 4 2 9 
 
 exhibits a race of men who ate no corn and had hearts of adamant, CHAP. 
 
 IV. 
 and whose hands sprung from their vast shoulders. These were the ■ 
 
 workers in brass (for men had not yet needed or come to know the 
 use of iron), and their weapons were used to their own destruction. 
 Like the men sprung from the dragon's teeth in the Theban and Ar- 
 gonautic myths, they fought with and slaughtered each other, and 
 went down without a name to the gloomy underworld of Hades. 
 But it must not be forgotten that the Hesiodic poet knows of no 
 transitional periods. The old age does not fade away insensibly into 
 the new. It is completely swept off, and the new takes its place as 
 virtually a new creation. Thus the earth becomes the possession of 
 a series of degenerating inhabitants, the race of the poet's own day 
 being the worst of all These are the men of the iron age, who know 
 no peace by day and by night, and for whom, although some good 
 may yet be mingled with the evil, the poet anticipates nothing but an 
 increasing misery which at the last will become unbearable. Good 
 faith and kindly dealing will in the end vanish from the face of the 
 earth, until Aidos and Nemesis (reverence and righteousness) will 
 wrap their shining garments around their radiant forms, and soar 
 away into the heights never pierced by the eye of man. 
 
 Such is the purely ethical legend by which the Hesiodic poet ac- The 
 counts for the present condition of mankind — a state not only opposed a g™ K 
 to the legends of Hermes, Prometheus, and Phoroneus, but also to all 
 the associations which had taken the strongest hold on the popular 
 mind The stories recited by bards or rhapsodists told them of a 
 time when men walked the earth who were the children of immortal 
 mothers, whose joys and sorrows were alike beyond those of men 
 now living, who had done great deeds and committed great crimes, 
 but who nevertheless held open converse with the flashing-eyed 
 goddess of the dawn, and for whom the fire-god forged irresistible 
 weapons and impenetrable armour. In the conviction of the 
 Hesiodic as of our Homeric poets, the heroes of this magnificent but 
 chequered age were utterly different from the miserable race which 
 had followed them, nor could they be identified with the beings of 
 the three races who had gone before them. It was, however, im- 
 possible even for a poet, who probably preferred his ethical maxims 
 to the story of the wrath of Achilleus or the avenging of Helen, to 
 
 the realityof the evil demonsthusbrought new creed was insured. The old 
 
 into existence, and then, as the gods mythology was not killed, but it took 
 
 themselves are in the Iliad and Odyssey a different shape, and, losing all its 
 
 and elsewhere called demons, to include ancient beauty, acquired new powers of 
 
 all together in the one class of malignant mischief and corruption.— Grote, Hist. 
 
 devils ■ and at once the victory of the Greece, i. 96, &c. 
 
43° MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK pass them by in contemptuous silence. They must therefore be 
 
 ■ '■ • placed by themselves in a position which breaks the ethical order of 
 
 the primeval ages ; 1 and thus the poet contents himself with saying 
 that many of them slew each other at Thebes fighting for the apples 
 or the cows of Oidipous, while others met their doom at Troy. All 
 these were placed by Zeus in a region far away from the undying gods 
 and beyond the bounds of the earth, where Kronos is their king, 
 and where the teeming soil produces yearly its triple harvests in the 
 islands of the blessed by the deep eddying ocean. 
 The Pro- j n contrast with this gloomier belief, the Promethean myth 
 
 metheus of . . ... 
 
 ^Eschylos. exhibits mankind m a scale ascending from the savage state in 
 which they knew the use neither of fire nor of metals to that high . 
 civilisation in which Zeus fears that men may become like the gods 
 in wisdom and thus share their power. For this myth, as related 
 by ^Eschylos, knows nothing of a previous knowledge of fire, which, 
 according to the Hesiodic version, Zeus took away from men in 
 revenge for the cheat which left only the fat and bones of victims 
 as the portion of the gods. This explanation, which is not alto- 
 gether consistent with other passages in the Hesiodic Theogony, 
 completely excludes the idea which lies at the very root of the 
 ^Eschylean tradition, for Prometheus expressly speaks of men not as 
 having lost high powers and the fruits of great results achieved by 
 those powers, but as never having been awakened to the conscious- 
 ness of the powers with which they were endowed From the first, 
 until he came to their aid, they were beings to whom sight and hearing 
 were wholly useless, and for whom life presented only the confused 
 shapes of a dream. The sunless caves, in which they lived like ants, 
 were not wrought into shape by their hands. For them there were 
 no distinctions of seasons, no knowledge of the rising and setting of 
 the stars. For this state of unspeakable misery there was no remedy 
 until men could be roused to a knowledge of their own powers and 
 be placed in the conditions indispensable for their exercise — a result 
 to be achieved only by bestowing on them the boon of fire. But this 
 very idea involves the fact that till then fire was a thing unknown to 
 men upon the earth. They might see it in the cloven thunderclouds, 
 or tremble at the fiery streams hurled into the air from the heaving 
 volcano, but to them fire was at the least a thing which they dared 
 not approach with the thought of mastering and turning it to use. 
 Some wiser being than they must therefore bring it to them in a form 
 which shall deprive it of its terrors and make it the servant, not the 
 
 1 It is noteworthy that the genera- Vuh are interrupted after the third 
 *tions given in the Theogony of the Popol creation. — Max Miiller, Chips, i. 335. 
 
THE GIFT OF FIRE. 43 J 
 
 destroyer, of man. That being is Prometheus, who, ascending to CHAP. 
 
 the palace of Zeus, fills a ferule with fire, and thus brings down the '■ — 
 
 precious boon to the woe-begone children of men. Henceforth the 
 task of raising them was practically stripped of its difficulty, and 
 Prometheus was enabled to teach men how to cook and build, and 
 where to find the riches stored up within the earth. From him came 
 the knowledge of the movements of the heavens, and the changes of 
 the seasons ; by him men were taught to plough and reap, and to 
 launch themselves in ships on the waters and spread their white 
 wings to the breeze. From him they received skill in the discern- 
 ment of herbs and roots for the healing of diseases under which they 
 had groaned in hopeless suffering; and from him they learnt to 
 understand the signs of the calm and troubled heavens, and the 
 meanings of the muscular movements of victims slain in sacrifice. 
 
 It was impossible for the poet to show more clearly that Prome- The 
 theus was the friend who bestowed on man, originally a creature raen t of 
 more feeble and helpless than any of the brute beasts, all that can J^ ™ 6 " 
 make life valuable. Of any earlier condition in which men lived, as 
 in the golden or silver ages, or of any state better in any respect than 
 the one in which he found them, the Prometheus of the great tragic 
 poet knows nothing. Nor can we well lay too great a stress on this 
 fact, because the version given by^Eschylos not only makes the whole 
 myth self-consistent, but is clearly the earlier form of the legend into 
 which the Hesiodic poet introduced the vengeance taken by Zeus for 
 the cheat put upon him. This story is really a mere patchwork ; for 
 according to it men, deprived of fire as a punishment, lose a thing on 
 which much of their comfort may depend, but they are not deprived 
 of the crafty wisdom in which Prometheus had been their teacher. 
 In short, they are as far as ever from that state of unawakened powers 
 which is of the very essence of the story in the tragedy of -^Eschylos. 
 But there were two things which ^Eschylos felt it needful to explain. 
 The very mode in which Prometheus became possessed of the price- 
 less treasure implied that he was acting in opposition to the will of 
 Zeus, or at the least without his knowledge, while it showed that he 
 had access to the gleaming palace of the father of the gods. How 
 then came it about that Prometheus should be able thus to enter 
 Olympos, and why should he seek to conceal the deed which he had 
 resolved to do ? These questions the poet answered by a reference 
 to other myths with which Prometheus was connected. This friend 
 of man was himself .either a Titan or the son of the Titan Iapetos ; 
 and when his gigantic kinsfolk rose in rebellion against Zeus, Prome- 
 theus played the part of Michael in the great war waged within the 
 
432 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK courts of heaven. Finding that all good counsels were cast away on 
 
 ■ •^—' the brutal partisans of Kronos, Prometheus throws in the weight of 
 
 his wisdom on the side of Zeus, and the result is that Kronos with his 
 adherents is hurled, like Satan with the revolted angels, into the abyss 
 of Tartaros or hell. Thus far Prometheus was a benefactor to Zeus 
 without awakening either his jealousy or his wrath. Henceforth he 
 might have remained for ever in the bright homes of Olympos had it 
 not been for the injustice of which Zeus became guilty as soon as he 
 found himself securely seated on the throne of heaven. To each of 
 the deathless gods he assigned a place and function ; of men alone he 
 took no count, his heart's desire being to sweep the whole race from 
 the earth and to create another. But it is clear that this resolution 
 was formed not because men were already becoming too wise and too 
 powerful, as the Hesiodic version would represent it, but because 
 man was too mean and wretched a thing to be suffered to cumber 
 the earth. Here Zeus expresses no fear, and Prometheus is opposed 
 to him not because he is too severe upon enemies whom he dreads, 
 but because he feels no pity for creatures whose wretchedness calls 
 only for compassion. The mercy refused by Zeus is extended to 
 them by Prometheus, who determines to raise them from their abject 
 misery, and by stealing the fire converts the opposition of Zeus into a 
 fierce longing for vengeance against the mighty being who had dared 
 to thwart his will. The great heart whose pulses had beaten in 
 sympathy with the griefs and wants of men shall itself be torn with an 
 agony far surpassing their puny woes. In the sentence thus passed 
 upon him it seems difficult not to discern a phrase or a sentiment in 
 close analogy with those which are seen in the myths of Erinys or Ate. 
 The awful being, who with sleepless eye wanders through the air to 
 watch the deeds of men and exact a righteous penalty for the shed- 
 ding of innocent blood, had been, or was, in the land of the Five 
 Streams only the beautiful Saranyu or morning. But the natural 
 phrase, " the dawn will find out the evil-doer," changes Saranyu in 
 Hellas intq the dread minister of divine vengeance ; and it was 
 necessary only to give a physical meaning to the phrase that the hearts 
 of the enemies of Zeus shall be racked with pain, to furnish a starting- 
 point for the myth which told how the vulture gnawed the heart of 
 Prometheus as he lay bound to the frozen crags of Caucasus. But 
 the visible vulture gnawing a bleeding heart would soon have 
 finished its horrid task ; the heart, therefore, must constantly grow, 
 and thus the story ran that the portion consumed during the day was 
 restored in the night, and the region of everlasting ice and storm was 
 chosen as the place of torture presenting the most awful contrast 
 with the sunlit halls of Olympos. 
 
THE HESIODIC AND ^SCHYLEAN PROMETHEUS. 
 
 433 
 
 The zeal of Prometheus on behalf of mankind is brought to its 
 acme in the institutional legend which professed to account for the 
 portion assigned to the gods in the distribution of victims slain in 
 sacrifices. They have only the bones and the fat, while the meat and 
 the entrails belong to men. This practice is ascribed strictly to the 
 craft of Prometheus, who, in the great contest between gods and men 
 in Mekone, divided an ox, and placing the meat under the stomach 
 and the bones under the more inviting and auspicious fat, called on 
 Zeus to make his choice. The god with great eagerness placed both 
 hands on the fat, and was enraged on finding that it concealed only a 
 heap of bones. 1 This insult, according to the Hesiodic Theogony, 
 Zeus avenged by depriving men of fire — a sequel hopelessly at 
 variance with the more genuine form of the myth as related by 
 ^Eschylos. 
 
 But the name Prometheus * suggested to the Greeks a connexion 
 with words springing from the same root with Metis and Medeia. It 
 came, in short, to mean Forethought or Providence, and thus they 
 were led to its antithesis Epimetheus, Afterthought, and to exalt the 
 one by framing a story to illustrate the vanity of the other. This is as 
 
 CHAP. 
 IV. 
 
 The cheat- 
 ing of 
 Zeus. 
 
 Prome- 
 theus and 
 Pandora. 
 
 1 The Hesiodic poet in relating this 
 story makes use of one or two expres- 
 sions which imply or assert that Zeus 
 saw through the trick from the first, 
 and that thus it was in fact no trick at 
 all. When Zeus saw the two heaps 
 laid out for his choice, he is made to 
 say that the division is not fair. The 
 poet adds that this was a sarcasm from 
 a god whose wisdom was boundless ; 
 and in the same way. when he is sum- 
 moned to choose, the poet says that he 
 did so with his eyes open, yvu> j>' obS' 
 iiyvotriffe S6\ov. The words are intro- 
 duced simply to save the majesty of 
 Zeus at the cost of complete inconsis- 
 tency with the story. Had he thus seen 
 through the trick, he would have de- 
 feated it, and would certainly have 
 shown no feverish eagerness to lay his 
 hands on the tempting heap of fat. 
 But Prometheus succeeds in his scheme ; 
 in other words, Zeus is really outwitted. 
 Grote sees clearly that the poet's re- 
 servation cannot be admitted. — Hist. 
 Greece, i. 86. In one point, however, 
 the jEschylean version is as singularly 
 at variance with itself as in all others it 
 is with the Hesiodic myth. These chil- 
 dren of men, who are described as being 
 unable either to see or hear, and as 
 clustering together like ants in their 
 sunless caves until they receive the boon 
 
 of fire and the blessings which follow 
 that gift, yet possess' a knowledge of 
 things to come, and see most clearly 
 what is to be the course and the close of 
 their lives, TrpoSepiceffdai fi6pov, before 
 Prometheus brings down for them the 
 heavenly fire. This power he takes 
 away from them, substituting blind 
 hopes or dreams in its place ; and when 
 he has added to this benefit the gift of 
 the fire, he then instructs them in divi- 
 nation, thus supplying in a measure the 
 very knowledge which he had wished 
 to take away, and of which he had in 
 fact deprived them. The contradiction 
 could not be more complete. 
 
 2 It has been connected by Dr. Kuhn 
 with the Sanskrit Pramantha or chum 
 used for kindling fire with dried pieces 
 of wood. The wood thus has reference 
 not to his wisdom but to his giving of 
 the fire ; and it was in this case a mere 
 resemblance of sound which led the 
 Greeks to explain the name as denoting 
 forethought. Hence Epimetheus is 
 strictly the result of a false etymology ; 
 and the process which brought him into 
 existence is illustrated by the language 
 of Pindar (Pyth. v. 25), who assigns to 
 Epimetheus a daughter Prophasis, Ex- 
 cuse, the offspring of after-thought. — 
 Grote, Hist. Gr. i. 102. 
 
 2 F 
 
434 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK manifestly implied by the story of Pandora as the overreaching of 
 n ' Zeus is patent in the institutional myth of the sacrifices. Prometheus 
 is the wise and cautious counsellor, whose advice, if followed, will 
 assuredly mitigate an evil or prevent a catastrophe. As such, he had 
 bidden men, and more especially his brother Epimetheus, to be on 
 their guard against any gifts which might be offered to them by Zeus, 
 as their acceptance would be followed only by pain and misery. But 
 it was impossible thus to defeat the schemes of Zeus or avert the doom 
 of man. No sooner had Zeus been tricked in the matter of the 
 sacrificial victims than he bade the fire-god Hephaistos mould of clay 
 the figure of a maiden, 1 into which Athene the dawn-goddess breathed 
 the breath of life, clothing her with silver raiment, while Hermes gave 
 her the mind of a dog, to cozen, deceive, and ruin those with whom 
 she might come in contact. The maiden, thus arrayed, is brought to 
 Epimetheus, and presented to him under the name Pandora, the gift 
 of all the gods. 2 Thus was woman brought to man ; and the poet of 
 the Theogony only adds that through woman man was speedily plunged 
 into woe irremediable. The author of the Works and Days gives the 
 reasons in detail. In the keeping of Epimetheus was a fatal jar, 
 whose cover could not be lifted without grievous consequences to 
 mankind. Pandora of course raises the lid, and a thousand evils are 
 let loose. Thus far men had been plagued by no diseases : now the 
 air was filled with the seeds of sickness which everywhere produced 
 their baneful fruit ; and the only possible alleviation of their woe was 
 rendered impossible by the shutting up of Hope, which alone remained 
 a prisoner within the cask when Pandora in her terror hastily replaced 
 the cover. 8 Here manifestly we have an account of the origin of evil 
 
 1 IntheFinnishepicof Wainambinen, lid is very doubtful, while the whole 
 
 the smith is Ilmarinen, who makes, not legend assuredly represents Zeus as in- 
 
 for others, but for himself, a wife of gold exorably hostile to men, and hence as 
 
 and silver whom he brings to life after most unlikely to interfere in their be- 
 
 vast trouble. He finds, however, that half. In Grote's opinion the point is 
 
 that side of his body which has touched one which does not admit of question, 
 
 the golden Bride is very cold in the Pandora, he says, does not in Hesiod 
 
 morning. Hence he is willing to turn "bring with her the cask. . . . The 
 
 her over to Wainamoinen, who, not case is analogous to that of the closed 
 
 much relishing the gift, advises him to bag of unfavourable winds which ^Eolus 
 
 take it to some place where gold is in gives into the hands of Odysseus, and 
 
 more request. which the guilty companions of the 
 
 a In another and a more probable latter force open, to the entire ruin of 
 tradition Pandora is an epithet of Gaia, his hopes. . . . The diseases and evils 
 the bountiful earth, lavish of her gifts are inoperative so long as they remain 
 to all her children : it would thus shut up in the cask : the same mischief- 
 answer to the phrase Sii-rup i&av. making which lets them out to their 
 
 s The opinion that Hope was left a calamitous work takes care that Hope 
 
 prisoner out of mercy to men seems un- shall still continue a powerless prisoner 
 
 tenable. The genuineness of the line in the inside." — Hist. Gr. i. 104: 
 
 in which Zeus bids Pandora replace the Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 319. 
 
GIVERS OF FIRE. 435 
 
 which is altogether at variance with the true Promethean legend. CHAP. 
 The disaster thus caused by Pandora occurs long after the theft of the ^ — • 
 
 fire from Olympos, and at a time when Prometheus was paying the 
 penalty for his offence. But in the version given by iEschylos 
 Prometheus mentions, as one of his reasons for wishing to bestow on 
 men the boon of fire, the crowd of diseases and plagues which they 
 were unable either to mitigate or to cure. The reconciliation of 
 these two myths, thus sprung from two different lines of thought, is 
 an impossibility. But the Hesiodic legend is indeed inconsistent 
 throughout. The mere comparison instituted between Prometheus 
 and Epimetheus, the fore-thinker and the after-thinker, implies that 
 there must be some advantage in the one, some loss in the other, if 
 the contrast is to have any force. But in the Theogony and the 
 Works and Days there is no more to be said in behalf of one than of 
 the other. The provident and the improvident are alike outwitted 
 and punished ; and the gain, if any there be, is decidedly to the man 
 who does not see the coming evils as they cast their shadows before 
 them. 
 
 Putting aside these myths as the result of a mistaken etymology, Prome- 
 we see in Prometheus simply another Phoroneus, the giver of fire, □f u k ! Sj 1 < n 
 and, by consequence, of the blessings which spring from the know- 
 ledge of fire. As wakening the senses of men, as providing them 
 with the appliances and comforts of life, as teaching them how to 
 plough and build, to cross the seas and search the mines, he is prac- 
 tically the creator as well as the preserver of men ; and the creative 
 function thus assigned to him is brought out still more in the story 
 of his son Deukalion, in whose days the great flood of waters over- 
 whelms the whole of Hellas. By his father's advice Deukalion builds 
 an ark, in which with his wife Pyrrha he floats for nine days and 
 nights until the vessel rested on the summits of Parnassos. 1 When 
 descending from the ark with Pyrrha (a name denoting redness, 
 ■whether of the soil, or, as other names in the myth render far more 
 probable, of the early morning), he offers his first sacrifice. Hermes 
 is sent to grant them any one thing which they may choose. The 
 prayer of Deukalion reflects the spirit of Prometheus ; and he 
 
 1 For other versions of this Flood them to the heights of Parnassos, where, 
 
 see pp. 226, 327. In all these deluges of course, the city of Lykoreia, or 
 
 only the righteous, or those who have a Mountain of Light, is founded. Me- 
 
 consecrated character, are saved. The garos, again, who is saved by following 
 
 ,men of Delphoi are the ministers of the the high-soaring cranes, is a son of Zeus 
 
 light-god Phoibos : hence wolves, by the and a Sithnian nymph, or, in other 
 
 same equivocation which led to the con- words, a child of the waters, akin to the 
 
 founding of the tail of light, Lykosoura morning deities Athen£, Artemis, and 
 
 .(Lykabas), with that of the wolf, led Aphrodite. — Paus. i. 40, 1. 
 
43^ MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book beseeches Zeus to restore mankind, now that the race has been 
 
 • J- swept away, as his father had entreated him to stay his hand when 
 
 first he resolved to destroy them. The answer, whether given by 
 Zeus or by Theseus, is that they must cast the bones of their mother 
 behind them as they go upon their way ; and the wisdom of Prome- 
 theus, which had warned them of the coming deluge, now teaches 
 them that their common parent must be the Earth, and that her 
 bones were to be seen in the rocks and stones strewn around them. 
 These, accordingly, they cast backwards over their heads ; and from 
 those which Deukalion hurls spring up men, from those cast by 
 Pyrrha women. 1 
 Prome- But Prometheus is one of those beings over whom tortures and 
 
 id? US a death have no lasting hold. Memnon, Sarpedon, and Adonis may 
 all die, but they must rise again to more than their ancient splendour; 
 and thus Prometheus must be delivered from his long torments by 
 one of those bright heroes whose nature he shares. The Promethean 
 legend thus becomes intermingled with that of 16 as a parent of 
 Herakl£s, for only beings like Herakl£s, Phoibos, or Asklepios may 
 achieve such deliverances. Since, again, the sufferings of Prometheus 
 have been caused by his resisting the will of Zeus, it follows that his 
 rescue must involve the humiliation of Zeus ; and thus the indomi- 
 table son of Iapetos is represented as using language which seems to 
 point distinctly to the Norse belief in Ragnarok, the Twilight of the 
 gods, when the long day of the deities of Asgard shall be quenched 
 in endless night. 2 Nor are 16 and Herakles the only names denoting 
 the brilliance of the morning or the sun, which are associated with 
 the name of Prometheus. The whole legend teems with a trans- 
 parent mythical history in its very names, if we confine ourselves 
 to these alone. Deukalion and Pyrrha are the parents of Protogeneia, 
 who, being wedded to Zeus, becomes the mother of Aethlios, whose 
 wife, Kalyke, is the mother of Endymion, the husband of Asterodia, 
 who bears him fifty children. Translating these words into English, 
 
 1 This myth, in Professor Max fruit of a certain palm, and out of the 
 
 Miiller's opinion, "owes its origin to a kernels sprang men and women, 
 mere pun on \abs and Xaas." — Chips, 2 It may be doubted whether this 
 
 &■=£., ii. 12. The temptation so to assign idea is anything more than an inference 
 
 it is great; but it seems unlikely that conceived by the mind of ./Eschylos; 
 
 the same equivocation should run for no other mention of the downfall of 
 
 through the language of other tribes, the Olympian hierarchy seems to be 
 
 among whom the story is found, as found in any other Greek writer. The 
 
 among the Macusi Indians of South notion, which agrees well with the 
 
 America, who believe that the stones gloomy climate of the North, was not 
 
 were changed into men, and the Tama- likely to fasten on the imagination of 
 
 naks of Orinoko, who hold that a pair Hellenic tribes in their sunnier home, 
 of human beings cast behind them the 
 
THE OUTER AND INNER FIRES. 437 
 
 we have simply the assertions that the clear purple tints usher in the CH A p - 
 
 early dawn, the mother of the struggling sun, from whose union with ■ 
 
 the earth springs the wearied sun of evening, who, plunging into the 
 western waters, is wedded to the tranquil night moving among the 
 stars who are her children. 
 
 Section V.— THE LIGHTNING. 
 
 With the gift of fire Prometheus imparted to man the power of The 
 interpreting the fiery lightnings which flash across the sky and seem 
 to pierce the very bowels of the earth. These lightnings are the 
 mighty fires in which the invincible weapons and arms are welded 
 for beings like Phoibos, Herakles, or Achilleus ; or they are them- 
 selves the awful thunderbolts forged by Hephaistos, the fire-god, and 
 his ministers for Zeus himself. These ministers are the gigantic 
 Titans, some of whom are thus compelled to do service to the god 
 against whom they had rebelled ; while others, like Typhoeus and 
 Enkelados, are bound on fiery couches beneath huge mountains, 
 through which they vomit forth streams of molten fire. Thus, among 
 the myths related of these beings, we find some which refer to the 
 manifestations of fire in the heaven, while others exhibit the working 
 of the same forces upon the earth or under it. When we reach the 
 Hesiodic or Orphic theogonies, these myths have been modified and 
 woven together in a highly elaborate system. It is true that even 
 here we find the poets, or mythographers, working more or less in 
 unconscious fidelity to the old mythical phrases, which had mainly 
 furnished them with their materials. Thus when the Orphic poet 
 desired to go further back than the point to which the Hesiodic 
 theogony traces the generation of the Kosmos, he traced the universe 
 to the great mundane egg produced by Chronos, time, out of Chaos 
 and Aither, — a symbol answering to the mighty mixing-bowl of the 
 Platonic demiourgos, and akin to all the circular, oval, or boat-shaped 
 emblems of fertility which have been associated with the signs of the 
 male-powers in nature. But the artificial character of these theogonies 
 can neither be ignored nor explained away ; nor can it be denied, 
 that the deliberate process of manufacture which they have under- 
 gone deprives them in great part of any mythological value, while it 
 frees us from the necessity of going through their tedious details, or 
 of adhering invariably to their order. Thus, if we take the story 
 whether of the gigantic Polyphemos or of the Kyklopes among whom 
 he is reckoned, we are not bound to go through the cumbrous gene- 
 
438 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK alogy of Ouraniones, Titans, and Gigantes with which the theogonies 
 
 II 
 
 are overloaded. It is enough to say that when Arge"s, Steropes, and 
 Brontes are spoken of as Kyklopes, these are manifestly the dazzling 
 and scorching flashes which plough up the storm-clad heavens. But 
 although it is possible to trace the affinity between these Kyklopes 
 and the beings to whom the poets of the Iliad and the Odyssey give 
 the same name, the latter exhibit nevertheless features very different 
 from the former. 1 The Kyklops of the Odyssey has nothing to do 
 with fire; he is the son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoosa; in 
 other words, he is emphatically the child of the waters, and of the 
 waters only — the huge mists which wrap the earth in a dark shroud 
 Instead of forging armour, he feeds his flock of sheep and goats on 
 the rough hill-side. These herds answer to the cattle of Helios in 
 every respect except their brilliance. The flocks of the Kyklops are 
 the rough and misshapen vapours on which no sunshine sheds its 
 glory, while the Kyklops himself is the oppressive and blackening 
 mist, through which glares the ghastly eye of the shrouded sun. 
 This terrible being may be seen drawn with wonderful fidelity to the 
 spirit of the old myth in Turner's picture of the overthrow of the 
 troops sent by Cambyses to the shrine of the Libyan Ammon ; and 
 they who see the one-eyed monster glaring down on the devoted 
 army, where the painter was probably utterly unaware that he was 
 doing anything more than representing the simoom of the desert, 
 will recognise at once the unconscious accuracy with which the 
 modern painter conveys the old Homeric conception of Polyphemos. 
 In this picture, as in the storms of the desert, the sun becomes the 
 one great eye of an enormous monster, who devours every living 
 thing that crosses his path, as Polyphemos devoured the comrades 
 of Odysseus. 2 The blinding of this monster is the natural sequel 
 
 1 According to Mr. Brown, the other of these meanings the word must 
 
 metal- working Kyklopes are Semitic, have, if it be Greek at all. 
 while the name describes them as circle- 2 The sun, thus glaring through the 
 
 builders. It is, of course, possible that storm-cloud, may be regarded not merely 
 
 the name Kyklops may simply represent as the eye but as the whole face of some 
 
 the Semitic Khouk-lobh "Rulers of horrible monster ; and the name Kykl&ps 
 
 the flame, or fire-worshippers," these agrees etymologically with the latter 
 
 Khouk-lobh being builders of those meaning better than with the other, 
 
 gigantic works which are hence sup- The word no more means of necessity a 
 
 posed to be called Cyclopean. But being with one eye in the middle of his 
 
 the giants with whom Odysseus was forehead, than Glauk6pis, as an epithet 
 
 here brought into contact were not of Athene', implies that she had only a 
 
 builders at all; and assuredly the grey eye. This name really denotes the 
 
 Greek name could not have been given blinding splendour of her countenance ; 
 
 to them as a race of circle-builders. The and thus the Kyklops became a being 
 
 word Kyklops ought rather to mean not with an eye in the middle of his 
 
 one with around face than with a round head, but with a round face. In this 
 
 eye in the midst of his face : but one or case, as it so happens, either description 
 
THE WARS OF THE TITANS. 439 
 
 when his mere brute force is pitted against the craft of his adversary. 1 c ^ap. 
 
 In his seeming insignificance and his despised estate, in hi»wayworn : — ■ 
 
 mien and his many sorrows, Odysseus takes the place of the Boots 
 or Cinderella of Teutonic folk-lore ; and as the giant is manifestly 
 the enemy of the bright being whose splendours are for the time 
 hidden beneath a veil, so it is the representative of the sun himself 
 who pierces out his eye ; and thus Odysseus, Boots, and Jack the 
 Giant Killer alike overcome and escape from the enemy, although 
 they may each be said to escape with the skin of their teeth. 
 
 Polyphemos then is the Kyklops, 2 in his aspect as a shepherd The Ky- 
 feeding his vast flocks on the mountain-sides ; but from the mighty 
 vapours through which his great eye glares may dart at any moment 
 the forked streams of lightning; and thus the Kyklopes are connected 
 with the fire-convulsed heaven, and with Hephaistos the lord of the 
 awful flames. These, with the Hekatoncheires, or hundred-handed 
 monsters, are the true Gigantes, the earth-born children of Ouranos, 
 whom he thrusts down into the nether abyss, like the pent-up fires of 
 a volcano. But the Titans still remained free. Whatever may be 
 the names of these beings, they are clearly the mighty forces which 
 carry on the stupendous changes wrought from time to' time in the 
 physical world. Of the titles given to them by mythographers, many 
 doubtless, like the abstract conceptions of Themis and Mnemosyne, 
 are artificial additions, and may be the manufacture of the mytho- 
 graphers themselves. Others, as Krios and Hyperion, denote simply 
 might or supremacy, and as such might become the names of Helios, 
 Phoibos, or other kindred beings. Between these beings and their 
 father a second war is waged, in which Gaia enables her children to 
 mutilate Ouranos, from whose blood spring the Erinyes, so fearful 
 on Hellenic soil, so beautiful in the land of the five streams, and 
 Aphrodite, the dawn goddess, who may be terrible as well as lovely. 
 The Kyklopes are now delivered from their prison-house, and Kronos 
 becomes the supreme king; but time can only swallow the things 
 which he has made, and vomit them forth again. The thing which 
 hath been, shall be, and there is nothing new under the sun. But 
 it was as impossible that the Kyklopes could continue the allies of 
 
 is equally true to the phenomena of its mysterious shadows, 
 nature. Even if the notion of the round * The story and attributes of Poly- 
 face was suggested before the Greek phemos with a thousand others were 
 myth-makers reached the idea of the transferred to the devil, when the Chris- 
 one eye in the centre of the forehead, tian missionaries had converted all the 
 we can see at once how readily the ancient gods into demons. Seech, x. of 
 latter notion may be derived from the this book, section 8. 
 sight of the black storm-cloud, as it 2 Sayce, Introduction to the Science 
 suffers the sun to glare dimly through of Language, ii. 263. 
 
440 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Schamir 
 
 and 
 
 Sassafras. 
 
 any monarch of heaven, as that the same fountain should send forth 
 sweet water and bitter ; and again they are thrust down into the 
 depths from which they had been rescued, once more to be avenged 
 when the Titans, led on by Zeus, waged a third war of elements, in 
 which Kronos is hurled from his throne, and the child born in the 
 Diktaian (or Light) cave reigns in his stead. But when the Kyklopes 
 are once more set free, Zeus avails himself of their might to crush 
 the Titans ; and finally the Kyklopes themselves are slain by Phoibos 
 in vengeance for the death of AsklSpios the Healer and the Saviour. 
 These several contests are not distinguished from each by any peculiar 
 features; and the writers of the theogouies simply heap together 
 mountains of words almost as vast as the rocks hurled by the hands 
 of the giants, as if conscious of the barrenness of their theme, and of 
 its lack of interest as compared with myths springing from phrases 
 which, though they may denote the phenomena of nature, strike a 
 responsive chord in the human heart. It is, in fact, the old story of 
 the struggle between Indra and Vritra, regarded from a point of view 
 which removes it altogether from the region of human sympathies. 1 
 
 Thus, then, the myth of the Kyklopes brings before us in close 
 connexion the two images of the cloud and the lightning. This 
 connexion may be traced through a vast number of stories, in many 
 cases but slightly resembling each other, yet all adhering to the original 
 ideas of mist and fire. In these the lightning becomes an arrow 
 capable of piercing the mountain-side or the huge storm-cloud, and 
 displaying for a moment marvellous treasures of jewels and gold. 
 The effects produced by this arrow or spear are sometimes good, 
 sometimes disastrous. It may scorch and paralyse, or in times of 
 drought, when the waters are pent up in the cloud, it may cleave the 
 vapours and call the dead earth to life again with the streams let 
 loose upon her parched surface. But the cloud might assume the 
 form not only of sheep and cattle, as in the Vedic hymns and in the 
 Thrinakian legend, but of birds, as of swans or eagles ; and as the 
 clouds carry the lightning with them until the time comes for using 
 the mighty weapons, so the bird carries a stone capable of splitting 
 the hardest substance. Finally the stone becomes a worm, and thus 
 we have the framework of a large family of stories which, if they have 
 their origin among Aryan tribes, have been extended far beyond the 
 limits of that race. In the many versions devised by Hebrew tra- 
 
 1 In short, these theogonies are the 
 result, in part, of a backward process, 
 which led the mythographer back to the 
 mundane egg, and, in part, of that 
 
 systematic rearrangement of current 
 myths, which might be carried out in 
 any way most congenial to the worker. 
 
ROCK-SPLITTING PLANTS. 44 1 
 
 dition for a legend gained through their contact with Iranian tribes, CHAP, 
 the cloud is in each case a bird, the lightning being either .a stone or ■ : — - 
 
 a worm. 1 Thus Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, discovers the wonder- 
 working pebble Schamir, by watching a moor-hen, which, finding a 
 piece of glass laid over her nest, flies away, and fetching a worm, 
 splits the cover ; or Solomon obtains it in the form of a stone from 
 the raven, of whom he has been informed by the demon Sackar. In 
 similar stories told by JEliati and Pliny of the woodpecker or the 
 hoopoe, the instrument by which the bird gets at her young is a grass; 
 and thus we reach the family of plants whose power of splitting rocks 
 has won for them the name of Saxifrage, or Sassafras. This grass or 
 plant will either reveal treasures, as in the blinding glare of the electric 
 fluid, or will restore life, as in the effects of lightning in setting free 
 the waters on a parched-up soil. Thus the story of Glaukos and 
 Polyidos, of the Three Snake Leaves, and of Rama and Luxman, is 
 repeated in Fouqud's Sir Elidoc, where the young Amyot is watching 
 the corpse of a woman as Glaukos watches that of Polyidos. This 
 mysterious herb becomes the German Luckflower, the possessor of 
 which is enabled to go down into the rocks which gape to receive 
 him, and to fill his pockets with the glittering treasures of which the 
 beautiful queen of this hidden palace bids him take his fill, warning 
 him only not to forget the best. This warning is, of course, under- 
 stood by the peasant as a charge to select the most precious stones, 
 and leaving the flower behind him, he finds, as the rocks come together 
 with a crash, that the mountain is closed to him for ever. This flower 
 is sometimes inclosed in a staff, which is obviously only another form 
 of the lightning-spear, as in the tale of the luckless shepherd of Ilsen- 
 stein, who, forgetting to take the staff as he leaves the cave, is himself 
 cloven by the closing rocks. In all these cases the flower or plant, 
 as the talismanic spell, is more precious than the hid treasures ; and 
 unless the treasure-seeker keeps it by him he is lost. It is, in short, 
 the flower, sometimes blue, sometimes yellow or red (as the hues vary 
 of the lightning flashes), which exclaims in feeble piteous tone, 
 " Forget me not," but its little cry is unheeded. 
 
 In the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves the flower itself AIl j n ^ d 
 has disappeared, but the spell still lies in its name ; for sesame is hatiser. 
 the name of a well-known Eastern plant (Sesamum orientate); so that 
 probably, in the original form of the Persian tale absorbed into the 
 Arabian Nights, a flower was employed to give admission to the 
 mountain. 2 In the story of Allah-ud-deen, the same verbal talisman 
 
 1 Curious Myths, second series, 2 In Slavonic tradition, the Sassafras 
 
 ' ' Schamir. " of the thunder-god Perkunas is a golden 
 
442 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK is employed by the African magician, when he has kindled a fire 
 from which rises a dense smoke and vapour, and the instantaneous 
 effect, as of the lightning, is the discovery of a way into the depths of 
 the earth. In the tale of Ahmed and the Peri Banou, the Schamir 
 or Sassafras is again an arrow which, when shot by the hand of the 
 prince, travels so far as to become invisible, as the lightnings shine 
 from the east and give light to the uttermost west. Following its 
 course, he comes to a great mountain, and finds the arrow just where 
 an opening in the rocks shows him a door by which he descends into 
 a place of unimaginable splendour. Here he is greeted by the queen 
 of this magnificent domain, who calls him by his name, and having 
 convinced him of her knowledge of all his actions by recounting 
 incidents of his past life, offers herself to him as his bride. With her 
 he dwells in happiness and luxury, until, driven by a yearning to see 
 his home and his father once more, he beseeches the benignant being 
 to suffer him to go, and at length obtains his wish after promising, 
 like true Thomas in the myth of Ercildoune, that he will soon return. 
 This beautiful Peri with her vast treasures and her marvellous wisdom 
 is but a reflexion of the wise Kirke and Medeia, or of the more 
 tender Kalypso, who woos the brave Odysseus in her glistening cave, 
 until she is compelled to let the man of many sorrows go on his way 
 to his wife Penelope. She is, in short, the Venus of the Horselberg 
 or Ercildoune (the hill of Ursula and her eleven thousand Virgins), 
 for the names are the same, and the prince Ahmed is Tanhaiiser, or 
 Thomas the Rimer, wooed and won by the Elfland queen. 
 The greedy It is obvious that for the name of the flower which is to open the 
 cave or the treasure-house might be substituted any magical formula, 
 while the lightning-flash might be represented by the lighting of a 
 miraculous taper, the extinguishing of which is followed by a loud 
 crashing noise. With these modifications the myth at once assumes 
 the form of the Spanish legend of the Moor's Legacy, as related by 
 Washington Irving. In this delightful tale we have all the usual 
 incidents of features — the buried treasures — the incantation which 
 has " such virtue that the strongest bolts and bars, nay, the adaman- 
 tine rock itself, will yield before it " — the wonderful taper by whose 
 light alone the incantation can be read — the opening of the secret 
 places of the earth while the taper continues to burn — the crash with 
 which the gates close when the light is gone. All these features are 
 so skilfully fitted into the modern Alhambra legend, as fairly to hide 
 
 key, with which he unlocks the earth, of light." — Ralston, Songs of the Russian 
 
 brings to light "its hidden treasures, People, 96. 
 
 its restrained waters, its captive founts * 
 
THE LIGHTNING. 443 
 
 the origin of the story, until we apply the right key to the lock. C^AP. 
 No sooner is this done than the myth is as clearly revfcaled as the '■ — ■ 
 
 treasure of the robbers' cave on pronouncing the word "Sesame." 
 Of the real meaning of the tale, Irving doubtless knew nothing ; but 
 he has preserved it as faithfully as the hymn-writer adhered to the 
 spirit of the myth of Hermes. "The scroll was produced" (the 
 sassafras or sesame), " the yellow waxen taper lighted " (the flash of 
 the yellow lightning), " the earth trembled and the pavement opened 
 with a thundering sound." While the taper burns, the Moor and the 
 water-carrier load the panniers of their ass with costly treasures ; but 
 when they have satisfied themselves, the costliest still remain un- 
 touched, and the greedy Alcalde, having in vain prayed them to bring 
 up these also, descends with his griping retainers still lower into the 
 vault. " No sooner did the Moor behold them fairly earthed, than 
 he extinguished the yellow taper " (the darkness closes in after the 
 flash of lightning), " the pavement closed with the usual crash, and 
 the three worthies remained buried in its womb." Doubtless, when 
 reduced to their primitive elements, these tales may seem poor and 
 monotonous enough; but the marvellous powers of growth which 
 these germs possess have seldom been more clearly exhibited than 
 in the folk-lore which has yielded the legends of the Forty Thieves, 
 the Peri Banou, Allah-ud-deen, and the Legacy of the Moor, with 
 the German stories of Simeli Mountain and the Glass Coffin. 1 
 
 Once more, the light flashing from the dim and dusky storm- Mediaeval 
 cloud becomes the Hand of Glory, which, taken from a dead Spe S " 
 man, aids the mediaeval treasure-seeker in his forbidden search, 
 whether in the depths of the earth or after his neighbour's goods ; 
 nor have we far to seek in much older writings for the very same 
 image without its repulsive transformation. The hand of glory is the 
 red light of Jupiter, with which he smites the sacred citadels ; 2 and 
 with this we may compare the myth of the golden hand of Indra 
 Savit&r. 
 
 1 In this story the office of Schamir lightning, it splits the rocks open and 
 
 is discharged by a goat, suggesting a the Tailor descends through the opening 
 
 comparison with the Aigis of AthenS into the hidden chamber, where the 
 
 (see p. 250). The beast thrusts his maiden sleeps in the Glass Coffin, 
 horns with such force that, like the * Horace, Od. i. 2. 
 
444 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WINDS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Vayu and 
 Favonius. 
 
 Boreas 
 and the 
 Maruts. 
 
 Section I.— VAYU AND THE MARUTS. 
 
 The god of the bright heaven, who is known as Dyu, Indra, and 
 - Agni, is also called Vayu, a name denoting, it would seem, simply 
 the gentler movements of the air, which are expressed by the sweet 
 pipings of the Greek Pan and the soft breathings of the Latin 
 Favonius. As such, he comes early in the morning to chase away 
 the demons, and the Dawns weave for him golden raiment. 1 He is 
 drawn by the Nirjuts, and has Indra for his charioteer." With some 
 he was, along with Agni and Surya, supreme among the deities. 
 " There are only three deities, according to the Nairuktas (etymolo- 
 gists) : Agni whose place is on earth ; Vayu or Indra whose place is 
 in the atmosphere ; and Surya whose place is in the sky." * 
 
 The blustering rage of the Greek Boreas and the more violent 
 moods of Hermes are represented by the crowd of Maruts, or storm- 
 winds, who attend on Indra and aid him in his struggle with his great 
 enemy Vritra. Of these beings it is enough to say, that the language 
 used in describing their functions is, if possible, more transparent than 
 that of the poem known as the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. They 
 overturn trees and destroy forests, they roar like lions and are as 
 swift as thought, they shake the mountains and are clothed with rain. 
 They are borne on tawny-coloured horses; they are brothers, "of 
 whom no one is the elder, no one the younger." They are born self- 
 luminous with the spotted deer, the spears, the daggers, the glitter- 
 ing ornaments. 4 These spears and daggers are the lightnings, and 
 the spotted deer are seen in the spotted lynxes who play round 
 Phoibos as he pipes to the flocks of Admetos. 6 The worshipper 
 hears the cracking of their whips in their hands as they go upon their 
 way. After the mightiest exploits they assume again, " according to 
 
 1 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 
 
 » H. H. Wilson, R. V. S. iii. 209 ; 
 Muir, Sanskr. Texts, iv. 3, 7. 
 
 337 
 
 59 
 
 3 Muir, Sir. Texts, part iv. p. 57. 
 * Max Miiller, Rig Veda Sanhita, i. 
 
 5 Eurip. Alk. 579. 
 
THE MARUTS AND HERMES. 445 
 
 their wont the form of new-born babes," * a phrase which exhibits the CHAP. 
 
 germ, and more than the germ, of the myth of Hermes returning like ■ '■ — • 
 
 a child to his cradle after tearing up the forests. Their voice is 
 louder than that of Stentor. 
 
 " Whither now ? " asks the poet. " On what errand of yours are 
 you going, in heaven not on earth ? Where are your cows sporting ? 
 From the shout of the Maruts over the whole space of the earth men 
 reeled forward." a 
 
 " They make the rocks to tremble ; they tear asunder the kings of 
 the forest," like Hermes in his rage. 
 
 " Lances gleam, Maruts, upon your shoulders, anklets on your 
 feet, golden cuirasses on your breasts, and pure (waters shine) on 
 your chariots : lightnings blazing with fire glow in your hands, and 
 golden tiaras are towering on your heads." 8 
 
 In the traditions of Northern Europe these furious Maruts become 
 the fearful Ogres, who come tearing along in their ships (the clouds), 
 while the wind roars and growls after them, and who, after desperate 
 conflicts, are vanquished by Shortshanks in the Norse tale.* The 
 ogre of this story carries with him " a great thick iron club,'' which 
 sends the earth and stones flying five yards in the air at each stroke. 
 
 But pre-eminently, as the name denotes, the Maruts are the The Crush- 
 crushers or grinders ; and thus, as made to share in the deadly strife Grinders, 
 between Indra and Vritra, they assume an exclusively warlike 
 character. The history of the root which furnishes this name has 
 been already traced, 6 and has linked together the Greek war-god 
 Ares, the gigantic Aloadai and Moliones, the Latin Mars and Mors, 
 and the Teutonic Thor Miolnir. They are the children of Rudra, 
 worshipped as the destroyer and reproducer, for these functions were 
 blended by the same association of ideas which gave birth to the 
 long series of correlative deities in Aryan mythology. 
 
 " Adorned with armlets, the Maruts have shone like the skies 
 with their stars ; they have glittered like showers from the clouds, at 
 the time when the prolific Rudra generated you, Maruts, with jewels 
 on your breasts, from the shining udder of Prisni." 6 
 
 Among the monstrous overgrowths of wild fancies in the later Rudra. 
 Hindu literature we find some of the more prominent attributes of 
 the cognate Greek deity ascribed to Rudra in his character as Father 
 
 1 Max Miiller, R. V. S. i. 3. called Stribog.— Ralston, Songs of the 
 
 1 lb. 65. Russian People, 102. 
 
 » h! H.' Wilson, R. V. S. vol. ii. p. 5 P. 16. 
 
 333. ^ ".•#• V- «• 34. 2; Muir, Skr. Texts, 
 
 1 The Slavonic god of the winds is part iv. p. 260. 
 
446 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of the Winds. Like the Asvins and Agni, like Proteus, Phoibos, and 
 ' - the other fish-gods, Rudra can change his form at will. . 
 
 " Father of the Maruts, may thy felicity extend to us : exclude us 
 not from the light of the sun. 
 
 " Thou, Rudra, art the chiefest of beings in glory. Thou, wielder 
 of the thunderbolt, art the mightiest of the mighty. 
 
 "Where, Rudra, is thy joy-dispensing hand? Firm with strong 
 limbs, assuming many forms, he shines with golden ornaments." x 
 
 Like Hermes, Rudra is worshipped as the robber, the cheat, the 
 deceiver, the Master Thief. 2 The mocking laughter of the wind as 
 it passes on after wreaking its fury could not fail to suggest the same 
 ideas in the most distant lands. As we might expect, Rudra, like 
 Siva, whose gracious name was a mere euphemism to deprecate his 
 deadly wrath, at length eclipses Indra, as Indra had put Dyaus and 
 Varuna into the background, and he becomes associated most closely 
 with that phallic worship which seemingly found but little favour in 
 the true Vedic age. s 
 
 Section II.— HERMES. 
 
 Hindu and The cnaract e r of tne more gentle Vayu, who comes with the 
 
 Greek blush of early morning, carries us to the strange legend of Hermes ; 
 
 the wind, and we have to see how the phrases which yielded but a slight 
 
 harvest of myth in the East grew up in the West into stories enriched 
 
 by an exquisite fancy, while they remained free from the cumbrous 
 
 and repulsive extravagances of later Hindu mythology, and how true 
 
 to the spirit of the old mythical speech and thought is the legend of 
 
 that son of Zeus, who was born early in the morning in a cave of the 
 
 Kyllenian hill, who at noon played softly and sweetly on his harp. 
 
 and who at eventide stole away the cattle of Phoibos. 4 
 
 The story Rising from his cradle (so the story runs), the babe stepped forth 
 
 of Hermes. f rom the cave, and found a tortoise feeding on the grass. Joyously 
 
 seizing his prize, he pierced out its life with a borer, and drilling 
 
 holes in the shell, framed a lyre with reed canes, a bull's hide, and 
 
 1 H. H. Wilson, R. V. S. ii. 289. the Fisherman and the Jin in the Ara- 
 
 2 Muir, Sanskr. Texts, part iv. p. bian Nights. This tale is substantially 
 341. the same as Grimm's story of the Spirit 
 
 3 Dr. Muir fully admits thescantiness in the Bottle. The bottle in the one 
 of the evidence on which the negative case, the jar in the other, represents the 
 conclusion rests. — Sanskr. Texts, iv. p. cradle to which Hermes comes back after 
 348. striding like a giant over heaths and 
 
 * Hymn to Hermes, 17, 18. The hills, as well as the cave of Aiolos and 
 
 sudden growth of Hermes, followed by the bag of winds which he places in the 
 
 an equally rapid return to his infantile hands of Odysseus, 
 shape and strength, explains the story of 
 
THE CRADLE OF HERMES. 447 
 
 seven sheep-gut cords. Then striking the strings he called forth CHAP, 
 sounds of wonderful sweetness, as he sang of the loves of Zeus in the ■ 
 beautiful home of his mother Maia, the daughter of Atlas. But soon 
 he laid down his harp in his cradle, for the craving of hunger was 
 upon him, and as the sun went down with his chariot and horses to 
 the stream of Ocean, 1 the child hastened to the shadowy mountains 
 of Pieria, where the cattle of the gods feed in their large pastures. 
 Taking fifty of the herd, he drove them away, sending them hither 
 and thither, so that none could tell by what path they had really 
 gone, and on his own feet he bound branches of tamarisk and myrtle. 
 Passing along the plains of Onchestos, he charged an old man who 
 was at work in his vineyard to forget the things which it might not 
 be convenient to remember. 
 
 Hastening onwards with the cattle, he reached the banks of The theft 
 Alpheios, as the moon rose up in the sky. There he brought of 'l? e 
 together a heap of wood, and, kindling the first flame that shone upon 
 the earth, he slew two of the cows, and stretching their hides on the 
 rock, cut up the flesh into twelve portions. 2 But sorely though his 
 hunger pressed him, he touched not the savoury food, and hurling 
 his sandals into the river, he broke up the blazing pile, and scattered 
 the ashes all night long beneath the bright light of the moon. Early 
 in the morning he reached Kyllene, neither god nor man having spied 
 him on the road ; and passing through the bolt-hole of the cave like 
 a mist or a soft autumn breeze, 8 he lay down in his cradle, playing 
 among the clothes with one hand, while he held his lyre in the 
 other. To the warning of his mother, who told Kim that Phoibos 
 would take a fearful vengeance, and bade him begone as born to be 
 the plague of gods and men, 4 Hermes simply answered that he meant 
 to be the equal of Phoibos, and that if this right were refused to him, 
 he would go and sack his wealthy house at Pytho. 
 
 Meanwhile, Phoibos, hastening to Onchestos in search of his The cove- 
 cattle, had asked the old vinedresser to say who had taken them. ^ nt of 
 
 But the words of Hermes still rang in the old man's ears, and he and Phoi- 
 bos. 
 
 1 Hymn to Hermes, 67. I have This is the story of the Fisherman and 
 
 striven to adhere with scrupulous care the Jin in the Arabian Nights, of the 
 
 to the imagery of the hymn, avoiding Spirit in the Bottle in Grimm's German 
 
 the introduction of any notions not stories, of the devil in the purse of the 
 
 warranted by actual expressions in the Master Smith, and again in the story of 
 
 poem. the Lad and the Devil (Dasent), and 
 
 1 Hermes is thus especially con- the Gaelic tale of The Soldier. — Camp- 
 
 nected with the ordering of burnt sacri- bell, ii. 279. 
 
 fices. But this we have seen to be the * With this we may compare the 
 
 especial attribute or function of Agni. prognostications of the mother of the 
 
 3 In other words, the great giant has Shifty Lad, in the 'Scottish version of 
 
 reduced himself almost to nothing. the myth. 
 
448 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK could remember only that he had seen cows and a babe following 
 "• them with a staff in his hand. Knowing now who had stolen them, 1 
 Phoibos hastened on to Pylos, and there stood amazed at the con- 
 fused tracks which the beasts had left behind them. Hurrying 
 onwards to KyllenS, Apollon caught the child in his cradle, and 
 taxed him with the theft " How can it be that I have stolen the 
 cows ? " said the babe, " I who can but sleep and suck and play with 
 the clothes of my cradle. I was born but yesterday, and my feet 
 are tender, and the ground is hard. I have not taken your cattle, 
 and I know nothing of cows but their name." But as he spoke he 
 winked slily with his eyes, and a long low whistle came from his 
 lips. Smiling in spite of his anger, Phoibos saw that the craft of 
 Hermes would set many a herdsman grieving, and that he had won 
 the right to be called the prince of robbers and the Master Thief for 
 ever. Then seizing the child he was bearing him away when a loud 
 noise made him let go his hold ; but at length both appeared before 
 the judgment-seat of Zeus, and the babe, who spoke of himself as a 
 most truthful person, said that he must be guiltless, as he knew not 
 even what sort of things cows were. The plea was not admitted, and 
 the nod of Zeus warned Hermes that his command to restore the 
 oxen was not to be disobeyed. So on the banks of Alpheios he 
 showed the lost cattle to Phoibos, who, dismayed at the signs of 
 recent slaughter, again seized the babe in his anger. In great fear 
 Hermes bethought him of his lyre, and striking its chords wakened 
 sounds most soft and soothing as he sang of the old time when the 
 gods were born and the world was young. As he listened to the 
 beautiful harmony, Phoibos, angry no more, longed only to learn 
 whence the child had this wondrous power, and to gain for himself 
 this marvellous gift of song. At once Hermes granted his prayer. 
 "Take my lyre," he said, " which to those who can use it deftly will 
 discourse of all sweet things, but will babble nonsense and moan 
 strangely to all who know not how to draw forth its speech." So the 
 strife between them was ended, and Phoibos placed in the hand of 
 Hermes his three-leafed rod of wealth and happiness, and gave him 
 charge over all his cattle. 2 Then touching the tortoise-lyre, Apollon 
 
 1 Hymn to Hermes, 214-5. Nothing hiding-place furnished. The poet might 
 
 could show more clearly than these indeed have said that the child had 
 
 words that the myth pointed to a stolen the cows many times already : 
 
 physical phenomenon with which but the statement would not have agreed 
 
 Phoibos was already familiar. Had well with his special object in relating 
 
 the story been told by one who meant the myth — viz. to account for the alliance 
 
 to speak of any human child, he would between Phoibos and Hermes, 
 never have represented Apollon as " Thus Hermes becomes in the 
 
 knowing who the thief was before his German story the Little Farmer who 
 
 name was mentioned or the clue to his cheats ' the greedy townsmen with the 
 
THE COMPACT BETWEEN HERMES AND PH01BOS. 449 
 
 called forth its sweet music, and Hermes, taking courage, prayed that CHAP. 
 
 to him also might be granted the secret wisdom of Phoibos ; but • '—— ' 
 
 Apollon said, " This alone may not be. None but myself may know 
 the hidden counsels of Zeus ; but other things there are which 
 mortal men may never learn, and these things the Thriai shall teach 
 thee, who dwell far down in the clifts of Parnassos. Other honours 
 too are in store for thee. Thou shalt be the guardian of all flocks 
 and herds, the messenger of the gods, and the guide of the dead to 
 the dark land of Hades." Thus was the compact between them 
 made, and Phoibos became the lord of the sweet-voiced lyre, and 
 Hermes for his part sware that no harm should come to the holy 
 home of Apollon at Delphoi. But to men Hermes brings no great 
 help, for he has a way of cheating them through the dusky hours of 
 night. 
 
 It is obvious that the legend, as thus related in the hymn, cannot The mean- 
 be understood until we have traced to their source the mythical facts covenant, 
 that Hermes was born in the morning, that from him come the gifts 
 of music and song, that he reached his full strength at midday, that 
 although he could kindle flame he could not eat the food which the 
 fire devoured, and that he could at will lie like a child in his cradle 
 or terrify gods and men with his sudden blasts. 1 The mystery is 
 certainly not solved if we hold that " the general types of Hermes 
 and Apollon, coupled with the present fact that no thief ever 
 approached the rich and seemingly accessible treasures of Delphi, 
 engender a string of expository incidents, cast into a quasi-historical 
 form, and detailing how it happened that Hermes had bound himself 
 by especial convention to respect the Delphian temple." 2 The 
 immunity of the Pythian shrine from theft and plunder cannot have 
 originated the general types of the two gods, and it is precisely with 
 these types that we are now concerned. If a convention should be 
 made at all, why should it be with Hermes rather than with any other 
 god ? If it be answered that Hermes was the prince and patron of 
 thieves, we have then to ask why this should be his character and 
 whence the notion came. The mere pointing out of a contrast does 
 not explain the origin of that contrast ; and it is a principle capable 
 of universal application that " invention cannot absolutely create ; it 
 
 sight of his flocks in the water. "There * Hymn to Hermes, 296. This line 
 
 happened to be a fine blue sky with contains, perhaps, the only really coarse 
 
 plenty of fleecy clouds over it, which expression in the whole poem ; and the 
 
 were mirrored in the water and looked reference to the action of wind in its 
 
 like little lambs. The farmers called sudden outburst at once makes it both 
 
 one to another, 'Look there, we can see innocent and graphic, 
 the sheep already on the ground below s Grote, History of Greece, part i. 
 
 the water.' " ch. i. 
 
 2 G 
 
4SO 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 can only work on what it finds already provided to hand." * On the 
 other hand, it is manifestly useless to explain as a jest the relations 
 between Hermes and Apollon, until we have shown why these 
 particular relations should be invested with a ludicrous character. 2 
 It is more than strange that Colonel Mure should suppose that he had 
 touched the real point at issue by asserting that in order to accom- 
 modate the dispute "on terms honourable to each party" "an elegant 
 expedient suggested itself" in the invention of the lyre by Hermes, 
 and the transference of this instrument, which could not fail to lay 
 Apollon under a heavy debt of gratitude to the donor. 8 This leaves 
 altogether out of sight the fact that Phoibos imparted to Hermes such 
 secrets as it was lawful for him to disclose, and in no way explains why 
 Hermes should invent the lyre and Phoibos be possessed of a hidden 
 wisdom. To say that " Hermes in his capacity of god is gifted from 
 the first moment of his existence with divine power and energy," and 
 that " as a member of the Hellenic pantheon he is subjected to the 
 natural drawbacks of humanity, and hence at his birth .to those of 
 infancy," is partly to misrepresent the myth and partly to say of him 
 
 1 Gladstone, Homer and the Homeric 
 Age, ii. 9. 
 
 2 Mure, Histoiy of Greek Literature, 
 ii. 340. No wish to disparage the great 
 learning of Colonel Mure or to depre- 
 ciate his services in the important subject 
 to which he devoted himself must be in- 
 ferred from the expression of a conviction 
 that he was incapable of analysing fairly 
 any mythical narrative, the truth being 
 that he knew nothing of the nature of 
 myths in general. Thus in the present 
 case he seems to have a fixed idea that 
 his work is done when he says that the 
 whole Hymn to Hermes is designed as a 
 burlesque, that the absurdity is intended 
 to lie in the contrast " between the 
 Herculean exploits of the divine urchin 
 and his baby form and habits," and that 
 the supernatural element of the story 
 " alone gives point and seasoning to 
 an otherwise palpable extravagance." 
 There is not an expression throughout 
 the whole hymn which implies any 
 consciousness of extravagance or bur- 
 lesque or absurdity on the part of the 
 poet, who evidently writes in all possible 
 seriousness. But with Colonel Mure 
 almost all mythical incidents resolve 
 themselves into the mere extravagances 
 of a disordered or ill-regulated fancy. 
 The hundred-headed narcissus, whose 
 fragrance made earth and heaven smile, 
 and which tempted Persephone' to leave 
 her companions in the fields of Enna, 
 
 he is content to put aside as " a mon- 
 strous hyperbole." In point of fact, 
 the poet chose the narcissus because its 
 name denotes the deadly languor and 
 lethargy which comes over the earth in 
 autumn, and which is expressed more 
 fully in the myth of Narkissos, the 
 counterpart of Endymion. (See page 
 280.) It is not, however, accurate to 
 speak of the " baby habits " of Hermes. 
 His childish ways are confined to the 
 time which he spends in his cradle. As 
 soon as he leaves it, he begins to move 
 with giant strides, and nothing of the 
 child remains about him. Colonel Mure 
 adds that " as the patron deity of cun- 
 ning and intrigue, he is at once qualiBed 
 to compete with and to surpass even 
 Apollo, hitherto considered as unrivalled 
 in these arts. " There is not the slightest 
 ground for thinking that Apollon was 
 at any time connected with the notion 
 of cunning and intrigue, and still less 
 for supposing that he was regarded as 
 the embodiment or ideal of those 
 qualities until the questionable honour 
 was transferred to Hermes. It is, in 
 fact, impossible to determine whether 
 the myth of Phoibos has the priority of 
 time over that of Hermes, and therefore 
 we cannot say how the former was re- 
 garded before the latter furnished the 
 notion of the Master Thief. 
 
 * Crit. Hist. Gr. Lit. ii. 344. 
 
HERMES AND SARAMA. 45 1 
 
 that which may be said just as well of Apollon, or Dionysos, or chap. 
 Aphrodite. Hermes, it is true, is represented as a babe at his birth • -■ • 
 in the morning : but it is ludicrous to speak of natural human draw- 
 backs for a child who can leave his cradle when a few hours old, and 
 exert the strength of a giant at his will. If, again, Apollon at his 
 birth was bathed by the nymphs in pure water and wrapped in a soft 
 and spotless robe, he yet became very soon the Chrysaor whose 
 invincible sword must win him the victory over all his enemies. 
 
 We are thus beating the air until we discover the groundwork or The 
 
 rivnlry 
 
 source of the ideas which led to the notion of contrast and rivalry between 
 between the two gods. Far from concerning ourselves in the first " e t { mes 
 place with the mode devised for their reconciliation, it is this very Kioibos. 
 rivalry and antagonism for which we have to account. If the legend 
 in its Greek form fails to carry us to the source of the idea, we must 
 necessarily look elsewhere : and we shall not search the hymns of 
 the Veda in vain. "The divine greyhound Sarama.," says Dr. 
 Mommsen, 1 " who guards for the lord of heaven the golden herd of 
 stars and sunbeams, and for him collects the nourishing rain-clouds 
 of heaven for the milking, and who moreover faithfully conducts the 
 pious dead into the world of the blessed, becomes in the hands of 
 the Greeks the son of Sarama, Sarameyas, or Hermeias.'' In the- 
 Vedic Sarama Dr. Kuhn finds a name identical with the Teutonic 
 storm and the Greek Horme. Although neither of these statements . 
 accords strictly with the Vedic passages which speak of Sarama and. 
 Sarameya, the controversy which has turned upon these names may 
 perhaps be compared to the battle of the knights for the sides of the 
 silvered and brazened shield in the old tale. 
 
 Confining our view strictly to the Veda, we find no divine grey- Hermes 
 hound Sarama. The beautiful being known by this name is the \\\l ^ vi ° g 
 Greek Helene, the words " being phonetically identical, not only in air - 
 every consonant and vowel, but even in their accent ; " 2 and both 
 are traced to the root Sar, to go or to creep. When the cows of 
 Indra are stolen by the Panis, Sarama is the first to spy out the clift 
 in which they were hidden, and the first to hear their lowings. The 
 cows which she thus recovers Indra reconquers from the Panis, who 
 have striven with all their powers to corrupt the fidelity of Sarama. 
 
 "What kind of man is Indra?" they ask, "he as whose 
 messenger thou comest from afar ? Let us make thee our sister, da 
 not go away again : we will give thee part of the cows, O darling.'' 
 
 Sarama, then, as going, like Ushas, before Indra, is the Dawn,. 
 
 1 History of Rome, i. 1 8. 
 
 s MaxMuller, Lectures on Language, second series, 471. 
 
452 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and Sarameya or Hermeias is the Dawn-child. Into the conception 
 
 ■ '■ ■ of the former, Professor Max Miiller rightly asserts that the idea of 
 
 storm never entered ; and the passages in which mention is made of 
 Sarameya lead him also to exclude this notion from the character 
 of Hermes. With him, then, Hermes is " the god of twilight, who ' 
 betrays his equivocal nature by stealing, though only in fun, the herds 
 of Apollon, but restoring them without the violent combat that is 
 waged for the same herds in India between Indra the bright god and 
 Vala the robber. In India the dawn brings the light, in Greece the 
 twilight is itself supposed to have stolen it, or to hold back the light, 
 and Hermes the twilight surrenders the booty when challenged by 
 the sun-god Apollo." 1 This view explains at most only two or three 
 of the traits which make up the character of the Hellenic Hermes; 
 it does not show us how the functions of the twilight could be carried ' 
 on through the live-long night ; 2 still less does it account for the 
 radical idea of sound connected with Hermes as contrasted with the 
 light which is the chief characteristic of Apollon. Yet Professor 
 Max Miiller himself supplies the clue which may lead us through the 
 labyrinth when he tells us that Hermes is born in the morning, 
 " as Sarameya would be the son of the twilight, or, it may be, the 
 first breeze of the dawn." 3 The idea which lies at the root of the 
 Vedic Sarama and Sarameya is that of brightness ; the idea which 
 furnishes the groundwork for the myth of Hermes is essentially that 
 of sound. There is nothing to bewilder us in this fact. Both ideas 
 are equally involved in the root Sar, which expressed only motion ; 
 and the degree of difference discernible between the Vedic Sarama 
 and the Greek Hermes is at the worst precisely that which we should 
 expect from the disintegrating process brought about by a partial or 
 complete forgetfulness of the original meaning of words. That the 
 tales of one nation are not borrowed directly from the legends of 
 another, the whole course of philological science tends, as we have 
 seen, more and more to prove. Names which are mere attributes in 
 one mythology are attached to distinct persons in another. The 
 title Arjuni, which in the Veda is a transparent epithet of the dawn, 
 becomes in the West Argennos, known only as a favourite of Aga- 
 memnon ; and the mysterious Varuna of the Hindu is very in- 
 adequately represented by the Hellenic Ouranos. The Greek 
 Charites and the Latin Gratiae are in name identical with the San- 
 skrit Harits : Erinys is Saranyu, and Helen is SaramiL But the 
 Greek did not get his Charis from the Harit of the Brahman ; the 
 
 1 Lect. on Lang, second series, 475. 2 Hymn to Hermes, 141. 
 
 * Lect. on Lang, second series, 4 73. 
 
SOURCES OF MYTHICAL NAMES. 453 
 
 western poets did not receive their Helen from Vedic bards : CHAP. 
 
 the Hellenic Hermes did not owe his parentage to Sarameya* Carry- ■ ■ 
 
 ing with them an earlier form of those names from the common home 
 of the race, the Greek developed his own myths as the Vedic rishis 
 developed theirs. The common element insured resemblance, while 
 it rendered absolute agreement impossible, and an indefinite diver- 
 gence in detail inevitable. If the myth so developed is found to 
 contradict the essential idea of a less developed Sanskrit phrase, 
 there would be good cause for perplexity ; but here there is no such 
 contrariety. The idea of the dawn is associated with that of the 
 breeze almost as much as with that of light ; and although the idea 
 of Sarama" excludes the bare notion of storm, it does not exclude the 
 thought of the whispering airs of morning tide. The action of 
 Hermes in the Homeric hymn cannot be consistently explained by a 
 mere reference to storms ; and the Sarama, whose child he is, is un- 
 mistakeably the Dawn who peers about after the bright cows which 
 have been stolen by the night and hidden in its secret caves. With 
 this being the Hellenic Hermes retains all the affinity which from the 
 general results of Comparative Mythology we should expect him to 
 exhibit. We may with Professor Max Miiller lay stress on the facts 
 that " he loves HersS, the dew, and Aglauros, her sister ; among his 
 sons is Kephalos, the head of the day. He is the herald of gods ; 
 so is the twilight : so was Sarama" the messenger of Indra. He is 
 the spy of the night, vvktos oiroyirryr^p ; he sends sleep and dreams ; 
 the bird of the morning, the cock, stands by his side. Lastly, he is 
 the guide of travellers, and particularly of the souls who travel on 
 their last journey : he is the Psychopompos." 1 And yet the single 
 idea of light fails utterly to explain or to account for the origin of the 
 series of incidents narrated in the Homeric hymn. Throughout this 
 singularly beautiful poem the leading idea is that of air in motion, or 
 wind, varying in degree from the soft breath of a summer breeze to 
 the rage of the groaning hurricane. His silence in the morning, his 
 soft harping at midday, the huge strides with which in the evening 
 he hurries after the cattle of Phoibos, the crashing of the forest 
 branches until they burst into flame, the sacrifice which Hermes 
 prepares, but of which he cannot taste though grievously pressed by 
 hunger, the wearied steps with which he returns to sleep in his cradle, 
 the long low whistle with which he slily closes his reply to the charge 
 of theft, the loud blast which makes Apollon let go his hold, the soft 
 music by which the babe assuages his wrath, the longing of Hermes 
 to learn the secret wisdom of the sun-god, are all traits exquisitely 
 1 Led. on Lang, second series, 476. 
 
454 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK beautiful if told of the wind, but with absolutely no meaning if 
 
 ■ I 1 ' applied to the light or the dawn. 
 
 Transpa- Analysed with reference to the idea of air in motion, the whole 
 
 nefsof the story becomes self-luminous. Like the fire which at its first kindling 
 m y th - steps out with the strength of a horse from its prison, the wind may 
 
 freshen to a gale before it be an hour old, and sweep before it the 
 mighty clouds big with the rain that is to refresh the earth. Where 
 it cannot throw down it can penetrate. It pries unseen into holes 
 and crannies, it sweeps round dark corners, it plunges into glens and 
 caves ; and when the folk come out to see the mischief that it has done, 
 they hear its mocking laughter as it hastens on its way. These few 
 phrases lay bare the whole framework of the Homeric legend, and 
 account for the not ill-natured slyness and love of practical jokes 
 which enter into the character of Hermes. 1 The babe leaves the 
 cradle before he is an hour old. The breath of the breeze is at first 
 soft and harmonious as the sounds which he summons from his tortoise- 
 lyre. But his strength grows rapidly, and he lays aside his harp to 
 set out on a plundering expedition. With mighty strides he hastens 
 from the heights of Kyllene until he drives from their pastures the 
 cattle of Apollon, obliterating the foot-tracks after the fashion of the 
 autumn-winds, which cover the roads with leaves and mire. 3 In his 
 course he sees an old man working in his vineyard, and, like a cats- 
 paw on the surface of the sea, he whispers in his ear a warning of which 
 but half the sound is caught before the breeze has passed away. All 
 the night long the wind roared, or, as the poet says, Hermes toiled 
 till the branches of the trees, rubbing against each other, burst into a 
 flame ; and so men praise Hermes, like Prometheus, Phoroneus, and 
 Bhuranyu, as the giver of the kindliest boon — fire. 3 The flames, 
 fanned by the wind, consume the sacrifice ; but the wind, though 
 hungry, cannot eat of it, 4 and when the morning has come he returns 
 to his mother's cave, passing through the opening of the bolt like the 
 sigh of a summer breeze or mist on a hillside. 6 The wind is tired of 
 blowing, or, in other words, the feet of Hermes patter almost noise- 
 lessly over the floor, 6 till he lies down to sleep in his cradle which he 
 had left but a few hours ago. The sun rises and finds to his discom- 
 fiture that the herds are gone. He too sees the hedger of Onchestos, 
 who thinks, but is not sure, 7 that he had seen a babe driving cows 
 before him. The sun hastens on his way, sorely perplexed at the con- 
 fused foot-tracks covered with mud and strewn with leaves, just as if 
 
 1 Hor. Od. i. 10. * lb. 131. 
 
 2 Hymn to Hermes, 75. * lb. 147.' 
 
 3 lb. no. 6 lb. 149. ' lb. 20S. 
 
THE MUSIC OF HERMES. 455 
 
 the oaks had taken to walking on their heads. 1 But when he charges CHAP. 
 
 the child with the theft, the defence is grounded on his tender age. • '■ 
 
 Can the breeze of a day old, breathing as softly as a babe new born, 
 be guilty of so much mischief? Its proper home is the summer land ; a 
 why should it stride wantonly over bleak hills and bare heaths ? But, 
 with an instinct singularly true, Hermes is represented as closing 
 his defence with a long whistle, 3 which sounds very much like mockery 
 and tends perhaps to heighten the scepticism of Apollon. The latter 
 seizes the child, who with a loud blast makes him suddenly let go, 
 and then appeals against his unkind treatment to his father (the sky). 1 
 Zeus refuses to accept his plea of infancy ; but when Hermes brings 
 back the cows, the suspicions of Apollon are again roused, and, 
 dreading his angry looks, the child strikes his tortoise-lyre and wakens 
 sounds so soft and tender 6 that the hardest-hearted man cannot choose 
 but listen. Never on the heights of Olympos, where winds perhaps 
 blow strong as they commonly do on mountain summits, had Phoibos 
 heard a strain so soothing. 6 Like the pleasant murmur of a breeze in 
 the palm-groves of the south, it filled his heart with a strange yearn- 
 ing, 7 carrying him back to the days when the world was young and 
 all the bright gods kept holiday, and he longed for the glorious gift of 
 music" which made the life of Hermes a joy on the earth. His 
 prayer is at once granted. The wind grudges not his music to the sun ; 
 he seeks only to know the secrets which his own eyes cannot pene- 
 trate, 9 for Phoibos sits in the high heaven by the side of Zeus, knowing 
 the inmost mind of his father, and his keen glance can pierce the 
 depths of the green sea. This wisdom the sun may not impart. The 
 wind may not vex the pure ether or break in upon the eternal repose 
 of the ocean depths. Still there are other honours in store for him, 
 many and great. He shall be the guardian of the bright clouds ; his 
 song shall cheer the sons of men and lessen the sum of human suffer- 
 ing ; his breath shall waft the dead to the world unseen, and when he 
 wills he may get wisdom by holding converse with the hoary sisters 
 far down the cliffs of Parnassos, as the wind may be heard myste- 
 riously whispering in hidden glens and unfathomable caves. The 
 compact is ratified by the oath that the wind shall do no hurt to the 
 home of the sun, who declares in his turn that he loves nothing so 
 well as the fresh breeze of heaven. 10 True to the last to the spirit of 
 the myth, the poet adds that his friendship for man is not equal to his 
 
 1 Hymn to Hermes, 349. T lb. 422. » lb. 457, 
 
 * lb. 267-8. ' lb. 280. 9 //'. 472, 532. 
 
 * lb. 312. "> lb. 525. 
 « lb. 419. • lb. 445, 450. 
 
456 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Humour 
 of the 
 myth. 
 
 love for the sun. The wind has a way of doing men mischief while 
 
 ■> they sleep. 
 
 The idea which has explained every incident of the hymn accounts 
 also for the humour which runs through it. It is a humour depending 
 not upon the contrast between the puny form and the mighty exploits 
 of Hermes or on the supernatural element which in Colonel Mure's 
 belief alone gives point to what would otherwise be mere extravagance. 
 It is the result of an exquisitely faithful noting of outward phenomena, 
 and, as such, it was not the invention of the Homeric or post-Homeric 
 poets, but a part of the rich inheritance which gave them likewise the 
 chief features in the characters of Achilleus, Meleagros, Odysseus, and 
 other mythical heroes. For those who have eyes to see it, nature has 
 her comedy not less than her sad and mournful tragedy. If some 
 have seen in the death of the ambitious or grasping man, cut off in 
 the midst of his schemes, an irony which would excite a smile if the 
 subject were less awful, we may enter into the laughter of Hermes, as 
 he pries into nooks and crannies, or uproots forests, or tears down, 
 as the pastime of an hour, fabrics raised with the toil of many years. 
 The idea of the sun as bringing forth rich harvests from the earth in 
 many lands, and passing from one to the other with an imperturbable 
 indifference, may suggest the notion of a selfish sensuality which may 
 run into broad burlesque. 1 On these grounds we should expect 
 to find a ludicrous side to the stories told of Zeus, Herakles, and 
 Hermes as representing the sky, the sun, and the wind; but in 
 each case the humour, whether coarse or refined, was involved in the 
 very truthfulness of the conception, although this conception was 
 worked out with an unconscious fidelity which is indeed astonishing. 
 The burlesque with which the adventures of Herakles may easily 
 be invested, arose from no intention of disparaging the hero's great- 
 ness. The Greek spoke as the needs of his subject required him 
 to speak ; and the sly humour which marks the theft of Hermes in 
 Pieria no more detracts from the dignity of Hermes, than the 
 " frolicsome and irregular " 2 exploits of Samson degraded the Jewish 
 hero in the estimation of his countrymen. Even if the hymn-writer 
 had failed to identify Hermes with the winds of heaven as con- 
 fidently as, when he spoke of Seleng watching over Endymion, he 
 must have felt that he was speaking really of the moon and the sun, 
 this would prove only that the original conception of the myth led 
 
 ' Hence, while Herakles is a good- 
 humoured glutton in the Alk6stis of 
 Euripides, he becomes the Valiant 
 L'.ttle Tailor of the German story, who 
 
 succeeds in all his exploits by sheer 
 force of boasting. 
 
 2 Stanley, Lectures on the Jewish 
 Church. 
 
LATER ATTRIBUTES OF HERMES. 457 
 
 him unconsciously to handle all his materials in strict accordance CHAP. 
 
 with the leading idea. That the meaning of the myth of Kegnes had »- — ■ 
 
 not been so far forgotten, will perhaps be generally conceded. 
 
 The idea of sound, which underlies all the incidents of the Hermes, 
 Homeric hymn, explains most of the attributes and inventions ascribed sen ger and 
 to Hermes. The soft music of the breeze would at once make him the tmef ' 
 the author of the harp or lyre. As driving the clouds across the blue 
 fields of heaven, he would be the messenger of Apollon, and this 
 office would soon be merged in that of the herald of Zeus and all the 
 gods. As such again, he would be skilled in the use of words, and he 
 would be employed in tasks where eloquence was needed. Thus he 
 appears before Priam in the time of his anguish, not in his divine 
 character, but as one of the servants of Achilleus, and, by the force of 
 his words alone, persuades the old man to go and beg the body of 
 Hektor. 1 So too he wins the assent of Hades to the return of Perse- 
 phone from the 'under world. 2 Hermes thus became associated with 
 all that calls for wisdom, tact, and skill in the intercourse between 
 man and man, and thus he is exhibited at once as a cunning thief, 
 and as the presiding god of wealth. 8 It is possible, however, or likely, 
 that in later times, the functions of Hermes were largely multiplied 
 by a confusion between words, the fruitful source of secondary myths. 
 If such words as ipp.r]veta and kpn.-qve.vuv, to interpret, are to be traced 
 to the name Hermes, there are others, as Ipp-a, a prop, eppaKcs, heaps 
 of stones, lpp.a.Tt£,eiv, to ballast a ship, which clearly can have nothing 
 to do with it. Yet on the strength of these words Hermes becomes 
 a god of boundaries, the guardian of gymnasia, and lastly the patron 
 of gymnastic games ; and his statues were thus placed at the entrance 
 of the Agora. 4 The cause of this confusion M. Breal finds in the 
 
 1 77. xxiv. 400. importance for all who wish to determine 
 
 a Hymn to Dimeter, 335. the character of the god : and it is, to 
 
 * TrAovTo5oT7is'TTa\iyi«iTrri\os. Orph. say the least, extremely difficult to dis- 
 xxviii. The so-called Orphic hymns, cern even the germ of this idea in the 
 as we have seen, string together all the Jliad or Odyssey. The Latin god Mer- 
 epithets which the conceptions or in- curius is, it is true, simply a god of 
 ferences of poets and mythographers traffickers (merx, mercari) : but he 
 had accumulated during a long series of possessed not a single attribute in 
 ages. Among these the epithet Tris- common with the Hellenic Hermes ; and 
 megistos, the "ter maximus Hermes" the Fetiales persistently refused to admit 
 of Ausonius, has degenerated into the their identity, in spite of the fashion 
 supposed Saracenic idol Termagant. — which attached the Greek myths to Latin 
 Grimm, D. M. 137. deities with which they had nothing to- 
 
 * Hermes Agoraios. We are thus do. The Hellenic Hermes is a harper, 
 brought to the later developements a thief, a guide, or a messenger— but 
 which connected him in some degree not a merchant. Whatever honours he- 
 with traffic and merchandise. Of this may have apart from his inherent powers 
 notion not a trace can be found in the of song and mischief are bestowed on 
 so-called Homeric Hymn to Hermes, him by Phoibos. 
 
 which must be regarded as of the first With Hermes Agoraios we might be 
 
458 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 ROOK 
 II. 
 
 Hermes 
 and the 
 Charites. 
 
 Hermes 
 the herald. 
 
 word Ip/itStov or ip/j.a.Siov, commonly taken to signify a small statue 
 of Hermes, but which might also mean a small prop or stay. This 
 word eppa M. Breal connects with the Greek upyio or epKos : and 
 the Latin arcere, erctum, may in the same way have led to the identi- 
 fication of the Latin Ercules or Herculus, the god of boundaries, with 
 the Greek Herakles. The word ep/naiov, as denoting a god-send or 
 treasure-trove, may belong to either the one root or the other. 1 
 
 The office of Hermes connects him necessarily with many legends, 
 and especially with those of Prometheus, 16, Paris, and Deukalion ; 
 but it is more noteworthy that " as the Dawn in the Veda is brought 
 by the bright Harits, so Hermes is called the leader of the Charites." a 
 His worship, we are told, was instituted first in Arkadia, and thence 
 transferred to Athens. 3 That it may have been so is possible ; but in 
 the absence of all historical evidence we cannot affirm it as fact : and 
 no argument can be based on traditions concerned with such names 
 as Athens, Arkadia, Ortygia, or Eleusis. If Hermes be the son of 
 the twilight, or the first breeze of the morning, his worship would 
 as certainly begin in Arkadia (the glistening land), or at Athens (the 
 home of the Dawn), and his first temple be built by Lykaon (the 
 gleaming), as the worship of Phoibos would spring up in the brilliant 
 Delos, or by the banks of the golden Xanthos in the far-off Lykia or 
 land of light, whence Sarpedon came to the help of Hektor. The 
 reasons have been already given, 4 which seem to warrant the conclu- 
 sion that historical inferences based on names which, although applied 
 afterwards to real cities or countries, come from the mythical cloud- 
 land, can be likened only to castles built in the air. 
 
 The staff or rod which Hermes received from Phoibos, and which 
 connects this myth with the special emblem of Vishnu, 6 was regarded 
 as denoting his heraldic office. It was, however, always endowed 
 with magic properties, and had the power even of raising the dead. 6 
 The fillets of this staff sometimes gave place to serpents ; and the 
 golden sandals, which in the Iliad and Odyssey bear him through the 
 air more swiftly than the wind, were at length, probably from the needs 
 of the sculptor and the painter, fitted with wings, and the Orphic 
 
 naturally disposed to compare Apollon 
 Aguieus, whose image, like that of 
 Hermes, was a block of stone. But 
 Mr. Brown (Great Dionysiak Myth, i. 
 358) thinks that we have here a verbal 
 error, and that the name of the god was 
 Aguios, the limbless, the gttia refer- 
 ring especially to the lower limbs ; and 
 that thus the name would be pecu- 
 liarly appropriate to a terminal statue. 
 
 1 See M. Bre'al's letter on this subject, 
 inserted in Prof. Max Miiller's Led. on 
 Lang, second series, 474. 
 
 2 riyeftay Xapircsv, Max Miiller, ib. 
 
 473- 
 
 Hygin. Fab. 225. 
 See book i. ch. x. 
 See p. 180. 
 Virg. s£n. iv. 242. 
 
THE FATAL PARTING. 459 
 
 hymn-writer salutes him accordingly as the god of the winged sandals. 1 CHAP. 
 
 In the legend of Medousa these sandals bear Perseus away from the ■ '~— 
 
 pursuit of the angry Gorgons into the Hyperborean gardens and 
 thence to the shores of Libya. 
 
 Section III.— ORPHEUS. 
 
 Of the myth of Orpheus it may also be said that it brings before p °i nls of 
 us a being, in whom some attributes which belong to the light or the between 
 sun are blended with others which point as clearly to the wind. The ° r P heus 
 charm of the harping of Hermes is fully admitted in the Homeric Hermes, 
 hymn, but its effect is simply the effect of exquisite music on those 
 who have ears to hear and hearts to feel it. In the story of Orpheus 
 the action becomes almost wholly mechanical. If his lyre has power 
 over living beings, it has power also over stones, rocks, and trees. 
 What then is Orpheus? Is he, like Hermes, the child of the dawn, 
 or is he the sun-god himself joined for a little while with a beautiful 
 bride whom he is to recover only to lose her again ? There can be 
 no doubt that this solar myth has been bodily imported into the 
 legend of Orpheus, even if it does not constitute its essence. The 
 name of his wife, Eurydike, is one of the many names which denote 
 the wide-spreading flush of the dawn ; and this fair being is bitten by 
 the serpent of night as she wanders close by the water which is fatal 
 alike to Melusina and Undine, to the Lady of Geierstein and to the 
 more ancient Bheki or frog-sun. But if his Helen is thus stolen away 
 by the dark power, Orpheus must seek her as pertinaciously as the 
 Achaians strive for the recovery of Helen or the Argonauts for that 
 of the Golden Fleece. All night long he will wander through the 
 regions of night, fearing no danger and daunted by no obstacles, if 
 only his eyes may rest once more on her who was the delight of his 
 life. At last he comes to the grim abode of the king of the dead, 
 and at length obtains the boon that his wife may follow him to the 
 land of the living, on the one condition that he is not to look back 
 until she has fairly reached the earth. The promise is not kept ; and 
 when Orpheus, overcome by an irresistible yearning, turns round to 
 gaze on the beautiful face of his bride, he sees her form vanish away 
 like mist at the rising of the sun. This, it is obvious, is but another 
 form of the myth which is seen in the stories of Phoibos and Daphne, 
 of Indra and Dahana, of Arethousa and Alpheios ; and as such, it 
 would be purely solar. But the legend as thus related is shorn of 
 other features not less essential than these solar attributes. Orpheus 
 
 » Hymn XXVIII. 
 
460 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK is never without his harp. It is with this that he charms all things 
 ' ' • conscious or unconscious. With this he gathers together the bright 
 herds of Helios and all the beasts of the field. As he draws forth its 
 sweet sounds, the trees, the rocks, the streams, all hasten to hear him, 
 or to follow him as he moves onwards on his journey. Only when 
 Eurydike is dead, are its delicious sounds silenced ; but when at the 
 gates of the palace of Hades the three-headed hound Kerberos growls 
 savagely at him, its soft" tones charm away his fury, and the same spell 
 subdues the heart of the rugged king himself. It is thus only that he 
 wins the desire of his heart; and when Eurydikg is torn from him the 
 second time, the heavenly music is heard again no more. It is 
 impossible to regard this part of the story as a solar myth, except on 
 the supposition that Orpheus is but another form of Phoibos after he 
 has become possessed of the lyre of Hermes. But the truth is that 
 the myth of the Hellenic Hermes is not more essentially connected 
 with the idea of sound than is that of Orpheus together with the long 
 series of myths based on the same notion which are found scattered 
 over almost all the world. In the opinion of Professor Max Miiller 
 " Orpheus is the same word as the Sanskrit Ribhu or Arbhu, which 
 though it is best known as the name of the three Ribhus, was used in 
 the Veda as an epithet of Indra, and a name for the Sun." 1 Mr. 
 Kelly, following Dr. Kuhn, sees in the Ribhus the storm-winds which 
 sweep trees and rocks in wild dance before them by the force of 
 their magic song. 2 But even if the Sanskrit name can be applied 
 only to the sun, this would only show that the name of Orpheus 
 underwent in its journey to the west a modification similar to that 
 of the name Hermes. It must, however, be noted that Orpheus acts 
 only by means of his harp, which always rouses to motion. The 
 action of Hermes is twofold, and when he is going forth on his 
 plundering expedition he lays aside his lyre, which he resumes only 
 when he comes back to lie down like a child in his cradle. Hence 
 the lyre of Hermes only charms and soothes. Its sweet tones 
 conquer the angry sun-god, and lull to sleep the all-seeing Argos of 
 the hundred eyes, when Hermes seeks to deliver 16 from his cease- 
 less scrutiny. But among the Greek poets the idea which would 
 connect Orpheus with the sun was wholly lost. In Pindar he is sent 
 indeed by Apollon to the gathering of the Argonauts, but this would 
 
 1 Chips, &°c, ii. 127. The converse Satyavan, she insists on following him, 
 
 of the stoiy of Orpheus is found in the and at last succeeds in winning back the 
 
 legend of Savitri as recounted in the life of her husband, with whom she 
 
 Mahabharata. Here Savitri marries reaches her home at the break of day. 
 Satyavan, knowing that he must die 2 Cwiosilies of Indo-European Folk- 
 
 within the year. W hen Yama comes for lore, \J. 
 
THE HARP OF ORPHEUS. 4&I 
 
 point simply to a phrase which spoke of the sun as sending or bringing CHAP. 
 
 the morning breeze ; and with the poet he is simply the harper and v — " 
 
 the father of songs. 1 In ^Eschylos he leads everything after him by 
 the gladness with which his strain inspires them. 2 In Euripides he 
 is the harper who compels the rocks to follow him, 3 while in speaking 
 of him as the originator of sacred mysteries the poet transfers to him 
 the idea which represents Hermes as obtaining mysterious wisdom in 
 the hidden caves of the Thriai. 4 In the so-called Orphic Argonautika 
 the harper is the son of Oiagros and Kalliope, the latter name 
 denoting simply the beauty of sound, even if the former be not 
 a result of the onomatopoeia which has produced such Greek words 
 as tixo> y°°s> an d ol/xoiyrj. No sooner does he call on the divine ship 
 which the heroes had vainly tried to move, than the Argo, charmed 
 by the tones, glides gently into the sea. 6 The same tones wake the 
 voyagers in Lemnos from the sensuous spell which makes Odysseus 
 dread the land of the Lotos-eaters. 6 At the magic sound'the Kyanean 
 rocks parted asunder to make room for the speaking ship, and the 
 Symplegades which had been dashed together in the fury of ages 
 remained steadfast for evermore. 7 But it is singular that when it 
 becomes needful to stupify the dragon which guards the golden 
 fleece, the work is done not by the harp of Orpheus, but by the sleep- 
 god Hypnos himself, whom Orpheus summons to lull the Vritra to 
 slumber. 8 
 
 The same irresistible spell belongs to the music of the Seirens, The Se >- 
 who are represented as meeting their doom, in one legend, by means 
 of Orpheus, in another, through Odysseus. Whether these beings 
 represent the Seirai, or belts of calms, which are so treacherous and 
 fatal to mariners, or whether the name itself is found again in the 
 Syrinx or pipe of the god Pan, and in the Latin susurrus, 9 the whisper 
 of the breeze, is a point of no great importance, so long as we note 
 the fact that none who listened to their song could be withheld from 
 rushing under its influence to their own destruction. In the story 
 of the Odyssey, Odysseus breaks the spell by filling his sailors' ears 
 with wax, while he has himself stoutly tied to the mast of his ship. 
 In the Orphic myth the divine harper counteracts their witchery by 
 his own strain, and the Seirens throw themselves into the sea and are 
 changed into rocks according to the doom which granted them life 
 
 1 Pyth. iv. 315. 2 Agam. 1630. ' lb. 740. 
 
 * Iphig. in Aul. 1213. * lb. 1008. 
 
 * Rhes. 943 ; Hymn to Hermes, 552. • The name is more probably con- 
 5 Argonaut. 262. nected with the Latin Silanus. 
 
 « lb. 480. 
 
462 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book only until some one should sing more sweetly and powerfully than 
 
 11. } 
 
 The Piper This mysterious spell belongs also to the Piper of Hameln, who, 
 of Hameln. wroth at be j ng c h ea ted of his promised recompense for piping away 
 into the Weser the rats which had plagued the city, 1 returns to take 
 an unlooked-for vengeance. No sooner is a note of his music heard 
 than there is throughout the town a sound of pattering feet, all the 
 children of the town hurrying to listen to the strange melody. The 
 musician goes before them to a hill rising above the Weser, and as 
 they follow him into a cavern, the door in the mountain-side shuts 
 fast, and their happy voices are heard no more. According to one 
 version none were saved but a lame boy, who remained sad and 
 cheerless because he could not see the beautiful land to which the 
 piper had said that he was leading them. At Brandenburg the plague 
 from which the piper delivers the people is a host of ants, whom 
 he charms into the water. The promised payment is not made, 
 and when he came again, all the pigs followed him into the lake— a 
 touch borrowed probably from the narrative of the miracle at Gadara. 
 In this myth there is a triple series of incidents. Failing to receive 
 his recompense the second year for sweeping away a cloud of crickets, 
 the piper takes away all their ships. In the third year all the children 
 vanish as from Hameln, the unpaid toil of the piper having been 
 this time expended in driving away a legion of rats, 
 rhe Erl- The idea of music as charming away souls from earth is common 
 
 to all these legends, and this notion is brought out more fully not 
 only in Gothe's ballad of the Erlking, who charms the child to death 
 in his father's arms, but also in superstitions still prevalent among 
 certain classes of people in this country, who believe that the dying 
 hear the sound of sweet music discoursing to them of the happy land 
 far away. 2 
 
 The idea of the shrubs and trees as moved by the harping of 
 
 1 This tale at once carries us to the sively to the god near whom it was 
 
 Sminthian worship of Apollon. Smin- placed ; accordingly he refers the myth 
 
 thos, it is said, was a Cretan word for a without hesitation to Apollon as the 
 
 mouse, and certain it is that a mouse was deliverer from those plagues of mice 
 
 placed at the foot of the statues of the which have been dreaded or hated as a 
 
 sun-god in the temples where he was terrible scourge, and which even now 
 
 worshipped under this name. But the draw German peasants in crowds to the 
 
 story accounted for this by saying that churches to fall on their knees and pray 
 
 the mouse was endowed with the gift of God to destroy the mice. — Griechische 
 
 prophecy, and was therefore put by the G'dtterlekre, i. 482. But the Hindu 
 
 side of the deity who was possessed of Ganesa, as well as the Hellenic ApollSn, 
 
 the profound wisdom of Zeus himself. is represented as crushing the mouse. — 
 
 This in the opinion of Welcker is a mere Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, ii. 68. 
 inversion, which assigned to the mouse i Gould, Curious Myths, second 
 
 an attribute which had belonged exclu- series, 160. 
 
 king. 
 
THE MAGIC LYRE. 4^3 
 
 Orpheus has run out into strange forms. In some myths, the CHAP. 
 
 musician who compels all to dance at his will is endowed*with the '■ ■ 
 
 thievish ways of Hermes, although these again are attributed to an am0 ng V tht 
 honest servant who at the end of three years receives three farthings thorns. 
 as his recompense. In the German story of the Jew among the 
 Thorns the servant gives these farthings to a dwarf who grants him 
 three wishes in return. The first two wishes are, of course, for a 
 weapon that shall strike down all it aims at, and a fiddle that shall 
 make every one dance, while by the third he obtains the power of 
 forcing every one to comply with any request that he may make. 
 From this point the story turns more on the Homeric than on the 
 Orphic myth. Strangely enough, Phoibos is here metamorphosed 
 into the Jew, who is robbed not of cows but of a bird, and made to 
 dance until his clothes are all torn to shreds. The appeal to a judge 
 and the trial, with the shifty excuses, the dismissal of the plea, and 
 the sentence, follow in their due order. But just as Hermes delivers 
 himself by waking the sweet music of his lyre when Phoibos on dis- 
 covering the skins of the slaughtered cattle is about to slay him, so 
 the servant at the gallows makes his request to be allowed to play one 
 more tune, when judge, hangman, accuser, and spectators all join in 
 the magic dance. Another modern turn is given to the legend when 
 the Jew is made to confess that he had stolen the money which he 
 gave the honest servant, and is himself hanged in the servant's 
 stead. 1 
 
 In a less developed form this story is the same as the legend of Th e story 
 Arion, who, though supposed to be the friend of the Corinthian 
 tyrant Periandros, is still represented as a son of Poseidon. In this 
 case the musician's harp fails to win his life at the hands of the men 
 who grudge him his wealth ; but his wish seems to carry with it 
 a power which they are not able to resist, while his playing brings to 
 the side of the ship a dolphin who bears Arion on his back to 
 Corinth. In the trial which follows, the tables are turned on the 
 sailors much as they are on the Jew in the German story, and Arion 
 recovers his harp which was to play an important part in many 
 another Aryan myth. 
 
 The German form of the myth has been traced into Iceland, inchanteo 
 where Sigurd's harp in the hands of Bosi makes chairs and tables, horns. *"' 
 kings and courtiers, leap and reel, until all fall down from sheer 
 weariness and Bosi makes off with his bride who was about to be 
 
 1 This marvellous piper reappears' in tune, and of the Valiant Tailor whc 
 
 Grimm's stories of the Wonderful Musi- thus conquers the Bear as Orpheus, 
 
 cian of Roland who makes the witch masters Kerberos. 
 dance against her will to a bewitched 
 
4<54 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The harp 
 of Waina- 
 moinen. 
 
 given to some one else. The horn of Oberon in the romance of 
 Huon of Bordeaux has the same powers, while it further becomes, 
 like the Sangreal, a test of good and evil, for only those of blameless 
 character dance when its strains are heard. Still more marvellous are 
 the properties of the lyre of Glenkundie : 
 
 He'd harpit a fish out o' saut water, 
 
 Or water out o' a stane, 
 Or milk out o' a maiden's breast 
 
 That bairn had never nane. ' 
 
 The instrument reappears in the pipe of the Irish Maurice Connor, 
 which could waken the dead as well as stir the living ; but Maurice 
 is himself enticed by a mermaid, and vanishes with her beneath the 
 waters. It is seen again in the magic lyre which the ghost of Zoray- 
 hayda gives to the Rose of the Alhambra in the charming legend 
 related by Washington Irving, and which rouses the mad Philip V. 
 from his would-be coffin to a sudden outburst of martial vehemence. 
 In Slavonic stories the harp exhibits only the lulling qualities of the 
 lyre of Hermes. It comes before us again in the story of Jack the 
 Giant-Killer, in which the Giant, who in the unchristianised myth was 
 Wuotan himself, possessed an inchanting harp, bags of gold and 
 diamonds, and a hen which daily laid a golden egg. " The harp," 
 says Mr. Gould, " is the wind, the bags are the clouds dropping the 
 sparkling rain, and the golden egg, laid every morning by the red 
 hen, is the dawn-produced Sun." 2 This magic lyre is further found 
 where perhaps we should little look for 'it, in the grotesque myths of 
 the Quiches of Guatemala. It is seen in its full might in the song 
 of the Finnish Wainamoinen, and in the wonderful effects produced 
 by the chanting of the sons of Kalew on the woods, which burst 
 instantly into flowers and fruit, before the song is ended. The close 
 parallelism between the myth of Wainamoinen and the legends of 
 Hermes and Orpheus cannot be better given than in the words of 
 Mr. Gould. 
 
 " Wainamoinen went to a waterfall and killed a pike which swam 
 below it Of the bones of this fish he constructed a harp, just as 
 Hermes made his lyre of the tortoiseshell. But he dropped this 
 instrument into the sea, and thus it fell into the power of the sea- 
 gods, which accounts for the music of the ocean on the beach. The 
 hero then made another from the forest wood, and with it descended 
 to Pohjola, the realm of darkness, in quest of the mystic Sampo, just 
 
 1 Jamieson's Scottish Ballads, i. 98 ; 
 Trice, Introd. to Wen-tori's Hist. Eng. 
 
 Poetry, lxiv. 
 
 ' Curious Myths, ii. 160. 
 
THE EASTERN AND WESTERN SIBYLS. 4 6 5 
 
 as in the classic myth Orpheus went down to Hades to bring thence chap. 
 
 Eurydice. When in the realm of gloom perpetual, the FinnSemigod ■ '■ ■ 
 
 struck his kantele and sent all the inhabitants of Pohjola to sleep, as 
 Hermes when about to steal 16 made the eyes of Argos Panoptes close 
 at the sound of his lyre. Then he ran off with the Sampo, and had 
 nearly got it to the land of light when the dwellers in Pohjola awoke, 
 and pursued and fought him for the ravished treasure, which, in the 
 struggle, fell into the sea and was lost ; again reminding us of the 
 classic tale of Orpheus." l 
 
 Wuotan again in the Teutonic mythology is Galdner the singer : Galdner 
 and in the Gudrunlied the time which it would take one to ride a ° 
 
 thousand miles passed in a moment while any one listened to the 
 singing of HjarrandL The christianised form of this myth, as the 
 Legend of the Monk and the Bird, is well known to the readers of 
 Longfellow and Archbishop Trench, and is noteworthy chiefly as 
 inverting the parts, and making the bird charm the wearied and 
 doubting man. 
 
 Still more remarkable is the connexion of this mystic harp in The Sibyl, 
 the legend of Gunadhya with a myth which reproduces that of the 
 Sibylline books offered in diminished quantities, but always at the 
 same price, to the Roman king Tarquin. In the Eastern tale 
 the part of Tarquin is played by King Satavahana to whom Gunadhya 
 sends a poem of seven hundred thousand slokas written in his own 
 blood. This poem the king rejects as being written in the Pisacha 
 dialect. Gunadhya then burns a portion of the poem on the top of 
 a mountain ; but while it is being consumed, his song brings together 
 all the beasts of the forest who weep for joy at the beauty of his tale. 
 The king falls ill, and is told that he must eat game : but none is to 
 be had, for all the beasts are listening to Gunadhya. On hearing 
 this news, the king hastens to the spot and buys the poem, or rather 
 the seventh portion which now alone remained of the whole. 2 It is 
 scarcely necessary to add that in this tale, as in that of Wainamoinen, 
 we have two stories which must be traced to a common source with 
 the myths of Hermes, Orpheus, and the Sibyl,— in other words, to 
 a story the framework of which had been put together before the 
 separation of the Aryan tribes. 8 
 
 1 Curious Myths, ii. 177. Curious Myths, ii. 172. 
 
 * Katha Sarit Sagara, i. 8 ; Gould, » See p. 65, et seg. 
 
 2 H 
 
456 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 — Section IV.— PAN. 
 
 The song The harp of Orpheus and the lyre of Hermes are but other forms „_ 
 
 breez^in of the reed pipe of Pan. Of the real meaning of this name the 
 the reeds. Western p oets were utterly unconscious. In the Homeric Hymn he 
 is said to be so called because all the gods were cheered by his music. 1 
 Still through all the grotesque and uncouth details of the myth, which 
 tells us of his goat's feet and horns, his noisy laughter and capricious 
 action, the idea of wind is pre-eminent It is the notion not so much 
 of the soft and lulling strains of Hermes in his gentler mood, or of the 
 irresistible power of the harp of Orpheus, as of the purifying breezes 
 which blow gently or strong, for a long or a little while, waking the 
 echoes now here now there, in defiance of all plan or system, and 
 with a wantonness which baffles all human powers of calculation. To 
 this idea the Homeric Hymn adheres with a singular fidelity, as it tells 
 us how he wanders sometimes on the mountain summits, sometimes 
 plunging into the thickets of the glen, sometimes by the stream side or 
 up the towering crags, or singing among the reeds at eventide. So 
 swift is his pace that the birds of the air cannot pass him by. With 
 him play the water-maidens, and the patter of the nymphs' feet is 
 heard as they join in his song by the side of the dark fountain. 2 Like 
 Hermes again and Sarameya, he is the child of the dawn and the 
 morning, and it is his wont to lie down at noontide in a slumber from 
 which he takes it ill if he be rudely roused. 8 Of his parentage we 
 have many stories, but the same notion underlies them all. Some- 
 times, as in the Homeric Hymn, he is the son of Hermes and of the 
 nymph Dryops, sometimes of Hermes and Penelope, sometimes of 
 Penelope' and Odysseus ; but Penelope is the bride of the toiling sun, 
 who is parted from her whether at morning or eventide, and to be her 
 son is to be the child of Sarami. Nor is the idea changed if he be , 
 spoken of as the son of heaven and earth (Ouranos and Gaia), or of 
 air and water (Aither and a Nereid). 
 Pan, the Pan then is strictly the purifying breeze, the Sanskrit pavana, 4 a 
 
 breeze. ng name which reappears in the Latin Favonius, and perhaps also in 
 Faunus ; and his real character, as the god of the gentler winds, is 
 brought out most prominently in the story of his love for Pitys, and of 
 the jealousy of the blustering Boreas, who hurled the maiden from a 
 rock and changed her into a pine-tree. The myth explains itself. In 
 
 ' Hymn to Pan, 47. * Theok.vii. 107. 
 
 » lb. 7-20. 4 Max Muller, Chips, ii. 159. 
 
PAN AND PITVS. 467 
 
 Professor Max Miiller's words, " We need but walk with our eyes CHAP. 
 open along the cliffs of Bournemouth to see the meaning of that ■ 
 legend," — the tale of Pitys, the " pine-tree wooed by Pan, the gentle 
 wind, and struck down by jealous Boreas, the north wind." Of 
 Boreas himself we need say but little. His true character was as little 
 forgotten as that of Selene, and thus the name remained comparatively 
 barren. The Athenian was scarcely speaking in mythical language 
 when he said that Boreas had aided his forefathers by scattering the 
 fleets of Xerxes. The phrases were almost as transparent which spoke 
 of him as a son of Astraios and Eos, the star-god and the dawn, or as 
 carrying off Oreithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus, the king of the 
 dawn-city. 
 
 Another myth made Pan the lover of the nymph Syrinx ; but this Pan and 
 is but a slight veil thrown over the phrase which spoke of the wind ynn ** 
 playing on its pipe of reeds by the river's bank ; and the tale which 
 related how Syrinx, flying from Pan, like Daphne from Phoibos, was 
 changed into a reed, is but another form of the story which made 
 Pan the lover of the nymph Echo, just as the unrequited love of 
 Echo for Narkissos is but the complement of the unrequited love of 
 Selene" for Endymion. 
 
 Section V.— AMPHION AND ZETHOS. 
 
 The same power of the wind which is signified by the harp of The 
 Orpheus is seen in the story of Amphion, a being localised in the Qmheus. 
 traditions of Thebes. But Amphion is a twin-brother of Zethos, and 
 the two are, in the words of Euripides, simply the Dioskouroi, riding 
 on white horses, and thus fall into the ranks of the correlative deities 
 of Hindu and Greek mythology. But the myth runs into many- other 
 legends, the fortunes of their mother Antiope differing but little from 
 those of Auge, Tyro, Evadne, or Koronis. The tale is told in many 
 versions. One of these calls her a daughter of Nykteus, the brother 
 of Lykos, another speaks of Lykos, as her husband ; but this is only 
 saying that Artemis Hekate may be regarded as either the child of 
 the darkness or the bride of the light A third version makes her 
 a daughter of the river Asopos, a parentage which shows her affinity 
 with Athene, Aphrodite, and all other deities of the light and the 
 dawn. Her children, like Oidipous, Telephos, and many others, are 
 exposed on their birth, and like them found and brought up by shep- 
 herds, among whom Antiope herself is said to have long remained 
 a captive, like Danae in the house of Polydektes. We have now the 
 same distinction of office or employment which marks the other twin- 
 
468 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK brothers of Greek myths. Zethos tends the flocks, while Amphion 
 - IL receives from Hermes a harp which makes the stones not merely 
 
 move but fix themselves in their proper places as he builds the walls 
 of Thebes. The sequel of the history of Antiope exhibits, like the 
 myths of Tyro, Ino, and other legends, the jealous second wife or 
 step-mother, who is slain by Amphion and Zethos, as Sidero is killed 
 by Pelias and Neleus. Amphion himself becomes the husband of 
 Niobd, the mother who presumes to compare her children with the 
 offspring of Zeus and Leto. 
 Zethos In one tradition Zethos, the brother Amphion, is the husband of 
 
 ?. nd , Prokne\ the daughter of the Athenian Pandion ; and in this version 
 
 Prokne. , o ^ 
 
 the story ran that she killed her own child by mistake, when through 
 envy of her fertility she proposed to slay the eldest son of her sister- 
 in-law Niobe. 1 But in its more complete form the myth makes her 
 a wife of Tereus, who is king either of the hilhcountry (Thrace) or of 
 the Megarian Pegai. When her son Itys was born, Tereus cut out 
 his wife's tongue and hid her away with her babe, and then married 
 her sister Philomela, whom he deceived by saying that Prokne was 
 dead. When the sisters discovered his guilt, Prokne killed her own 
 child Itys, and served up his flesh as a meal for Tereus. 2 Tereus in 
 his turn, learning what had been done, pursues the sisters as they fly 
 from him, and he has almost seized them when they pray that they 
 may be changed into birds. Tereus thus became a hoopoe, Prokne 
 a swallow, and Philomela a nightingale. 8 Hence it is that as the 
 spring comes round, the bride mourns for her lost child with an 
 inconsolable sorrow, as in the Megarian legend the living Prokne 
 wept herself to death, like Niobe mourning for her sons and daughters. 
 The story is easily taken to pieces. The transformation is the result 
 of the same process which turned Lykaon into a wolf, and Kallisto 
 into a bear ; and as Philomela was a name for the nightingale, so the 
 daughter of Pandion is said to have been changed into that bird.' 
 With the nightingale as a bird of spring the swallow is closely 
 associated, and this fitting transformation was at once suggested for 
 ProknS. But it becomes at the least possible that in its earlier shape 
 the myth may have known only one wife of Tereus, who might be 
 called either Prokne or Philomela. Of these two names Prokne is. 
 apparently only another form of Prokris, who is also the daughter of 
 an Athenian king ; and thus the legend seems to explain itself, for as 
 in Tantalos and Lvkaon we have the sun scorching up and destroying 
 
 ' Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 141. » Another version reversed the doom 
 
 # _ ' Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, of the sisters, and made Prokne the 
 "■ 22 9- nightingale and Philomela the swallow. 
 
PROKNfi AND PHILOMELA. 4®9 
 
 his children, so here the dew is represented as offering the limbs of CH ^ P 
 her murdered child to her husband, the sun, as he dries up the dew- — — '■ — ■ 
 drops. The myth is thus only another version of the tale of Kephalos 
 ■or Prokris. The name Philomela, again, may denote one who loves 
 the flocks, or one who loves apples ; but we have already seen how 
 the sheep or flocks of Helios become the apples of the Hesperides, 
 and thus Philomela is really the lover of the golden-tinted clouds, 
 which greet the rising sun, and the name might well be given to either 
 the dawn or the dew. 
 
 The mournful or dirge-like sound of the wind is signified by Linos and 
 
 • • • • Zcolivros 
 
 another Boiotian tradition, which related how the matrons and 
 
 maidens mourned for Linos at the feast which was called Amis 
 
 because Linos had grown up among the lambs, — in other words, the 
 
 dirge-like breeze had sprung up while the heaven was flecked with 
 
 the fleecy clouds which, in the German popular stories, lured the 
 
 rivals of Dummling to their destruction in the waters. The myth 
 
 that Linos was torn to pieces by dogs points to the raging storm 
 
 which may follow the morning breeze. Between these two in force 
 
 would come Zephyros, the strong wind from the evening-land, the son 
 
 of Astraios the starry heaven, and of Eos who closes, as she had 
 
 begun, the day. The wife of Zephyros is the Harpyia Podarge, the 
 
 white-footed wind, Notos Argestes, who drives before her the snowy 
 
 vapours, and who is the mother of Xanthos and Balios, the immortal 
 
 horses of Achilleus. But as the clouds seem to fly before Podarge or 
 
 Zephyros, so the phenomenon of clouds coming up seemingly against 
 
 the wind is indicated in the myth of the wind Kaikias, a name which 
 
 seems to throw light on the story of Hercules and Cacus. 
 
 Section VI.— AIOLOS AND ARES. 
 
 In the Odyssey all the winds are placed by Zeus under the The 
 charge of Aiolos, who has the power of rousing or stilling them at his f U t h e ' a " 
 will. But beyond this fact the poem has nothing more to say of him Winds - 
 than that he was the father of six sons and six daughters, and that he 
 dwelt in an island which bore his name. With the mythology which 
 grew up around the persons of his supposed descendants we are 
 not here concerned. As a local or a tribal name, it has as much and 
 as little value as that of Hellen, Ion, or Achaios. In itself the word 
 is connected apparently with the names Aia and Aietes, and may 
 denote the changeful and restless sky from which the winds are born. 
 But the ingenuity of later mythographers was exercised in arranging 
 
A7o 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The 
 Storms. 
 
 or reconciling the pedigrees of the several children assigned to Aiolos, 
 - and their efforts were rewarded by complications which were relieved 
 of intolerable weariness only by the mythical interest attaching to 
 some of the many names thus grouped in a more or less arbitrary 
 connexion. With them this association was valuable, chiefly as 
 accounting for the historical distribution of certain Hellenic clans; 
 and this supposed fact has been imported into the controversy 
 respecting the date and composition of our Homeric poems, by some 
 critics who hold that Homer was essentially an Aiolic poet, who 
 wished to glorify his tribesmen over all the other members of the 
 Hellenic race. It may be enough to say that there is no trace of 
 such a feeling in either our Iliad or our Odyssey, which simply speak 
 of Aiolos as a son of HippotSs and the steward of the winds of 
 heaven. 
 
 But Hermes, Orpheus, Amphion, and Pan, are not the only con- 
 ceptions of the effects of air in motion to be found in Greek 
 mythology. The Vedic Maruts are the winds, not as alternately 
 soothing and furious, like the capricious action of Hermes, not as 
 constraining everything to do their magic bidding, like the harping of 
 Orpheus and Amphion, nor yet as discoursing their plaintive music 
 among the reeds, like the pipe of Pan ; but simply in their force as 
 the grinders or crushers of everything that comes in their way. 
 These crushers are found in more than one set of mythical beings in 
 Greek legends. They are the Moliones, or mill-men, or the Aktoridai, 
 the pounders of grain, who have one body but two heads, four hands, 
 and four feet, — who first undertake to aid Herakles in his struggle 
 with Augeias, and then turning against the hero are slain by him near 
 Kleonai. These representatives of Thor Miolnir we see also in the 
 Aloadai, 1 the sons of Iphimedousa, whose love for Poseidon led her 
 to roam along the sea-shore, pouring the salt water over her body. 
 
 * The identity of the names Aloadai 
 and Moliones must be determined by 
 the answer to be given to the question, 
 whether ctAonj, a threshing-floor, can be 
 traced back to the root mal which indu- 
 bitably yields Molione, /ii\y, the Latin 
 mola, our mill and meal. There is no 
 proof that certain words may in Greek 
 assume an initial \i. which is merely 
 euphonic : but there is abundant evi- 
 dence that Greek words, which origin- 
 ally began with ft, occasionally drop it. 
 This, Professor Max Miiller admits, is 
 a. violent change, and it would seem 
 physically unnecessary ; but he adduces 
 the analogies of n6<rxos and iSaxos, a 
 
 tender shoot or branch, !fo for iiia m 
 Homer, the Latin mola, and the Greek 
 oi\at, meal, adding that "instead of 
 our very word &\evpov, wheaten flour, 
 another form, fiA\evpov, is mentioned by 
 Helladius." — Led. on Lang, second 
 series, 323. The same change is seen in 
 juev as corresponding to the numeral IV. 
 The idea of the storm as crushing and 
 pounding is seen in molnija, a name for 
 lightning among the Slavonic tribes, 
 and in Munja, the sister of Grom, the 
 thunderer, in Serbian songs. — Max 
 Miiller, ib. 322. With these we may 
 compare Menia and Fenia, the grinders 
 of Frodi's quern. 
 
THE MOLIONES AND AKTORIDAI. 47 1 
 
 The myth is transparent enough. They are as mighty in their infancy CHAP, 
 as Hermes. When they are nine years old, their bodies are nine ■- • ' 
 cubits in breadth and twenty-seven in height — a rude yet not inapt 
 image of the stormy wind heaping up in a few hours its vast masses 
 of angry vapour. It was inevitable that the phenomena of storm 
 should suggest their warfare with the gods, and that one version 
 should represent them as successful, the other as vanquished. The 
 storm-clouds scattered by the sun in his might are the Aloadai when 
 defeated by Phoibos before their beards begin to be seen, in other 
 words, before the expanding vapours have time to spread themselves 
 over the sky. The same clouds in their triumph are the Aloadai 
 when they bind Ares and keep him for months in chains, as the 
 gigantic ranges of vapours may be seen sometimes keeping an almost 
 motionless guard around the heaven, while the wind seems to chafe 
 beneath, as in a prison from which it cannot get forth. The piling of 
 the cumuli clouds in the skies is the heaping up of Ossa on Olympos 
 and of Pelion on Ossa to scale the heavens, while their threat to make 
 the sea dry land and the dry land sea is the savage fury of the storm 
 when the earth and the air seem mingled in inextricable confusion. 
 The daring of the giants goes even further. Ephialtes, like Ixion, 
 seeks to win Here while Otos follows Artemis, who, in the form of 
 a stag, so runs between the brothers that they, aiming at her at the 
 same time, kill each other, as the thunderclouds perish from their own 
 discharges. 1 
 
 Ares, the god imprisoned by the Aloadai, whose name he shares, A r& and ' 
 represents like them the storm-wind raging through the sky. As the 
 idea of calm yet keen intellect is inseparable from Atheng, so the 
 character of Ares exhibits simply a blind force without foresight or 
 judgment, and not unfrequently illustrates the poet's phrase that 
 strength without counsel insures only its own destruction. Hence 
 Ares and Athene' are open enemies. The pure dawn can have nothing 
 in common with the cloud-laden and wind-oppressed atmosphere. 
 He is then in no sense a god of war, unless war is taken as mere 
 quarrelling and slaughtering for its own sake. Of the merits of con- 
 tending parties he has neither knowledge nor care. Where the 
 carcases are likely to lie thickest, thither like a vulture will he go ; 
 
 1 " Otos and Ephialtes, the wind Ares and the Mantis, discovered the 
 and the . hurricane," i.e. the leaper. personification of the sky as excited by- 
 Max Midler, Led. on Lang, second storm." AthenS then, according to 
 ser ; es . Preller, " als Gbttin der reinen Luft und 
 
 2 Professor Max Muller remarks, id. des ^Ethers die naturliche Feindin des 
 325, that " In Ares, Preller, without any Ares ist." — Gr. Myth. 202. 
 
 thought of the relationship between 
 
472 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and thus he becomes pre-eminently fickle and treacherous, 1 the object 
 
 ^ . of hatred and disgust to all the gods, except when, as in the lay of 
 
 Demodokos, he is loved by AphroditS. But this legend implies that 
 the god has laid aside his fury, and so is entrapped in the coils cast 
 round him by Hephaistos, an episode which merely repeats his 
 imprisonment by the Aloadai. Like these, his body is of enormous 
 size, and his roar, like the roar of a hurricane, is louder than the 
 shouting of ten thousand men. But in spite of his strength, his life 
 is little more than a series of disasters, for the storm-wind must soon 
 be conquered by the powers of the bright heaven. Hence he is 
 defeated by Herakl£s when he seeks to defend his son Kyknos against 
 that hero, and wounded by Diomedes, who fights under the protection 
 of Athene. In the myth of Adonis he is the boar who smites the 
 darling of Aphrodite, of whom he is jealous, as the storm-winds of 
 autumn grudge to the dawn the light of the beautiful summer. 2 
 
 1 a\\OTrp6<ra\\os. this Hellenic name, no one will now 
 
 2 When Herodotos says that Are's maintain ; and the judgment of Hero- 
 was worshipped by Scythian tribes under dotos on a comparison of attributes 
 the form of a sword, to which even would not be altogether trustworthy, 
 human sacrifices were offered, we have The so-called Egyptian Ares has much 
 to receive his statement with as much more of the features of Dionysos. The 
 caution as the account given by him of Scythian sword belongs to another set 
 the Ares worshipped by the Egyptians. of ideas. See ch. ii. sect. xii. 
 
 That the deities were worshipped under 
 
<. 473 > 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE WATERS. 
 
 Section I. —THE DWELLERS IN THE SEA. 
 
 Between Proteus, the child of Poseidon, and Nereus, the son of chap. 
 
 Pontos, there is little distinction beyond that of name. Both dwell ■ — Xt 
 
 in the waters, and although the name of the latter points more a nd 
 especially to the sea as his abode, yet the power which, according to Kere - us - 
 Apollodoros, he possesses of changing his form at will indicates his 
 affinity to the cloud deities, unless it be taken as referring to the 
 changing face of the ocean with its tossed and twisting waves. It miist, 
 however, be noted that, far from giving him this power, the Hesiodic 
 Theogony seems to exclude it by denying to him the capricious fickle- 
 ness of Proteus. He is called the old man, we are here told, be- 
 cause he is truthful and cannot lie, because he is trustworthy and 
 kindly, because he forgets not law but knows all good counsels and 
 just words — a singular contrast to the being who will yield only to 
 the argument of force. Like Proteus, he is gifted with mysterious 
 wisdom, and his advice guides Herakles in the search for the apples 
 (or flocks) of the Hesperides. His wife Doris is naturally the mother 
 of a goodly offspring, fifty in number, like the children of Danaos, 
 Aigyptos, Thestios, and Asterodia ; but the ingenuity of later mytho- 
 graphers was scarcely equal to the task of inventing for all of them 
 names of decent mythical semblance. Some few, as Amphitrite and 
 Galateia, are genuine names for dwellers in the waters ; but most of 
 them, as Dynamene, Pherousa, Proto, Kymodoke, Nesaia, Aktaia, 
 are mere epithets denoting their power and strength, their office or 
 their abode. Of Pontos himself, the father of Nereus, there is even 
 less to be said. In the Hesiodic Theogony he is a son of Gaia 
 alone, as Typhoeus springs only from Here and Athene has no 
 mother. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Pontos is a mere name for the 
 sea , and the phrases irdvTos a\bs 7roXtiJs and OaXacrtra ttovtov show 
 that the poets were not altogether unconscious of its meaning and of 
 its affinity with their word ttcitos, a path. It is therefore a name 
 
474 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Glaukos. 
 
 Naiads 
 
 and 
 
 Nereids. 
 
 applied to the sea by a people who, till they had seen the great water, 
 ■ had used it only of roadways on land. In the myth of Thaumas, the 
 son of Pontos and the father of Iris and the Harpyiai, we are again 
 carried back to the phenomena of the heavens ; the latter being the 
 greedy storm-clouds stretching out their crooked claws for their prey, 
 the former the rainbow joining the heavens and the earth with its 
 path of light. 
 
 Another son of Poseidon, whose home is also in the waters, is the 
 Boiotian Glaukos, the builder of the divine ship Argo and its helms- 
 man. After the fight of Iason with the Tyrrhenians, Glaukos sinks 
 into the sea, and thenceforth is endowed with many of the attributes 
 of Nereus. Like him, he is continually roaming, and yearly he visits 
 all the coasts and islands of Hellas ; like him, he is full of wisdom, 
 and his words may be implicitly trusted. 
 
 The domain in which these deities dwell is thickly peopled. 
 Their subjects and companions are the nymphs, whose name, as de- 
 noting simply water, belongs of right to no beings who live on dry 
 land, or in caves or trees. 1 The classification of the nymphs as 
 Oreads, Dryads, or others, is therefore in strictness an impossible 
 one ; and the word Naiad, usually confined to the nymphs of the 
 fresh waters, is as general a term as the name Nymph itself. Nor is 
 there any reason beyond that of mere usage why the Nereides should 
 not be called Naiads as well as Nymphs. But the tendency was to 
 multiply classes : and seldom perhaps has the imagination of man 
 been exercised on a more beautiful or harmless subject than the 
 nature and tasks of these beautiful beings who comfort Prometheus 
 in his awful agony and with Thetis cheer Achilleus when his heart is 
 riven with grief for his friend Patroklos. For the most part, indeed, 
 they remain mere names ; but their radiant forms are needed to fill 
 up the background of those magnificent scenes in which the career of 
 the short-lived and suffering sun is brought to a close. And beyond 
 this, they answered a good purpose by filling the whole earth with a 
 joyous and unfailing life. If it be said that to the Greek this earth 
 was his mother, and that he cared not to rise above it, yet it was 
 better that his thoughts should be where they were, than that he 
 should make vain profession of a higher faith at the cost of peopling 
 whole worlds with beings malignant as they were powerful. The 
 effect of Christian teaching would necessarily invest the Hellenic 
 nymphs with some portion of this malignity, and as they would still 
 be objects of worship to the unconverted, that worship would become 
 
 vifupT) answers precisely to the 
 Latin lympha, and thus the Latin 
 
 lymphaticus corresponds to the Greek 
 
 VVfl<p<j\TJTrTOS. 
 
THETIS. 475 
 
 constantly more and more superstitious ; and superstition, although CHAP, 
 its nature remains unchanged, is stripped of half its horrors, when its — — : — 
 objects are beings whose nature is wholly genial. This comparatively 
 wholesome influence the idea of nymphs inhabiting every portion of 
 the world exercised on the Hellenic mind. Each fountain and lake, 
 each river and marsh, each well, tree, hill, and vale had its guardian, 
 whose presence was a blessing, not a curse. As dwelling in the deep 
 running waters, the nymphs who in name answer precisely to the 
 i Vedic Apsaras, or movers in the waters, have in some measure the 
 ! wisdom of Nereus, Glaukos, and of Proteus ; hence the soothsayer, 
 as he uttered the oracles of the god, was sometimes said to be filled 
 with their spirit. They guarded the flocks and fostered the sacred- 
 ness of home, while on the sick they exercised the beneficent art and 
 ' skill of Asklepios. 
 
 These kindly beings must, however, be distinguished from the Swan- 
 Swan-maidens and other creatures of Aryan mythology, whose nature M * ldens 
 is more akin to the clouds and vapours. The lakes on which these Apsaras. 
 . maidens are seen to swim are the blue seas of heaven, in which may 
 ! be seen beautiful or repulsive forms, the daughters of Phorkys, 
 • Gorgons, Harpies, Kentaurs, .Titans, Graiai, Phaiakians. Nor can it 
 ! be said that Thetis, though called a Nereid, is in all points like the 
 . companions among whom she dwells. She lives, indeed, in the sea ; 
 ! but she has been brought up by Here the queen of the high heaven, 
 and like the Telchines and Kouretes, like Proteus and Glaukos, she 
 can change her form at will, and Peleus obtains her as his bride only 
 when he has treated her as Aristaios treats the guardian of the ocean 
 herds. She belongs thus partly to the sea, and in part to the upper 
 air, and thus the story of her life runs through not a little of the 
 mythical history of the Greeks. When Dionysos flies from Lykourgos, 
 and Hephaistos is hurled down from Olympos, it is Thetis who gives 
 them a refuge ; and if she is married to a mortal man, it is only be. 
 cause at the suggestion, it is said, of Here, she refuses to become the 
 bride of Zeus, or as others would have it, because it was fated that 
 her child should be mightier than his father — a myth which can be 
 only solar in its character. In yet another version she plays the part 
 of Aphrodite to Anchises in the Homeric Hymn, and wins Peleus as 
 her husband by promising that his son shall be the most renowned of 
 all the heroes. The story of her wedding carries us far away from 
 her native element, and when, as in the Iliad, she preserves the body 
 of Patroklos from decay, she appears rather in the character of the 
 dawn-goddess who keeps off all unseemly things from the slain 
 Hektor. Nor is she seen in her true character as a Nereid, before 
 
476 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Triton 
 and Am- 
 phitritS. 
 
 The 
 Seirens. 
 
 Skylla and 
 Charybdis. 
 
 the last sad scene, when, rising from the sea with her attendant 
 - nymphs, she bathes the body of her dead son, and wraps it in a robe 
 of spotless white, in which the same nymphs folded the infant 
 Chrysaor. 
 
 But as the sea-goddess thus puts on some of the qualities and is 
 invested with some of the functions which might seem to belong ex- 
 clusively to the powers of the heavens and the light, so the latter are 
 all connected more or less closely with the waters, and the nymphs 
 might not unnaturally see their kinsfolk in Athene Tritogeneia; in 
 Daphne, the child of the Peneian stream ; in Phoibos Apollon her 
 lover, and in Aphrodite Anadyomene herself. All these, indeed, 
 whatever may be their destiny, are at their rising the offspring of 
 Tritos (Triton), the lord of the waters. The Triton of Hellenic my- 
 thology, who dwells in his golden palace in the lowest depths of the 
 sea, rides on the billows which are his snow-crested horses. This 
 god of the waters is reflected in Amphitrite, the wife of Poseidon in 
 some versions, who is present at the birth of Phoibos in Delos. In 
 the Odyssey she is simply the sea, purple-faced and loud-sounding. 
 
 Another aspect of the great deep is presented in the Seirens, 
 who by their beautiful singing lure mariners to their ruin. As basking 
 among the rocks in the sunlit waters, they may represent, as some 
 have supposed, the belts (Seirai) of deceitful calms against which the 
 sailor must be ever on his guard, lest he suffer them to draw his ship 
 to sandbanks or quicksands. But apart from the beautiful passage in 
 the Odyssey, which tells us how their song rose with a strange power 
 through the still air when the god had lulled the waves to sleep, the 
 mythology of these beings is almost wholly artificial. They are 
 children of Acheron and Sterope, of Phorkos, Melpomene, and 
 others, and names were devised for them in a-cordance with their 
 parentage. In form they were half women, half fishes, and thus are 
 akin to Echidna and Melusina ; and their doom was that they should 
 live only until some one should escape their toils. Hence by some 
 myfhographers they are said to have flung themselves into the sea 
 and to have been changed into rocks, when Odysseus had effected 
 his escape, while others ascribe their defeat to Orpheus. 1 Other 
 versions gave them wings, and again deprived them of them, for aid- 
 ing or refusing to aid Demeter in her search for Persephone. 
 
 Nor are there wanting mythical beings who work their will among 
 storm-beaten rocks and awful whirlpools. Among the former dwells 
 Skylla, and in the latter the more terrible Charybdis. These creatures 
 the Odyssey places on two rocks, distant about an arrow's flight from 
 
 J See page 461. 
 
SKYLLA. 477 
 
 each other, and between these the ship of Odysseus must pass. If CHAr. 
 
 he goes near the one whose smooth scarped sides run up into a • ^ — ■ 
 
 covering of everlasting cloud, he will lose six of his men as a prey to 
 the six mouths which Skylla will open to engulf them. But better 
 thus to sacrifice a few to this monster with six outstretching necks 
 and twelve shapeless feet, as she shoots out her hungry hands from 
 her dismal dens, than to have the ships knocked to pieces in the 
 whirlpool where Charybdis thrice in the day drinks in the waters of 
 the sea, and thrice spouts them forth again. The peril may seem to 
 be less. The sides of \he rock beneath which she dwells are not 
 so rugged, and on it blooms a large wild fig-tree, 1 with dense foliage ; 
 but no ship that ever came within reach of the whirling eddies ever 
 saw the light again. In other words, Skylla is the one who tears her 
 prey, while Charybdis swallows them; the one is the boiling surf 
 beating against a precipitous and iron-bound coast, the other the 
 treacherous back-currents of a gulf full of hidden rocks. The name 
 Krataiis also given to her in the Odyssey denotes simply her irre- 
 sistible power. This horrid being is put to death in many ways. In 
 one version she is slain by Herakles, and brought to life again by her 
 father Phorkys as he burns her body. In another she is a beautiful 
 princess, who is loved by Zeus, and who, being robbed of her children 
 by the jealous Here, hides herself in a dismal cavern, and is there 
 changed into a terrific goblin which preys upon little children. This 
 Skylla, who is called a daughter of Lamia the devourer, is in fact the 
 hobgoblin of modern tales, and was manifestly used by nurses in the 
 days of Euripides much as nurses may use such names now to quiet 
 or frighten their charges. 2 In another version. she refuses her love to 
 the sea-god Glaukos, who betakes himself to Kirke ; but Kirke, instead 
 of aiding him to win her, threw some herbs into the well where Skylla 
 bathed and changed her into the form of Echidna. It is needless to 
 cite other legends which are much to the same effect. 
 
 The Megarian tradition brings before us another Skylla, who is The 
 probably only another form of the being beloved by Glaukos or S ty\f['~ a 
 Triton. Here the beautiful maiden gives her love to the Cretan 
 Minos, who is besieging Megara to revenge the death of Androgeos, 
 and in order to become his wife she steals the purple lock on the 
 head of her father Nisos, on which depended her own life and the 
 safety of the city. But she reaps no good from her treachery. In 
 
 1 Preller here suspects a play be- yevos ; quoted from Euripides by Dio- 
 tween the words tyivtbs and ipivis. • doros xx. 41.— Preller, Cr. Myth. i. 
 
 2 ti'j t' ofivo/jia -rb imveiSiSTOV fipo- 484. 
 fats ovk otSe Aapias ttjs Ai^uotikIjs 
 
478 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 one story she is tied to the stern. of the ship of Minos and drowned 
 • in the Saronic gulf; in another she throws herself into the water, as 
 Minos sails away, and is turned into a bird, while her father, who has 
 been changed into an eagle, swoops down after her into the sea. 
 
 Section II— THE LORD OF THE WATERS. 
 
 Zeus Po- 
 seiddn. 
 
 Over all these beings of the world of waters Poseidon is in the later 
 mythology exalted as the supreme king. In its Greek form his name, 
 like that of Indra, has been supposed to exhibit him as the god of 
 moisture, the rain-bringer, who makes the thirsty earth drink and yield 
 her fruits. 1 Hence in some myths he is the friend and guardian of 
 Dionysos, and the lover of Demeter, who becomes the mother of 
 Despoina and the horse Orion ; and although he can descend to the 
 depths of the sea and there dwell, yet he can appear at will on Olym- 
 pos, and his power is exercised scarcely less in the heavens than in the 
 depths beneath. Like Zeus, he is the gatherer of the clouds, and he 
 can let loose the winds from their prison-house. But his empire was 
 not well defined, and thus the myths relating to him turn chiefly on 
 his contests with other deities, even with some towards whom he is 
 generally friendly. In the dispute with Zeus for Aigina, Poseidon 
 had been successful, and the island retained one of the many names 
 denoting spots where the waves break. His power and his dwelling 
 were in like manner seen at Aigai and at Helike, spots where the 
 billows curl and dash upon the shore. 2 But in the city on the banks 
 of Kephisos he encounters a mightier rival ; and here he fails to give 
 his name to it, although in one version he shows his power and his 
 beneficence by striking his trident into the rock of the Akropolis and 
 causing the waters to leap forth. In her turn Athene produces the 
 olive, and this is adjudged to be the better gift for men. Poseidon 
 here acts in strict accordance with the meaning of his name ; but it 
 is not easy to see on what grounds the claims of Athene are allowed 
 precedence, and hence we may suppose that the more genuine form 
 of this myth is to be found in the other version which makes Poseidon 
 
 1 " Sein Name driickt die flussige 
 Natur im weitesten Umfange aus. Die 
 alteren Formen sind das dorische 
 TIoo-IStis und noceiS^j (daher das Fest 
 rioo-eiSeio und TloaiZfiiov), woraus weiter- 
 hin IIo(rei8tW, IloireiSaiy, dor. IIoTiSrfi', 
 UoTfiSiv, seol. UoTiSav, TIoTtiSov, ge- 
 werden ist. Die Wurzel ist dieselbe 
 wie in den Wortern tt6tos, irorifa, 
 
 iroTap6s." — Preller, Gr. Myth. i. 443. 
 
 2 " JEgse und Helikg bedeuten ei- 
 gentlich das Meer oder die Meeres- 
 kiiste, wo sich die Wogen brechen." — 
 Preller, Gr. Myth. i. 443. Thus the 
 name Helikon would denote the up- 
 wasd curling or spouting of the water 
 when the soil is dinted by the hoof of 
 Pegasos. 
 
SEMITIC DEITIES. 479 
 
 call forth from the earth not a well but a horse. But the fact of this chap. 
 
 antagonism with the Aryan gods of Hellas is a fact which r cannot be ■ ■ — • 
 
 lightly passed over. There must be a reason for it ; and we are at 
 once justified in asking whether the strife between Poseidon and 
 Athene may not be the' strife which followed the introduction of the 
 Dionysiak ritual into JBoiotia. The name cannot with any plausibility 
 be referred to an Aryan root. The attempts to connect it with 
 Potamos and Posis are failures, because beyond doubt Poseidon was 
 not, as this would show him to be, a god of fresh-water streams and 
 rivers : nor can it with sufficient reason be connected with the root 
 contained in such words as Potis, Potnia, Potent, and others denoting 
 power. As then we have here a name which we cannot explain by a 
 comparison with any Greek words, and for which we find no equiva- 
 lent in the language or the traditions of any cognate tribes, — when the 
 character of the person named is not self-consistent, — when the stories 
 told of him point to disputes and struggles for the establishment of 
 his power, and when, lastly, these traditions seem to indicate the 
 East as the birthplace of his worship, we are at the least free to see 
 what may be said for the notion that the god in question is not a 
 Greek or an Aryan but a Semitic deity. 
 
 On the explanation which sees in Poseidon simply the definite Poseiden 
 article prefixed to the Phenician Sidon, I do not venture to pro- Athene. 
 nounce judgment 1 But it is of more importance to note that the 
 two chief epithets applied to him denote far' more a god of the solid 
 earth than a lord of the waters. The being who is Ennosigaios, the 
 Earth-shaker, must clearly be worshipped in a country of earthquakes ; 
 and he who is Gaieochos can only be the keeper or guardian of the 
 world. But when in the eyes of the Greeks he became a sea-god, 
 the images associated with his name received explanations in harmony 
 with the spirit not of Semitic but of Aryan mythology. He would 
 now become the tamer of the horse in a new sense. As the rays of 
 the sun became the Harits and Rohits, his gleaming steeds, so the 
 curling waves with their white crests would be the flowing-maned 
 horses of the sea-king. Thus he ascends his chariot at Aigai, and 
 his steeds with golden hair streaming from their shoulders speed 
 across the waters. Round him play the monsters of the deep, and 
 
 1 Mr. Brown, in his monograph on Brown's remarks on these points seem 
 
 "Poseidon," explains Sidon (the fish- not altogether clear. If the same Phe- 
 
 ing station) as the On or Ann of the nician word signified both bull and ship, 
 
 ship, the Aun being the mundane egg, this might explain the association of 
 
 Obn, from which all things proceed. the bull with PoseidSn in the mind of 
 
 But the connexion of Poseid6n with the Greek, while it might also point 
 
 the horse has to be accounted for not less to the importation of the new deity 
 
 than his connexion with the ship. Mr. across the sea. 
 
4 So 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Poseid&n 
 and the 
 Telchines. 
 
 the sea in her gladness makes a path for her lord. 1 In the myth 
 which traces the name of the [yEgean] Aigaian sea to the goat, 2 which 
 is said to have sprung from its surface, we have a story which might 
 have made Poseidon the goatherd, whose goats leap from rock to 
 rock as the waves toss to and fro in the sea. But it failed to take 
 root, probably because such names as Aigialos, the shore where the 
 sea breaks, retained their meaning too clearly. There was nothing 
 to prevent the other association, and thus the story was that Poseidon 
 bestowed on man the horse, and by teaching them how to tame and 
 use it fostered the art of war and the love of strife. Thus the verdict 
 of the gods in his contest with Athene receives its full justification. 
 His defeat is followed by a plague of waters which burst over the 
 land when he is worsted by Athen§, or by the drying up of the rivers 
 when Here refuses to let him be king in Argos. In Corinth there is 
 a compromise. Helios remains master of the Akropolis which greets 
 him on his rising, while Poseidon is lord of the Isthmus. 8 In Delos 
 and at Delphi he failed to carry his point, and he was content to give 
 up his rights over the former in exchange for a temple on the island 
 of Kalaureia, and over the latter for a sanctuary on the cape of 
 Tainaron, while at Naxos he was defeated by the kindred god 
 Dionysos. 
 
 It is plain that we have here a struggle between the Aryan gods 
 of the land and a stranger who seeks to thrust himself in among 
 them. The Aryan deities are those who possess the wide heaven ; 
 and from these Poseidon in the Iliad is carefully distinguished. His 
 children, the gigantic Aloadai, fail in their attempts to storm the 
 abodes of the ethereal gods. 
 
 Of the process which assigned to him a definite place in the later 
 theogonies it is scarcely necessary to speak. Like Zeus, Poseidon 
 had been Kronides, and when this name had been made to yield a 
 mythical personality, he became also a son of Kronos, and was 
 swallowed by him, like the other children of Rhea. A truer feeling 
 is seen in the myth which makes the Telchines, the mystic dancers of 
 the sky, guardians of his infancy. 4 Like Zeus, again, he must fight 
 against the Titans, and when after their defeat the triple division is 
 made between the Kronid brothers, Poseidon must be made to own 
 allegiance to Zeus, — an admission which is followed by no great 
 harmony. He can retort the angry words of Zeus, and he plots with 
 Here and Athene to bind him. 
 
 1 //. xiii. 
 
 2 rb fiev 
 
 23-3?- 
 
 Aiyaiov irtKayos ol fjtiyairb 
 Tys irepl Kfb/as alybs tir&vvfiov yzyovtvai 
 tpaoivj oi 5£ &Trb T7)s Koputrrfas rrts 
 Alyaliis ovojuafo/ifCjus- Sch. Apollon. i. 
 
 II. 65.— Preller, Gr. Myth. i. 445. 
 
 » The earlier identity of Poseid&n 
 with Zeus is attested by the name Zeno- 
 poseidon. Preller, Gr. Mvth. i 4.1:2 
 4 Diod. v. 55. ' ^ 
 
MELIKERTES AND KADMOS. 4^1 
 
 The myth which makes Poseidon and Phoibos together build the CHAP. 
 
 walls of Ilion for Laomedon belongs to the earlier stage in the • ^ — 
 
 growth of the myth, during which he is still the king of the upper ^fg^. 
 air, and therefore may be represented, like the Delian god and the man. 
 heroes who share his nature, as toiling for the benefit of mean and 
 ungrateful man. 1 For at the hands of Laomedon he receives no 
 better recompense than that which Eurystheus accords to Herakles ; 
 and hence the wrath of Poseidon against Ilion and its people burns 
 as fiercely as that of Here. The monster which he brings up from 
 the sea to punish Laomedon is the huge storm-cloud, which appears 
 in the Cretan legend as the bull sent by Poseidon to be sacrificed by 
 Minos, who instead of so dealing with it hides it among his own 
 cattle, the fitting punishment for thus allowing the dark vapours to 
 mingle with the bright clouds being that the love of Pasiphae is 
 given to the monster, and thus is born the dreadful Minotauros. 
 Lastly, his union with Amphitrite carries us to the Vedic god 
 Trita, who reigns over the water and the sea. In the Assyrian my- 
 thology he had been the husband of the fish-goddess Derketo, 
 whom the Greeks called Atergatis, the mother of Sammuramit or 
 'Semiramis. 
 
 Among other mythical inhabitants of the sea are Ino, the daugh- Meii- 
 ter of Kadmos and Harmonia, and her child Melikertes. Their 
 •earthly history belongs to the myth of the Golden Fleece ; but when 
 on failing to bring about the death of Phrixos she plunges, like Endy- 
 mion, into the sea, she is the antithesis of Aphrodite Anadyomend. 
 With her change of abode her nature seemingly becomes more 
 genial. She is the pitying nymph who hastens to the help of Odys- 
 seus as he is tossed on the stormy waters after the breaking up of 
 his raft ; and thus she is especially the white goddess whose light 
 tints the sky or crests the waves. In his new home her son Meli- 
 kertes, we are told, becomes Palaimon, 2 or, as some would have it, 
 Glaukos. The few stories related of him are as significant as his 
 name. The latter is clearly that of the Semitic Melkarth, and thus 
 the sacrifices of children in his honour, and the horrid nature of his 
 cultus generally, are at once explained. It becomes, therefore, the 
 more probable that Kadmos is but a Greek form of the Semitic 
 Kedem, the east ; and without going further we have a sufficient 
 -warrant for the assertion that the influence of the Assyrian or Semitic 
 
 1 As the builder, Poseidon has the merely an assimilation of Semitic to 
 
 name Asphaliaios. the nearest Greek sounds. Palaimon 
 
 * Regarded as an Aryan word, this is the Semitic Baal-hamon. — Brown, 
 
 name might denote the wrestler ; but Great Dionysiak Myth. 
 there can be no doubt here that we have 
 
 3 I 
 
482 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The ocean 
 stream. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 religion and mythology on that of the Greek world was far more 
 direct and important than any that came from Egypt. 
 
 In his later and more definite functions as the god of the waters, 
 Poseidon is still the lord only of the troubled sea : l and there remains 
 a being far more ancient and more majestic, the tranquil Okeanos, 
 whose slow and deep-rolling stream no storm can ever ruffle. He 
 dwells in the far west, where are the sources of all things. From 
 him flow all rivers and all the tossing floods, all fountains and all 
 wells. 2 Nay, he is himself the spring of all existence,* whether to the 
 gods or to men. 1 He is therefore with Tethys his wife the guardian 
 of Here, while Zeus is busy warring with the Titans. His children 
 are recounted in numbers which denote infinity ; and the Hesiodic 
 Theogony which calls him a son of Ouranosand Gaia gives him three 
 thousand daughters who dwell in the lakes and fountains of the earth, 
 and three thousand sons who inhabit the murmuring streams, 5 and 
 seems also to point dimly to the source of the Ocean itself. 6 
 
 Danaos 
 
 and 
 
 Aigyptos. 
 
 Section III.— THE RIVERS AND FOUNTAINS. 
 
 If in the legend of Danaos and Aigyptos with their fifty sons and 
 fifty daughters we put aside the name Belos and possibly that of 
 Aigyptos as not less distinctly foreign than the Semitic Melikertes, 
 Kadmos, and AgSnor in the Boiotian mythology, there remains in 
 the whole list of names on either side scarcely a name which is not 
 purely Greek or Aryan. Doubtless when at a comparatively late 
 time the myths were systematically arranged, this singular story was 
 dovetailed into the cycle of stories which began with the- love of Zeus 
 for the Inachian 16 ; and when 16 was further identified with Isis, a 
 wide door was opened for the introduction of purely foreign elements 
 into myths of strictly Aryan origin. Nor would it be prudent to deny 
 that for such identifications there may not, in some cases, have been 
 at the least a plausible ground. 16 was the horned maiden, and her 
 calf-child was Epaphos ; but the Egyptian worshipped Apis, and had 
 
 1 The Latin Neptunus is (if we re- 
 gard the name as Aryan, and therefore 
 as akin to the Greek vlirra, v4<pos, 
 vc<p4\i), L. nebula, &c.) the god only 
 of the cloud as the source of moisture 
 and water, and therefore not a god of 
 the sea at all, although Virgil chose to 
 gather round him all the myths which 
 were attached to the Hellenised Po- 
 seid6n ; but Mr. Isaac Taylor (Etruscan 
 Researches, 139) identifies it with the 
 Etruscan Nethunus, for which he claims 
 
 a solar character. 
 x II. xxi. 195. 
 
 * II. xiv. 246. 
 
 * //. xiv. 301. 
 
 8 Hes. Theog. 365, &c. The name 
 Okeanos is referred by some to the 
 same root with the Latin aqua (cf. acer, 
 i>Kvs), the short syllable being repre- 
 sented by Acheron and Acheloos, the 
 long by Axios, Axe, Exe, Esk, Usk, 
 and other forms. See also p. iqo. 
 
 * Hes. Theog. 282. 
 
FOREIGN NAMES IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY. 483 
 
 Isis as his horned maiden. There was nothing here which might chap. 
 
 not have grown up independently in Egypt and in Greece :#nor is any Xi — • 
 
 hypothesis of borrowing needed to account for the similarity of myths 
 suggested by the horns of the new moon. The mischief began with 
 the notion that the whole Greek mythology not merely exhibited 
 certain points of likeness or contact with that of Semitic or other 
 alien tribes, but was directly borrowed from it ; and when for this 
 portentous fact no evidence was demanded or furnished beyond the 
 impudent assertions of Egyptian priests, there was obviously no limit 
 and ho difficulty in making any one Greek god the counterpart of a 
 deity in the mythology of Egypt. Hence, speaking generally, we are 
 fully justified in sweeping away all such statements as groundless 
 fabrications. Nay more, when Herodotos tells us that Danaos and 
 Lynkeus were natives of Chemmis, and that the Egyptians trace from 
 them the genealogy of Perseus, the periodical appearance of whose 
 gigantic slipper caused infinite joy in Egypt, we cannot be sure that 
 his informers even knew the names which the historian puts into their 
 mouths. In all probability, the points of likeness were supplied by 
 Herodotos himself, although doubtless the Egyptians said all that 
 they could to strengthen his fixed idea that Egypt was the source of 
 the mythology and religion, the art and science of Greece ; nor does 
 the appearance of a solitary sandal lead us necessarily to suppose 
 that the being who wore it was in any way akin to the Argive hero 
 who receives two sandals from the Ocean nymphs. 
 
 Hence it is possible or likely that the names Belos and Aigyptos Their 
 may have been late importations into a purely native myth, while the sons and 
 
 , ■ ^ -^ , . ■ : , , . ' , daughters. 
 
 wanderings of Danaos and Aigyptos with their sons and daughters 
 
 have just as much and as little value as the pilgrimage of 16. In the 
 
 form thus assigned to it, the legend runs that Libya, the daughter ot 
 
 Epaphos the calf-child of 16, became the bride of Poseidon and the 
 
 mother of Agenor and Belos. Of these the former is placed in 
 
 Phoinikia, and takes his place in the purely solar myth of Telephassa, 
 
 Kadmos, and Europe : the latter remains in Libya, and marrying 
 
 Anchirrhoe (the mighty stream), a daughter of the Nile, becomes the 
 
 father of the twins Danaos and Aigyptos, whose lives exhibit not 
 
 much more harmony and concord than those of many other pairs of 
 
 twins in Aryan story. These sons of Belos marry many wives, and 
 
 while Aigyptos has fifty sons, Danaos has fifty daughters, numbers 
 
 which must be compared with the fifty daughters of Nereus or the 
 
 fifty children of Endymion and Asterodia. The action of the story 
 
 begins with the tyranny of Aigyptos and his sons over Danaos and 
 
 his daughters. By the aid of Athene, Danaos builds a fifty-oared 
 
4§4 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Hyper- 
 mnestra 
 and Lyn- 
 keus. 
 
 Origin of 
 the myth. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 vessel, and departing with his children, comes first to the Rhodian 
 ' Lindos, then to Argos, where they disembark near Lernai during a 
 time of terrible drought caused by the wrath of Poseidon. He, at 
 once sends his daughters to seek for water; and Amymong (the 
 blameless), chancing to hit a Satyr while aiming at a stag, is rescued 
 from his hot pursuit by Poseidon whose bride she becomes and who 
 calls up for her the never-failing fountain of Lernai. But Aigyptos 
 and his sons waste little time in following them. At first they exhibit 
 all their old vehemence and ferocity, but presently changing their 
 tone, they make proposals to marry, each, one of the fifty Danaides. 1 
 The proffer is accepted in apparent friendship ; but on the day of 
 the wedding Danaos places a dagger in the hands of each maiden, 
 and charges her to smite her husband before the day again breaks 
 upon the earth. His bidding is obeyed by all except Hypermnestra 
 (the overloving or gentle), who prefers to be thought weak and waver- 
 ing rather than to be a murderess. All the others cut off the heads of 
 the sons of Aigyptos, and bury them in the marshland of Lernai, while 
 they placed their bodies at the gates of the city. From this crime they 
 were purified by Athene and Hermes at the bidding of Zeus, who 
 thus showed his approval of their deed. Nevertheless, the story grew 
 up that in the world of the dead the guilty daughters of Danaos were 
 condemned to pour water everlastingly into sieves. 
 
 Danaos had now to find husbands for his eight and forty daughters, 
 Hypermnestra being still married to Lynkeus and Amymone to 
 Poseidon. This he found no easy task, but at length he succeeded 
 through the device afterwards adopted, we are told, by Kleistlicnes. 
 There were, however, versions which spoke of them as all slain by 
 Lynkeus, who also put Danaos himself to death. There is little that 
 is noteworthy in the rest of the legend, unless it be the way in which 
 he became chief in the land where the people were after him called 
 Danaoi. The dispute for supremacy between himself and Gelanor is 
 referred to the people, and the decision is to be given on the follow- 
 ing day, when, before the appointed hour, a wolf rushed in upon the 
 herd feeding before the gates and pulled down the leader. The wolf 
 was, of course, the minister of the Lykian Apollon ; the stricken herd 
 were the subjects of the native king, and the smitten ox was the king 
 himself. The interpretation was obvious, and Gelanor had to give 
 way to Danaos. 
 
 What is the meaning and origin of this strange tale ? With an 
 ingenuity which must go far towards producing conviction, Preller 
 
 and 
 
 1 With this number we may com- 
 pare the fifty daughters of Daksha in 
 
 Hindu mythology, and of Thestios," 
 the fifty sons of Pallas and Priam. 
 
THE DAN AIDES. 4^5 
 
 VI. 
 
 answers this question by a reference to the physical geography of chap. 
 Argolis. Not much, he thinks, can be done by referring the name • 
 Danaos to the root da, to burn, which we find in Ahana, Dahana, 
 and Daphne, 1 as denoting the dry and waterless nature of the Argive 
 soil. This dryness, he remarks, is only superficial, the whole terri- 
 tory being rich in wells or fountains which, it must be specially noted, 
 are in the myth assigned as the works of Danaos, who causes them 
 to be dug. These springs were the object of a special veneration, 
 and the fifty daughters of Danaos are thus the representatives of the 
 many Argive wells or springs, and belong strictly to the ranks of water- 
 nymphs. 2 In the summer these springs may fail. Still later even 
 the beds of the larger streams, as of the Inachos or the Kephisos, 
 may be left dry, while in the rainy portion of the year these Cha- 
 radrai or Cheimarrhoi, winter flowing streams, come down with great 
 force and overflow their banks. Thus the myth resolves itself into 
 phrases which described originally these alternations of flood and 
 drought. The downward rush of the winter torrents is the wild 
 pursuit of the sons of Aigyptos, who threaten to overwhelm the 
 Danaides, or nymphs of the fountains ; but as their strength begins 
 to fail, they offer themselves as their husbands, and are taken at their 
 word. But the time for vengeance has come ; the waters of the 
 torrents fail more and more, until their stream is even more scanty 
 than that of the springs. In other words, they are slain by their 
 wives, who draw or cut off the waters from their sources. These 
 sources are the heads of the rivers, and thus it is said that the 
 Danaides cut off their husbands' heads. A precise parallel to this 
 myth is furnished by the Arkadian tale, which speaks of Skephros 
 (the droughty) as slandering or reviling Leimon (the moist or watery 
 being), and as presently slain by Leimon, who in his turn is killed 
 by Artemis. If in place of the latter we substitute the Danaides, and 
 for the former the sons of Aigyptos, we have at once the Argive 
 tradition. The meaning becomes still more obvious when we mark 
 the fact that the Danaides threw the heads into the marsh-grounds 
 of Lernai (in other words, that there the sources of the waters were 
 preserved according to the promise of Poseidon that that fountain 
 should never fail), while the bodies of the sons of Aigyptos, the dry 
 beds of the rivers, were exposed in the sight of all the people. It 
 
 1 The objection on the score of the 2 If the name Danaos itself denotes 
 
 quantity of the first syllable, which in water, it must be identified with Tanais, 
 
 Danaos is short, while in Daphne 1 and Don, Donau, Tyne, Teign, Tone, and 
 
 lavb. tiika, wood easily inflammable, it other forms of the Celtic and Slavonic 
 
 is long, is perhaps one on which too words for a running stream, 
 much stress should not be laid. 
 
486 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The Lyr- 
 keios. 
 
 may therefore well be doubted whether the name Aigyptos itself be 
 not a word which may in its earlier form have shown its affinity with 
 Aigai, Aigaion, Aigialos, Aigaia, and other names denoting simply 
 the breaking or dashing of water against the shores of the sea or the 
 banks of a river. 1 
 
 But one of the Danaides refused or failed to slay her husband. 
 The name of this son of Aigyptos is Lynkeus, a myth to which 
 Pausanias furnishes a clue by giving its other form Lyrkeios. But 
 Lyrkeios was the name given to the river Inachos in the earlier 
 portion of its course, and thus this story would simply mean that 
 although the other streams were quite dried up, the waters of the 
 Lyrkeios did not wholly fail. 2 
 
 1 Preller thinks that when the idea 
 of a foreign origin for Aigyptos and 
 Danaos was once suggested, the Nile 
 with its yearly inundations and shrink- 
 ings presented an obvious point of com- 
 parison with the Cheimarrnoi or winter- 
 torrents of the Peloponnesos. — Gr. 
 Myth. ii. 47. 
 
 1 The head of Lynkeus (Lyrkeios), 
 the one stream which is not dried up, 
 answers to the neck of the Lernaian 
 Hydra. So long as streams were sup- 
 plied from the main source, Hcrakles 
 
 had still to struggle with the Hydra. 
 His victory was not achieved until he 
 had severed this neck which Hyper- 
 mnestra refused to touch. The heads 
 of the slain sons of Aigyptos are the 
 heads which Herakles hewed off from, 
 the 'Hydra's neck : and thus this labour 
 of Herakles resolves itself into the 
 struggle of the sun with the streams of 
 the earth, the conquest of which is of 
 course the setting in of thorough 
 drought. 
 
( 487 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CLOUDS. 
 
 Section I.— THE CHILDREN OF THE MIST. 
 
 The name Nephele stands almost at the beginning of that series of chap. 
 
 mythical narratives which stretch down to a time even later than the . ,-: — . 
 
 alleged period of the return of the Herakleids. She is the mother fn" Heiie. 
 of the children whose disappearance led to the long searching of the 
 Argonautai for the Golden Fleece, to be followed by the disappearance 
 of Helen and then of the children of Heraklgs ; each with its aston- 
 ishing train of marvellous incidents which, when closely viewed, are 
 found more or less to repeat each other under a different colouring, 
 and with names sometimes only slightly disguised, sometimes even 
 unchanged. But Nephele herself is strictly the representative of the 
 mist or the cloud, and as such she becomes the wife of Athamas, a 
 being on whose nature some light is thrown by the fact that he is the 
 brother of Sisyphos, the sun condemned, like Ixion, to an endless 
 and a fruitless toil. 1 In this aspect, the myth resolves itself into 
 a series of transparent phrases. The statement that Athamas married 
 Nephele at the bidding of Here is merely the assertion that the 
 wedding of the sun with the clouds, of Herakles with Iole, is brought 
 to pass in the sight of the blue heaven. From this union spring two 
 children, Phrixos and Helle, whose names and attributes are purely 
 atmospheric. It is true that a mistaken etymology led some of the 
 old mythographers to connect the name of Phrixos with the roasting 
 of corn in order to kill the seed, as an explanation of the anger of 
 Athamas and his crime ; but we have to mark the sequel of the tale, 
 in which it is of the very essence of the story that Phrixos reaches 
 Kolchis safely on the back of the ram, while Helle falls off and is 
 drowned. That the name of this ill-fated maiden is the same as that 
 
 1 The name Athamas is indubitably Sun-god, Melkarth, who goes forth to 
 
 the Semitic Tammuz,. which Mr. Brown hunt alone. — Great Dionysiak Myth, 
 
 further identifies with the Akkadian ii. 293 ; The Unicorn, 59. 
 Dumuzi, the Only Son, the solitary 
 
488 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Athamas 
 and In6. 
 
 of the Helloi, or Selloi, or Hellenes, and that the latter are the 
 - children of Helios, will probably be disputed by none. Helle then 
 is the bright clear air as illuminated by the rays of the sun ; and she 
 is carried away from the western Thessaly to the far eastern land. 
 But before the dawn can come the evening light must die out utterly, 
 and hence it was inevitable that Helle should meet her doom in the 
 broad-flowing Hellespontos, the path which bears her name. What 
 then is her brother but the air of ether in itself, and not merely as lit 
 up by the splendour of the sun ? It was impossible, then, that the 
 frigid Phrixos could feel the weariness which conquered his sister. 
 Her force might fail, but his arms would cling only the more closely 
 round the neck of the ram, until at last, as the first blush of light was 
 wakened in the eastern sky, he reaches the home of the Kolchian 
 king. 
 
 Not less clear are the other incidents of the legend. Athamas 
 has been wedded to Nephele ; but he is no more at ease than is 
 Iason with Medeia, and the Kadmeian Ino plays in this tale the 
 part of the Corinthian Glauke. Finding that her husband's love has 
 been given to. another, Nephele vanishes away. The morning mist 
 retreats to Niflheim, its cloud-home, leaving her children in the hands 
 of Ino Leukothea, the gleaming heaven. Hence between her and the 
 children of the mist there is an enmity as natural as that which exists 
 between Ares and Athene, and this enmity is as naturally signified in 
 the drought or famine which she brings upon the land. It is, in fact, 
 the same plague with which the Sphinx tormented the men of Thebes 
 and Ahi scourged the worshippers of Indra. When consulted as to 
 the cause of all this misery, the Delphian priestess answers that the 
 children of Athamas must be sacrificed, or in other words that the 
 crime of Tantalos and Lykaon must be committed again. Ino seeks 
 to bring the doom on the children of Nephele, who now sends the 
 golden-fleeced ram to bear them away to Kolchis. But the curse 
 works on still ; and the madness of Herakles falls on Athamas, who 
 carries out the sentence of the Pythia by slaying his son Learchos. 
 The drought has reached its height ; and Ino, with her other child, 
 Melikertes, casts herself into the sea. Left alone, Athamas now asks 
 whither he must go and where he may find a home : and the answer 
 is that he must make his abode where wild beasts receive him 
 hospitably. This welcome he finds in a spot where wolves, having 
 torn some sheep, leave for him the untasted banquet. The beasts 
 must needs be wolves, and the country of which he thus becomes 
 the lord is the Aleian plain, through which the lonely Belleroph6n 
 wandered in the closing days of his life. 
 
( 4«9 )' 
 
 CHAP. 
 • VII. 
 
 Section II.— THE CLOUD-LAND. " 
 
 Nephele then is the mist of morning tide, which vanishes, like The Pha : . 
 Daphne and Arethousa, when the sun becomes Chrysaor. The 
 myths of the earth under its many names bring the clouds before 
 us in other forms, as the Kouretes, who weave their mystic dances 
 round the infant Zeus ; the Idaian Daktyls, who impart to the harp 
 of Orpheus its irresistible power ; and the marvellous Telchtnes, who 
 can change their forms at will. 1 But the cloud-land in all its magni- 
 ficence and imperial array is displayed not so much in these isolated 
 stories as in the great Phaiakian legend of the Odyssey. It may be 
 safely said that there is scarcely a single detail in this marvellous 
 narrative which fails to show the nature and the origin of the subjects 
 of Alkinoos. We may, if we please, regard them as a people settled 
 historically in the island known to us as Korkyra or Corfu ; and with 
 Preller or other writers we may lay stress on the fact that they are 
 altogether a people of ships and of the sea, living far away from 
 mortal men near the western Okeanos ; but no one who wishes- 
 really to get at the truth of facts can thus convince himself that he 
 has solved the problem. Whether Scheria be or be not the Mediter- 
 ranean Korkyra, the meaning of most of the names occurring in the 
 myth is beyond all doubt ; and we have simply to follow the poet as 
 he tells the tale, how long ago they had dwelt in the broad Hypereia, 
 near to the rude and gigantic Kyklopes, who were mightier than they 
 and did them sore harm, until Nausithoos led them away to Scheria, 
 and there built them a city and planted them vineyards and raised 
 temples to the gods. 3 Here we have no sooner recalled to mind the 
 nature of the Kyklopes as the storm-cloud which clings to, or keeps its- 
 flocks, on the rough mountain-side, than the whole story becomes 
 transparent. The broad Hypereia is the upper region, where dwell 
 also the Hyperboreans in their beautiful gardens. Nay, we may 
 safely say that the Phaiakians are the Hyperboreans who have been 
 driven from their early home by the black vapours between whom 
 and themselves there can be no friendship. From these malignant 
 foes they can but fly to Scheria, their fixed abode, 3 where these rugged 
 shepherds 4 cannot trouble thein. 
 
 1 See p. 480. The name Phaiax that it denotes simply the firm land, 
 contains the root pha, which denotes Gr Myth. i. 492. It would thus be 
 lieht and sound of all degrees, as in akin to frpfc^ 
 
 Gr. <t>atva, <pdos, <pai6s, <pynl, L. fan, The avepes a\<py«Ta.l here spoken 
 
 fatum °^ are c l ear 'y ' ne Kyklopes and none 
 
 2 Od. vi. I, &c. ° thers - 
 • Of the word Scheria Preller says 
 
490 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK This new home then is that ideal land far away in the west, over 
 
 ■ — "'.— ■ which is spread the soft beauty of an everlasting twilight, unsullied 
 of Aiki- laCe b y unseemly mists and murky vapours, where the radiant processions 
 noos. which gladden the eyes of mortal men only when the heavens are 
 
 clear are ever passing through the streets and along the flower-clad 
 hills. On this beautiful conception the imagination of the poet 
 might feed, and find there an inexhaustible banquet ; and we need 
 only mark the several images which he has chosen to see how faith- 
 fully he adheres (and it may be unconsciously) to the, phenomena 
 of cloud-land. He who has seen in the eastern or western sky as lit 
 up by the rising or setting sun the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous 
 temples catching the light on their burnished faces, can well feel 
 whence came the surpassing and everlasting glory of the palace and 
 the gardens of Alkinoos. In those marvellous scenes which more 
 than all other painters Turner delighted to transfer to paper or 
 canvas, we may see the walls and chambers of that splendid dwelling 
 gleaming with the lustre of the sun or the moon, the brazen walls 
 with their purple bands and stringcourses, the golden doors, and 
 steps of silver. Nay, who has not watched the varying forms and 
 half convinced himself that the unsubstantial figures before him are 
 the shapes of men and beasts who people that shadowy kingdom ? 
 Who has not seen there the dogs of gold and silver who guard the 
 house of Alkinoos and on whom old age and death can never lay 
 a finger— the golden youths standing around the inmost shrine with 
 torches in their hands, whose light never dies out — the busy maidens 
 plying their golden distaffs as their fingers run along the filmy threads 
 spread on the bare ground of the unfading ether? Who does not 
 understand the poet at once when he says that their marvellous skill 
 came from Athend, the goddess of the dawn ? And who does not 
 see that in the gardens of this beautiful palace must bloom trees 
 laden always with golden fruits, that here the soft west wind brings 
 new blossoms before the old have ripened, that here fountains send 
 their crystal streams to freshen the meadows which laugh beneath 
 the radiant heaven ? It is certainly possible that in this description, 
 the poet may have introduced some features in the art or civilisation 
 of his own day ; but the magnificent imagination even of a Spanish 
 beggar has never dreamed of a home so splendid as that of the 
 Scherian chieftain, and assuredly golden statues and doors, silver stairs 
 and brazen walls formed no part of the possessions of any king of the 
 east or the west from the days of the Homeric poets to our own. In 
 truth, there is nothing of the earth in this exquisite picture. In the 
 Phaiakian land sorrow and trouble are things unknown. The house 
 
THE FLEETS OF THE SEAS OF HEAVEN. 49 * 
 
 of Alkinoos is the house of feasting, where the dancers are never c ^j P - 
 weary, and the harp is never silent. -^_^— -~ 
 
 But the poet carries us to the true Phaiakian domain, when The fleets 
 he makes Alkinoos say that though his people are not good boxers or °^£. '" 
 wrestlers, none can outrun them on land or rival their skill on ship- 
 board ; and we may well suppose that some consciousness of the 
 meaning of his tale must have been present to the mind of the bard 
 as he recounted the wonders of the Phaiakian ships. These myste- 
 rious vessels have neither helmsmen nor r.udders, rigging nor tackling ; 
 but they know the thoughts and the minds of men. There is not a 
 city nor a cornfield throughout the wide earth which they fail to 
 visit, as they traverse the sea veiled in mist and cloud ; and in this 
 their ceaseless voyaging they dread no disaster. 1 No bark of that 
 goodly fleet has ever been stranded or wrecked, for so the gods have 
 ordained for the blameless leaders and guides of all across the 
 sounding seas. Far in the distance only looms a danger of which 
 the wise Nausithoos has dimly warned the king ; and whence can the 
 peril come. but from Poseidon, whose huge and ungentle offspring drove 
 them from their ancient heritage ? But whether the sea-god will really 
 be able to fulfil his threat and sink the gallant Phaiakian bark, is a 
 matter which Alkinoos is content to leave to the disposal of God. 
 So in the light of a sun which has not yet gone down dwell the 
 happy Phaiakian people ; but their beautiful ships are seen not only 
 by Achaian eyes. The old Teutonic poet also beheld Skidbladnir, 
 the magic bark of Freya ; the Icelander saw the good ship Ellide, 
 as the wish-breeze bore them along to their destination. Nor were 
 these the only vessels endowed with the power and wisdom of the 
 Phaiakian ships. The divine Argo can speak the language of men, 
 and guide its crew to the land which they seek ; but at this point the 
 story of the speaking vessel becomes mingled with images which, 
 belong to another set of myths. The Argo contains within itself all 
 the warriors of the Achaian land, and Skidbladnir, which can carry 
 all the iEsir, may yet be folded up like a mist and carried in the 
 hand like a garment One question only remains. If the ships, 
 of Alkinoos have neither helm, nor rudder, nor rigging, what can 
 
 1 In the Norse story of Big Bird they'll forget to look at you." In 
 
 Dan the ship has become an iron boat ; short, each time that the club (of the 
 
 but still "it sails of itself, if you only Maruts) is raised, the fiercer will be 
 
 say, Boat, boat, go on. In that boat the storm. The old myth is still further 
 
 there is an iron club, and that club you apparent in the concluding direction, 
 
 must lift a little when you see the ship "When you've got to land, you've no 
 
 [which is bearing away the dawn- need to bother yourself at all about the 
 
 maiden] straight ahead of you, and then boat ; first turn it about and shove it off 
 
 they'll get such a rattling fair breeze, and say, Boat, boat, go back home." 
 
492 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK these ships be but the Phaiakians themselves, as they sail at will 
 
 ■ li through the blue seas of heaven, not on the watery deep which 
 
 couches beneath ? 1 Their very name points to the twilight land, and 
 when the ship brings Odysseus back to his own island, it comes like 
 the gleaming star ushering Eos, the early born. 2 
 The Phai- As the Kyklopes are the natural enemies of the Phaiakians, so 
 Odysseus? tne latter have a natural friendship and love for the bright beings 
 who gladden them with their light When the heavens are veiled 
 with the murky storm-vapours, the lovely Phaiakians may still be 
 thought of as comforting the bright hero in his sorrow : and hence 
 the sympathy which by the agency of the dawn-goddess Athene is 
 kindled in the heart of the pure Nausikaa. for the stranger whom she 
 finds on the sea-shore wearied almost unto death. This man of 
 many griefs is not indeed what he seems ; and the real nature of the 
 being whom they thus befriend breaks out from time to time beneath 
 the poor disguise which for the present he is content to wear. No 
 sooner has Odysseus cleansed his face, than the soft locks flow 
 down over his shoulders with the hue of the hyacinth flower, and 
 his form gleams like a golden statue ; 8 and the same air of regal 
 majesty is thrown over him when he stands in the assembly of the 
 Phaiakians, who must love him when they see his glory. 4 
 Niobgand From the sorrows of the forsaken Nephele we passed to the 
 happiness of the cloud-land itself. From this peaceful region we 
 must pass again to deeper griefs than those of the wife of Athamas. 
 Of the many tales related of the luckless NiobS, there is perhaps not 
 one of which the meaning is not easily seen. Her name itself shows 
 her affinity to the mother of Phrixos and Helle; and if in one version 
 she is called a daughter of Phoroneus, from whom, as a bride of Zeus, 
 are born Argos and Pelasgos, this only tells us that the mist is the 
 child of fire or heat, and that from its union with the heaven springs 
 
 1 The poet, as we might expect, the lay of Beowulf, when he feels hitn- 
 contradicts himself when he relates the self about to die, he bids his men lay 
 voyage of the Phaiakians as they carry him armed in the boat and put him out 
 Odysseus from Phaiakia to Ithaka. to sea. This is the bark Ellide of Ice- 
 Here the ship has oarsmen and oars, landic legend, the wonderful ship of the 
 and these imply the furniture of other Norse tale of Shortshanks, which be- 
 ships, which he has expressly denied to comes bigger and bigger as soon as the 
 them before. hero steps into it, which goes without 
 
 * Od. xiii. 93 ; Preller, Gr. Myth. rudder or sail, and when he comes out 
 
 i. 495. Not less mysterious than the becomes as small as it was before. 
 
 Phaiakian ships is the vessel without This is, manifestly, nothing more than 
 
 sail or rudder, which brings Scild, the the swelling and shrinking of vapour : 
 
 son of Sceaf, the sheaf of corn, to the and so the ship which can carry all the 
 
 coast of Scandia. — Grimm, Teutonic ^Esir may be folded up like a napkin. 
 Mythology, Stallybrass, i. 369. Scild 3 Od. vi. 225. 
 
 becomes the king of the land, and in 4 Od. viii. 21. 
 
 Letd. 
 
THE KOURETES AND TELCHiNES. 493 
 
 the light-crowned cloud. But the commoner version which represents chap. 
 
 her as a daughter of Tantalos is still more significant. Here Niobe, ■ — — • 
 
 the bride of the Theban Amphion, a being akin to Orpheus, Pan, 
 and Hermes, becomes the mother of beautiful children, whose number 
 varies as much as that of the sons and daughters of Endymion, or of 
 the mystic Kourgtes and Telchines. Then follows the rivalry of the 
 proud mother with the mightier parent of Artemis and Phoibos — 
 the presumption of the mist or the ice which dares to match the 
 golden-tinted clouds with the sun and moon in their splendour. 
 The children of Leto are but two in number ; her own cluster round 
 her, a blooming troop of sons and daughters. 1 But Leto had only 
 to carry the story of her troubles to her children, and the unerring 
 arrows soon smote the unconscious causes of her anger. NioM her- 
 self sat down overcome with woe on the summits of Sipylos, and there 
 her grief turned her into stone, as the water turns into ice on the cold 
 hil-side. 3 Local tradition so preserved the story that the people 
 fancied that they saw on the heights of Sipylos the actual figure of 
 Niobe mourning for her children; but, in fact, there were many 
 Niobes in many lands, and the same luckless portion was the lot 
 of all. 3 
 
 In the Vedic hymns, the cloud myths are inextricably intermingled The cattle 
 with those of the dawn and the light. The very enemy of Indra of HehoSi 
 hiding the stolen herds in his horrid den is but the storm-cloud 
 which shuts up the rain-clouds ready to refresh the parched earth. 
 He is Cacus who drags the cattle of Geryon into his cave, and the 
 Sphinx which plagues the Kadmeians with drought. Of the beautiful 
 
 1 The number of these children is seat, point to the melting or weeping 
 variously given in almost every account. of the petrified or frozen winter earth. 
 The clouds are never the same. Professor Max Miiller compares this 
 
 2 Sophokles, Antig. 830, speaks ex- myth with that of Chione (x^"> hiems, 
 pressly of the snow which never leaves winter), who for presumption much like 
 her, and thus shows that he is dealing that of NiobS is slain by Artemis, 
 with the phenomena of congelation. Preller, Cr. Myth. ii. 383, takes a dif- 
 
 3 With many other names, that of ferent view. " Niobe ist selbst die 
 Niobe may be traced back to a root snu, Rhea dieser Bergen und dieser Thaler " 
 to flow, which yields the Sanskrit Nyava, [of Sipylos], "die fruchtbare Mutter 
 tnow, as from Dyu we have Dyava, i.e. und doch so traurig, im Friihlinge pran- 
 &tii&. Hence Professor Max Miiller gend in dem Schmucke blithender 
 sees in Niobe the goddess of winter, Kinder, im Sommer, wenn die heissen 
 whose children are smitten by the arrows Pfeile der Gbtter des Lichtes treften, 
 of Phoibos and Artemis, as the winter verwaist, und wie Rachel, die iiber den 
 gives place to summer. Thus the myth Leichen ihrer Kinder sitzt und ' will 
 that there were none to bury them be- sich nicht trosten lassen, denn es ist aus 
 cause all who might have done so had mit ihnen.' " He adds that the petri- 
 been turned into stone, is explained as faction of Niobe seems to indicate the 
 indicating the power of frost which tradition of some catastrophe. The 
 congeals everything : and thus also the catastrophe is simply that of every 
 tears of Niobe, as she sits on her stony northern winter. 
 
491 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 cattle of Indra thus stolen by the Panis Sarama is the guardian ; each 
 ■ morning she comes forth to lead them to their pastures, 1 each evening 
 she reappears to drive them home. The same scenes are repeated 
 daily in the Homeric Thrinakia, where the cattle of the sun are tended 
 by the nymphs Phaethousa and LampetiS, the fair-haired children 
 whom Neaira, the early morning, bare to Helios Hyperioa But 
 although the companions of Odysseus are made actually to slay some 
 of these cows, and although strange signs follow their crime, yet the 
 story itself points to another origin for these particular herds. The 
 Thrinakian cattle are not the clouds, but the days of the year. The 
 herds are seven in number, and in each herd are fifty cows, never less, 
 and representing in all the three hundred and fifty days of the lunar 
 year. 2 Thus in the story that the comrades of Odysseus did not 
 return home with him because they slew the cattle of the sun, we 
 may " recognise an old proverbial or mythological expression, too 
 literally interpreted even by Homer, and therefore turned into mytno- 
 logy." If, then, the original phrase ran that Odysseus reached his 
 home because he persevered in his task, while his companions 
 "wasted their time, killed the days, i.e. the cattle of Helios, and 
 were therefore punished, nothing would be more natural than that 
 after a time their punishment should have been ascribed to their 
 actually devouring the oxen in the island of Thrinakia." 8 
 
 Section III.— THE NYMPHS AND SWAN-MAIDENS. 
 
 The swan- 
 shaped 
 Phorkides. 
 
 On the cloud-origin of the Vedic Gandharvas, the Hellenic 
 Kentaurs, and the Kyklopes whether of our Homeric or Hesiodic 
 poems, enough has perhaps been said in the analysis of the myths 
 of Urvas!, Psyche, Ixion, and Asklepios. These myths may each 
 run into others which relate more exclusively to the earth or the sun, 
 but the close connexion of earth, light, and vapour, is so constantly 
 present to the minds of all the Aryan tribes that it becomes almost 
 impossible to set down any one myth, as a whole, as a specimen of 
 one definite class ; and thus the language used of the powers of 
 darkness themselves is applied to the gloomy storm-vapours, whether 
 
 1 In many popular tales these blue 
 pastures with the white flocks feeding 
 on them are reflected in the water, and 
 the sheep feeding far down in the depths 
 are made the means by which Boots or 
 Dummling (the beggar Odysseus) lures 
 his stupid brothers to their death. See 
 the story of "Big Peter and Little 
 Peter," in Dasent's Norse Tales; the 
 
 Gaelic story of the Three Widows, 
 Campbell, ii. 224, 228, 237 ; and the 
 German tale of the Little Farmer, 
 Grimm. 
 
 2 Sir G. C. Lewis, Astronomy of 
 the Ancients, 21. 
 
 3 Chips, &c, ii. 166; Brown, Great 
 Dionysiak Myth, i. 392. 
 
ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY. 495 
 
 they appear' as the monstrous Polyphemos, or as the three daughters chap. 
 
 of Phorkos, who have but one tooth each and possess a single eye ^ — ■ 
 
 in common. These beings ^Eschylos especially calls swan-shaped, 
 and here we have the germ of a large family of legends common to 
 all the Aryan tribes and extending, it would seem, far beyond them. 
 We have already seen the clouds, whether as lit up by the sun or as 
 refreshing the earth with rain, spoken of as cows tended by nymphs, 
 while fhe stormy vapours, their relentless enemies, are snakes, worms, 
 or dragons, which throttle or strangle their prey. But the' Sphinx, 
 one of the most prominent of this repulsive tribe, is called particularly 
 the winged hound, 1 and the swan-shaped Phorkides answer to the 
 black ravens who, as messengers of Wuotan, roam across the sky. 
 These two classes of vapours are kept tolerably distinct. The one 
 brings only famine and sickness ; the other recalls the dead earth 
 to life, like the serpents with their snake-leaves in the stories of 
 Glaukos, of Faithful John, and of Panch Phul Ranee. Sometimes, 
 however, the vapours play an intermediate part, being neither wholly 
 malignant nor kindly. Thus in the Arabian Nights the rushing 
 vapour is the roc, " which broods over its great luminous egg, the 
 sun, and which haunts the sparkling valley of diamonds, the starry 
 sky.'' 2 Here the single eye in the forehead of Polyph£mos becomes 
 the golden egg which reappears in the story of Jack the Giant Killer 
 as the egg which the red hen lays every morning. This monstrous 
 bird appears as the kindly minister of the light-born prince in the 
 Norse story of Farmer Weathersky. We are now more especially 
 in the mythical domain of which strange animal shapes are the 
 tenants ; and we may do well to note the vast multitude of beasts, 
 birds, and fishes which figure in the mythology of the Aryan world. 
 This strange throng, which exhibits innumerable shapes, beautiful or 
 grotesque, graceful or repulsive, lovely or fearful, is most numerous 
 in the Vedic and post-Vedic literature of India. But if we call to 
 mind a few only of the old Greek myths, we shall see at once how 
 large a part these creatures play in them. Thus we have the eagle of 
 Zeus and the owl of Athene, the horses of Achilleus and Poseidon, 
 the ass of Seilenos and the ass's ears of Midas; we see Athene" 
 change herself at will into a bird, and 16 and Kallisto transmuted 
 into a heifer and a bear ; we find the boar in the stories of Atys, 
 Adonis, Meleagros, and Odysseus, the terrible Minotauros in the myth 
 of Theseus, and the fire-breathing bulls in that of Medeia. In the 
 Homeric Hymn Apollon throws himself into the sea in the form 
 
 1 imjvis K<mv. ^Esch. JPr. 1024; 2 Gould, Curious Myths, second 
 
 Agam. 136. s eries > '4°- 
 
496 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of a dolphin, and comes out of it again as a star. In the story 
 
 ■ n " - of Aristaios the fish-god is seen as the preacher of wisdom ; it 
 
 shows itself as a deliverer in the myth of Orion. As to snakes 
 and dragons, they are everywhere ; as noxious beasts in the myths 
 of Phoibos, Kadmos, or Herakles, and in beneficent aspects in 
 the stories of Iamos and Melampous. Dionysos can change him- 
 self into a bear or a lion ; Lykaon is changed against his will into 
 a wolf, Arachne into a spider, Philomele and Prokne into the 
 nightingale and the swallow. The golden ram carries Phrixos and 
 HellS from the land of Athamas ; the three-headed dog guards the 
 gates of Hades. , Nay, we have strange unions between Leda and 
 the swan, and heroes and heroines hatched from eggs, with horrible 
 associations between men and horses and other beasts ; and not only 
 have we the marvellous changes by which Apollon and Athene 
 appear as crows and Talaos as a partridge, but for many of these 
 transformations or for the manifestation of them the times are 
 definitely marked. It is only on comparing the Greek myths with 
 those of other peoples or races that our eyes are opened to the 
 ■enormous range of this mythological zoology. Birds, beasts, reptiles, 
 insects, fishes, here live in a world of their own, reflecting in greater 
 or less degree the forms and habits of the animals of earth, yet never 
 wholly like them ; and this strange world exhibits everywhere a series 
 of incessantly and rapidly shifting scenes, in which the same objects 
 from different points of view appear brilliant or dark, lovely or 
 appalling. These continual changes originated the idea of celestial 
 companions or friends, " who are now in unison, now separate ; who 
 now appear to love each other, to move together, and affectionately 
 to greet each other, now rush upon each other to fight, despoil, betray, 
 and destroy each other turn by turn ; who now attract and are now 
 attracted, are now seduced and now seducers, now cheated and 
 now deceivers, now victims and now sacrificers." 1 Their friends or 
 enemies may, again, assume and throw off these brute forms ; and 
 beasts are supposed to go through courses of action which are 
 possible only for men. The god Hanuman, the son of the bull 
 or of the wind, appearing himself both as a bull and as an ape, 
 receives as a reward from the king Bharatas a hundred thousand 
 cows, sixteen wives, and a hundred servant-maids. As bull or ape, 
 what could he have done with them ? But they who handed down 
 
 1 I quote the words of Count de subject ; but I should not be justified 
 
 Gubernatis, who has made this mythical were I to fail in calling the reader's 
 
 world his own in his volumes on Zoo- attention to an inquiry of great im- 
 
 Jogical Mythology. I can but stand portance. 
 ifor a moment at the threshold of the 
 
APSARAS AND VALKYRIEN. 497 
 
 to us the feats of Hanuman took care also to tell us how he had the chap. 
 
 faculty of changing his form at will. It was, of course, natural and • ,-!_ - 
 
 even inevitable that the ideas suggested by the conditions of primitive 
 Aryan life should be transferred to the heavens. To the ancient 
 Aryan the prosperity of his herds was of the first importance ; but 
 the horse was also an animal whose splendid qualities he keenly 
 appreciated. Hence he compared the sun climbing up the heavens 
 to the invincible war-steed. The sun thus becomes both a horse and 
 a bull. By a not less natural process he became also the rider or 
 charioteer who guides both horses and bulls at his will; and a 
 starting-point was furnished for legions of myths which might pass into 
 shapes strangely unlike those which they had worn at starting. We 
 thus reach the graceful myths in which the forms of fair maidens and 
 swans pass one into the other, like the shifting colours of a dream. 
 
 In the Hymn to Apollon the clouds appear as the nymphs or The Muses 
 goddesses who bathe the new-born Phoibos, and the white robe vaikyrien. 
 which they wrap around him is the garment of morning mist, through 
 which his orb may be seen ascending amidst zones of gold. Among 
 these nymphs are the Charites, who attend on Aphrodite", the lovely 
 clouds which dance in the morning sky, while in the hymn of Kalli- 
 machos the clouds are plainly spoken of as the singing swans who 
 hasten from Paktolos and fly seven times round Delos at the birth of 
 Phoibos, who therefore in after years fixes on seven notes as the 
 complement of the musical scale. These beautiful beings in their 
 thousand forms all spring from the water, whether it be Athene 
 or Aphrodite, Melusina or Urvasi. All therefore are Apsaras or 
 water-maidens, of whom the germs may be seen in Vedic hymns, 
 while in later Hindu epics they appear with all the features of the 
 Teutonic Vaikyrien ; and the consolation addressed to the warriors 
 of the Mahabharata is that by which Mahomet cheers the hearts of 
 the faithful. " A hero slain is not to be lamented, for he is exalted in 
 heaven. Thousands of beautiful nymphs (apsaras) run quickly up to 
 the hero who has been slain in battle, saying to him, Be my husband." 1 
 Here then we have the groundwork of all those tales which speak of 
 men as wedded to fairies, nymphs, nixies, mermaids, swan-maidens, 
 or other supernatural beings. The details may vary indefinitely; 
 but the Aryan and Turanian myths alike point to the same phe- 
 nomena. From the thought which regarded the cloud as an eagle or 
 a swan, it was easy to pass to the idea that these birds were beautiful 
 maidens, and hence that they could at will, or on the ending of the 
 inchantment, assume their human form. This would, in fact, be 
 
 1 Muir, Skr. Texts, part iv. p. 235. 
 
 2 K 
 
498 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK nothing more than the power exercised by Herakles, who, whenever 
 - , "■ he desired it, could lay aside his robe of lion's skin. Then would 
 follow the myth, that the only way to capture these beings was to 
 seize their garment of swan's or eagle's feathers, without which they 
 were powerless ; and this myth has been reflected in a thousand tales 
 which relate how men, searching for something lost, have reached 
 some peaceful lake (the blue heaven) on which were floating the 
 silver swans, birds only in outward seeming, and so long as they were 
 suffered to wear theirfeathery robes. 1 Some specimens of Turanian 
 myths belonging to this class are noteworthy as containing not. only 
 this idea but all the chief incidents belonging to the Teutonic story 
 of the Giant who had no Heart in his Body, and tfye Hindu tale of 
 Punchkin. Among the Minussinian Tartars these maidens appear, 
 like the Hellenic Harpyiai, as beings which scourge themselves into 
 action with a sword, and fly gorged with blood, through the heavens 
 forty in number, yet running into one, like the many clouds absorbed 
 into a single mass. The vapour in this, its less inviting aspect, is 
 seen in the myth of Kyknos, the swan son of Ares, or Sthehelos, or 
 Poseidon (for all these versions are found), who after a hard fight is 
 slain by Herakles. 
 The swan- In the legend of Helen and the Dioskouroi Zeus himself comes 
 Zeusf to Leda in the guise of a swan, as to Danae he appears in the form 
 of a golden shower ; and hence from the two eggs sprung severally, 
 according to one of many versions, Kastor and Helen, Polydeukes 
 and Klytaimnestra, while others say that the brothers were the sons 
 of Zeus, and Helen the child of the mortal Tyndareos. 2 When the 
 notion which regarded Helen as doomed to bring ruin on her kins- 
 folk and friends had been more fully developed, the story ran that 
 the egg came not from Leda but from Nemesis, the power which, 
 like the Norns, gives to each man his portion. 
 Inchanted The ideas of inchantment and transformation once awakened ran 
 maidens. T [ i m a crowd of stories which resemble in some of their features 
 the myths of which the tale of PsychS and Eros is a type ; in others, 
 the legends in which the youngest brother or sister, Boots or Cinder- 
 ella, is in the end exalted over those who had thought little of him 
 in times past, and, in others again, the narratives of jealous wives or 
 stepmothers, found in the mythology of all the Aryan tribes. Thus 
 the ship and the swan are both prominent in the mediaeval romance 
 
 1 These robes in other tales become legends we may also compare the 
 
 fairy garments, without which the Per- stories of mermaids who unite them- 
 
 sian Peri cannot leave the human hus- selves with human lovers, 
 band to whom she is wedded. — Keight- 2 But, as we have seen, p. 414, 
 
 ley, Fairy Mythology, 21. With these Tyndareos is the thunderer. 
 
THE KNIGHT OF THE SWAN. 499 
 
 of the Knight of the Swan, in which the son of queen Matabrune, chap. 
 
 having married the beautiful Beatrice, leaves her in his another's • Xii • 
 
 charge. After his departure, Beatrice gives birth to six sons and a 
 daughter, each with a silver collar round its neck. These children 
 the stepmother seeks to destroy, but she is cheated by the usual 
 device which substitutes some beast for the human victim. At 
 length Matabrune is informed that seven children may be seen each 
 with a silver collar, and again she decrees their death. They are, 
 however, only deprived of their collars, and the loss changes them 
 into swans, all but the youngest, Helias, whom a hermit had taken 
 away as his companion. 1 Helias, of course, avenges his mother's 
 innocence, when she is about to be put to death, and then makes a 
 vow that he will never rest until he has delivered his brothers and 
 sister from the evil inchantment. Having recovered five of the 
 collars, he succeeds at length in restoring five to their human shape ; 
 but one remains spellbound, his collar having been melted to make a 
 drinking-cup for Matabrune. This swan-brother now appears draw- 
 ing a boat, in which Helias embarks, and arriving at Neumagen fights 
 on behalf of the lady who claimed the duchy of Bouillon. His 
 victory makes him duke of Bouillon, but he warns the duchess that 
 if she asks his name he must leave her. In due time the question is 
 of course asked, and instantly, the swan and boat reappearing, Helias 
 vanishes like Eros when seen by Psyche. This romance Mr. Gould, 
 who gives some other versions of the story, regards as a local myth 
 of Brabantine origin, the name Helias being a corruption of the 
 Keltic ala, eala, ealadh, a swan. This is but saying, in other words, 
 that an old myth has been worked into the traditions of European 
 towns, and attached, like the story of the early life of Cyrus, to names 
 undoubtedly historical. The tale itself agrees in all its essential 
 features not only with many Teutonic legends but with the Hindu 
 story of Guzra Bai, the Beatrice of the tale of Truth's Triumph. 
 This beautiful maiden is the Flower Girl, or the Gardener's daughter; 
 in other words, the child of Demeter playing on the flowery plain of 
 Nysa or Enna, — the teeming source of life as distinguished from the 
 dead or inert matter on which it works. She thus becomes at once, 
 like Beatrice, the mother of many children ; here the number is a 
 hundred and one, this one being as with Beatrice a daughter. These 
 beautiful children awaken the jealousy and hatred of the twelve 
 childless wives to whom the husband of Guzra Bai was already mar- 
 
 1 In Grimm's story of "The White water, but at the same moment a snow- 
 and the Black Bride," the mother and white swan is seen swimming down the 
 sister push the true bride into the stream. 
 
5oo 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The 
 Hyades 
 and 
 Pleiades. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 ried, and in whom we may see an image of the months of the year or 
 the hours of the night, in themselves producing nothing, until the 
 spring reawakens the slumbering earth or the dawn flushes the 
 eastern sky. In either case, it is but one hour or one day doing the 
 work which otherwise many hours and many days would be unable 
 to accomplish. Then follows a series of transformations which have 
 the effect of counteracting the arts of the twelve queens 1 as those of 
 Matabrune are frustrated in the western story, and which end in the 
 change of all the brothers not into swans but into crows, the only one 
 of Guzra Bai's children who is saved being the daughter, as HeKas 
 alone is not transformed in the myth of Matabrune. The subsequent 
 marriage of Guzra Bai's daughter under the name of Draupadi to a 
 king who sees her feeding the crows is the return of Persephone from 
 the lower world in more than her former beauty. Draupadi now 
 becomes the mother of a child who avenges her wrongs as Perseus 
 requites the persecutors of Danae, and punishes the demon who, 
 with the wand of Kirke, had changed his mother's brothers into 
 crows. The final incident is the deliverance of Guzra Bai from the 
 prison to which the twelve princesses had committed her, and the 
 discomfiture of the latter, answering to the humiliation of Matabrune. 
 As the storm-cloud brooding over the earth without yielding rain 
 became in Greek mythology the Theban Sphinx or the Pythian 1 
 Dragon, so the clouds as rain-givers were the Hyades or the rainy 
 sisters. These, it is obvious, might be described in a hundred ways, 
 and accordingly almost every mythographer has a different account 
 to give of them. They are the daughters of Atlas and Aithra, the 
 heaven and the pure air, or of Okeanos, the water, or of Erechtheus 
 (the earth) ; and thus the myths do but repeat the generation of the 
 
 cloud, 
 
 I am the daughter of earth and water, 
 And the nursling of the sky, 
 
 giving it names which all denote their cherishing, fructifying, and re- 
 viving powers. 2 They are the nymphs of Nysa or Dodona, who 
 guard the infant Dionysos, or are the nurses of Zeus himself; and 
 this kinlness the wine-god requites by causing Medeia, the wise 
 dawn-goddess, to restore them to youth when they had grown old, a 
 sight witnessed every morning. These nymphs are seen again in 
 their sisters the Pleiades, whose name, pointing only to their watery 
 nature, became confused with that of the ring-dove, Peleias, and so 
 
 1 These twelve queens answer to 
 the twelve old men who sit round the 
 fire, or the twelve foster brothers in the 
 
 Lay of Magnus. See note, p. 426. 
 
 1 Eudora, Althaia, Phyto, Anv 
 brosia, &c. 
 
THE GLOAMING. 5CI 
 
 the story ran that they were changed into doves and placed among chap. 
 
 the stars. Generally these Pleiades are seven in number, six being • V11 " 
 
 visible and one invisible. Without taking into account any supposed 
 astronomical explanations, it is enough to note that the same difference 
 marks the stories already cited of Matabrune, Guzra Bai, and others, 
 in which of a troop of children some remain visible while the rest 
 vanish through inchantment. 
 
 These sisters are either always youthful and radiant, or they are The 
 from time to time restored to their former beauty. But we may raial " 
 think also of clouds as dwelling for ever far away in the doubtful 
 gloaming, not wholly dark, but faintly visible in a weird and dismal 
 twilight. These clouds, which are never kindled into beauty by the 
 rays of the sun, are the Graiai, the daughter of Phorkys, whose hair was 
 grey from their birth, like the white streamers which move in ghastly 
 lines across the sky, as evening dies away into night The swan form 
 of these sisters points clearly, as we have seen, to their cloud origin ; 
 and the story of the single tooth and the common eye would follow 
 from the notion of their everlasting old age, even if these features 
 were not suggested by myths like those of Polyphemos and the 
 Kyklopes. 1 
 
 Some of the features which characterise these gloomy sisters were The Gor- 
 ifcransferred to the Gorgons, if the idea of one Gorgon, as in our Iliad gons- 
 and Odyssey, be older than the Hesiodic myth of the three Gorgon 
 daughters of Phorkys and Keto, Stheino or Stheno, Euryale, and Me- 
 dousa. The Gorgo of the Odyssey is the hideous head of a monster 
 belonging to the nether world ; in the Iliad she is a being with an 
 awful face and a terrific glance. In the Hesiodic Theogony the two 
 undying and barren sisters are sharply distinguished from Medousa, 
 the woman of pitiable woes. 2 It is, of course, possible that the writh- 
 ing snakes which, by the doom passed on her, take the place of her 
 beautiful locks may represent the hideous storm-vapours streaming 
 across the heaven at night But this explanation does not account 
 for the myth of the mortal maiden who once 
 
 Walked in beauty like the night 
 Of cloudless climes and starry skies, 
 
 whom Poseidon loved in the soft green meadow among the flowers 
 of spring, and who became the mother of the mighty Chrysaor and 
 the winged horse Pegasos who rose from heaven to the house of Zeus, 
 where he is the bearer of thunders and lightnings to the king of gods 
 
 1 Among the many monsters which serpents who destroy Laokoon and his 
 are either children of Poseidon or are sons, 
 sent up by him from the sea are the two ' Avypk iraBovaa. Hes. Theog. 276. 
 
502 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Aktaidn. 
 
 Medousa 
 and Chry- 
 
 and men. Here plainly Medousa is none other than Leto, the 
 ^ mother of Chrysaor, the lord of the golden sword ; in other words, 
 the night in its benignant aspect as the parent of the sun, and there- 
 fore as mortal, for must not the birth of the sun be fatal to the dark- 
 ness from which it springs ? Hence Perseus, the child of the golden 
 shower, must bring her weary woe to an end. The remaining feature 
 of the story is the early loveliness of Medousa, which tempts her into 
 rivalry with the dawn-goddess Athene herself, a rivalry which they 
 who know the moonlit nights of the Mediterranean can well under- 
 stand. But let the storm-clouds pass across the sky, and the maiden's 
 beauty is at once marred. She is no longer the darling of Poseidon, 
 sporting on the grassy shore. The unseemly vapours stream like 
 serpents across her once beautiful face, hissing with the breath of the 
 night-breeze, and a look of agony unutterable comes over her 
 countenance, chilling and freezing the hearts' blood of those who 
 gaze on the brow of the storm-tormented night This agony can pass 
 away only with her life ; in other words, when the sword of Phoibos 
 smites and scatters the murky mists. But although Medousa may 
 die, the source from which the storm-clouds come cannot be choked, 
 and thus the Gorgons who seek to revenge on Perseus their sister's 
 death are themselves immortal. 
 
 In the Theban myth of Aktaion, the son of the Kadmeian 
 Autonoe, the cloud appears as a huntsman who has been taught by 
 the Kentaur Cheiron, but who is torn to pieces by his own dogs, just 
 as the large masses of vapour are rent and scattered by the wind, 
 which bear them across the sky. As this rending is most easily seen 
 in a heaven tolerably free from clouds, so the story ran that Aktaion 
 was thus punished because he had rashly looked on Artemis while 
 she was bathing in the fountain of Gargaphia. 
 
 Not less significant is the myth of Pegasos, the offspring of 
 Medousa with Chrysaor, the magnificent piles of sunlit cloud, which 
 seem to rise as if on eagle's wings to the highest heaven, and in whose 
 bosom may lurk the lightnings and thunders of Zeus. Like Athene 1 
 and AphroditS, like Daphne and Arethousa, this horse of the morning 
 (Eos) must be born from the waters ; hence he is Pegasos, sprung 
 from the fountains of Poseidon, the sea. 1 On this horse Bellerophon 
 is mounted in his contest with the Chimaira: but he becomes 
 
 1 With Pegasos we may compare 
 the horse in Grimm's story of the Two 
 Wanderers (Dioskouroi), which courses 
 thrice round the castle yard as swiftly 
 as lightning, and then falls. This is 
 the moment of the lightning flash, and 
 
 the story of course goes on to say that 
 "at the same moment a fearful noise 
 was heard, and a piece out of the ground 
 of the court rose up into the air like a 
 ball," and a stream of water leaps forth, 
 as on the discomfiture of the Sphinx. 
 
ATH^Ni CHALINITIS. 503 
 
 possessed of this steed only by the aid of Athene Chalinttis, who, Chap. 
 
 giving him a bridle, enables him to catch the horse as he drinks from • — Xii 
 
 the well PeirSne, or, as others said, brings him Pegasos already tamed 
 and bridled. When the Chimaira was slain, Bellerophon, the story 
 ran, sought to rise to heaven on the back of his steed, but was either 
 thrown off or fell off from giddiness, while the horse continued to soar 
 upwards, like the cumuli clouds which far outstrip the sun as they 
 rise with him into the sky. 
 
 Pegasos, however, is not only the thundering horse of Zeus ; he 
 is also connected with the Muses, who in their swan forms x are the Pegasos. 
 beautiful clouds sailing along the sky to the soft music of the morning 
 breezes. The same blending of the myths of vapour and wind is 
 seen in the rivalry between the Pierides and the Helikonian Muses. 
 When the former sang, everything, it is said, became dark and 
 gloomy, as when the wind sighs through the pinewoods at night, 
 while with the song of the Muses the light of gladness returned, and 
 Helikon itself leaped up in its joy and rose heavenwards, until a blow 
 from the hoof of Pegasos smote it down, as a sudden thunderstorm 
 may check the soaring cirri in their heavenward way. But Pegasos 
 is still in this myth the moisture-laden cloud. From the spot dinted 
 by his hoof sprang the fountain Hippokrene, whether in Boiotia or in. 
 Argos. 2 
 
 ' Kallim. Hymn to Delos, 255. are given of the supposed footmark or* 
 
 2 These footprints are not peculiar Adam's Peak in Ceylon, 
 to European mythology. Two accounts 
 
504 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The na- 
 tivity of 
 Dionysos. 
 
 Section I.— DIONYSOS. 
 
 In all mythology the earth is treated as the mother of all living things. 
 ' It may seem almost a paradox to say that the idea of the earth as 
 a producer or restorer would be more likely to lead men on to the 
 notion of a power transcending nature than the impressions made 
 on the human mind by the phenomena of the daily or nightly heavens ; 
 but on further thought we can scarcely fail to see that the continuance 
 of life on the earth, the unceasing restlessness, the perpetual change 
 which is going on upon its surface, the sensitiveness of all vegetable 
 and animal substances to the influences which act upon them from 
 without, must inevitably lead men on to something more like a scheme 
 of philosophy than any which could be furnished by mere phrases 
 describing the phenomena of the day or the year. It does not follow 
 that the condition of those who were thus led on should be happier 
 than that of those who, from whatever cause, remained content with 
 recording the impressions made upon them daily by the sights and 
 sounds of the outward world. The history of the Semitic nations seems 
 to lend no countenance to any such notion. The Aryan was satisfied 
 with noting the birth of the sun from the darkness, his long toil, his 
 battle with countless enemies, his sleep in the land of forgetfulness, 
 and his rising again to life and strength in the joyous regions of the 
 dawn. The Phenician and the Canaanite could not rest here. They 
 were themselves part of a mysterious system which whirled them 
 through the realms of infinite space, a system characterised by an 
 exuberance of power, by a majestic and rhythmical movement, by a 
 force consciously exulting in the joyousness of its strength. In such 
 notions as these we have the surest foundations of an orgiastic 
 worship ; and the worship of all the Semitic tribes was orgiastic to 
 the core. The spirit of such a worship or ritual is beyond doubt 
 aggressive and contagious. The enthusiasm with which it fills the 
 worshippers will never allow him to rest in patient inactivity ; and it 
 
SEMITIC AND ARYAN DEITIES. 505 
 
 moves him, unhappily, only in the direction of evil. It is better to chap. 
 
 praise Ushas, or Eos, or the dawn, whatever name we may give it, for ' — '• — • 
 
 the light, the food, and all the other blessings which it brings to us, 
 than to lose ourselves in the labyrinth of cosmical movements and 
 in the idea of mystic revolutions which may be typified by the 
 frenzied dances of the worshippers. We may therefore say proudly 
 that the Semitic deities are cosmical, while those of the Aryan nations 
 are phenomenal ; but the Semitic and Aryan tribes acted and reacted 
 on each other, and, as we might suppose, the more violent influence 
 was exercised by the former. Under such circumstances there must be a 
 struggle, more or less fierce ; and the fact and the issue of this struggle 
 come before us especially in the myth of Dionyos arid Poseidon. 
 
 The stories of his birth differed widely. Some said that his The trans- 
 mother was burnt up at his birth by the lightnings of Zeus, others said f °™ations 
 that she died in the chest in which she was placed with her child. Some nysos. 
 said that he was born in Naxos, others on mount Nysa : but few 
 perhaps cared to distinguish between the many mountains which bore 
 this name. The Homeric hymn, passing by the earlier incidents of his 
 life, tells the simple tale how Dionysos in the first bloom of youth 
 was sitting on a jutting rock by the sea-shore, a purple robe thrown 
 over his shoulders and his golden locks streaming from his head, 
 when he was seized by some Tyrrhenian mariners who had seen him 
 as they were sailing by. These men placed him on board their vessel 
 and strongly bound him ; but the chains snapped like twigs and fell 
 from his hands and feet, while he sat smiling on them with his deep- 
 blue eyes. The helmsman at once saw the folly of his comrades, and 
 bade them let him. go lest the god, for such he must be, should do 
 them some harm. His words fell on unheeding ears, and they 
 declared that they would bear him away to Kypros, Egypt, or the 
 Hyperborean land. But no sooner had they taken to their oars than 
 a purple stream flowed along the decks, and the air was filled with 
 its fragrance. Then the vine-plant shot up the masts, and its branches 
 laden with rosy fruit hung from the yardarms, mingled with clustering 
 ivy, while the oar-pegs were all wreathed in glistening garlands. The 
 sailors now beseech Medeides, the steersman, to bring the ship to 
 shore ; but it is too late. For Dionysos now took the forms of a lion 
 and a bear, and thus rushing upon them drove the cruel mariners into 
 the sea, where they became dolphins, while the. good steersman was 
 crowned with honour and glory. 
 
 In this story we have clearly the manifestation of that power which Dionysos 
 ripens the fruits of the earth, and more especially the vine, in the greos. 
 several stages from its germ to its maturity. The fearful power dis- 
 
So6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Dionysos 
 the Wan- 
 derer. 
 
 played by the god is the influence which the grape exercises on man. 
 Its juice may flow as a quiet stream, filling the air with sweet odours; 
 but as men drink of it its aspect is changed, and it becomes like a 
 wild beast urging them to their destruction. But the penalty thus 
 inflicted upon the Tyrrhenian mariners is strictly for their evil treat- 
 ment of the god, 'whose character is merely jovial, and by no means 
 designedly malignant. Nor is the god himself invested with the 
 majesty of the supreme Zeus, or of Phoibos or Poseidon, although the 
 helmsman says that either of these gods may possibly have taken 
 the form of the youthful Dionysos. But before we find ourselves in 
 historical Hellas a complete change has taken place. Dionysos is now 
 the horned Zagreos after his death and resurrection, and the myth of 
 the son of Semele is anticipated or repeated by the legend of this child 
 of Persephone, whom his father Zeus places beside him on his throne. 
 In this, as in other cases, the jealousy of Here is roused, and at her 
 instigation the Titans slay Zagreos, and cutting up his limbs, 1 leave 
 only his heart, which Athene carries to Zeus. This heart is given to 
 Semel£, who thus becomes the mother of Dionysos. This slaughter 
 and cutting up of Zagreos is only another form of the rape of Perse- 
 phone herself. It is the stripping off of leaves and fruits in the 
 gloomy autumn which leaves only the heart or trunk of the tree to 
 give birth to the foliage of the coming year, and the resurrection of 
 Zagreos is the return of Persephone to her mother Demeter. Hence- 
 forth with Demet£r, who really is his mother also, Dionysos becomes 
 a deity of the first rank ; 2 and into his mythology are introduced a 
 number of foreign elements, pointing to the comparatively recent 
 influence exercised by Egypt and Syria on the popular Hellenic 
 religion. The opposition of the Thrakian Lykourgos and the Theban 
 Pentheus to the frenzied rites thus foisted on the cultus of Dionysos 
 is among the few indications of historical facts exhibited in Hellenic 
 mythology. 
 
 In the Homeric hymn the Tyrrhenian mariners avow their in- 
 tention of taking Dionysos to Egypt, or Ethiopia, or the Hyperbo- 
 rean land ; and this idea of change of abode becomes the prominent 
 
 1 The author of Mankind, their Origin 
 and Destiny, notices the reproduction of 
 the Dionysos myth in Christian hagiology. 
 "Dionysos is cut to pieces by the 
 Msenades on the top of mount Parnassus: 
 Denis is put to death in the same 
 manner on the summit of Montmartre. 
 Dionysos is placed in a tomb, and his 
 death is bewailed by women : the man- 
 gled limbs of Denis are collected by holy 
 
 females, who weeping convey them to a 
 tomb over which is built the abbey 
 church which bears his name. Dionysos 
 experiences a wonderful restoration to 
 life, and quits the coffin within which he 
 had been confined : Denis rises again 
 from the dead, replaces his severed head, 
 to the amazement of the spectators, and 
 then deliberately walks away." 
 ' Grote, Hist. Greece, i. 23. 
 
DIONYSOS THE WANDERER. 507 
 
 feature in the later developements of the wandering wine-god. It is S^n P ' 
 
 unnecessary to trace these journeys in detail, for when the aotion was ' ■ — -' 
 
 once suggested, every country and even every town would naturally 
 frame its own story of the wonderful things done by Dionysos as he 
 abode in each. Thus he flays Damaskos alive for refusing to allow 
 the introduction of the vine which Dionysos had discovered, and a 
 false etymology suggested the myth that a tiger bore him across the 
 river Tigris. But wherever he goes there is the same monotonous 
 exhibition of fury and frenzy by which mothers become strange unto 
 their own flesh and maidens abandon themselves to frantic excite- 
 ment. 1 All this is merely translating into action phrases which 
 might tell of the manifest powers of the wine-god ; and the epithets 
 applied to him show that these phrases were not limited merely to his 
 exciting or maddening influences. In his gentler aspects he is the 
 giver of joy, the healer of sicknesses, the guardian against plagues. 
 As such he is even a lawgiver, and a promoter of peace and concord. 
 As kindling new or strange thoughts in the mind, he is a giver of 
 wisdom and the revealer of hidden secrets of the future. In this, as 
 his more genuine and earlier character, he is attended by the beautiful 
 Charites, the maidens and ministers of the dawn-goddess Aphroditd, 
 who give place in the later mythology to fearful troops of raging 
 Mainades or Bassarides, bearing in their hands the budding thyrsus, 
 which marks the connexion of this cultus with that of the great 
 restoring or revivifying forces of the world. 2 
 
 The changes which come over the person of Dionysos are in The 
 accordance with the natural facts indicated by his attributes. Weak Sk^ysds. 
 and seemingly helpless in his infancy, like Hermes or Phoibos himself, 
 he is to attain m the end to boundless power j 8 but the intervening 
 
 1 In this aspect of his cosmical func- ter, and that this word was suggested 
 tions he is Dionysos Kechen6s, the by KampS, which according to Diodoros 
 gaping, open-mouthed lion, the type of was the name of a monster slain by 
 the raging, devouring sun, Athamas Dionysos, this monster being the vast 
 (Tammuz). — Brown, The Unicorn, 28. serpent belted round the world. He 
 
 2 The robe of fawn or leopard skin holds, however, that the inference was 
 worn by Dionysos and his followers false, the name Dionysos being really 
 cannot be explained by any reference to the Semitic Dian-nisi, the equivalent 
 his characteristics as the lord of the of the Egyptian Rhotamenti. Seep. 301. 
 vintage and the vintage revels. The If, like Athamas, Palaimon, and many 
 interpretation is foimd in the statement more, the name Dionysos is tjius to be 
 of Diodoros (i. 11), that it is simply the givenupasnon- Aryan, a strange Nemesis 
 star-spangled robe of the night. — Brown, attends those who may think that the 
 The Unicorn, 78. rending away of names supposed to be 
 
 * This idea of power seems to be Greek weakens the groundwork of the 
 
 involved in the name, if Mr. Brown be theory which sees in the great mass of 
 
 right in saying that the Greek Nyssa, as mythology the thoughts of men on the 
 
 meaning the post or turning-point on a phenomena of the outward world and 
 
 racecourse, becomes equivalent to Kamp- the course of the seasons and the year. 1} 
 
508 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book sta g es exhibit in him the languid and voluptuous character which 
 
 ' : ' marks the early foliage and vegetation of summer. Hence the Story 
 
 that Persephone placed her child Dionysos in the hands of Ino and 
 Athamas to be brought up as a girl; and from this character of 
 feminine gracefulness he passes to the vehement licence of his heated 
 worshippers. 
 The Persephone, as we have seen, is not his only mother ; nor is the 
 
 SionyM& f myth which makes him born of his mother Semele amidst the blaze 
 of the thunderbolts the only legend of his birth. He is spoken of 
 sometimes as a son of 16, or of Arge, of Dione, or Amaltheia, the 
 nurse of Zeus ; and there was a tale which related how, when Kadmos 
 heard that Zeus had made his child Semele a mother, he placed her 
 and her babe in a chest, and launched them, as Akrisios launched 
 Danae and her infant, upon the sea. The chest, according to local 
 tradition, was carried to Brasiai, where the babe was rescued by Ino ; 
 Semele, who was found dead, being solemnly buried on the shore. 1 
 Orgiastic Thus far the form of the myth, although it may not be genuinely 
 
 D?onyK>s°. f Hellenic and Aryan, wears a sufficiently Hellenised look : but even 
 here we have expressions implying that in the case of Dionysos new 
 methods of worship, if not some new religious ideas, were introduced 
 from Asia into the countries north and west of the Egean ; that these 
 changes were stoutly resisted, and that the opposition was overcome 
 by force. They also show that the new worship was orgiastic, in- 
 volving a tumult and even frenzy of feeling by no means congenial to 
 the ordinary Hellenic or Aryan mind, and that this excitement was 
 in direct relations with certain theories or notions of the forces at 
 work in the Kosmos. The dances of his worshippers may at times 
 have been furious ; but they were regulated so as to answer to what 
 was supposed to be the march of the planets round the central sun, 
 the dances of the stars across the nightly heavens. That this revolu- 
 tion (whatever may have been its extent) was effected first in Boiotia, 
 can scarcely be a matter for doubt. It is proved not only by the 
 localisation of the myths which indicate the change, but by the im- 
 portation of Phenician names and words into the Boiotian vocabulary ; 
 by the use of Banna, for instance, as the equivalent of Thugater, and 
 
 any are disposed on this score to exult ' Preller ( Gr. Myth. i. 523) regards 
 
 over Professor Max Miiller, they are the name Dionysos as simply an epithet 
 
 met by the trenchant remark of Mr. of Zeus as the Nysaian or ripening god : 
 
 Sayce, that " the more the Babylonian "Der Name scheint einen feuchten, 
 
 mythology is examined, the more solar saftig fruchtbaren Ort zu bedeuten, wie 
 
 is its origin found to be," and that, with jenes Leibethron am Makedonischen 
 
 the exception of Anu and Hea, "the Olymp, wo Dionysos und Orpheus seit 
 
 great deities seem all to go back to the alter Zeit in der Umgebung der Musen 
 
 sun." verehrt wurden." 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF DIONYSOS. 509 
 
 by the fact that the city which claimed supremacy over all the Boiotian CHAP. 
 
 towns has a non-Hellenic name, which Mr. Brown idenjjfies with • '■ — - 
 
 the Semitic Tebah, the Kibotos, ark, chest, or coffin, of the Septua- 
 gint, as the mystic egg-chest of Uasar [Osiris] and Adonis, the 
 Kalathos of Demeter ; the envelopement and covering of the growth 
 and life-power of the world, a fit mother city for Dionysos and his 
 train. 1 
 
 That Dionysos became for the Greeks (whatever he may have Dionysos 
 been at the first) vastly more than the mere god of the vintage and ° n ™ 6st£s ' 
 the soil, there can be no question. The epithets in the hymns ad- Bassareua. 
 dressed to him and to Bassareus give more than sufficient evidence 
 of this; and when we turn to the tragic poets, we find that their 
 Dionysos is a phallic thyrsos-bearing, serpent-crowned god, in his 
 savage aspect Omestes, the eater of raw flesh, the bloodthirsty 
 brother of the Orthian Artemis who took delight in the torments 
 of Spartan youths scourged (not unfrequently to death) in his 
 honour. It is something that the undesigned testimony of some old 
 myths shows that to this horrible Semitic ritual were owing just those 
 features in Hellenic thought and worship which are least attractive, 
 and those also which can only be described as coarse, cruel, and 
 revolting, and that the monsters of Eastern conception which the 
 Semitic nations worshipped as their gods remained for them monsters 
 always. The conclusion, if it be true, is not unwelcome, that the 
 custom of human sacrifice, which happily never laid hold on the 
 Greek world, was a custom which, so far as it was adopted at all, 
 came from the East. 
 
 The struggle was a hard one ; but the victory of Dionysos was Dionyso* 
 not so complete as that of Poseidon. By Poseidon the true sea-god p"s eid5n , 
 Nereus was left practically out of sight and out of mind ; but 
 Dionysos could do no more than win himself a throne by the side 
 of that of Demeter and Apollon, in the joint ritual of Delphoi and 
 Eleusis. 
 
 To the Greek the name of Bacchos, to denote this god, was Bnc:rho<=. 
 almost as familiar as that of Dionysos. The name Zeus Meilichios 
 was also a familiar sound in his ears, and it conveyed to him the 
 notion of a being who is mild and merciful. But he did not know 
 that Meilichios and Bacchos were only different forms of the same 
 name, as in truth they seem to be. Meilichios is as much and as 
 little Greek as Palaimon. It was simply the Greek word which 
 
 1 Great Dionysiak Myth, ii. 238. and that Thebai, or Ox-town, was the 
 Mr. Brown adds that Theba amongst proper capital of Thebais, Boiotia, or 
 the Aramoans was the equivalent of ox, Ox-land. 
 
cjq MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 came nearest in sound to the Semitic Moloch, the king. Seen in its 
 ■ full form in Ha-mileas, it passes into the abraded forms Mocar, 
 Macar, and Micar, for Molcar, Malcar, and Milcar. Mocar again 
 appears in the form Bocar, Macar or Bacar, and so with the rest. 
 So, too, Bokchus or Bocchus, the name of certain Mauretanian 
 kings, is also written Bocus and Mocus, and is a contraction of 
 Malchus and Malek : and so in the Greek Bacchos we have a 
 variant form of Melkarth, the Boiotian Melikertes. But Bacchos is 
 confessedly Dionysos, and thus Dionysos is himself Zeus Meilichios, 
 the Moloch, or king. As to the name Dionysos, we can scarcely 
 speak with the same confidence. It may be the Assyrian Daian-nisi, 
 or Dian-nisi, the judge of men ; and if so, it would correspond strictly 
 to the Hamitic Rhotamenti, Rhadamanthys. 1 
 
 Section II.— DEMETER. 
 
 The story The myth which gives most fully and most clearly the history of 
 
 ph^ne 56 " * e eart ' 1 tnrou gh tne changing year is to be found not so much in 
 the legend of Adonis as in the legend of Persephone herself. This 
 story as related in the Hymn to Demeter tells us how the beautiful 
 maiden (and in her relations with the upper world she is pre-eminently 
 the maiden, Kore), was playing with her companions on the flowery 
 Nysian plain, when far away across the meadow her eye caught the 
 gleam of a narcissus flower. As she ran towards it alone, a fragrance, 
 which reached to the heaven and made the earth and sea laugh for 
 gladness, filled her with delight; but when she stretched out her arms 
 to seize the stalk with its hundred flowers, the earth gaped, and 
 before her stood the immortal horses bearing the car of the king 
 Polydegmon, who placed her by his side. In vain the maiden cried 
 aloud, and made her prayer to the son of Kronos ; for Zeus was far 
 away, receiving the prayers and offerings of men in his holy place, 
 and there was none to hear save Hekate, "who in her secret cave 
 heard the wail of her agony, and Helios, the bright son of HyperiSn, 
 and one other — the loving mother, whose heart was pierced as with 
 a sword, as the cry of her child reached her ears, a cry which echoed 
 mournfully over hills, and vales, and waters. Then Dem§ter threw 
 the dark veil over her shoulders, and hastened like a bird overland 
 and sea, searching for her child. But neither god nor man could 
 give her tidings until, with torch in hand, she reached the cave of 
 Hekate, who knew only of the theft of the maiden, but could not tel' 
 1 Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, ch. ix. sect. vi. 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE LOST MAIDEN. 511 
 
 whither she had gone. From Helios, whom she addresses as the chap. 
 
 VIII 
 
 all-seeing, Demgter receives clearer tidings and a deeper sympathy, *—— ^— ■ — ■ 
 and now she learns that her child is the bride of Aidoneus, who reigns 
 in the unseen land beneath the earth. The grief of the mourning 
 mother is almost swallowed up in rage, as she leaves the home of the' 
 gods and wanders along the fields and by the cities of men, so changed 
 in form, and so closely veiled that none could know the beautiful 
 queen who had till then shed a charm of loveliness over all the wide 
 world. At last she sat down by the wayside, near Eleusis, where the 
 maidens of the city came to draw water from the fountain. Here, 
 when questioned by the daughters of Keleos the king, the mourner 
 tells them that her name is Deo, and that, having escaped from 
 Cretan kidnappers, she seeks a refuge and a home, where she may 
 nurse young children. Such a home she finds in the house of Keleos, 
 which the poet makes her enter veiled from head to foot. 1 Not a 
 word does she utter in answer to the kindly greetings of Metaneira, 
 and the deep gloom is lessened only by the jests and sarcasms of 
 Iambe. When Metaneira offers her wine, she says that now she may 
 not taste it, but asks for a draught of water mingled with flour and 
 mint, and then takes charge of the new-born son of Keleos, whom 
 she names Demophoon. Under her care the babe thrives marvel- 
 lously, though he has no nourishment either of bread or of milk. 
 The kindly nurse designs, indeed, to make him immortal ; and thus 
 by day she anoints him with ambrosia, and in the night she plunges 
 him, like a torch, into a bath of fire. But her purpose is frustrated 
 by the folly of Metaneira, who, seeing the child thus basking in the 
 flames, screams with fear, and is told by Demeter that, though her 
 child shall ever receive honour because he has slumbered in her arms, 
 still, like all the sons of men, and like Achilleus himself, he must die. 
 Nevertheless, though she cast the child away from her, she abode 
 yet in the house of Keleos, mourning and grieving for the maiden, 
 so that all things in the heaven above and the earth beneath felt 
 the weight of her sorrow. In vain the ploughs turned up the soil, 
 in vain was the barley seed scattered along the furrows. In Olympos 
 itself there was only gloom and sadness, so that Zeus charged Iris 
 to go and summon Demeter to the palace of the gods. But neither 
 her words nor those of the deities who follow her avail to lessen her 
 grief or to bend her will. The mourning mother will not leave the 
 place of her exile till her eyes have looked upon her child once more. 
 
 1 The hymn-writer forgets for a head touched the roof, while a blaze of 
 ■ moment the veiled Mater Dolorosa, light streamed through the doors «ind 
 when at her entrance he says that her filled the dwelling. 
 
512 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Iduna. 
 
 The stu- 
 
 pifying 
 
 Narcissus. 
 
 Then Hermes, at the bidding of Zeus, enters the dismal under world, 
 and Polydegmon consents to the return of Persephone, who leaps 
 with delight for the joy that is coming. Still he cannot altogether 
 give up his bride, and Persephone finds that she has unwittingly 
 eaten the pomegranate seed, 1 and must come back to Aidoneus 
 again. But even with this condition the joy of the meeting is scarcely 
 lessened. A third part only of the year she must be queen in Hades; 
 through all the other months she is to be once more the beautiful 
 maiden who sported on the plains of Nysa. The wrath of Demeter 
 has departed with her grief, the air is filled with fragrance, and the 
 cornfields wave with the ripening grain. 
 
 In Teutonic tradition Persephone is represented by Iduna, the 
 beautiful, whom Loki brings back in the shape of a quail (Wachtel), 
 a myth which cannot fail to remind us of Artemis Ortygia. Loki 
 here distinctly plays the part of Perseus, for the giants of cold hasten 
 after him as he bears away Iduna, as the Gorgon sisters chase Perseus 
 on his way to the Hyperborean gardens. This myth in Bunsen's 
 belief " is an exact counterpart of the earliest myth of Herakles, who 
 falls into the sleep of winter and lies there stiff and stark till lolaus 
 wakes him by holding a quail to his nose." a This idea of the palsied 
 or feeble sun is reproduced in the Egyptian Harp-i-chruti (the Grecised' 
 Harpokrates), the sun regarded as an infant, the lame child of Isis, 
 the earth, — a phrase which carries us to that wide class of legends, 
 which speak of the sun, or the wind, or the light, as weak, if not 
 impotent, in their first manifestations. Osiris can be avenged only 
 by Horos, the full-grown sun, after the vernal equinox. 
 
 Although with the mythical history of Persephone are mingled 
 some institutional legends explaining the ritual of the Eleusinian 
 mysteries, the myth itself is so transparent as to need but little inter- 
 pretation. The stupifying narcissus with its hundred flowers springing 
 from a single stem ,is in the opinion of Colonel Mure a monstrous 
 hyperbole ; yet that must be a narcotic which lulls to sleep the vege- 
 tation of nature in the bright yet sad autumn days when heaven and 
 earth smile with the beauty of the dying year, and the myth necessarily 
 
 1 " Am haufigsten ward der Granat- 
 apfel als Symbol des Zeugung und 
 Empfangnissverwendet, waswohl davon 
 herriihrt dass er, weil seine Kerne 
 zugleich Samenkerne sind, Samen- 
 behaltniss ist ; und insofern diese Kerne 
 in zahlreicher Menge in ihm enthalten 
 sind, diente er sehr passend zum Symbol 
 des Geschlechtsverhaltnisses. ... In 
 den Mythen erscheint der Granatbaum 
 
 als entsprossen aus dem auf die Erde 
 geflossenen Blute eines des Zeugegliedes 
 beraiibten Gottes : und Nana, die 
 Tochter des Flussgotts Sangarus, wurde 
 schon dadurch schwanger, weil sie einea 
 Granatapfel in ihren Schoos gelegt 
 hatte (Arnob. adv. Gent. 5)."— Nork, 
 s.v. Apfel. 
 
 ! God in History, ii. 488. 
 
THE SUMMER CHILD. 513 
 
 chose the flower whose name denoted this dreamy lethargy. Even chap. 
 
 in her gloomy nether abode the character of the maiden is jiot wholly • ^ — • 
 
 changed. She is still not the fierce queen who delights in death, but 
 the daughter yearning to be clasped once more in her mother's arms. 
 That mother is carefully nursing the child of Keleos, the seed which 
 grows without food or drink, except the nourishment of the dew and 
 of the heat which still lurks in the bosom of the winter-smitten earth. 
 But while she is engaged in this task, she is mourning still for the 
 daughter who has been taken away from her, and the dreary time 
 which passes before they meet again is the reign of the gloomy winter, 
 which keeps the leaves off the trees and condemns the tillers of the 
 soil to unwilling idleness. The sequel of the hymn simply depicts 
 the joy of returning spring and summer, when the mourning mother 
 is exalted in glory to the everlasting halls of Olympos. Hence, so 
 far as the meaning of the myth is concerned, it matters little whether 
 Demet£r be herself the earth grieving for the lost treasures of summer, 
 or the dawn-mother mourning for the desolation of the earth which she 
 loves. 1 
 
 This story is naturally found in all lands where the difference The slee P 
 
 rr- • « , ot Winter. 
 
 between summer and winter is sufficiently marked to leave on the 
 mind the impression of death and resurrection. Its forms of course 
 vary indefinitely, but it is in fact repeated virtually in every solar 
 legend. The beautiful earth laughing amidst the summer flowers is 
 as truly the bride of the sun as is the blushing dawn with its violet 
 tints. The grief of Demeter for Korg is the sorrow of Apollon when 
 bereft of Daphne, as its converse is the mourning of PsychS for Eros 
 or Selene for Endymion. But there is hope for all. Sarpedon, 
 Adonis, Memnon, Arethousa, shall all rise again, — but only when 
 the time is come to join the being who has loved them, or who has 
 the power to rouse them from their sleep. The utter barrenness of 
 the earth, so long as the wrath of Demeter lasts, answers to the 
 locking up of the treasures in Teutonic folk-lore ; but the awakening 
 of spring may be said to be the result of the return, not only of the 
 maiden from the under world, but of the sun from the far-off regions 
 to which he had departed. In the former case the divine messenger 
 comes to summon the daughter from the unseen land ; in the other 
 
 1 Professor Max Miiller prefers the Poseidon or Helios to ApollSn. Gaia 
 
 latter explanation and refers the name is thus the actual soil from which the 
 
 to the Sanskrit dyavamatar. — Lectures, deadly narcissus springs, and therefore 
 
 second series, 517. If Demeter, or Deo, the accomplice of Polydegmon, while 
 
 as she also styles herself, be only a Demete'r is the mysterious power which 
 
 name for the earth, then Gaia stands to causes all living things to grow and 
 
 DemSter in the relation of Nereus to ripen. 
 
 2 L 
 
5H 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The 
 story of 
 Rapunzel. 
 
 the sleeper rests unawakened until she feels the magic touch of the 
 -only being who can rouse her. With either of these ideas it was 
 possible and easy to work out the myth into an infinite variety of 
 detail; and thus in the northern story Persephone becomes the 
 maiden Bsynhild who sleeps within the flaming walls, as the heroine 
 of the Hindu tales lies in a palace of glass surrounded by seven 
 hedges of spears. But she must sleep until the knight arrives who 
 is to slay the dragon, and the successful exploit of Sigurd would 
 suggest the failure of weaker men who had made the same attempt 
 before him. Thus we have the germ of those countless tales in which 
 the father promises to bestow his daughter on the man who can either 
 leap over the wall of spears or work his way through the hedge of 
 thorns, or slay the monster who guards her dwelling, death being 
 the penalty for all who try and fail. The victorious knight is the 
 sun when it has gained sufficient strength to break the chains of 
 winter and set the maiden free; the luckless beings who precede 
 him are the suns which rise and set, making vain efforts in the first 
 bleak days of spring to rouse nature from her deathlike slumbers. 
 This is the simple tale of Dornroschen or Briar Rose, who pricks her 
 finger with a spindle and falls into a sleep of a hundred years, the 
 spindle answering here to the stupifying narcissus in the myth of 
 Persephong. This sudden touch of winter, arresting all the life and 
 activity of nature, followed in some climates by a return of spring 
 scarcely less sudden, would naturally suggest the idea of human 
 sleepers resuming their tasks at the precise point at which they were 
 interrupted ; and thus when, after many princes who had died while 
 trying to force their way through the hedge of briars, the king's son 
 arrives at the end of the fated time and finds the way open, an air 
 of burlesque is given to the tale (scarcely more extravagant, however, 
 than that which Euripides has imparted to the deliverer of Alkestis), 
 and the cook on his waking gives the scullion boy a blow which he 
 had raised his hand to strike a hundred years ago. 
 
 This myth of the stealing away of the summer-child is told in 
 Grimm's story of Rapunzel, where the witch's garden is the earth 
 with its fertilising powers pent up within high walls. Rapunzel her- 
 self is Kore, the maiden, the Rose of the Alhambra, while the witch 
 is the icy Fredegonda, whose story Washington Irving has told with 
 marvellous but unconscious fidelity. The maiden is shut up, like 
 Danae, in a high tower, but the sequel reverses the Argive legend. 
 It is not Zeus who comes in the form of a golden shower but the 
 prince who ascends on the long golden locks which stream to the 
 earth from the head of Rapunzel. In the story of the Dwarfs Perse- 
 
THE WINTER PRISON. SIS 
 
 phone 1 is the maiden who eats a golden apple (the narkissos), and chap. 
 
 thereupon sinks a hundred fathoms deep into the earthy where the • — ^ — 
 
 prince (Herakles) finds her with the nine-headed dragon resting on 
 her lap. The return of Persephone is strangely set forth in the story 
 of the House in the Wood, which in other stories is the house or case 
 of ice in which the seemingly dead princess is laid. This house breaks 
 up, like the ice, at the return of spring. The sides crack. " The doors 
 were slammed back against the walls ; the beams groaned as if they 
 were being riven away from their fastenings ; the stairs fell down, and 
 at last it seemed as if the whole roof fell in." * On waking from her 
 sleep the maiden finds herself in a splendid palace, surrounded by 
 regal luxuries. Persephone has returned from the dreary abode of 
 Hades to the green couch of the life-giving mother. 
 
 The gradual lengthening of the days after the winter solstice is The 
 singularly seen in Grimm's story of the Nix of the Mill Pond. In ing days, 
 this tale, the dawn-bride, severed from her husband, betakes herself 
 to an old woman, who comforts her and bids her comb her long hair 
 by the water-side and see what would happen. As she plies her 
 golden comb, a wave rolling to the bank carries it away. Presently 
 the waters began to bubble and the head of the huntsman (Alpheios) 
 appears. " He did not speak, but looked at his wife sorrowfully, and 
 at the same moment another wave rolled on and covered his head." 
 A second time she goes to the old woman, who gives her a flute, and 
 this time there " appeared not only the head, but half the body of the 
 man, who stretched out his arms towards his wife ; but at the same 
 moment a wave came and covering his head drew him down again." 
 The third time she comes with a spinning-wheel of gold (the wheel of 
 Ixion), and the huntsman leaping out of the waters hurries away with 
 his wife from the demons who seek to seize them. In the story c 
 Jungfrau Maleen (Kore), the princess and her maid are shut up in a 
 dark tower, and are constrained to scrape a hole through the wall in 
 order to let in the light. When they are able to peep out they see a 
 blue sky, but everything on the earth is desolate as at the close of a 
 northern winter, and like Cinderella, the maiden is obliged to take 
 the cook's place in the king's palace, where at length, as in other stories, 
 
 1 With this may be compared the clouds at that season of the year and 
 
 Slavonic account of the transition from causes them to pour forth rain." — 
 
 winter into spring. "In the spring, Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 
 
 according to a White-Russian tradition, 93. As these phrases scarcely describe 
 
 Perun goes forth in his fiery car, and the phenomena of a Russian spring in 
 
 crushes with his blazing darts the demons Europe, Mr. Ralston regards them as 
 
 from whose wounds the blood is some- pointing to the time when Slaves, 
 
 times described as streaming forth. Teutons, and Hindus were still an un- 
 
 That is to say, the lightning pierces the divided people. 
 
Si6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The ill- 
 tempered 
 Princess. 
 
 Story of 
 Surya Bai. 
 
 she becomes the bride of the prince. The Norse tale of the Old 
 • Dame and her Hen repeats the same myth. Here the maiden who 
 falls down into the cave within the hill is disconsolate because she 
 cannot get back to her mother, " who is hard pinched, she knows, 
 for meat and drink, and has no one with her," a true picture of the 
 lonely Demeter on the Eleusinian plain. The Rinkrank (Hades) of 
 the German story is here a Troll, who is cheated in the same way, 
 the sisters whom the Maiden sends back to the upper world before 
 herself being the less genial spring-days which precede the return of 
 the true summer. 
 
 In the Spanish story Jungfrau Maleen assumes a less attractive 
 form. She is here the ill-tempered princess, who is shut up in a 
 castle which has no door. To this stronghold comes a poor young 
 knight in search of adventures, the Odysseus, Sigurd, Boots, or Beggar, 
 of Greek and Teutonic legends ; and he and his three companions 
 for a long time strive in vain to make a breach in the wall. The grip 
 of winter is too strong to be overcome, and the hill of ice cannot yet 
 be scaled. At last they hear a cry which seems to come from an old 
 well overgrown with creeping plants ; but on opening the cover of the 
 well, they find that the hole seems to go down to the very depths of 
 the earth, — in short, to Hades. They then set to work to twist a 
 rope by which to descend for the rescue of the maiden who is im- 
 prisoned in this dismal dungeon ; but when it is ready, his companions 
 draw off from further share in the enterprise. Sigurd alone can ride 
 through the flames to awaken Brynhild, and the young knight alone 
 has the courage to go down into the black abyss. The maiden who 
 has been carried off by a horned demon becomes, of course, the 
 knight's wife. For awhile she behaves fairly, but at length her ill- 
 temper so far gets the better of her that the knight is heartily glad 
 when the demon takes her away once more. In other words, the 
 worn-out summer puts on the sorry garb of autumn, and is again 
 carried away into the winter-land. 
 
 But far more noteworthy is the Hindu story of Little Surya Bai, 
 or the sun-child, as exhibiting a developement of the myth far more 
 elaborate than that of either Hellenic or Teutonic legends. This 
 beautiful child, the daughter of a poor milkwoman, is stolen by two 
 eagles, who bear her to a nest made of wood hooped with iron, and 
 having seven doors. Here, having lavished upon her all the costliest 
 treasures of the earth, they leave her, to go and fetch a diamond ring 
 for her little finger. While they are still away, the fire in the nest, 
 without which the maiden could not cook her food, is put out ; and 
 1 Patranas, or Spanish Stories, legendary and traditional. 
 
StrRYA BAI. 517 
 
 in her perplexity, Surya, peering over the walls of the nest, sees smoke chap. 
 
 curling up afar off, and going towards it, finds herself at the tiouse of a • — : — 
 
 Rakshas, or evil demon, whose mother tries to keep her that she may 
 serve as a feast for her son. Surya. Bai, however, will not stay ; and 
 when the Rakshas, learning from his mother what a prize he had 
 missed, comes to the nest, he finds the little maiden asleep, and in 
 his frantic efforts to break open the walls, leaves a piece of his claw 
 sticking in the crack of the door. This nail is, of course, the spindle 
 which wounds Briar Rose and the narcissus which stupifies Perse- 
 phone' ; and thus Surya, placing her hand unwittingly upon it, loses 
 all consciousness. In this state she is found by a Raja, who, after 
 gazing long upon her, feels sure that her slumber is not the sleep of 
 death, and spies the claw sticking in her hand. As soon as it is taken 
 out, Surya. revives, and becomes the bride of the Raja, thus rousing 
 the jealousy of his other wife, as 16 rouses the jealousy of Here ; and 
 like 16, Surya is made to disappear, not by the stinging of a gadfly, 
 but by the fate which HSre had designed for Semele and her child 
 Dionysos. Surya. is enticed to the edge of a tank and thrown in ; but 
 on the spot where she fell there sprang up a golden sunflower, which 
 the Raja sees as he wanders about in his inconsolable agony. The 
 flower bends lovingly towards him, and he lavishes on it the wealth 
 of affection which he had bestowed on Surya, until the jealous wife 
 has the flower carried into a forest and burnt. From its ashes a 
 mango tree rises, with one fair blossom on its topmost bough, which 
 swells into a fruit so beautiful that it is to be kept only for the Raja. 
 This mango, when ripe, falls into the can of the poor milkwoman, 
 who carries it home, and is astonished to see that the can contains 
 not a mango, but a tiny lady richly dressed in red and gold and no 
 bigger than the fruit. But she grows with wonderful quickness, and 
 when she reaches her full stature, she is again seen by the Raja, 
 who claims his bride, but is repulsed by the milkwoman. The truth, 
 however, cannot be hid : and the Raja and the milkwoman each 
 recognise the lost maiden, when Surya tells her own tale and con- 
 fesses that an irresistible impulse made her throw herself into the milk- 
 can, while her form was yet that of the mango. 
 
 The milkwoman of this myth is simply Demeter in the aspect The 
 with which the Vedic hymn-writers were most familiar. To them the ^^ hl ° s 
 earth was pre-eminently the being who nourishes all living things 
 with heavenly milk, who satisfies all desires without being herself ex- 
 hausted. 1 The eagles which carry the child are the clouds of sunrise 
 
 1 I can but follow here the writer Deccan Tales, which appeared in the 
 of a very able review of Miss Frere's Spectator for April 25, 1868. Tlv 
 
5»8 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Holda. 
 
 and sunset — the Asvins or the Dioskouroi, who carry away Aithra 
 - from Athens, the swan-maidens of Teutonic folk-lore, the Erinyes and 
 Harpyiai of Hellenic legend. The nest is the secret place where 
 Persephone is hidden, whether Hades, or the lonely heath where 
 Brynhild sleeps, or the gloomy Niflheim where Fafhir guards the 
 stolen treasures. But dreary though it may be, it is not without fire 
 to keep up the maiden's life, as that of Demophoon is strengthened 
 by the fiery bath of Demeter. The journey of Surya, to the Rakshas' 
 country denotes the blight and frost which may nip and chill the first 
 vegetation of spring. From this slumber she is roused by the Raja, 
 who, like Sigurd, is the sun. The jealousy of the elder queen is 
 matched, not only by that of Here, but more precisely by that of Eos, 
 the rival of Prokris. Thus ' Suryst, exposed to countless dangers, is , 
 yet imperishable. If thrown into the water, she rises like Aphrodite 
 in renewed beauty : if consumed by fire, the fruit-tree rises from her 
 ashes, until at last the mango falls into the milkwoman's can as the 
 ripe fruit must fall into the lap of the earth, its mother. 
 
 The idea of Demeter finds an expression in the Teutonic Holda, 
 the benignant goddess or lady, who reappears as Frau Berchta, the 
 bright maiden, the Phaethousa or Lampetie" of the Odyssey. The 
 few details which we have of these beings agree strictly with the 
 meaning of their names. Thus Holda gently wraps the earth in a 
 mantle of snow, and when the snow falls she is said to be making 
 her bed, of which the feathers fly about, reminding us of the Scythian 
 statement made by Herodotos that the air in the northernmost part 
 -of Europe is always full of feathers. This Frau Holda (verelde) is 
 transformed into Pharaildis, a name said to have been given to 
 Herodias, who in the medieval myth was confounded with her 
 daughter, and of whom the story was told that she loved the Baptist, 
 and determined never to wed any man if she could not be his wife ; 
 that Herod, discovering this, ordered John to be put to death, and 
 that the bringing of the head on a charger was not for any purposes 
 of insult, but that she might bathe it with her tears. 1 The head flies 
 from her kisses, and she is left mourning like Aphrodite for Adonis. 
 A third part of the human race is made subject to her by way of 
 atonement for her sufferings. The same myth is told of dame 
 Habonde in the Roman de la Rose. 2 
 
 passages quoted are from the Atharva 
 Veda, but these are perhaps more valu- 
 able for the purpose of illustrating the 
 current folk-lore than if they occurred 
 in the Rig Veda. We see, however, a 
 conception as early as that of the Ge 
 Pammetor of ^Eschylos in the invocation 
 
 "May the Earth which the Asvins 
 meted out, on which Vishnu hath step- 
 ped, which the mighty Indra has rid 
 of all his enemies, may Earth pour out 
 her milk— mother Earth to me her son." 
 
 1 Grimm, D. M. 262. 
 
 2 lb. 205. 
 
DtM^TER AND IASl6N. 519 
 
 It is in this kindly and attractive guise that Persephone" appears chap. 
 
 in the myth of Eleusis. Here the story took root most firfnly ; and *— '• — • 
 
 the fountain where the daughters of Keleos accosted the mourning s inian 
 mother, and the spot where Iamb& assailed her with friendly jests, myth * 
 were pointed out to the veneration of the faithful who came to 
 celebrate her solemn mysteries. To the Eleusinians, beyond a doubt, 
 the whole narrative was genuine and sacred history. 1 But this belief 
 would, of course, explain as little to them as it would to us the origin 
 and nature of the story. Both are alike laid bare by a comparison 
 which has shown that every incident may be matched with incidents 
 in other legends so far resembling each other as to leave no room for 
 questioning their real identity, yet so far unlike as to preclude the 
 idea that the one was borrowed from or directly suggested by the 
 other. But the Eleusinian could adduce in evidence of his belief not 
 only the mysteries which were there enacted, but the geographical 
 names which the story consecrated ; and here he found himself in 
 the magic circle from which the inhabitants of Athens or Argos, 
 Arkadia or Lykia, Delos or Ortygia, could never escape. Eleusis 
 itself was a town or village in the land of the dawn-goddess Athene, 
 and the name denoted simply the approach of Demeter to greet her 
 returning child. If, again, it pleased the Athenians to think that 
 Persephone was stolen away from Kolonos, or even from the spot 
 where she met her mother, there were other versions which localised 
 this incident on some Nysaian plain, as in the Homeric hymn, in the 
 Sicilian Enna, or near the well of Arethousa. 
 
 As we might expect, the myth of Deme'ter is intertwined with Demeter 
 the legends of many other beings, both human and divine. Like sifln. 
 Herakles and Zeus, she has, in many'lands, many loves and many 
 children. As the wife of Poseidon she is the mother of Despoina 
 and Orion. 8 The earth must love the beautifully tinted skies of 
 morning; and thus Demeter loves Iasion, 3 the son of Zeus and 
 Hemera, the heaven and the day, or of Minos and the nymph 
 Pyronea, 4 and becomes the mother of Plouton or Ploutos, the god 
 
 1 Grote, History of Greece, i. 55. the worship of the mother of the gods 
 
 2 Max Muller, Lechires, second series, was not Phrygian in origin. — Brown, 
 517; Apollod. iii. 6, 8. Great Dionysiak Myth, i. 129. 
 
 * Iasion is the father of Korybas, and 4 The name Minos, it has been 
 must perhaps thus take his place along already said, is, like Menu, the same 
 with his descendants the Korybantes word as man the measurer or thinker, 
 as belonging to the world rather of But Minos himself is the husband of Pa- 
 Semitic than of Aryan mythology ; but siphafi the light-giver, and the father of 
 it does not therefore follow of necessity Ariadne who guides Iheseus to the den 
 that his name is not Aryan. As he is of the Minotauros. It is scarcely neces- 
 said to have introduced the worship of sary to give all the names which occur 
 Kybele into Asia, this may mean that in the story of Iasi&n or other myths of 
 
520 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II 
 
 Ceres and 
 Saturnus. 
 
 who guards the treasures of the earth, and whom the Latins identified 
 with Hades. She must hate those who spoil her trees and waste 
 her fruits; hence she punishes with fearful hunger the earth-tearer 
 Erysichthon. As possessing and guarding the wealth of the earth, 
 she takes her place among the Chthonian deities, whose work is 
 carried on unseen by mortal eyes. As teaching men how to plough, 
 to sow, and to reap, she is Demeter Thesmophoros, the lover of law, 
 order, peace and justice. 
 
 Of the Latin Ceres it is enough to say that although, like other 
 Latin deities, she has no special mythology, her name at least is 
 significant She is strictly the ripener of the fruits of the earth ; and 
 since, as such, she could have no attribute wholly inconsistent with 
 the character of the Greek Demeter, it became easy to attach to Ceres 
 all the stories told of the Hellenic goddess. 1 With the name of Ceres 
 we ought to connect that of Saturnus, a god who has no feature in 
 common with the Greek Kronos with whom the later Romans 
 identified him, as they identified his wife Ops, a name corresponding 
 in meaning with that of Ploutos, with Rhea. Saturnus, as the sower of 
 the seed, 2 answers far more nearly to the Greek Triptolemos, who is 
 taught by DemetSr. At the end of his work Saturn is said to have 
 vanished from the earth, as Persephone disappears when the summer 
 has come to an end ; and the local tradition went that Latium was 
 his lurking-place. 8 
 
 Erichtho- 
 mos. 
 
 Section III— THE CHILDREN OF THE EARTH. 
 
 As the Eleusinian myth tells the story of the earth and her 
 treasures under the name of Demeter, so the Athenian legend tells 
 the same story under the name of Erechtheus or Erichthonios, a son 
 of Hephaistos, according to one version, by Atthis, a daughter of 
 Kranaos, according to another, by Athene herself. 4 In the latter 
 
 Sarad, autumn, viz. sri or sri, to cook or 
 ripen. Srt, or Lakshmi, is in the Rama- 
 yana the wife of Vishnu. Like Aphro- 
 dite', she rises from the sea, but with 
 four arms, and her dwelling is in the 
 Lotos. 
 
 2 Breal, Hercule et Cacus, 38. 
 
 * The name must necessarily be 
 traced through its cognate forms ; and 
 thus, before we can judge positively, we 
 must compare it with Latini, Lakini, 
 Lavini, &c. 
 
 4 As Kranal is a title of Athene, 
 Atthis the child of Kranaos is probably 
 only Athene under a slight disguise. 
 
 a like kind. There are but few which 
 would be found to withstand the test of 
 philological analysis ; but even where 
 this is the case, we are fully justified in 
 selecting those versions which explain 
 themselves. The mere fact that in one 
 of them Iasion is called a son of Zeus 
 and Hemera, is sufficient evidence that 
 this was one way of accounting for his 
 existence ; and this phrase is trans- 
 parent. 
 
 1 The name has by some been iden- 
 tified with the Greek Kore, by others 
 with the Latin Garanus or Recaranus. 
 By Professor Max Miiller it is referred 
 to the root which yields the Sanskrit 
 
ERECHTHEUS AND KEKROPS. 521 
 
 version Athene becomes his mother when she goes to Hephaistos to CHAP. 
 ask for a suit of armour, the fire-fashioned raiment of the morning. . ' • 
 
 When the child is born she nourishes it, as Demeter nursed Demo- 
 phoon, with the design of rendering it immortal ; and, placing it in a 
 chest, she gave the child to Pandrosos, Herse, and Agraulos, charging 
 them not to raise the lid. 1 They disobey, and finding that the coils 
 of a snake are folded round the body of the child, are either slain by 
 Athene or throw themselves down the precipice of the Akropolis. 
 Henceforth the dragon-bodied or snake-bound Erichthonios dwells in 
 the shrine of Athene, and under her special protection. 
 
 There were other stories of Erichthonios or Erechtheus a which Erech- 
 some mythographers assign to a grandson of the supposed child of 
 Hephaistos and Athene\ Of this latter Erechtheus, the son of Pan- 
 dion, it is said that he was killed by the thunderbolts of Zeus, after his 
 daughters had been sacrificed to atone for the slaughter of Eumolpos 
 by the Athenians — a tale • manifestly akin to the punishment of 
 Tantalos after the crime committed on his son Pelops. 
 
 But the legend of Erichthonios is merely a repetition of the myth Kekrops. 
 of the dragon-bodied Kekrops, who gave his name to the land which 
 had till then been called Akte, and who became the father not only 
 of Erysichthon but of the three sisters who proved faithless in the 
 charge of Erichthonios. To the time of Kekrops is assigned one 
 version of the story which relates the rivalry of Poseidon and Athene' ; 
 but here Poseidon produces not a horse, but a well on the Akropolis, 
 a wofk for which he is careless enough to produce no witness, while 
 Athene makes her olive tree grow up beneath the eye of Kekrops, 
 who gives judgment that the city shall bear the name of the dawn- 
 goddess.* 
 
 * The names Pandrosos and HersS which regards the name as a compound 
 
 translate each other : the addition of of xti&v, the earth, seems to become at 
 
 Agraulos merely states that the dew least doubtful. There is, however, no 
 
 covers the fields. ground for upholding a double peison- 
 
 2 Of the name Erichthonios, Preller ality. " The Homeric Scholiast treated 
 
 {Gr.Myth.i. I59)says, "DerName. . . Erechtheus and Erichthonios as the same 
 
 recht eigentlich einen Genius der frucht- person under two names ; and since in 
 
 baren Erdbodens bedeutet, " and com- regard to such mythical _ persons there 
 
 pares it with ipioivr\s, ipi$a\as, and exists no other test of identity of the 
 
 other words. Benfey (rpiTuvh 'A9W subject except perfect similarity of attri- 
 
 25) traces it to a supposed form, e'peT- butes, this seems the reasonable conclu- 
 
 X0eus, "von ep-ap in aporiip, und be- sion."— Grote, History of Greece, 1. 264. 
 
 deutet die Erde (x^ov ursprunglich x e °V- The case >*• however, altered when we 
 
 =Sanskr. ksham) beackernd." ev, he find the names in the my thology of other 
 
 adds, is a stfcng form of u, and the theme nations, in which the origin of the word 
 
 -X8v is in close analogy with Sanskr. no longer remains, open to doubt. — 
 
 ■guUomgam,-ko from. kam. If Erech- Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 136. 
 theus and Erichthonios are names for 3 The meaning of the myth of 
 
 one and the same person, the explanation' Kekrops is sufficiently clear, whether we 
 
522 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Pelops. 
 
 A more transparent myth of the earth is found in the history of 
 ■ Pelops, the son of Tantalos and Dione, or as some have it, Klytia 
 or Euryanassa. His father in his magnificent palace and with his 
 inexhaustible wealth is manifestly only another form of Ixion and 
 Helios ; and the child whom he slays represents not less clearly the 
 fruits of the earth first sustained by his warmth and then scorched 
 by his raging heat. This horrible banquet of his flesh he sets before 
 Zeus, for the ravages of drought are accomplished in-the face of the 
 blue heaven ; but none of the gods will eat of it, except Demet£r, who 
 plunged in grief for the loss of her child, eats the shoulder : and thus 
 the story ran that when at the bidding of Zeus Hermes boiled the 
 limbs and restored them to life, an ivory shoulder supplied the place 
 of the part devoured by Demeter. 1 In the story of Hippodameia, a 
 name which occurs as an epithet of Aphrodite, 2 Pelops plays the part 
 of the successful hero in the myths of Brynhild, or Briar Rose. The 
 heads of those who have failed to conquer Oinomaos in the chariot 
 race stare down upon him from the doorposts ; but nothing daunted, 
 he makes a compact with Myrtilos the charioteer to loosen the wheels 
 of Oinamaos. Pelops is thus the victor; but as even the summer 
 which succeeds in ripening the grape must die, so Pelops is made to 
 fall under the curse of Myrtilos, whom he ungratefully drowns in the 
 sea. This curse was wrought out in the fortunes of all his children, 
 whose life and death do but exhibit one of the many aspects of the 
 great tragedy of nature. 
 
 Section IV.— THE PRIESTS OF THE GREAT MOTHER. 
 
 Gnia and 
 Ouranos. 
 
 The earth itself, as the soil distinguished from the fruits which 
 grow from it or the power which nourishes them, is known as Gaia 
 in the Hesiodic Theogony, where she is described seemingly as self- 
 existent, for no parents are assigned either to her or to Chaos, 
 Tartaros, and Eros. All this, however, with the assignment of Erebos 
 and Nyx as children of Chaos, and of Aither and Hemera as children 
 of Nyx, the night, may have been to the poet as mere an allegory as 
 
 adopt or reject Preller's explanation of 
 the word : " Der Name scheint mit 
 Kapirhs und Kpdmiov zusammenhangen, 
 so dass sich also schon dadurch die 
 Beziehung auf Frucht und Erndte an- 
 kiindigen wiirde." — Gr. Myth. ii. 137. 
 Others look upon it as a variant of Ker- 
 kfips, Kerkope, the grasshopper. But 
 the name has a suspiciously non-Aryan 
 
 look. 
 
 1 Hence the notion that his de- 
 scendants likewise had one shoulder 
 white as ivory. Pindar rejects the story, 
 preferring the version that he was 
 carried off by Poseidon, as Ganyme'des 
 was taken by the eagle to Olympos. — 
 01. i. 40. 
 
 2 Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 385. 
 
MARS AND ARES. 523 
 
 the birth of the long hills which together with the troubled sea are chap. 
 
 VIII 
 
 brought into being by Gaia. Then follows the bridal of th% earth ■ ^ — - 
 
 and sky, and Gaia becomes the mother of a host of children, 
 representing either the sun under the name of Hyperion, or the forces 
 at work in the natural world, the thunders and lightnings, here called 
 the round-eyed giants, and the hundred-handed monsters, one of 
 whom, Briareos, rescues Zeus from the wiles of HSre, Atheng, and 
 Poseidon. But in all this there is really not much more mythology 
 than in the little which has to be said of the Latin Tellus or Terra, 
 a name the meaning of which was never either lost or weakened. 
 It belongs to a group of words, all denoting dryness and comparative 
 bareness; and the Latin Terra is in fact the dry land. It was other- 
 wise with Mars, a god who, worshipped originally as the ripener of 
 fruits and grain, was afterwards from the accident of his name invested 
 with the attributes of the fierce and brutal Arfis of the Greeks. 1 In 
 his own character, as fostering wealth of corn and cattle, he was 
 worshipped at PrEeneste, as Herodotos would have us believe that 
 Scythian tribes worshipped Ares, with the symbol of a sword, one of 
 the many forms assumed by the Hindu Linga. As such, he was pre- 
 eminently the father of all living things, Marspiter, or Maspiter, the 
 parent of the twin-born Romulus and Remus. As the ripener and 
 grinder of the corn he is Pilumnus and Picumnus, 2 although the 
 process of disintegration constantly at work on mythical names con- 
 verted these epithets into two independent deities, while another 
 
 1 The root is mar, which yields the gers. Picumnus vient d'une racine pic 
 name of the Maruts and many other qui veut dive fendre: on la trouve dans 
 mythical beings. Mars, with his picas, le pic-vert qui creuse le tronc 
 common epithet Silvanus, is the softener des arbres, pour y chercher sa nourriture 
 of the earth and the ripener of its har- et y logerses petits. "— Breal, Hercule et 
 vests. The name occurs under the Cacus, 34. 
 
 forms Mamers and Mavors. Of these The Latin Jupiter Pistor is another 
 
 Professor Miiller says, "Marmar and god whose name belongs to the same 
 
 Marmor, old Latin names for Mars, root with Pilumnus. Of this deity 
 
 are reduplicated forms ; and in the Professor Miiller says that he " was 
 
 Oscan Mamers the r of the reduplicated originally the god who crushes with the 
 
 syllable is lost. Mavors is more difficult thunderbolt ; and the Molse Martis 
 
 to explain, for there is "no instance in seem to rest on an analogous conception 
 
 Latin of m in the middle of a word of the nature of Mars." — Lectures, second 
 
 being changed to v." — Lectures, second series, 324. It seems more probable 
 
 series, 324. that Jupiter Pistor, like Mars Silvanus 
 
 2 '" Pilumnus et Picumnus, deux or Pilumnus, was a rustic god. The 
 anciens participes presents, le dieu qui expression Mote Martis, like the Greek 
 broie et le dieu qui fend. Le pilum,^ ixu\os "Ap-qos, is one which might suit 
 avant d'etre 1'arme du soldat romain, si either the crushing or the softening god. 
 celebre chez les historiens, fut le pilon The Dii Novensiles are referred by Mr. 
 qui sert a broyer le ble\ Pilum est wae Isaac Taylor _ (Etruscan Researches, 
 contraction de pistillum et vient de 143) to Finnic and Samojedic roots 
 pinsere. Pila est le vase oil Ton broyait, heaven and god. They are thus, in his 
 et Pilumnus, comme le dit expressement belief, the lightning gods, or the heavenly 
 Servius (Mn. ix. 4), le dieu des boulan- lighteners. 
 
524 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Rhea. 
 
 The Kou- 
 r6tes and 
 Idaian 
 Daktyls. 
 
 myth affirmed that he received the name Picumnus as being the god 
 to whom the woodpecker was consecrated. 
 
 Another representative of the earth is Rhea, 1 herself a child of 
 Ouranos and Gaia, and the wife of Kronos, by whom she becomes 
 the mother of the great Olympian deities Hestia, Dem£ter, HerG, 
 Hades, Poseidon, all swallowed by their father, and lastly, Zeus, who 
 is saved to be brought up in the cave of Dikte\ But throughout 
 Rhea remained a name and a power, worshipped as the great repro- 
 ductive force of the world, as producing life through death, and thus 
 as honoured by the sacrifice of the reproductive power in her ministers. 
 Thus she became pre-eminently the great mother, worshipped under 
 the titles M§, and Ammas, and perhaps even more widely known and 
 feared as Kybele or Kybebe. 2 
 
 With the name of Rhea are connected the mystic beings known, 
 as the KourStes, the Korybantes, the Idaian Daktyloi, and the Ka- 
 beiroi. It is as possible that these names may, some or all of them, 
 denote races displaced and overthrown by the advancing Hellenic 
 tribes, as that the Trolls may represent aboriginal inhabitants driven 
 to the mountains by the Teutonic invaders. According to Thirlwall, 
 the name Telchines is only another name for the historical Phenician 
 people, and the legends related by them " embody recollections of arts 
 introduced or refined by foreigners who attracted the admiration of 
 the rude tribes whom they visited." 8 It is enough to remark here 
 that ihe art of the Telchines is simply that of Hephaistos. Like him, 
 they forge iron weapons or instruments for the gods : and they resemble 
 the Kyklopes not only in this their work, but in their parentage, which 
 exhibits them as sons of Poseidon, or Thalassa, the troubled sea. 
 Thus also we see in them not only the fellow-helpers of Hephaistos 
 in the Iliad, but the rude shepherds of the Odyssey. They are 
 creatures without feet, as the Ph.iiakian ships have neither rudders 
 
 name of a veiled deity, often associated 
 with Phthah, the pigmy god, answering, 
 perhaps, to the Hari of the Hindu. To 
 Mas, as a name of Rhea, Papas as a 
 title of the Phrygian Zeus precisely cor- 
 responds. — Preller, ib. i. 511. They 
 are no more than the terms Pater and 
 Mater applied to Zeus and De6, or All- 
 Father as a name of Odin. The old 
 title of Rhea is applied, whether with 
 or without design, to the Virgin Mary. 
 Thus Dr. Faber, writing to Mr, Watts 
 Russell, asks him to think of him "amid 
 the glories of Christian Rome on those 
 Sunday evenings in October, all dedi- 
 cated to dearest Mama." — Life, p. 329. 
 * Hist. Greece, part i. ch. iii. 
 
 1 The origin of the name is doubtful. 
 Preller (Gr. Myth. i. 502) inclines to 
 regard it as a form of Gea, Gaia, De6, 
 instancing as changes of 8 into p the 
 words Kripixetov, caduceus ; meridies, 
 medidies. 
 
 * This name Preller explains, after 
 Hesychios, as denoting her abode on the 
 hills : but such interpretations must be 
 regarded with great suspicion. A large 
 number of foreign words were associated 
 with the worship of such deities as Rhea 
 and Dionysos, and we are as little justi- 
 fied in identifying one with another as 
 we are in adopting the conclusion of 
 Herodotos, that Athene' is only another 
 form of the Egyptian word Neith, the 
 
THE GUARDIANS OF ZEUS. S 2 5 
 
 nor oars. They can pour down rain or snow on the earth, and, C ^^ T P - 
 
 like the clouds, they can change their form at will ; and thus they are 
 destroyed by Phoibos in the guise of a wolf, as the sun's rays scatter 
 the mists at noonday. In this capacity of changing their form and 
 bringing storms upon the earth we have all that is needed as the 
 groundwork of their reputation as sorcerers, even if we refuse to 
 indulge in any conjectures as to the origin of the name. 1 Their office 
 as nurses of Poseidon 2 is even more significant, as showing their close 
 affinity to the nurses of Zeus in the cave of Dikte. Hence the story 
 recorded by Strabo that those of the Telchines who went with Rhea 
 to Crete were there called Kouretes, the guardians of the child (Kovpos) 
 Zeus. 8 These are the dancers clad in everlasting youth, the Daktyloi, 
 or pointers, of Ida, the nourishing earth, the bride of Dyaus the 
 heaven.* These also are beings endowed with a strange wisdom and 
 with magical powers, and from them Orpheus received the charm 
 which gave to his harp its irresistible power. Their numbers vary, 
 sometimes only a few being seen, sometimes a troop of fifty or a 
 hundred, like the fifty children of Danaos, Thestios, or Asterodia. 
 
 The characteristics of the Phaiakians and their ships carry us to The Tel- 
 other myths of the clouds and the light. As roaming over hill and Kouretes. 
 dale as visiting every cornfield and seeing all the works of men, and 
 as endowed with powers of thought, these mysterious vessels are 
 possessed in some measure of the wisdom of Phoibos himself. 
 The kindred Telchines and Kouretes, the unwearied dancers who 
 move across the skies, have the power also of changing their forms 
 at will. 6 If we put these attributes together, we at once have the 
 wise "yet treacherous, and the capricious yet truthful Proteus, the 
 Fanner Weathersky of Teutonic tales. This strange being is the old 
 
 1 " Der name Te^xiVes ist abzuleiten certainly could not do so, if it be only in 
 
 von ei\ya in der Bedeutung bezaubern, adaptation to a Semitic sound. 
 
 durch Beriihrung berucken, daher Ste- 5 So with the fairy in the Ballad of 
 
 sichoros die Keren und betaiibende Tamlane : 
 
 Schlage, welche das Bewusstsein yer- 
 
 dunkeln, T€\ x r«s genannt hatte."— " I quit my body when I please, 
 
 Preller Gr Myth. i. 473. ° r unt0 Jt re P air > 
 
 s Thirlwall, Hist. Greece, i. 76. We can inhabit at our ease 
 
 ' Preller, Gr. Myth. i. 103. In either earth or air. 
 
 « The connexion of 5 ^™*°* J"^ ur shapes and size we can convert 
 
 digitus with the root from which sprung 1 
 
 the GreekSe,'^', the Latm ind^o and 1 ^ ^ ^ tQ us 
 
 other words, is ge neral YpT£ t, the As is the lofty hall." 
 
 myth that they served Rhea as the 
 
 fingers serve the hand would naturally ^ ^ ^ ^ ^^ spedfies al , th . 
 
 grow up when the real meaning ot tne £ q{ Thetis when p eleus seeks t£> 
 
 name was weakened or forgotten. .But 5 
 
 this fact, if proved, would not explain win ner. 
 
 necessarily the source of the name ; and 
 
526 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK man f the sea, who reappears in the voyages of Sindbad. He is 
 
 *— — ' necessarily a subject, some said a son, of Poseidon ; and he lives not 
 
 far from the river Aigyptos, a phrase akin to the myth of the Aithio- 
 pian Memnon. Huge flocks of seals sport around him in the waters, 
 like clouds gambolling in the heavens ; and when the heat is greatest 
 he raises himself from the deeps and takes his rest on the sea-shore. 
 It is at this time that Virgil represents Aristaios as fettering the old 
 rrfan by the advice of his mother Arethousa. The attempt is followed 
 by many changes of form ; and Proteus 1 becomes first a fire, then 
 a snake, and passes through other changes before he is compelled 
 to return to his proper form. In Proteus, the king of Egypt, we have 
 one of those persons of whom the Euemerists availed themselves 
 to escape from the necessity of believing the incredible tale of Troy. 
 According to one version of the story, Paris came to Egypt with 
 Helen in the course of his homeward wanderings from Sparta. It 
 was easy to say that the real Helen went no further, and that the 
 Helen seen in Ilion was only a phantom with which Proteus cheated 
 the senses of Paris and his countrymea It is enough to remark that 
 of such a tale the poets of our Iliad and Odyssey know nothing ; and 
 that the Egyptian Proteus is none other than the son of Poseidon, 
 gifted with more than the wisdom of Hermes. 
 The Ka- That the Kabeiroi and Korybantes were sometimes regarded by 
 
 Koryban- tne Greeks as exhibiting only another phase of the idea which under- 
 tes " lies the conception of the mythical Kouretes, is a point scarcely open 
 
 to doubt. Like the latter, they have a protecting and soothing 
 power, and hence are nourishers of the earth and its fruits, and the 
 givers of wine to the Argonautai. They are sons or descendants of 
 Hephaistos or Proteus, or of Zeus and Kalliope. But as the myths 
 of Cacus or the Kyklopes seem in some of their features to indicate 
 the phenomena of volcanic action, so it is quite possible that such 
 phenomena may have modified the stories told of the several classes 
 of these mysterious beings. The fires of the Kyklopes may be either 
 the lightnings seen in the heaven or the flames which burst from the 
 earth ; and the mysterious flash which reveals the treasures of the 
 earth to the Arabian prince or the Teutonic Tanhaiiser may equally 
 represent both. But there can be little doubt that this group of 
 strange and weird beings has no greater claim to be included within 
 the domain of Aryan mythology than that which may be conceded to 
 Kadmos, 16, Epaphos, Dionysos, Poseidon, Athamas, Adonis, Meli- 
 kertes, Bacchus, Ino, or Palaimon. They are probably all the creations 
 
 1 Like the Rakshas in the story of Guzra Bai (Truth's Triumph). — Frere, 
 
 Deccan Tales. 
 
METAL-WORKING GODS. 527 
 
 of the Semitic mind : and that most of them are so, has been proved chap. 
 conclusively by the evidence of their names as well as of the functions ■ - VI "- - 
 and the worship assigned to them. It may be possible to find plau- 
 sible explanations of the names of some of them by referring them 
 to Greek or Aryan words; but even in the case of the Telchtnes, the 
 Kouretes, and the Daktyls, such explanations can scarcely be received 
 without misgiving, or be acquiesced in with any feeling of satisfaction. 
 But some of these names refuse obstinately to be welded into an 
 Aryan form: and of these the title Kabeiroi is perhaps the most 
 conspicuous. These strange creatures are metal-workers of wonderful 
 skill. They are few in number, being either three, seven, or eight, the 
 latter answering to that of the Egyptian Phthah and his seven sons. 
 They were worshipped especially in Samothrace, but their cultus was 
 extended along the shores of Asia Minor and the northern coasts of 
 the Egean ; in other words, it was found only in regions subject to 
 Phenician or^other Semitic influence. When further we find that 
 these beings were honoured by Semitic tribes as Gibborim, or the 
 mighty ones, the problem of their origin and nature is surely set at 
 rest 1 
 
 Section V.— THE PEOPLE OF THE WOODS AND WATERS. 
 
 The woods and hills form the special domain of the Satyrs, Tlle Sa- 
 a worthless and idle race with pointed ears, small horns, and the tail 
 of a goat or a horse. 2 Their life is spent in wild hunts through the 
 forest, in tending their flocks, or in idle dalliance and dancing with 
 the nymphs. Their music may constantly be heard as they play on 
 the flute, bagpipe, or cymbals, or on the syrinx of Pan. Their 
 capricious and cunning nature makes them no safe companions for 
 man. Nay, if the sheepfold were entered and the cattle hurt or stolen, 
 if women were scared by goblin shapes as they passed through the 
 woods, this was the doing of the Satyrs. We can scarcely be at a loss 
 in our search for the origin of these mythical beings and their 
 characteristics. When we find them represented as sprung from the 
 daughters of Hekataios or Phoroneus, or as the offspring of Hermes 
 and Iphthime ; when also we find that Pan, whom they resemble in 
 
 1 Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, ii. Mr. Brown, G. D. M. ii. 228) the 
 
 212, et sen. Mr. Brown asserts the Kabeiroi were the planets, 
 identity of theKouretes and Korybantes, 2 The Satyrs may answer possibly to 
 
 i. 130; but I am not aware that he gives the Dragon of the Aryan Hindus. They 
 
 the Semitic forms of their names, or of may have been conquered tribes, de- 
 
 those of the Telchtnes and Daktyls. spised and outcast.— Ty lor, Primitive 
 
 According to M. Lenormant (cited by Culture, i. 346. 
 
528 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK outward form and powers of music, is also a son of Hermes and the 
 
 «-^— ' nymph Dryops or Kallisto, or of Penelope who weaves the morning 
 
 clouds, we can scarcely fail to see in these Satyrs the phenomena of 
 the life which seems to animate the woods as the branches of the 
 trees move in wild dances with the clouds which course through the 
 air above, or assume forms strange or grotesque or fearful, in the deep 
 nooks and glens or in the dim and dusky tints of the gloaming. 1 
 At such hours, or in such places, the wayfarer may be frightened 
 with strange sounds like the pattering of feet behind him, or by ugly 
 shapes which seem to bar the path before him, or entangle his feet 
 and limbs as he forces his way through the brushwood If we trans- 
 late all this into the language of mythology, we have more than the 
 germ of all that is told us about the Satyrs. But the source thus 
 opened was found to be a fruitful one, and the Satyrs became the 
 companions of Dionysos, the lord of the wine-cup and the revel, or 
 of Herakl£s, the burly and heedless being who goes through life 
 toiling for a mean and worthless master, yet taking such enjoyment 
 as the passing hours may chance to bring him. 2 The burlesque form 
 in which they exhibited Herakles as robbed of his weapons, or teased 
 and angered by their banter until they take to their heels, suggested 
 a method which might be applied to other gods or heroes, and called 
 into existence the Greek satyric drama. Nor could a limit be placed 
 to their strange vagaries, or the shapes which they might assume. 
 The wild revel of the woods might be followed by a profound stillness, 
 of which men would speak as the sleep of Satyrs wearied out with 
 dancing and drinking. The white clouds, which may be seen like ships 
 anchored in a blue sea, hanging motionless over the thicket, would 
 be nymphs listening to their music or charmed by their wooing. 
 
 1 Mr. Brown (Gratf DionysiakMytk, away the lover of PsychS, the Kalypso 
 i. 134) objects that this does not ac- who seeks to lay the spell of her beauty 
 count for the particular form under on Odysseus, is the Fairy Queen of 
 which the Satyrs are represented, «>. with Tanhaiiser and of True Thomas; the 
 pointed ears, two small horns and goats' Kykl&pes is the misshapen Urisk ; the 
 tails, or by later writers with larger horns limping Hepliaistos is Wayland the 
 and goats' feet and legs. His conclusion Smith : and thus the whole fabric of 
 seems to be that they are Semitic ; but modem superstition is but a travesty of 
 it is not easy to see how such a conclu- myths with which in other forms we are 
 sion is warranted. He does not mention already familiar. Thus in these myths 
 the Semitic form of the word. dwarfed or maimed beings abound ; 
 
 2 With these creatures we are brought among these being the Kabeiroi, the 
 almost into the domain of modem fairy Idaian Daktyls, the Athenian Anakes, 
 mythology, of which it is enough here the Etruscan Tages, and the Lakedai- 
 to say that there is scarcely an important monian Dioskouroi. So too the Latin 
 feature in it which has not its parallel Lemures and Larva? are the ghosts of 
 in the so-called classical mythology of modem days, and the Manes are literally 
 Greece and Rome. The Latin Lares the Goodies of popular Teutonic super- 
 are the Brownies ; the Venus who takes stition. 
 
MIDAS AND MARSYAS. 5^9 
 
 Of these Satyrs the oldest are named the Seiienoi, or children of chap. 
 
 Seilenos. But although there are between these beings manj points ' -7—' 
 
 of likeness, both in form and character, there is this marked distinc- ^j. el " 
 tion, that while the Satyrs dwell among woods and hills, the Seiienoi 
 haunt streams, fountains, or marshy grounds. They are thus, like the 
 Naiads, spirits of the waters, with attributes borrowed from, or shared 
 with, the clouds that float above them. The grotesque form which 
 Seilenos is made to assume may be an exaggeration of the western 
 Greeks, who saw in the ass which bore him a mere sign of his folly 
 and absurdity, while it points rather to the high value set on the ass 
 by Eastern nations. It was, in fact, the symbol of his wisdom and 
 his prophetical powers, and not the mere beast of burden which, in 
 western myths, staggered along under the weight of an unwieldy 
 drunkard. The same idea doubtless lay at the root of the story of 
 Midas, to whom the ass's ears were at first not his shame but his 
 glory. This Phrygian king is, in short, only Tantalos under another 
 name, and with Tantalos, as with Sisyphos, the idea of wealth is 
 inseparable from that of wisdom or craft. If, again, Tantalos and 
 Sisyphos have palaces rich in all conceivable treasures, Midas has his 
 beautiful rose-gardens, in which the country folk catch Seilenos, who 
 is brought bound before the king. By him Midas is instructed in the 
 knowledge of all events, whether past or future, as well as in the 
 origin and nature of all things. In return for the kindness with 
 which he is treated, Dionysos promises to grant to Midas any wish 
 which he may express. Midas asks that everything which he touches 
 may be turned into gold, and finds to his dismay that it is as 
 impossible to swallow his food as the dishes on which it is laid. To 
 his prayer for deliverance the answer is that he must go and wash in 
 the stream of Paktolos, which has ever since retained a golden hue. 
 This myth is nothing more than a story framed on a saying, like the 
 German proverb, " Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde/' " Morning 
 hour has gold in her mouth," 1 and simply expressed the fact that the 
 newly risen sun sheds a glory over all the earth, in other words, turns 
 everything into gold. The sequel, which speaks of the misery of 
 Midas, would be suggested by the literal interpretation of the words, 
 while the command to bathe in the river finds a meaning in the fact 
 that the flaming splendours of the sun are quenched when, like En- 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Lectures, second series, 378. This proverb has acquired the 
 didactic meaning of the English distich, 
 
 " Early to bed and early to rise 
 Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, 
 
 which keeps up the same connexion between wealth and wisdom. 
 
 2 M 
 
530 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK dymion, he plunges beneath the waters. A faint reflexion of similar 
 
 • . ' .. ■ ideas seems to mark the story which accounted for the ass's ears, as a 
 
 punishment for adjudging the prize to Marsyas in his contest with 
 Phoibos. It now becomes a mysterious secret; but his servant 
 discovers it, and being unable to keep it to himself, digs a hole and 
 whispers into it that Midas has ass's ears. A reed growing up on the 
 spot repeats the words, and the rushes all round take, up the strain, 
 and publish the fact to all the world. 
 The Latin The name of Seilenos as a water-sprite suggests to Preller its 
 affinity with the Italian Silanus, a word for gushing or bubbling water; 
 nor is it easy to avoid a comparison with the Seirenes, who, like 
 Seilgnos, haunt the waters. As the dweller in the fertilising streams, 
 he can bestow draughts of wonderful sweetness ; and the wine which 
 his son Evanthes gives to Odysseus is pronounced by Polyphemos to 
 be more delicious than honey. As such also, he is the guardian and 
 teacher of Dionysos, for from the life-giving streams alone can the 
 grape acquire its sweetness and its power. 
 Priapos. But this higher and more dignified aspect of Seilenos, which led 
 
 Plato to speak of Sokrates as getting wisdom from him as well as from 
 his scholar Marsyas, was obscured in the folk-lore of the western 
 tribes by the characteristics of jollity and intemperance exhibited by 
 the Satyrs and the Herakles whom they cheat and tease, while his 
 office as the fertiliser of the vineyard brought him into close con- 
 nexion with Priapos, who exhibits the merely sensuous idea of repro- 
 duction in its grossest form, and of whom we need only say here that 
 he is a son of Dionysos, Adonis, Hermes, or Pan, while his mother is 
 Aphrodite or the Naiad Chione, names denoting simply the relations 
 of the waters with the winds or the sun. 1 
 
 1 Priapos, which Grimm connects like them the power of predicting th'ngs 
 
 with the O.N. friofr, fecundus, Goth, to come. The same idea was expressed 
 
 frair, seed, is, in short, only a coarser by the Latin Mutinus, Mutunus, or Mut- 
 
 form of Vishnu, Proteus, Onnes, and tunus, who was represented by the same 
 
 other like beings : and as such, he has symbol. 
 
( S3i ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE UNDER WORLD. 
 
 Section I.— HADES. 
 
 The myths of Demeter and Persephone have already carried us to chap. 
 the hidden land beneath the earth's surface, in which the seeds of all 
 life lie dormant, until Zeus sends Hermes to fetch the maiden back ^ he buned 
 to her mother, or in other words, until Sigurd comes to awaken 
 Brynhild out of her sleep. Hence, as containing the germs of all 
 future harvests, this unseen region becomes at once a land of bound- 
 less wealth, even if we take no thought of the gold, silver, and other 
 metals stored up in its secret places. This wealth may be of little 
 use to its possessor, and poverty beneath the sunlit heaven may be 
 happiness compared with the dismal pomp of the under world ; but 
 its king is nevertheless the wealthiest of all monarchs, and thus the 
 husband of Persephone' 1 is known especially as Plouton, the king 
 who never smiles in the midst of all his grandeur. 
 
 On this slender framework was raised the mythology of Hades, a Hades or 
 mythology which runs continually into the stories related of the dark ' ' neus- 
 powers who fight with and are vanquished by the lord of light. The 
 dog of the hateful king, the Kerberos of the Hesiodic Theogony, is 
 but another form of Orthros, who is called his brother ; and Orthros 
 is only a reflexion of the Vedic Vritra, the dark robber who hides 
 away the cattle of Indra. But the conception of Hades as the ruler 
 of this nether region is precisely parallel to that of Poseidon as the 
 god of the sea, and of the sea alone. So long as the word Kronides 
 remained a mere epithet, the Zeus of Olympos was also Zenoposeidon, 
 and as Zeus Katachthonios he would be also Hades, Ais, or Aidoneus, 
 the king of the lower world ; and the identity of the two is proved 
 not only by these titles, but also by the power which, after the triple 
 partition, Hades, like Poseidon, retains of appearing at will in 
 
 1 A story was told that Hades was transformation is, of course, a mere play 
 
 also a lover of the nymph Leuke, who on her name, while the myth resolves 
 
 on her death was changed into a white itself into the phrase that the night 
 
 poplar and planted in Elysion. The loves the tender light of morning. 
 
532 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book Olympos. Zeus then, as Hades, is simply the unseen, or the being 
 11 ■ w ho can make himself as well as others invisible. As such, he wears 
 the invisible cap or helmet, which appears as the tarn-kappe or 
 nebel-kappe of Teutonic legends. This cap he bestows on Hermes, 
 who is thus enabled to enter unseen the Gorgons' dwelling, and 
 escape the pursuit of the angry sisters. But his home is also the 
 bourne to which all the children of men must come, and from which 
 no traveller returns ; and thus he becomes the host who must receive 
 all under his roof, and whom it is best therefore to invoke as one 
 who will give them a kindly welcome, — in other words, as Polydektes, 
 Polydegmon, or Pankoites, the hospitable one who will assign to 
 every man his place of repose. Still, none may ever forget the awful 
 character of the gate-keeper (irvXdpTrjs) 1 of the lower world. He 
 must be addressed, not as Hades the unseen, but as Plouton the 
 wealthy, the Kuvera of the Ramayana ; and the averted face of the 
 man who offered sacrifice to him may recall to our minds the horrid 
 rites of the devil-worshippers of the Lebanon. 2 
 The Rivers Hades, then, in the definite authority assigned to him after the 
 seen Land. war w ^^ the Ti tans i is ^ e onlv being who is regarded as the lord 
 who remains always in his dismal kingdom, for Persephone, who 
 shares his throne, returns for half the year as Kor£ to gladden the 
 hearts of men, and Zagreos, Adonis, and Dionysos are also beings 
 over whom the prince of darkness has no permanent dominion. Of 
 the geography of this land of the dead we need say little more than 
 that it is no genuine growth of mythology. It was easy for poets 
 and mythographers, when they had once started with the idea of a 
 gloomy land watered with rivers of woe, to place Styx, the stream - 
 which makes men shudder, as the boundary which separates it from 
 
 1 These are the gates of the walls of the light. The Christian world has 
 
 built by Poseid6n, which all the dead chosen to misconstrue the phrase, and 
 
 must enter, and within which lie the endless wars, turning on theories of 
 
 realms of darkness. In the Iliad and Primacy, Indefectibility, and Infalli- 
 
 Odyssey irvKai "AiSou, "AiSou 5«^o are, bility, have been the result, 
 with others, familiar phrases. Jacobi, ' Like Hermes, and Herakles, 
 
 Mythologie, s.v. Hades. The same idea Hades has also assumed a burlesque 
 
 is found in Attic tragedy, %Ka ye/cpwj/ form, as in the German story of Old 
 
 KevBftwva teal okiStov iri\as XiTriiy, Eur. Rinkrank, who dwells in a great cave 
 
 Hek. i. Alk. 127, and in the gates of into which the King's daughter falls 
 
 the Semitic Sheol which Hezekiah in the mountain of glass (ice). The 
 
 dreaded to enter. These gates are to unwilling wife contrives to catch his 
 
 be assaulted by the Church to which beard in a door, and refuses to let it 
 
 Jesus committed the work of the world's free until he gives her the ladder by 
 
 salvation, and are by it to be finally which he climbs out of the mountain 1 
 
 battered down, — the words ah Karrurx"- depths into the open air. Thus es- 
 
 trovriv oOttjs denoting only that they caping, she returns with her heavenly 
 
 will not be strong enough to resist the lover, and despoils Rinkrank (Plout8n) 
 
 attacks made on them by the children of all his treasures. 
 
THE RIVERS OF HADES. 533 
 
 the world of living men, and to lead through it the channels of chap. 
 
 Lethe, in which all things are forgotten, of Kokytos, which echoes ■ i — 
 
 only with shrieks of pain, of Pyryphlegethon, with its waves 8f fire. 1 
 
 Section II.— ELYSION. 
 
 But, in truth, such details as these, produced as they are, not by The 
 the necessities of mythical developement but by the growth or the if j;" 
 wants of a religious faith, belong rather to the history of religion, and Dead - 
 not to the domain of mythology, which is concerned only or mainly 
 with legends springing from words and phrases whose original 
 meaning has been misunderstood or else either wholly or in part 
 forgotten. Thus, although the ideas of Elysion in the conception 
 of the epic or lyric poets may be full of the deepest interest as 
 throwing light on the thoughts and convictions of the time, their 
 mythological value must be measured by the degree in which they 
 may be traced to phrases denoting originally only the physical pheno- 
 mena of the heavens and the earth. With the state and the feelings 
 of the departed we are not here concerned ; but there is enough in the 
 descriptions of the asphodel meadows and the land where the corn 
 ripens thrice in the year, to guide us to the source of all these 
 notions. The Elysian plain is far away in the west where the sun 
 goes down beyond the bounds of the earth, when Eos gladdens 
 the close of day as she sheds her violet tints over the sky. The 
 abodes of the blessed are golden islands sailing in a sea of blue, the 
 burnished clouds floating in the pure ether. Grief and sorrow cannot 
 approach them ; plague and sickness cannot touch them. The barks 
 of the Phaiakians dread no disaster ; and thus the blissful company 
 gathered together in that far western land inherits a tearless eternity. 2 
 Of the other details in the picture the greater number would be 
 suggested directly by these images drawn from the phenomena of 
 sunset and twilight. What spot or stain can be seen on the deep 
 blue ocean in which the islands of the blessed repose for ever? 
 What unseemly forms can mar the beauty of that golden home lit by 
 the radiance of a sun which can never go down ? Who then but the 
 pure in heart, the truthful and the generous, can be suffered to tread 
 the violet fields ? And how shall they be tested save by judges who 
 can weigh the thoughts and intents of the heart ? Thus every soul, 
 as it drew near to that joyous land, was brought before the august 
 
 1 Acheron, the remaining river, is one river of Hades, 
 probably only another form of Ache- * &Sai:pvv i/efunircu almva. Find. 01. 
 
 l&os, the flowing water, and may per- ii. 120. 
 haps have been in the earlier myths the 
 
534 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The 
 
 Asphodel 
 Meadows. 
 
 tribunal of Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos ; and they whose 
 faith was in truth a quickening, power might draw from the ordeal 
 those golden lessons which Plato has put into the mouth of Sokrates 
 while awaiting the return of the theoric ship from Delos. These, 
 however, are the inferences of later thought. The belief of earlier 
 ages was content to picture to itself the meeting of Odysseus and 
 Laertes in that blissful land, the forgiveness of old wrongs, the 
 reconciliation of deadly feuds as the hand of Hektor is clasped in 
 the hand of the hero who slew him. There, as the story ran, the 
 lovely Helen, "pardoned and purified," became the bride of the 
 short-lived yet long-suffering Achilleus, even as Iole comforted 
 the dying Herakles on earth, and Hebe became his solace in 
 Olympos. But what is the meeting of Helen and Achilleus, of Iole, 
 and HSbe, and Herakles, but the return of the violet tints to greet 
 the sun in the west, which had greeted him in the east in the 
 morning? The idea was purely physical, yet it suggested the 
 thoughts of trial, atonement, and purification ; and it is unnecessary 
 to say that the human mind, having advanced thus far, must make 
 its way still further. 
 
 To these islands of the blessed only they could be admitted who 
 on earth had done great things, or who for whatever reasons might 
 be counted among the good and noble of mankind. But of the 
 beings who crossed the fatal streams of Styx, there would be some 
 as far exceeding the common crowd in wickedness or presumption as 
 these were unworthy to tread the asphodel meadows of Elysion. 
 Hence one of the names of the unseen world, which denoted 
 especially its everlasting unrest, would be chosen to signify the hope- 
 less prisons of the reprobate. There can be little doubt that in the 
 name Tartaros we have a word from the same root with Thalassa, the 
 heaving and restless sea, and that Tartaros was as strictly a mere 
 epithet of Hades as Plouton or Polydegmon. The creation of a 
 place of utter darkness for abandoned sinners was a moral or theolo- 
 gical, not a mythical necessity ; and hence the mythology of Tartaros 
 as a place of torment is as scanty and artificial as that of the Nereid 
 and Okeanid nymphs ; for when the Hesiodic Theogony makes 
 Tartaros and Gaia the parents of the Gigantes, of Typhoeus, and 
 Echidna, this only places Tartaros in the same rank with Poseidon, 
 who is the father of Polyphemos or of Here, who, according to 
 another myth, is herself the mother of Typhoon, another Typhoeus. 
 
( 555 ) 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DARKNESS. 
 
 Section I.— VRITRA AND AHI. 
 
 No mythical phrases have so powerfully affected the history of religion chap. 
 as the expressions which described originally the physical struggle IX - . 
 between light and darkness as exhibited in the alternations of day 0/^,^,4 
 and night. These phrases stand out with wonderful vividness in the and Helen, 
 hymns of the Rig Veda. The rain-god Indra is concerned with the 
 sacrifices of men, chiefly because these supply him with food to 
 sustain his steeds in the deadly conflict, and the drink which is 
 to invigorate his own strength On the Soma, of which, as of the 
 Achaian Nektar, all the gods have need, the might of Indra especially 
 depends ; and as soon as he has quaffed enough, he departs to do 
 battle with his enemy. This struggle may be considered as the 
 theme, which in a thousand different forms enters into all the con- 
 ceptions of Indra and into all the prayers addressed to him. Like 
 himself, his adversary has many names ; but in every word we have 
 the contrast between the beaming god of the heaven with his golden 
 locks and his flashing spear, and the sullen demon of darkness, who 
 lurks within his hidden caves, drinking the milk of the cows which 
 he has stolen. The issue of the battle is always the same ; but the 
 apparent monotony of the subject never deprives the language used 
 in describing it of the force which belongs to a genuine and heartfelt 
 conviction. So far from the truth is the fancy that great national 
 epics cannot have their origin in the same radical idea, and that the 
 monotony which would thus underlie them all is of itself conclusive 
 proof that in their general plan the Iliad and the Odyssey, the story 
 of the Volsuhgs and the Nibelung Song, the Ramayana of Hindustan 
 and the Persian Shahnameh have nothing in common. In the brief 
 and changeful course of the bright but short-lived sun ; in his love 
 for the dawn, who vanishes as he fixes his gaze upon her, and for 
 the dew which is scorched by his piercing rays ; in his toil for 
 creatures so poor and weak as man, in his grief for the loss of the 
 beautiful morning which cheered him at his rising, in the sullenness 
 
536 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 EOOK 
 II. 
 
 Indra and 
 Achilleus. 
 
 The 
 
 Struggle 
 bet^ een 
 Light and 
 Darkness. 
 
 with which he hides his grief behind the clouds, in the vengeance 
 — which he takes on the dark powers who have dimmed his glory, 
 in the serene and dazzling splendour which follows his victory, in the 
 restoration of his early love, who now comes before him as the 
 evening twilight with the same fairy network of luminous cloud, there 
 can be no monotony. It is a tale which may be told a thousand 
 times without losing its freshness, and may furnish the germ of 
 countless epics to those who have hearts to feel its touching beauty. 
 They who see monotony here may well see monotony also in the 
 whole drama of human life. It is no exaggeration to say that the 
 phrases which produced the myth of Indra must have given birth 
 to the Iliad. 
 
 The two stories are, in truth, the same. The enemy of Indra 
 keeps shut up in his prison-house the beautiful clouds which give 
 rain to the earth ; and the struggle which ends in their deliverance 
 is the battle of Achilleus with Hektor, and of the Achaians with the 
 men of Ilion, which ends in the rescue of Helen. The weary hours 
 during which the god fights with his hidden foe are the long years 
 which roll away in the siege of Troy ; and the lightnings which seal 
 the doom ot the hated thief represent the awful havoc in the midst 
 of which Paris the seducer receives the recompense of his treachery. 
 Of this story the most ancient hymns addressed to Indra exhibit the 
 unmistakeable outlines. In its simplest form the fight of Indra 
 with the demon is nothing more than a struggle to gain possession 
 of the rain-clouds. 1 But the ideas soon become more fully developed, 
 and his enemy assumes a thoroughly hateful character as the 
 throttling snake of darkness. In the less simple hymns the strictly 
 mythical imagery is, as M. Bre"al well remarks, intermingled with 
 phrases which speak not of the anthropomorphised god, but of floods, 
 clouds, winds and darkness. 2 
 
 Throughout these hymns two images stand out before us with 
 overpowering distinctness. On one side is the bright god of the 
 heaven, as beneficent as he is irresistible ; on the other the demon 
 of night and of darkness, as false and treacherous as he is malignant 
 On both of these contending powers the Hindu lavished all his 
 wealth of speech to exalt the one and to express his hatred of the 
 other. The latter (as his name Vritra, from var, to veil, indicates) 
 is pre-eminently the thief who hides away the rain-clouds. But 
 although the name comes from the same root which yielded that 
 of Varuna, the lurking-place of Vritra has nothing to do with that 
 broad-spreading veil which Varuna stretches over the loved earth 
 1 deal, Hercule et Cacus, 89. * lb. 93, &c. 
 
VRITRA AND ORTHROS. HJ 
 
 which is his bride. But the myth is yet in too early a state to allow CHAP. 
 
 of the definite designations which are brought before us in the _J ■ 
 
 conflicts of Zeus with Typhon and his monstrous progeny, of Apollon 
 with the Python, of Bellerophon with Chimaira, of Oidipous with the 
 Sphinx, of Hercules with Cacus, of Sigurd with the dragon Fafnir; 
 and thus not only is Vritra known by many names, but he is opposed 
 sometimes by Indra, sometimes by Agni the fire-god, sometimes by 
 Trita, Brihaspati, or other deities ; or rather these are all names , 
 for one and the same god. 
 
 iroWwv ovofidTwv fioptjAj fila. 
 
 Nay, although Indra is known pre-eminently as Vritrahan, the The great 
 Vritra-slayer, yet Vritra, far from being petrified into a dead person- 
 ality, became a name which might be applied to any enemy. The 
 Vritra of the Vritras denoted the most malignant of adversaries. 1 So 
 again Vritra, the thief, is also called Ahi, the throttling snake, or 
 dragon with three heads, like Geryon, the stealer of the cows 
 of Herakles, or Kerberos, whose name reappears in Carvara, another 
 epithet of the antagonist of Indra. He is also Vala, the enemy, 
 a name which we trace through the Teutonic lands until we reach 
 the cave of Wayland Smith in Berkshire. 2 Other names of this 
 hateful monster are Cushna, Cambara, Namuki; 8 but the most- 
 notable of all is Pani, which marks him as the seducer. Such he is, 
 as enticing the cows of Indra to leave their pastures, and more 
 especially as seeking to corrupt Sarama, when at Indra's bidding she 
 comes to reclaim the plundered cattle. 
 
 The name Pani reappears in Paris, the seducer of Helen ; but as Pani and 
 round this destroyer of his house and kinsfolk ideas are grouped Pans - 
 which are found in the conception of Phoibos and Helios, of Achil- 
 leus, Theseus, and other solar heroes, so in its Hellenic form Vritra 
 has sometimes a fair and sometimes a repulsive form. Orthros is the 
 hound of Geryon, slain by Herakles ; but it is also a name for the 
 first pale light of the dawn, 4 just as the night may be regarded now as 
 the evil power which kills the light, now as the sombre but benignant 
 mother of the morning. 6 This difference of view accounts precisely 
 for the contrast between Varuna and Vritra. 
 
 Between the Vedic and the Hellenic myths there is this difference Greek and 
 only, that in the latter the poets and mythographers who tell the m y" h £ 
 story recount without understanding it. They are no longer con- 
 scious that Geryon and Typhon, Echidna and Orthros, Python and 
 Kerberos, are names for the same thing, and that the combats of 
 
 1 Breal, Hercule et Cacus, 92, &c. 3 Breal, Hercule et Cacus, 93. 
 
 1 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 943. * ll>- l°S. &<=. cu£ <t>i\la. 
 
■538 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Herakles, Perseus, Theseus, and Kadmos with these monsters denote 
 
 ■ ^ — ■ simply the changes of the visible heavens. Each story has its own 
 
 local names and its own mythical geography, and this fact alone con- 
 stituted an almost insurmountable hindrance to the successful analysis 
 of the legends. But the language of the Vedic hymns explains ' 
 itself; and the personality of Indra and Vritra is after all, as M. Breal 
 has noted, only intermittent. 1 
 Snakes and Vritra then, the enemy of Indra, reappears in all the dragons, ' 
 snakes, or worms, slain by all the heroes of Aryan mythology ; and 
 if the dragons of some myths wear a less repulsive form, if they are 
 yoked to the chariot of Medeia or impart a mysterious wisdom to 
 Iamos and the children of AsklSpios, this is a result only of the pro- 
 cess which from the same root formed words for the very opposite 
 conceptions of Varuna and Vritra. The dragon is but the keen-eyed 
 creature, and the name may well seem to denote the beings who are 
 yoked to the chariot which Helios gave to the daughter of Aietes, 
 and who teach strange lessons to the children of the Dawn. The 
 serpent form of these dragons is of later growth. In itself, the name 
 is but an epithet which denoted the keen sight, as the Vedic Harits 
 and Rohits denoted the glistening colour, of the steeds who drew the 
 car of Indra. Then, when for the same reason the name was applied 
 to certain kinds of reptiles, these steeds were by an inevitable process 
 converted into serpents. Vritra, however, is properly not the dragon, 
 but the snake which chokes or throttles its victim ; and the names 
 which are used to describe his loathsome features are the names 
 which the Iranian and Teutonic tribes have given to their persona- 
 tions of moral and physical evil. The Vedic Ahi is etymologically 
 identical with the Greek Echidna, in whose home Herakles finds the 
 cattle of which he is in search, although in this story they have strayed 
 instead of being stolen. 
 The stolen Whether the rain-clouds were converted into cows by the process 
 Cattle. f ra( ji ca i or poetical metaphor 2 is a question of comparatively slight 
 importance. If the Sanskrit go, the English cow, designated at first, 
 like the Greek irpoparov, simply the moving thing, the name might 
 be applied as strictly to the clouds which move in the heavens as to 
 the cattle which walk on the earth. 8 The myth would come into 
 existence only when the name had become confined to horned cattle. 
 It is but another instance of the process which changed the flocks of 
 Helios into the apples guarded by the Hesperides, 4 and by transform- 
 
 1 Breal, Hercule et Cams, 97, 98 ; » Breal, Ilercule et Cacus, 108. 
 
 Muir, Princ. £>. of R. V. 562. * This is at once explained by the 
 
 ! MaxMiiller, Lectures on Language, fact that the word i^Xa has the mean- 
 
 second series, 353, &c. ing both of apples and sheep. 
 
THE ENEMIES OF INDRA. 539 
 
 ing Lykaon into a wolf laid the foundations of the horrible supersti- chap. 
 tions of lykanthropy. 1 • — ^ • 
 
 The Hellenic tribes carried away from their common Aryan home The Block- 
 not merely the phrases which told of a battle between the god of the Fountains, 
 heaven and his cloud-enemy, but those also which described the 
 nature of the struggle. If the name Vritra remains only in that of 
 the Hellenic hound Orthros, his evil work, as imprisoning the waters, 
 reappears in almost every western myth of monsters slain by solar 
 heroes. When Phoibos smites the Python at Delphoi, a stream of 
 water gushes out from the earth ; the dragon slain by the Theban 
 Kadmos blocks all access to a fountain ; and the defeat of the Sphinx 
 can alone bring rain to refresh the parched Boiotian soil. 2 This 
 warm and fertilising rain becomes from mere necessities of climate 
 the hidden treasure guarded, in the Teutonic legend, by the dragon 
 whom Sigurd slays on the snow-clad or glistening heath. 
 
 A later stage in the developement of the Hindu myth is seen in The stolen 
 the few passages which speak of the victims of Vritra not as clouds ymp ls ' 
 but as women. As sailing along in the bright heavens (dyu), the 
 clouds were naturally called devi, the brilliant, and the conversion of 
 the word deva into a general name for the gods transformed them 
 into Gnas, yvraiKts, or Nymphs, in whom we see the fair Helen whom 
 Paris stole from Menelaos, and Sita, the bride of Rama, who is 
 carried off by the giant Ravana. 3 But here also, as in its earlier 
 form, the myth remains purely physical ; and we have to turn to the 
 Iranian land to see the full growth of the idea which the old Hindu 
 worshippers faintly shadowed in the prayer that Vritra might not be 
 suffered to reign over them. 
 
 In the later Hindu mythology the power of darkness is known by Ravana 
 the names Bali, Ravana, or Graha. The first of these is in the Rama- an lta " 
 yana the conqueror of Indra himself, and after his victory over the 
 sun or the rain-god he enjoys the empire of the three worlds, intoxi- 
 cated with the increase of his power. But the darkness which has 
 ended the brief career of Achilleus must in turn be subdued by one 
 who is but Achilleus in another form ; and Bali, the son of Viro- 
 chana, meets his match in Vishnu, who confronts him in his dwarf 
 incarnation as Hara. 4 In the readiness with which Bali yields to the 
 request of the dwarf, who asks only for leave to step three paces, we 
 see the germ of that short-sightedness to their own interests which 
 
 1 Brfal, Herculeet Cacus, 115. _ Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 
 
 2 The deluge, which is poured into 233. 
 
 the trenches cut by Sigurd, when he 3 Breal, Hercule et Cacus, 117, 118. 
 
 slays the dragon Fafnir, appears in the * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iv. 117. 
 
 Slavonic story of Gregory the Brave. — 
 
540 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book has imparted a burlesque character to the trolls and fairies of 
 — — ^ — Northern Europe. 1 No sooner is the prayer granted than the 
 dwarf, who is none other than the sun, measures the whole heaven 
 with his three strides, and sends Bali to his fit abode in the dark 
 Patala. But Bali himself is closely akin, or rather identical, with 
 the giant Ravana,' who steals away Sita, the bride of Rama, by whom 
 he is himself slain, as Paris falls by the arrows of Philokt£tes. This 
 story is modified in the Vishnu P urana to suit the idea of the trans- 
 migration of souls, and Ravana, we are here told, had been in a former 
 birth Sisupala, the great enemy of Vishnu, whom he daily curses 
 with all the force of relentless hatred. But these maledictions had, 
 nevertheless, the effect of keeping the name of the god constantly 
 before his mind ; and thus, when he was slain by Vishnu, he 
 beheld the deity in his true character, and became united with his 
 divine adversary. 2 But Vishnu, the discus-bearing god, has another 
 enemy in Graha, in whom we see again only a new form of Ravana 
 and Bali. 8 Against this wise and powerful being, for the Panis are 
 possessed of a hidden treasure which passes for the possession of 
 knowledge, not even the discus of Vishnu nor a thousand thunder- 
 bolts have the least effect. The darkness is at the least as difficult 
 to subdue as is the dawn or the day. 
 The Trojan The three names, Pani, Vritra, and Ahi, which are specially used 
 to denote the antagonist of Indra, reappear in the mythology of other 
 tribes, sometimes under a strange disguise, which has invested a being 
 originally dark and sombre, with not a little of the beauty and glory 
 of his conqueror. With these modified names appear others which 
 virtually translate the Vedic epithets. That the Helen of the Iliad 
 is etymologically the Sarama of the Vedic hymns, there is no ques- 
 tion ; that the Pani who tempts, or who prevails over Sarama, is the 
 Trojan Paris, is not less clear. Both alike are deceivers and seducers, 
 and both bring down their own doom by their offence. But when 
 we have said that Paris, like the Panis and Vritra, steals away the 
 fairest of women and her treasures (in which we see again the cows 
 of Sarama) from the western land, that he hides her away for ten long 
 
 1 The Pani appears in the German him. The brothers and kinsfolk of 
 story of the Feather Bird as a sorcerer, the bride now come to rescue her ; 
 who went begging from house to house "they immediately closed up all the 
 that he might steal little girls. He is, doors of the house, and then set fire to 
 in short, Paris Gynaimanes, the Blue- it ; and the sorcerer and all his ac- 
 beard of modern stories, who gives each complices were burnt to ashes ; " a burn- 
 successive wife the keys of his house, ing which is manifestly the destruction 
 charging her not to look into a certain of Ilion. 
 
 chamber. At last he is cheated by the * Muir, Sanskrit Tales. I So, note. 
 
 Helen whom he carries to his dwelling, * lb. 159. 
 
 and who dresses up a turnip to deceive 
 
 Paris. 
 
SARAMA AND PENELOP& 541 
 
 years in Ilion, 1 as the clouds are shut up in the prison-house of the CHAP. 
 
 Panis, and that the fight between Paris and Menelaos with his ■ '■ • 
 
 Achaian hosts ends in a discomfiture precisely corresponding to the 
 defeat and death of Pani by the spear of Indra, we have in fact noted 
 every feature in the western legend which identifies Paris with the 
 dark powers, and invests him with the beauty of Medousa. 
 
 In the Odyssey, Sarama reappears as in the older Vedic portraits, Helen and 
 pure and unswerving in her fidelity to her absent lord. The dark Penelop& 
 powers or Panis are here the suitors who crowd around the beautiful. 
 Penelope, while Odysseus is journeying homewards from the plains 
 of Ilion. But the myth has here reached a later stage, and the 
 treasures of Indra are no longer the refreshing rain-clouds, but the 
 wealth which Odysseus has left stored up in his home, and which 
 the suitors waste at their will. The temptation of Penelope" assumes 
 the very form of the ordeal which Sarama is obliged to go through. 
 She, too, shall have her share of the t- .^asures, if she will but submit 
 to become the wife of any one of the chiefs who are striving for her 
 hand. The wheedling and bullying of the Panis in the Vedic hymns 
 are reproduced in the alternate coaxing and blustering of the western 
 suitors; but as Sarama rejects their offers, strong through the might 
 of the absent Indra, so Penelope has her scheme for frustrating the 
 suitors' plans, trusting in the midst of all her grief and agony that 
 Odysseus will assuredly one day come back. This device adheres 
 with singular fidelity to the phenomena which mark the last moments 
 of a summer day. Far above, in the upper regions of Hypereia, 
 where the beautiful Phaiakians dwelt before the uncouth Kyklopes 
 sought to do them mischief, the fairy network of cirri clouds is seen 
 at sundown flushing with deeper tints as the chariot of the lord of 
 day sinks lower in the sky. This is the network of the weaver 
 Penelope, who like Iole spreads her veil of violet clouds over the 
 heaven in the morning and in the evening. Below it, stealing up 
 from the dark waters, are seen the sombre clouds which blot the 
 light from the horizon, and rise from right and left as with out- 
 stretched arms, to clasp the fairy forms which still shed their 
 beauty over the upper heavens. At first their efforts are vain; 
 twice it may be, or thrice, the exquisite network fades from sight, 
 
 1 This Ilion Dr. O. Meyer, in his to a mere name, and that therefore it 
 
 Quasliones Homericce, has sought to may have originally retained its purely 
 
 identify with the Sanskrit word vl/u, appellative power in Greek as well as in 
 
 which he translates by stronghold. On Sanskrit, and from meaning a stronghold 
 
 this Professor Max Muller (Rig Veda in general, have come to mean the 
 
 Sanhita, i. 31) remarks " that vt/ii in stronghold of Troy. " 
 the Veda has not dwindled down as yet 
 
542 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Heraklgs 
 
 and 
 
 Echidna. 
 
 and then appears again with its lustre dimmed, as" if through grief 
 for the lover of Eos or of DaphnS, who has gone away. But the 
 shades of night grow deeper, and with it deepens the tumult 
 and rage of the black vapours which hurry to seize their prey; 
 and the ending of the web which the suitors compel Penelope' to 
 finish is the closing in of the night when the beautiful cirri clouds 
 are shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Then follows the weary 
 strife in which the suitors seek to overcome the obstinacy of Penelopg, 
 and which corresponds to the terrible struggle which precedes the 
 recovery of Helen from the thief who has stolen her away. But like 
 the Panis, and Paris, and Vritra, the suitors bring about their own 
 destruction. " I do not know that Indra is to be subdued," says 
 Sarama, " for it is he himself that subdues ; you Panis will lie 
 prostrate, killed by Indra" So too Penelope can point to a weapon 
 which none of the suitors can wield, and which shall bring them to 
 death if ever the chief returns to his home. In the house of Odysseus 
 there may be servants and handmaids who cast in their lot with the 
 suitors, as Sarama proved faithless when she accepted the milk 
 offered to her by the Panis ; and for these there is a penalty in store, 
 like the blow of Indra which punished Sarami for her faithlessness. 1 
 Finally, by his victory, Odysseus rescues Penelope and his wealth 
 from the hands of his enemies, who are smitten down by his unerring 
 arrows, as Vritra is slain by the irresistible spear of Indra. 
 
 The wealth of the Ithakan chieftain has assumed a different form 
 from that of the cows of Sarama : but there are other myths in which 
 the cattle of Indra reappear as in the Vedic hymns. Herakles has 
 more than once to search, like Phoibos, for stolen cows, or sometimes 
 horses, and each time they are found hidden away in the secret 
 dwelling of the robber. In the story of Echidna we have not only 
 the cattle and the cave, but the very name of the throttling snake 
 Ahi, the epithet by which the Hindu specially sought to express his 
 hatred for the serpent Vritra. Accordingly in the Hesiodic Theogony 
 Echidna is the parent of all the monsters who represent the cloud- 
 enemy of Indra. Night and day follow or produce each other, and 
 as Phoibos is the child df Leto, so is he in his turn the father of the 
 night which is his deadliest enemy. The black darkness follows the 
 beautiful twilight, and thus in the Hesiodic version Echidna is 
 the daughter of Chrysaor, the lord of the golden sword and of the 
 beautiful Kallirhoe. But although her offspring may cause disgust 
 
 1 As in the case of Sarama, so in 
 that of PenelopS, there are two versions 
 of the myth, one representing her as in- 
 corruptible, the other as faithless. Ac- 
 
 cording lo the latter, she became the 
 mother of Pan either by Hermes or by 
 all the suitors. 
 
THE CROSSING OF THE OCEAN STREAM. 543 
 
 and dread, she herself retains some portion of her parents' beauty, chap. 
 Like the French Melusina, from the waist upwards she is a beautiful x - 
 maiden, 1 the rest of her body being that of a huge snake. Her 
 abode, according to Hesiod, is among the Arimoi, where Typhoeus 
 slumbers, or according to Herodotos, far away in the icy Scythia. 
 Among her children, of some of whom Typhaon, " the terrible and 
 wanton wind," is the father, are the dogs Orthros and Kerberos, the 
 Lernaian Hydra, the Chimaira, and the deadly Phix or Sphinx which 
 brings drought and plague on Thebes. But whether in Hesiod, 
 Apollodoros, or Herodotos, the story of Echidna is interwined with 
 that of Geryones, who like herself is not only a child of Chrysaor 
 and Kallirhoe, but a monster, who has the bodies of three men 
 united at the waist This being lived in Erytheia, the red land, 
 which, in some versions; was on the coast of Epeiros, in others, nea: 
 Gadeira or Gades beyond the Pillars of Herakles. In either case, he 
 abode in the western regions, and there kept his herds of red oxen. 
 In other words, the myth of Geryones exhibits a fiery and stormy sun- 
 set, in which the red or purple oxen are the flaming clouds which 
 gather in the western horizon. These herds are guarded by the 
 shepherd Eurytion and the two-headed dog Orthros, the offspring 
 of Echidna and Typhon. These herds Herakles is charged to bring 
 to Eurystheus, and accordingly he journeys westward, receiving from 
 Helios the golden cup in which Helios himself journeys every night 
 from the west to the east. Having slain Orthros and Eurytion, 
 Herakles has a final struggle with Geryones, in which he wins a 
 victory answering to that of Indra over Vritra; and placing the 
 purple oxen in the golden cup he conveys them across the Ocean 
 stream, and begins his journey westward. 2 The stories of Alebion 
 and Derkynos, and again of Eryx, as noted by Apollodoros, 8 are only 
 fresh versions of the myth of the Panis, while the final incident of the 
 gadfly sent by Herd to scatter the herds reproduces the legend of 
 the same gadfly as sent to torment the heifer 16. The myth as related 
 by Herodotos has a greater interest, although he starts with speaking 
 of oxen and ends with a story of stolen horses. Here the events 
 occur in the wintry Scythian land, where Herakles coming himself 
 with his lionskin goes to sleep, and his horses straying away are 
 caught by Echidna and imprisoned in her cave. Thither Herakles 
 comes in search of them, and her reply to his question is that the 
 animals cannot be restored to him until he should have sojourned 
 with her for a time. HeraklSs must fare as Odysseus fared in the 
 palace of Kirke and the cave of Kalypso ; and Echidna becomes 
 
 1 Hes. Theog. 297. 2 Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 184. ' ii. 5, 10. 
 
544 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 II. 
 
 Orthros. 
 
 Typhon. 
 
 the mother of three sons, whose strength is to be tested by the same 
 ^ ordeal to which Theseus and Sigurd are compelled to submit He 
 only of the three shall remain in the land who can brace around his 
 body the girdle of Herakl£s and stretch his bow. To the girdle is 
 attached a golden phial or cup, of which we have already traced the 
 history. 
 
 As the name Ahi reappears in that of Echidna, so that of Vritra 
 is reproduced in Orthros, who in the Hesiodic Theogony is simply 
 a hound sprung from Echidna and Geryones, but in Apollodoros 
 becomes a dog with two heads, as Kerberos appears with three, 
 although in Hesiod his heads are not less than fifty in number. It 
 must, however, be noted that Orthros is sometimes himself called 
 Kerberos. He is thus the being who, like Vritra, hides away the 
 light or the glistening cows of the sun ; but the time specially assigned 
 to him as to the Asvins is that which marks the first faint streak of 
 dawn, the time in which darkness is still supreme although its reign 
 is drawing towards its close. 1 It was at this time that Hermes, having 
 toiled all night in the kindled forests, returned home gently to lay 
 himself down like a child in his cradle, as the soft breeze of morning 
 follows the gale which may have raged through the night. This 
 Orthros, who with Kerberos answers seemingly to the two dogs of 
 Yama, is slain by Herakles, as Vritra is killed by Indra, who thus 
 obtains the name of Vritrahan, — a name which must have assumed 
 in Greek the form Orthrophon. Nor is the name of Kerberos, who, 
 armed with serpents for his mane and tail, has sometimes even a 
 hundred heads, wanting in the Veda, which exhibits it under the form 
 Sarvari, an epithet for the night, meaning originally dark or pale. 
 Kerberos is thus " the dog of night, watching the path to the lower 
 world" 2 
 
 The same terrible enemy of the powers of light appears again 
 under the names Typhon, and Typhoeus, which denote the smoke 
 and flames vomited out by Vritra, Geryon, or Cacus, — in other words, 
 the lightning flashes which precede the fall of the pent-up rain. This 
 being is in the Hesiodic Theogony s the father of all the dreadful 
 winds which bring mischief and ruin to mortals, destroying ships at 
 sea and houses and crops on land By this dreadful hurricane, Seivbv 
 v/3pi<TT^v ayc/iov, Echidna becomes the mother of Kerberos, the 
 Lernaian Hydra, the Chimaira, the Sphinx, and the Nemean Lion, 
 all of them representing under different forms the dark powers who 
 struggle with and are conquered by the lord of day, and whose 
 mightiest hosts are seen in the armies of the Titans leagued against 
 1 Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 185. * lb. 183. * Theog. 869. 
 
THE STOLEN CATTLE. 545 
 
 the Kronid Zeus. Of these beings it is enough to say that later my- CHAP. 
 
 thologists arranged their names and their functions almost at their • '■ 
 
 will. Among the former appear some, as Hyperion and Phoibe. 
 which are elsewhere mere names for the sun and moon ; and in thi? 
 its later form the myth is little more than an attempt to explain how 
 it was that Kronos, time, was not able to devour and destroy all his 
 children. With this insatiable parent Zeus must be inevitably en- 
 gaged in an internecine war, the issue of which could not be doubtful. 
 The thunder-bolts by which Indra overwhelms his foe reappear in the 
 Greek myth as the Kyklopes and the Hekatoncheires or hundred- 
 handed beings whom on the advice of Gaia the king of the blue 
 heaven summons from the depths of Tartaros into which Kronos and 
 his associates are hurled. This struggle is, indeed, reproduced in 
 myth after myth. The enemies who had assailed Ouranos are seen 
 once more in the Gigantes or earth-born beings who league them- 
 selves against all the gods. These giants are mentioned in Hesiod 
 merely as children sprung from Gaia along with the Erinyes after the 
 mutilation of Ouranos. Elsewhere they are a horrible race destroyed 
 for their impiety, fearful in aspect, and like Echidna and Ahi, with 
 snaky bodies. 1 Against these foes even Zeus himself is powerless 
 unless he can gain the help of the mortal Herakles, and the latter in 
 his turn can prevail over Alkyoneus only by taking him away from his 
 own soil, from which, like Antaios, he rises with renewed strength 
 after every downfall. When at length the struggle is ended, the 
 giants are imprisoned, like the Titans, beneath the islands of the sea. 
 
 * 
 
 Section II.— THE LATIN MYTH. 
 
 The main features of the myths of Vritra, Geryon, and Echidna Hercules 
 reappear in the singular Latin legend known to us as that of Hercules ar 
 and Cacus. This story had undergone strange transformations before 
 it assumed its Euemerised forms in the hands of Livy and of the 
 Halikarnassian Dionysios, with whom even the account which he re- 
 jects as mythical has been carefully stripped of all supernatural in- 
 cidents. According to Dionysios, Herakles, driving before him the 
 oxen of Geryon, had reached the Palatine hill when, as in the myth 
 of Echidna, he was overcome by sleep. On waking he found that 
 some of his cattle had been stolen by some thief who had dragged 
 them away by their tails. Doubtless Dionysios means that Herakles 
 saw through the clumsy device, which the writer of the Homeric hymn 
 
 1 Paus. viii. 29, 3. 
 
 2 N 
 
546 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK discreetly avoided by making Hermes drive the cattle hither and 
 - IL - thither, until all possibility of tracking them was lost ; and with him 
 the story goes on with a colloquy between Herakles and Cacus, who 
 stands at the entrance of the cave and denies all knowledge of the 
 cattle.. But his guilt is proved when the lowing of the other cattle 
 whom Herakles brings up rouses the imprisoned oxen to reply. He 
 then slays Cacus with a blow of his club, and builds an altar to Zeus 
 the discoverer (cvpeo-ios) near the Porta Trigemina. 1 
 Cacus an- The myth as related by Virgil and Ovid carries us back at once 
 
 of Vritra!" to the language of the Vedic hymns ; and this fact, of which the 
 poets were of course profoundly unconscious, shows the fidelity with 
 which they adhered to the genuine tradition of the country. Here 
 we have the deep cave of Vritra, with its huge rocks beetling over it, 
 — the mighty mass which represents the dark thundercloud in which 
 the waters are confined. 2 Into this cave the rays of the sun can 
 never enter ; " and here dwelt the monster, who, like Echidna, is but 
 half a human being, and of whom the fire-god Vulcan is the father. 
 In the lowing of the imprisoned cattle, as in the dark speech of the 
 Sphinx, we have the rumbling of the thunder before the rain bursts 
 from its confinement in the clouds. The hurling down of the rock 
 by Hercules is the shattering of the castle of Vritra by the spear of 
 Indra. No sooner is the blow struck than the horrible abyss of his 
 dwelling is lighted up by the flames which burst from the monster's 
 
 1 Dion. H. i. 39-41. This version hero, and is substituted for Potitius, 
 
 Dionysios rejects as fabulous " because nay, for Evander ; the latter does not 
 
 the expedition of Herakles to drive oxen appear at all, nor do any Arcadians : 
 
 from the far west, in order to please none but natives are mentioned. So a 
 
 Eurystheus, is an improbable event, not sister of Cacus, Caca, was worshipped 
 
 because it contravenes the order of like Vesta, with eternal fire. " — Niebuhr, 
 
 nature." — Lewis, Credibility of Early History of Rome, i. : " The Aborigines 
 
 Roman History, i. 289. Dionysios has and Latins. " Niebuhr saw that in 
 
 no scruple in converting the myth into this legend '* the worship of the Sabine 
 
 history by making Herakles the leader Semo Sancus was transferred to the son 
 
 of a great army, and by stating that the of Alkmene" : " but he merely states the 
 
 stolen beasts belonged to his commis- fact without attempting to account for it. 
 sariat. Herakles is also invested by The version of the legend given by 
 
 him with that high moral character on Livy differs from that of Dionysios only 
 
 which the apologue of Prodikos is made in the description of Cacus as a shep- 
 
 to turn. Sir Cornewall Lewis remarks herd. Dionysios simply speaks of him 
 
 that in a legend of the Epizephyrian as a thief. The former ranks him with 
 
 Lokrians " Latinus fills the place of the pastoral Kylopes ; the latter de- 
 
 Cacus and steals the oxen of Hercules. " grades him to the level of Sinis and 
 
 — lb- 335- That the myth took a strong Prokroustes. 
 
 hold on the Latin imagination cannot ' Of Indra it is said that he has 
 
 be doubted. "The den of Cacus is slain Ahi who was seated on the moun- 
 
 placed in the Aventine ; but the steps tain summit ; the word parvata being 
 
 of Cacus were on the Palatine ; they used to denote alike a hill and a cloud, 
 
 are known to Diodorus : and the latter — R. V. i. 32 ; Breal, Hercule et Cacus, 
 
 hill is in his narrative the residence of 94. 
 
 Cacius, who with Pinarius hopitably * "Solis inaccessam radiis." 
 
 and reverently entertains the Tirynthian Virg. ALn. viii. 195. 
 
HERCULES AND HERCULUS. 547 
 
 mouth ; in other words, the darkness of the storm-cloud is pierced chap. 
 
 by the lightning. Then follows the death of the monster, to whose • ^ — - 
 
 carcase the poet applies an epithet which links this myth with the 
 legend of the Chimaira slain by Bellerophon and thus connects i 
 again with that of Vritra. 1 
 
 But we have here to meet the difficulty noticed by Niebuhr. Sancus or 
 Whatever is to be said of the name Cacus, it is clear that the name 
 Hercules cannot have been contained in the original Latin story. 
 There was indeed a Latin god Herculus, but, like the Lares wor- 
 shipped by the Arval Brotherhood, he was strictly a god of the 
 country and the guardian of fences and landmarks. He is known 
 as the Rustic, Domestic, or Genial Hercules, a name which points 
 to an old verb hercere, herciscere, akin to arcere, and the Greek 
 tlpyuv ; but this very fact precludes the idea that the Latin Hercules, 
 of which the old form Herclus, Herculus, survives in the exclamation 
 Mehercule, Mehercle, is identical with the Greek Herakles. 2 But 
 the god who overcame Cacus must have had the characteristics of the 
 Greek Herakles and the Vedic Indra ; and hence when the Roman 
 became acquainted with the Greek hero, whose name so closely 
 resembled that of one amongst his own ancient gods, he attributed to 
 his own Hercules the deeds which were rightly told of the son of 
 AlkmSne, and doubtless also of the god into whose place he was 
 thus intruded. The god thus displaced was, in M. Breal's judgment, 
 the deity known as Sancus or Recaranus. The former, answering to 
 Zeus Pistios of the Greek and the Dius Fidius of the Latins, imparted 
 to the Ara Maxima the peculiar sanction which rendered all oaths 
 there taken inviolable. 8 The name Recaranus, which is actually 
 
 1 " Villosa setis Pectora semiferi." — a la fois net et abstrait du Romain ne 
 . JEn. viii. 267. lui a pas permis de creer des kites. 
 
 2 In this case the name, as M. Breal intermediaires entre les dieux et les 
 remarks, should begin with s, as in the hommes. Sans doute, il connalt des 
 change of the aspirated Greek numeral genies d'un ordre plus ou moins releve, 
 into the Latin sex, septem, of 'iirouai qui president aux actions humaines et 
 into sequor, &c. — Hercule et Cacus, 52. interviennent dans la vie; il sacrifie aux 
 M. Breal further remarks (and great Mines de ses ancetres qui apres leur 
 stress must be laid upon his words) mort ont pris place parmi les dieux ; 
 that Herakles, like Perseus, Theseus, mais des demi- dieux comme Thesee, 
 Achilleus, and the rest, is in the Greek Persee, Heracles, tenant a la fois du 
 mythology strictly not a god. Though ciel et de la terre, on n'en voit pas dans 
 the son of Zeus himself, he is doomed to la mythologie Latine. La transforma- 
 toil, weariness, and death : and the only tion de Romulus en dieu Quirinus est 
 offset to his short career on earth is the une tentative tardive et mal reussie, que 
 assurance that when his journey here is Rome ne renouvela pas, jusqu'au temps 
 done he shall enter the halls of Olympos, oil elle fit de Cesar mort un demidieu. " 
 there to live in everlasting youth. But' — P. 51. 
 
 it is most doubtful whether the Latin 3 Breal, Hercule et Cacus, 57. The 
 
 mythology knew anything of heroes in name Semo with which that of Sancus 
 the Greek sense of the word. ' ' L'esprit is so often connected is an epithet denot- 
 
548 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK given by Aurelius Victor as that of the slayer of Cacus, 1 must in 
 "• . ■ M. Brdal's judgment be referred to the root cri, or kri, which has 
 furnished to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin a large number of words 
 denoting the ideas of creation and power. M. Breal cites from 
 Festus the word cerus as an epithet of Janus, 2 and connects with it 
 the Greek Kronos and the Keres, who have power over the life 
 and death of men. 8 If then Caranus, or Garanus, is the maker, 
 Recaranus must be the god who makes again, or who, like Dahana, 
 renders all things young; and thus Recaranus would denote the 
 Re-creator, and so the Recuperator or recoverer of the cattle stolen 
 by Cacus, Geryon, or Vritra. When, however, the Roman, becoming 
 acquainted with Greek myths, found the word Alexikakos among 
 the epithets of Herakles, he naturally came to regard Recaranus as 
 only another name for that hero. But the quantity of the name 
 Cacus leaves no room for this identification. The first syllable is 
 long, and the word, given by Diodoros under the form Kakios, and 
 reappearing in the Praenestine Caeculus, leads M. Breal to the 
 conclusion that the true Latin form was Csecius, as Ssetu-rnus answers 
 to Saturnus. What then is Csecius ? The idea of the being who 
 bears this name is clearly that of the Sanskrit Vritra, the being who 
 steals the beautiful clouds and blots out the light from the sky. Such 
 is Paris; such also is Typhon; and the latter word suggests to 
 M. Bre"al a comparison of Cacus with Csecus, the blind or eyeless 
 being. 4 But in a proverb cited by Aulus Gellius from Aristotle, 
 a being of this name is mentioned as possessing the power of drawing 
 the clouds towards him ; 6 and thus we have in M. Brdal's judgment 
 
 ing fertility and wealth, as in " semen : " an effectual command can be given only 
 
 and Herculus himself is necessarily in- by him who has a constraining authority, 
 
 eluded in the number of the Semones, i.e. who can make others do his bidding, 
 
 along with Ceres, Pales, and Flora. * If this can be established (and the 
 
 1 Orig. Gen. Rom. vi. ' ' Recaranus affinity of Cacus, Cascius, Kakios, and 
 quidam, Graecae originis, ingentis cor- the Greek xauclas seems to leave no 
 poris et magnarum virium pastor. . . . room for doubt), the word Cacus is at 
 Hercules appellatus." That Victor once accounted for. Csecus is one of 
 should look on Recaranus as strictly a many words in which the negative is 
 Greek word is not surprising ; but as it expressed by the particle ha denoting 
 does not occur in any Greek myths, the the number I, which Bopp discovers in 
 evidence becomes conclusive that he has the Gothic haihs=caecus, blind, hanfs, 
 here preserved the genuine Roman tra- one-handed, halts, lame, halbs, half, 
 dition. Caecus, then, is made up of this pri- 
 
 2 "Duonus cerus es, duonus Ianus.'' vative particle, and iha or aiha, auge, 
 The name is found on a cup preserved the eye. The second compound of halts 
 in the Gregorian museum at Rome and is found in the English phrase " lithe of 
 inscribed " Ceri Poculom." limb." Cf. Kokalos and Codes, pp. 
 
 3 Krjpes Ba.v6.roio. The words Kxtpios , 328, 329 ; and Calebs. 
 
 and Koipavos have passed into the notion 5 iciic i(p' airbv '4\kuv, us i KaiKia; 
 
 of mastery from the obvious fact that he ve<pos- a proverb applied to a man who 
 
 who has made a thing must have power is his own er.emy. — Hr6a\, id. ill; 
 
 over it. So Kpaiviiv is to decree, because Maury, Croyances, &c, 177. 
 
BELLEROS AND HIPPONOOS. 549 
 
 the explanation of an incident which, translated into the conditions chap. 
 
 of human life, becomes a clumsy stratagem. In storms, wheji con- ■ J- 
 
 trary currents are blowing at different elevations, the clouds may 
 often appear from the earth to be going against or right towards the 
 wind. Then it is that Cacus is drawing the cattle of Herakles by 
 their tails towards his cave. 
 
 Section III.— BELLEROPHON. 
 
 Virgil notes especially the rough and shaggy (villosa) breast of The 
 the monster Cacus : and this epithet carries us to the names of similar Beiieros. 
 beings in the mythology of other Aryan tribes. That the root var, 
 to hide or cover, has furnished names for Varuna the brooding- 
 heaven, as well as for Vritra, the enemy who hides away or imprisons 
 the rain, we have already seen. We may follow Professor Max 
 Miiller as he traces the root further through the Sanskrit ura in ura- 
 bhra, a ram (in other words, the wool-bearer), to urna, wool, the 
 Greek Eipos and Zp-iov, in urnayu, a goat and a spider (the Greek 
 ap-dxvrj), the one as supplying wool, the other as appearing to weave 
 it, to Aurnavabha, the wool-provider, one of the enemies slain by 
 Indra, the Russian volna, the Gothic vulla, the English wool, the 
 Latin villus and vellus, and the English fleece. But as in Varuna 
 the idea of covering gives place to that of guarding or shielding, so 
 lirawaA is a ram, but urarca/z is a protector. The meaning of the 
 word is- further modified from hairiness or woolliness into that of 
 mere roughness, and the term varvara was applied by the Aryan 
 invaders to the negro-like aboriginal tribes, whom the Greeks would 
 have termed barbarians. That this last word can be referred to no 
 other root is further proved by comparison of the Sanskrit loma^ya 
 with the Greek Sao-un??, words in which the shagginess of hair furnishes 
 a metaphor denoting roughness of pronunciation. 1 But the Sanskrit 
 varvara transliterated into Greek would yield the word Beiieros : and 
 thus we retain some notion of a being of whom the Greek myth gives 
 otherwise no account whatever. The invention of a noble Corinthian 
 of this name, to serve as the victim of Hipponoos the son of Glaukos, 
 is on a par with the explanations given by mythographers for such 
 names as Pan, Odysseus, Oidipous, or Aias. Beiieros then is some 
 shaggy or hairy monster, slain by the hero named from this exploit, 
 
 1 It is needless for me to do more treated at length and most convincingly, 
 
 than refer the reader to Professor Max Were I to repeat my obligations as often 
 
 Aluller's chapter on Bellerophon ( Chips, as I feel that I ought to repeat them, I 
 
 vol ii ) where he will find the subject might become weansome. 
 
550 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book — in short, another Caciis, or Ahi, or Vritra ; and as Indra is Vritra- 
 II - han, the slayer of Indra, so is Bellerophon the slayer of Belleros. 1 
 Although no mythical being is actually found bearing this name 
 in the Rig Veda, yet the black cloud is one of the chief enemies 
 (dasas) of Indra. This cloud is sometimes called the black skin, 
 sometimes the rain-giving and fertilising skin, 2 while the demon 
 of the cloud appears as a ram, or a shaggy and hairy creature, with 
 ninety-nine arms, or, if we give him one more limb, as Briareos. 
 This wool- or fleece-covered animal is therefore reproduced not only 
 in the monster Belleros, but in the Chimaira which Hipponoos is 
 said to have slain, a being, like Geryon, Kerberos, Orthros, and 
 Echidna, of a double or triple body. In the Chimaira the fore-part 
 is that of a lion, the middle that of a goat, while the hinder-part, like 
 that of his mother Echidna and all other cognate beings, is the tail 
 of a fish or serpent. 8 The death of Vritra or the wool-weaver 
 (Aurnavabha) is followed by the loosening or the downfall of the rain ; 
 but although it is not said that this is the effect of the slaughter of 
 Chimaira, the idea of rain or moisture as repressed by the monster 
 is not absent from the myth of Bellerophon. His victory is won 
 by means of Pegasos, the winged horse, whom he finds feeding by 
 the fountain or waters (mjy^) of Peirene; and from its back, as 
 he soars aloft in the air, Hipponoos pours down his deadly arrows 
 on the offspring of Echidna, as Indra from his chariot in the heaven 
 hurls his lance against the gloomy Vritra. 
 Lrophon- But Vritra, Ahi, the Panis and the other dark beings are all of 
 
 them enemies (dasas) of the gods, and he who destroys them is 
 dasyuhan, the slayer of the dasas — a name which transliterated into 
 Greek would yield Leophontes. This epithet is applied to Hip 
 ponoos as well as that of Bellerophon ; and it is clear that he cannot 
 be so called as killing lions, for he would then be Leontophontes. 
 Nor is it easy to connect this Leo or Deo, of which he is the con- 
 queror, with anything but the Sanskrit dasa, which reappears in 
 
 1 We may trace the root in the and Rikshas, Leukos and Lukos, &c. 
 Sanskrit han, the Greek ipivos, and the At the least, Chimaira is a name not 
 English bane. The precise Greek equi- for goats of any age, but only for those 
 valent for Vritrahan would be Orthro- which are one year old. The older 
 phon, u word which is not actually goats are called Aiges. Theokr. i. 6. 
 found, although Herakles is really Or- A Chimaira, then, is strictly a winter- 
 throphontes, the slayer of the shaggy ling (i.e. a yearling), just as the Latin 
 hound Orthros. bimus or trimus (bi-himus, hiems), de- 
 
 2 Max Miiller, Chips, ii. iSo. notes things of two or three winters old. 
 * It is possible that the introduction But the sun is the slayer of winter ; and 
 
 of the word Chimaira into this myth hence the creature which he slays would 
 may be the result of a confusion like be the Chimaira. 
 those already noticed between A^kshas 
 
 tes. 
 
LAIOS AND THE SPHINX. SSI 
 
 dasapati, the Greek Despotes, or lord of subjects, in other words, CHAP. 
 
 of conquered enemies. 1 In the Theban legend this foe iy repro- > : • 
 
 duced as Laios, 2 who is doomed, like Akrisios, to perish by the hand 
 of his child, as the night must give place to the day. 
 
 Section IV.— THE THEBAN MYTH. 
 
 The close affinity of the Theban Sphinx with the Ahi, the The 
 throttling snake, is manifest from its name, which belongs to the p inx ° 
 same root with the verb o-<£iyyu>, to bind tight, to squeeze, and so to 
 choke. In the Hesiodic Theogony this word is given under the form 
 Phix, and points to the connexion between the words o-<£i'yyw, Tr^yw/ii, 
 and the Latin figo, to fix or fasten. If the Thebans derived this 
 name from the mount Phikion, their mistake was but a repetition of 
 the process which traced the surnames of Phoibos to the island 
 of Delos and the country of Lykia. The Sphinx, then, like Vritra 
 and the Panis, is a being who imprisons the rain in hidden dungeons. 
 Like them, she takes her seat on a rock, and there she utters her 
 dark sayings, and destroys the men who cannot expound them. In 
 Hesiod, she is a daughter of Orthros and Chimaira, who with her 
 mother Echidna exhibits the same composite form which reappears 
 in the Sphinx. In the Sphinx the head of a woman is combined 
 with the body of a beast, having like Typhon the claws of the lion, 
 the wings of the bird, and the serpent's tail : and in Apollodoros 
 Typhon is himself her father.* It is, of course, possible that the 
 so-called Egyptian Sphinx may be an expression for the same idea 
 
 1 With this we must compare not = SIokos. — Chips, ii. 168. He adds 
 
 only the Greek Aorfs, \e<is, people, but (186) a large number of instances in 
 
 the adjective H'ios, hostile. This word which the same word in Latin exists 
 
 Professor Max Miiller (Chips, ii. 187) under both forms, as impedimenta, 
 
 traces to the root das, to perish, although impelimenta ; presidium, praesihum ; 
 
 he adds that, " in its frequent applica- considium, consilium; dingua (Goth, 
 
 tion to fire the adjective Bdios might tuggo), and lingua, &c. Professor 
 
 well be referred to the root dii, to Curtius, when he speaks of the transi- 
 
 burn." The difference in meaning be- tion of 5 into A as unheard of in Greek, 
 
 tween them is not greater than that must, in Professor Miiller s opinion, be 
 
 which separates Varuna from Vritra, or speaking of classical Greek, and not of 
 
 Uranah from Uranah." the Greek dialects, which are never- 
 
 s Laios, in the opinion both of Pro- theless of the greatest importance in 
 
 fessor Miiller and of M. Breal, is an the interpretation of the names of local 
 
 exact equivalent of the Sanskrit Dasyu. gods and heroes, and in the explanation 
 
 To the assertion of M. Comparetti that of local legends." But if we sought 
 
 an Aryan d never appears in Greek as /, for a Greek equivalent to the Latin avo, 
 
 Professor Miiller replies by saying that we might look for a form 8./J,, not less 
 
 the instances in support of his own than for Aouo, ; and we find both, as in 
 
 position were supplied byAhrens "De 11. J...47I, £. 7**X» *77« M«. 
 Dialecto Dorica,'* who cites hHvr, = 111. 5, 8. 
 
 $i<pv7i,'0\<icrcrevs = 'OSi.<reevf, and AiVkos 
 
552 MYTHOLOGY Of THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK which has given birth to Ahi, Vritra, the Panis, and the kindred 
 IL beings of Greek mythology ; but it can scarcely be said that either the 
 name or the figures of the Hellenic Sphinx have been borrowed from 
 Egypt. 1 The Egyptian Sphinx Ts very seldom winged, and is never 
 represented except as prone and recumbent, or in any form except 
 that of a lion with a human head and bust. The notion that the 
 riddling Sphinx of Thebes was derived from the land of the Nile 
 may have originated with Herodotos, or may have been taken for 
 granted on the bare assertion of Egyptian priests by others before 
 himself; but the name existed in Greek mythology long before the 
 port of Naukratis was opened to Greek commerce. The conclusions 
 which Herodotos drew from his Egyptian informants on the subjects 
 of ethnology and mythology were in almost every case wrong ; and 
 the Sphinx is too closely connected with Echidna and Zohak, with 
 Orthros, Vritra, Geryon, and Cacus, to justify any classification which 
 professes to account for one without explaining the rest. 2 
 The Riddle In point of fact, few Greek myths are more transparent than that 
 solved. £ tne mons t er w hich is slain by Oidipous. The story which made 
 her the daughter of Orthros or Typhon, said simply that the cloud 
 in which the thunder abode, and in which the rain was imprisoned, 
 was the child of the darkness : the version which made her a 
 daughter of Laios a spoke of her as sprung from the great enemy of 
 Indra and Phoibos — the darkness under another name. The huge 
 storm-cloud moves slowly through the air : and so the phrase went 
 that Herd the goddess of the open heaven had sent the Sphinx, 
 because the Thebans had not punished her enemy Laios, who had 
 carried off Chrysippos from Pisa. Others related that she had been 
 sent by Ares, the grinder, to avenge herself on Kadmos for slaying 
 his child the dragon, or that she was come to do the bidding of 
 Dionysos or of Hades. The effect of her coming is precisely that 
 which follows the theft of the cows of Indra by the Panis. The blue 
 heaven is veiled from sight, the light of the sun is blotted out, and 
 over the city broods the mighty mass, beetling like a gigantic rock, 
 which can never be moved until some one comes with strength 
 enough to conquer and to slay her. The robbery and rescuing of 
 the cows are the only incidents which have fallen out of the Theban 
 
 1 Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, i. case to the top of a palm-tree, from the 
 
 4°°- branches of which it struck down abun- 
 
 Vishl t u P«rana (H. H. dance of fruit, like raindrops poured 
 
 Wilson, 514) the sphinx appears as the upon earth by the wind." The simile 
 
 demon Dheanka, whom " Rama seized here gives the original form of the myth, 
 by both hind legs, and whirling him 3 Paus. ix. 26, 2. 
 
 round until he expired, tossed his car- 
 
OIDIPOUS AND THE SPHINX. 553 
 
 legend ; but in the discomfiture of the Sphinx, who dashes herself chap. 
 from the rock when her riddle is solved, we have the sudden downfall x - 
 of the waters when the thundercloud has been pierced by the lance 
 of Indra. The issue of the Boiotian story was determined by an 
 explanation given of the name of Oidipous. According to some, 
 the name denoted the swelling of the child's feet as he lay exposed 
 on the slopes of Kithairon ; by others who rejected the derivation 
 from the verb oiScco, to swell, it was referred to his wisdom in solving 
 the enigma of the feet. That the unintelligible muttering of the 
 thunder should suggest the introduction of some popular riddle into 
 the old myth, was natural and perhaps inevitable ; and the time at 
 which it was engrafted into the legend is a matter of little or no 
 importance. Wisdom is among the most prominent attributes of 
 the beings who do battle with the powers of darkness. Whether it 
 be Helios possessed of a knowledge which he cannot impart even to 
 Hermes, or of a robe which makes Medeia the wonder of all for her 
 sagacity and her power, or whether it be Tantalos, or Sisyphos, or 
 Ixion, whose wisdom is no security against their downfall, whether 
 it be Phoibos endowing his ministers at Delphoi with the gift of 
 prophecy, or Kadmos instructing his people in all art and learning, 
 we see in one and all the keenness of wit and strength of purpose 
 which do their work while gods and men think little of the dwarfs 
 Vishnu and Hari, the halting Hephaistos, or Apollon wrapped in his 
 swaddling-clothes at Delos. Their career begins in weakness to end 
 in strength, in defeat to be crowned by victory. In three strides the 
 child Vishnu traverses the heaven ; and the despised Oidipous, " who 
 knows nothing," solves the riddle of the Sphinx as surely as Indra 
 and Herakles discover the hiding-places of their cattle. It is but 
 another version of the story of Odysseus flouted as a beggar in his 
 own hall, or Boots sitting among the ashes while his elders laugh him 
 to scorn, but each winning a victory which is due rather to their 
 wisdom than to their power. 
 
 But if the riddle was introduced into the story at a comparatively The voice 
 late stage, the idea which suggested it is essential to the myth. It ^. f h '^ der 
 is that of the fatal voice of the thunder, 1 the utterances of Typhaon, 
 which even the gods can only sometimes understand, 3 and which 
 cease when the cloud has been pierced by the lightning and the rain 
 has fallen upon the earth. Thus, in two or three mythical phrases, 
 we have the framework of the whole myth. The first, " Oidipous is 
 talking with the Sphinx," indicates the struggle of Indra with the 
 Panis, of Zeus with Typhon, of Apollon with the Delphian dragon ; 
 1 PpovT~\soX l r-ov<t>6{-YiM.—Yin&.P}>th. iv. 350. » Hes. Theog. 837. 
 
554 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 in the second, " Oidipous has smitten the Sphinx," we have the con 
 summation which sets the land free from the plague of drought. The 
 same myth comes before us in the story of Sigurd and Fafnir whose 
 blood is the rain. Sigurd is bidden to dig a pit in the dragon's path- 
 way, and then, getting into the pit, to smite him to the heart, as Indra 
 smites Vritra. Sigurd dreads a flood which may drown him ; but 
 Odin bids him dig many pits to catch the blood, and thus it is made 
 to fertilise the whole earth. 
 
 The Py- 
 thian 
 Dragon. 
 
 Section V.— THE DELPHIAN AND CRETAN MYTHS. 
 
 In other myths the incidents of the imprisonment and liberation of 
 the waters are marked with scarcely less clearness than in the history 
 of Indra himself. The being with whom Apollon has to fight is the 
 dragon of Pytho, who had chased and vexed his mother during her jour- 
 neyings before she reached Delos, and at whose death the imprisoned 
 waters started from the sources opened by the spear of Phoibos. In 
 the Theban myth the snake who is slain by Kadmos guards the well 
 of Ares, and slays all who come to fetch water until Kadmos himself 
 deals it the death-blow. 1 The snakes or serpents are no other than 
 the dragon of the glistening heath, which, in the myths of the frost- 
 bound regions of the north, lies coiled round the sleeping Brynhild 
 and all her treasures. The myth is changed only in the point of 
 view which substitutes deliverance from the deadly cold of winter for 
 deliverance from the not less dreadful plague of drought. The 
 latter idea may be traced in the strange story related by Pausanias 2 
 of the hero of Temessa. The enemy here is not a snake but an evil 
 spirit, or rather the demon of one of the companions of Odysseus 
 who had been slain for wrong done to a maiden of that city. The 
 ravages of this demon, not less terrible than those of the Sphinx, 
 could be stayed, the Pythian priestess said, only by building a temple 
 to this hero or demon, and offering to him once a year a beautiful 
 maiden. From this point the story is but another version of the myth 
 of Perseus. Like him, Euthymos (a wrestler who is said to have won 
 several victories at Olympia between the 70th and 80th Olympiads, 
 but whom his countrymen regarded as a son of the river Kaikines) 
 resolves to rescue the maiden, and wins her as his bride, 3 while the 
 
 1 Mr. Breal (Hercule et Cacus, 113) 
 adds the instance of Eurybates : " Eury- 
 bate ayant tir<S de son antre le monstre 
 Sybaris qui desolait les environs de 
 Delphi, et l'ayant brise contre les ro- 
 chers, a la place oil il disparut une 
 source s'elanca de la pierre." This 
 monster, under the form of a huge wild 
 
 ass, who haunts a spring, is slain again 
 by the Persian Rustem. — Keightley, 
 Fairy Mythology, 19. 
 
 ' vi. 6. 
 
 8 In a still more modern shape the 
 story may be found in Southey's metrical 
 tale of the Dragon of Antioch. 
 
chrysaQr and geryon. 555 
 
 demon, like the Libyan dragon, sinks into the sea. Of the mode by chap. 
 which Euthymos mastered him nothing is said ; but Pausanias adds X " 
 that Euthymos was not subjected to death, and that the demon 
 whom he overcame was a creature terribly dark and black, with the 
 skin of a wolf for his garment With this legend we may compare 
 the story of the monsters slain by Beowulf, 1 the wolf-tamer, the first 
 of these being Grendel, who ravages the country of King Hrothgar, 
 and whom he slays after a struggle as arduous as that of Indra with 
 the Panis. The second is but another form of the first It is a huge 
 dragon which guards a treasure-hoard near the sea-shore, and which 
 sinks into the waters when smitten by the hero, who, like Sigurd, 
 becomes master of all his wealth. 
 
 The same devouring enemy of the lord of light reappears in the The Mino- 
 Cretan Minotauros ; and here also, as we resolve the myth into its tauros - 
 component parts, we see the simple framework on which it has been 
 built up. The story in its later form ran that at the prayer of Mirios 
 Poseidon sent up from the sea a bull, by whom Pasiphae becar.ie the 
 mother of a composite being like Echidna, Orthros, Geryon, or Ker- 
 beros ; that this monster was shut up in the labyrinth made by the 
 cunning workman Daidalos, and there fed with the children whom 
 the Athenians were obliged to send yearly, until at length the tribute- 
 ship brought among the intended victims the hero Theseus, who by 
 the aid of Ariadne slew the human-headed bull, or the bull-headed 
 man, for this being is exhibited under both forms. To search this 
 myth for a residuum of fact, pointing to some early dependence of 
 historical Athens on the maritime supremacy of some Cretan king, is, 
 as we have seen, utterly useless. We know nothing of Minos, Athens, 
 or Crete at the alleged time to which these myths relate except what 
 we learn from the myths themselves, and these utter no uncertain 
 sounds. The Minotauros is the offspring of the bull from the sea, 
 which appears again in the myth of Europe and is yoked to the 
 chariot of Indra, and of Pasiphae, who gives light to all. This 
 incident is but a translation of the fact that the night follows or is 
 born from the day. The same notion assigns Phoibos Chrysaor, the 
 lord of the golden sword, and the fair nymph Kallirhog, as the parents 
 of the frightful Geryon. The monster so born must share the nature 
 of Ahi, Vritra, the Panis, Cacus, and the Sphinx. In other words, 
 he must steal, kill, and devour, and his victims must belong to the 
 bright beings from whom he is sprung. The Panis steal the cows of 
 Indra, and the Minotauros consumes the beautiful children of the 
 
 1 For the Saga of Beowulf, see and Introduction to Comparative My- 
 Popular Romances of the Middle A&s, thology, 309. 
 
556 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK dawn-goddess AthenS ; in other words, the tribute must come from 
 ■ , . IL . . Athens. But all these fearful monsters lurk in secret places ; each 
 has his cave or mountain fastness, where he gorges himself on his 
 prey. The road to it is gloomy and bewildering ; and in the expres- 
 sion put into the mouth of the Panis, who tell Sarama that " the 
 way is far and leads tortuously away," we have something more than 
 the germ of the twisting and hazy labyrinth— we have the labyrinth 
 itself. This intricate abode is indeed the work of the magnificent 
 Daidalos ; but the walls of Ilion, to which Paris the seducer takes the 
 beautiful Helen, are built by Phoibos and Herakles themselves. In 
 this dark retreat lurks the monster who can be slain only by one 
 invincible hero; but although Indra is the destined destroyer of 
 Vritra, he cannot find out where his enemy is hidden away except by 
 the aid of Sarama. In this lovely being, who, peering about through 
 the sky in search of the stolen cattle, guides Indra to the den of the 
 throttling serpent, we see the not less beautiful Ariadne who points 
 out to Theseus the clue which is to guide him to the abode of the 
 Minotaur ; and thus the myth resolves itself into phrases which spoke 
 of the night as sprung from the day, as dwelling in the inscrut: ble 
 labyrinth of stars, 1 as stealing the treasures of the day and devoui ing 
 its victims through the hours of darkness, and as discovered by the 
 early morning who brings up its destined conqueror, the sua 
 
 Section VI.— THE GLOAMING AND THE NIGHT. 
 
 The Phor- Nor are myths wanting for the other phases of the heaven between 
 Grafai and tne settm g an d the rising of the sun. If the lovely flush of the first 
 Gorgons. twilight is betokened by the visits of Selene to Endymion, the dusky 
 gloaming is embodied in the Graiai, or daughters of Phorkys and 
 Keto, who are grey or ashen-coloured from their birth. Thus the 
 phrase that Perseus had reached the home of the Graiai only said in 
 other words that the sun had sunk beneath the horizon. In the 
 Hesiodic Theogony a they are only two in number, Pephredo and 
 Enyo, the latter name being akin to Enyalios and Enosichthon, 
 epithets of Ares and Poseidon as shakers of the earth and sea. In 
 the scholiast on ^ischylos 8 they appear as swan-maidens, who have 
 only one tooth and one eye in common, which they borrow from one 
 
 1 This reference to the Kosmos and I have no wish to dispute Mr. 
 
 may be a special Phenician feature in Brown's conclusions as to the character 
 
 the myth ; but there is nothing dis- of this monster and of the worship 
 
 tinctively Semitic in the name Mino- offered to him. — Great Dionysiak Myth, 
 
 tauros. Krete is, however, strictly ii. 143, et seq, 
 within the domain of Semitic influence ; '273. * Prom. I '. 793. 
 
MEDOUSA. 557 
 
 another as each may need them. The night again, as lit up by a chap. 
 grave and sombre beauty, or as oppressing men by its pitchy darkness, X ' 
 is represented by the other daughters of Phorkys and Ketd'who are 
 known as the Gorgons. Of these three sisters, one only, Medousa, 
 as embodying the short-lived night, is subject to death ; the others, 
 Stheino and Euryale, as signifying the eternal abyss of darkness, are 
 immortal. According to the Hesiodic poet, Poseidon loved Medousa 
 in the soft meadow among the flowers of spring ; and when her head 
 fell beneath the sword of Perseus, there sprang from it Chrysior with 
 his gleaming sword, and the winged horse Pegasos — an incident 
 which, is simply the counterpart of the birth of Geryoneus from Kal- 
 lirhoe and Chrysior. According to another version, Medousa had 
 once been beautiful, but had roused the wrath of Athene as becoming 
 the mother of glorious children, or as having dared to set her own 
 beauty in comparison with the loveliness of the Dawn herself. The 
 rivalry was indeed vain. The serenest night cannot vie with the 
 exquisite hues of the morning : and henceforth, to requite her daring, 
 the raven locks of Medousa must be turned into hissing snakes, the 
 deadly glance of her joyless face should freeze all who gazed on it 
 into stone, and even Perseus could bring her long agony to an end 
 only by fixing his eye on the burnished mirror while the sword of 
 Phoibos fell on the neck of the sleeping Gorgon. 1 
 
 The notion of these serpent enemies of the bright gods runs The Night 
 through the mythology of all the Aryan nations. Sometimes they wfnter 
 have three heads, sometimes seven or even more : but we cannot 
 forget that the words Ahi, Echidna, anguis, expressed an idea which 
 had nothing in common with the thought denoted by the dragon. The 
 latter was strictly the keen-sighted being, and as such belonged to the 
 heavenly hierarchy. The dragons who bear the chariot of Medeia 
 through the air, or who impart to the infant Iamos the gift of pro- 
 phecy, are connected only by the accident of a name with the snakes 
 whom Herakles strangles in his cradle, whom Phoibos slays at 
 Delphoi, or Indra smites in the land of the Panis." But when by the 
 
 1 Mr. Brown (The Unicorn, 49) Gorgo, a hideousness which does not 
 
 remarks with great force that "the arise in the first instance from the 
 
 Gorgon-power = Nocturnal = darkness lunar serpent rays ; and hence the 
 
 + moon, not darkness merely, or the open mouth, so marked a feature in 
 
 moon merely. Darkness is especially the Gorgoneion, and one not in the 
 
 a devourer or swallower." With least lunar." He adds (53) that " the 
 
 Gorgo, therefore, we may etymologi- petrifying stare of Medousa is the 
 
 cally compare Charon. Gorgo is thus moon-glare on the darkness, when 
 
 " the devouring darkness which has a the colour, sound, and motion of the 
 
 bright head— the Moon, a head capable world of day have gone. " 
 of being cut off. Hence the combined * In Teutonic folk-lore the night or 
 
 beauty and horror (hideousness) of the darkness is commonly the ravening wolf, 
 
558 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK weakening of memory the same word was used to denote the 
 
 ■ ^ • malignant serpent and the beneficent dragon, the attributes of the 
 
 one became in some myths more or less blended with those of the 
 other. In the popular Hindu story of Vikram Maharaja, the cobra 
 who curls himself up in his throat and will not be dislodged is clearly 
 the snake of winter, who takes away the gladness and joy of summer ; 
 for this disaster is followed by the rajah's exile, and his people mourn 
 his absence as DSmetSr grieves while her child Persephone is sojourn- 
 ing in Hades. It is in fact the story of Sigurd and Brynhild reversed; 
 for here it is Vikram who is banished or sleeps, while the beautiful 
 princess Buccoulee sees her destined husband in her dreams, and 
 recognises him among a group of beggars as Eurykleia recognises 
 Odysseus in his squalid raiment Him she follows, although he leads 
 her to a hut in the jungle, where she has but a hard time of it while 
 the cobra still remains coiled up in his throat. This woful state is 
 brought to an end by an incident which occurs in the stories of Panch 
 Phul Ranee and of Glaukos and Polyidos. Buccoulee hears two 
 cobras conversing, and learns from them the way not merely to rid 
 her husband of his tormentor, but to gain possession of the splendid 
 treasure which these snakes guard like the dragon of the glistening 
 heath or the monsters of the legend of Beowulf. 1 
 Modifica- still more notably is the idea of the old myth softened down in 
 
 myth. the tale of Troy, for Ilion is the stronghold of Paris the deceiver, and 
 Hektor is the stoutest warrior and the noblest man in all the hosts 
 of Priam. To the treachery of Alexandros he opposes the most 
 thorough truthfulness, to his indolent selfishness the most disin- 
 terested generosity and the most active patriotism. But Hektor had 
 had no share in the sin of Paris, and there was nothing even in the 
 earliest form of the myth which would require that the kinsmen of 
 Paris should not fight .bravely for their hearths and homes. We 
 have, however, seen already that the mythical instinct was satisfied 
 when the legend as a whole conveyed the idea from which the myth 
 sprung up. Ilion was indeed the fastness of the dark powers ; but 
 each chief and warrior who fought on their side would have his own 
 mythical history, and threads from very different looms might be 
 woven together into a single skein. This has happened to a singular 
 
 the Fenris of the Edda. This is the ' In the story of Muchie Lai, the 
 
 evil beast who swallows up Little Red seven-headed cobra is the friend and 
 
 Cap or Red Riding Hood, the evening, defender of the dawn-maiden, and is, 
 
 with her scarlet robe of twilight. In in fact, the snake who dwells in the 
 
 one version of this story Little Red Cap shrine of Athene, the goddess of the 
 
 escapes his malice, as Memnon rises morning. — Deccan Tales, 244, &c. 
 again from Hades. 
 
AHRIMAN. 
 
 559 
 
 extent in the Trojan legend. The warmer hues which are seen in the chap. 
 pictures of Phoibos, Perseus, and Herakles have been shed # over the ■ — * — 
 features even of Paris himself, while Glaukos, Sarpedon, and Memnon 
 are children of the dawn Who come from the gleaming eastern lands 
 watered by golden streams. Hence it is that Aphrodite' the dawn- 
 goddess has her child Aineias within the Trojan lines ; and when the 
 brave Hektor has been smitten beneath the spear of Achilleus, she 
 keeps his body from decay as Athene watched over the corpse of * 
 Patroklos. 
 
 Section VII. 
 THE PHYSICAL STRUGGLE SPIRITUALISED. 
 
 Thus far the struggle between the bright being and his enemy Contrast 
 has been entirely physical ; and nothing more than the faintest germs Hfadu'and 
 of moral sentiment or conviction as attaching to this conflict can be Iranialv 
 traced in the mythology whether of the Hindus or of the Western m " 
 Aryans. In the mere expression of the wish that the wicked Vritra 
 might not be suffered to reign over the worshippers of Indra, and in 
 the admission made by Zeus 1 that the fight between the Kronid gods 
 and the Titans is one for sovereignty or subjection, for life or death, 
 we have all that we can cite as symptoms of that marvellous change 
 which on Iranian soil converted this myth of Vritra into a religion 
 and a philosophy. So completely does the system thus developed 
 exhibit a metaphysical character, and so distinctly does it seem to 
 point to a purely intellectual origin, that we might well doubt the 
 identity of Ahriman and Vritra, were it not that an identity of names 
 and attributes runs through the Vedic and Iranian myths to a degree 
 which makes doubt impossible. 
 
 This agreement in names is indeed far more striking between the identity of 
 Hindu and Persian mythology than between that of the former and ™^^ 
 the Greeks. The names of Ahi, Vritra, Sarama, and the Panis Persian 
 reappear in the west as Echidna, Orthros, Helene, and Paris ; but myt ° og} 
 Trita or Traitana as a name of the god of the air has been lost, and 
 we fail to find the form Orthrophontes as a parallel to Vritrahan, 
 although such epithets as Leophontes and Bellerophontes would 
 lead us to expect it. In the Zendavesta not merely does this name 
 seem but little changed, as Verethragna, 2 but we also find the Trita, 
 Yama, and Krisasva of the Veda in the Yima-Kshagta, Thraetana, and 
 Keresaspa of the Avesta, the representatives of three of the earliest 
 1 Hesiod, Theog. bajb. * Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, ii. 172, 
 
560 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK generations of mankind, just as the Germans spoke of the Ingsevones, 
 
 ■ '■ ■ Herminones, and Iscaevones as sprung from Mannus the son of Tuisco 
 
 (Tyr). The identification of these names with the Feridun, Jemshid, 
 and Garshasp of the modern Persian e'pic of the Shahnameh is 
 regarded by Professor Max Miiller as among the most brilliant 
 discoveries of one of the greatest of French scholars. 1 Going 
 beyond this, Eugene Burnouf asserts that as Vivasvat is the father 
 of Yama in the Veda, so is Vivanghvat the father of the Zend Yima, 
 and that the father of the Vedic Trita is Aptya, while the father of 
 Thraetana is Athwya. 
 Azi£ah&ka But Thraetana is also known as Verethragna, the Verethra or 
 ' Vritra slayer, although his enemy is commonly spoken of under the 
 name of Azidahaka, the biting snake, the throttling Ahi of Vedic, 
 and the Echidna of Hellenic, myths. 2 These names again M. 
 Burnouf has traced into the great epic of Firdusi ; for the Pehlevi 
 form of his name leads us to Feridun, and Feridun is in the 
 Shahnameh the slayer of the tyrant Zohak. But the struggle, 
 which as carried on between Indra and Vritra is clearly a fight 
 to set free the pent-up waters, is between Thraetana and Azidahaka 
 a contest between a good and an evil being. The myth has received 
 a moral turn, and it suggested a series of conflicts between the like 
 , opposing powers, until they culminated in the eternal warfare of 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman. In India the thought of the people ran in 
 another channel. With them Indra, Dyu, Agni, Vishnu, Varuna, 
 were but names for one and the same divine Being, who alone was to 
 them the Maker and Preserver of all things. If it was said that they 
 had enemies, their foes were manifestly physical ; nor was there any- 
 thing in the phraseology of their hymns to lead us to the notion of 
 any evil power as having an existence independent of the great Cause 
 of all things. But on Persian soil, the word Verethragna, transparent 
 in its meaning to the worshippers of Indra, so thoroughly lost its 
 original sense that it came to denote mere strength or power ; 8 and 
 
 * Lectures on Language, second series, larme, see Max Miiller, Lectures on 
 
 522. Heeren {Asiatic Nations, i. 243) Language, second series, 259. In the 
 
 further identifies Jemshid with Achai- Servian story of the dragon which, like 
 
 menes. —Buckle, Commonplace Book, Punchkin, has an external heart, the 
 
 '477- snake is named Ajdeya, a modification, 
 
 2 The word Dahak reappears in the it would seem, of Azidakaka. — Ralston, 
 
 Greek ScSkcw, and in tid£, the name for Russian Folk Tales, in. 
 any biting animal, and may be com- 8 As such, M. Breal remarks that it 
 
 pared with tiger and with dog. For became an adjective, and is sometimes 
 
 the changes which from the same root used in the superlative degree, a hymn 
 
 have produced the Greek Sdicpv, the being spoken of as Verethrazanjtema.— 
 
 Gothic tagr, and the English tear, with HercuWet Cacus, 129. 
 the Latin lacryma and the French 
 
ORMUZD. jg, 
 
 as from a metaphysical point of view the power opposed to the chap. 
 righteous God must be a moral one, a series of synonyms were em- ■ X ' 
 ployed which imparted to the representative of Vritra more and more 
 of a spiritual character. The Devas of the Veda are the bright gods 
 who fight on the side of Indra ; in the Avesta the word has come to 
 mean an evil spirit, and the Zoroastrian was bound to declare that he 
 ceased to be a worshipper of the daevas. 1 Thus Verethra and all 
 kindred deities were placed in this class of malignant beings, and 
 branded with the epithet Drukhs, deceitful. 2 But the special dis- 
 tinction of the being known to us under the familiar name of Ahriman, 
 was the title of Angro-Mainyus, or spirit of darkness. 3 This name 
 was simply an offset to that of his righteous adversary, Spento- 
 Mainyus, or the spirit of light. But Spento-Mainyus was only 
 another name for the Supreme Being, whose name Ahuro-mazdao 
 we repeat in the shortened form of Ormuzd. 4 In this Being the 
 devout Zoroastrian trusted with all the strength of spiritual con- 
 viction : but the idea of his enemy was as closely linked with that 
 of the righteous God as the idea of Vritra with that of Indra ; and the 
 exaltation of Ormuzd carried the greatness of Ahriman to a pitch 
 which made him the creator and the sovereign of an evil universe at 
 war with the Kosmos of the spirit of light. 
 
 Such was the origin of Iranian dualism, a dualism which divided Iranian 
 the world between two opposing self-existent deities, while it pro- 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Chips, i. 25 ; Brown, Croyanceset Ugendes de VAntiqnite,£>\. 
 The Religion of Zoroaster, § 10. If this be the case (which is, to say the 
 
 2 The word is probably found in the least, very uncertain) the degradation of 
 Greek &-Tpe/c-^s, not deceitful = trust- Aryaman involved the exaltation of 
 worthy, sure. Mithra. " Une fois devenu la person- 
 
 3 M. Maury, regarding the name nification de la verite et de la bonne foi, 
 Ahriman as identical with the Vedic Mithra recut le caractere de mediateur 
 Aryaman, sees in the Iranian demon a entre Dieu et l'homme, /iealrTjs, comme 
 degradation of the Hindu sun-god, an l'appelle l'auteur du Traite sur Isis et 
 inverse change to that which invested Osiris," ib. 164. 
 
 the Trojan Paris with the attributes of * Like Thragtana and Verethragna, 
 
 solar heroes. " Mitra a un autre paredre the name Ormuzd is Sanskrit. Plato 
 
 que Varouna, c'est Aryaman. . . . speaks of Zoroaster as a son of Oro- 
 
 Cette divinite nous offre k l'origine une mazes, which is clearly only another 
 
 nouvelle personnification du soleil dans form of the name of this deity. In the 
 
 son action fortifiante et salutaire : ace inscriptions at Behistun it appears in 
 
 titre il est souvent associe a Bhaya, the form Auramazda ; but in Persian 
 
 PAditya qui dispense des bienfaits et qui the word conveys no meaning. In the 
 
 benit les hommes. . . . Mais, plus- Zendavesta it is found both as Ahuro- 
 
 tard, Aryaman devint l'Aditya de la mazdao and as Mazdao Ahuro ; and 
 
 mort, le soleil destructeur ; car, sous le these forms lead us at once to the San- 
 
 climat brulant de lTnde, on sait com- skrit, in which they correspond to the 
 
 bien est dangereuse l'insolation. . . . words Asuro medhas, wise spirit—a 
 
 Voila comment Aryaman fournit k la name which suggests a comparison with 
 
 religion de Zoroastre le type du dieu the Metis and Medeia of Greek myths, 
 
 mauvais, l'id^e d'une divinite adversaire See Max Miiller, Lectures on Language,. 
 
 constante d'Ormuzd et de Mithra."— first series, 195. 
 
 2 O 
 
562 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book fessedly left to men the power of choosing whom they should obey. 
 " Ahura-mazda is holy, true, to be honoured through truth, through 
 
 holy deeds." " You cannot serve him and his enemy." " In the 
 beginning there was a pair of twins, two spirits, each of a peculiar 
 activity. These are the Good and the Base in thought, word, 
 and deed. Choose one of these two spirits. Be good, not base." 
 But practically Ahriman took continually a stronger hold on the 
 popular imagination, and the full effects of this process were to be 
 realized elsewhere. The religion of Zoroaster has been regarded as a 
 reform ; in M. Br^al's judgment, it was rather a return to a classifi- 
 cation which the Hindu had abandoned or had never cared to adopt. 
 " While Brahmanism kept to the old belief only in the letter, 
 Mazdeism preserved its spirit The Parsee, who sees the universe 
 ' divided between two forces, everywhere present and each in turn 
 victorious until the final victory of. Ormuzd, is nearer to the mythical 
 representations of the first age than the Hindu, who, looking on 
 everything as an illusion of the senses, wraps up the universe and his 
 own personality in the existence of one single Being." * 
 Its in- With this dualism the Jews were brought into contact during the 
 
 thejews! 11 captivity at Babylon. That the Hebrew prophets had reiterated 
 their belief in one God with the most profound conviction, is not to 
 be questioned ; but as little can it be doubted that as a people the 
 Jews had exhibited little impulse towards Monotheism, and that from 
 this time we discern a readiness to adopt the Zoroastrian demon- 
 ology. Thus far Satan had appeared, as in the book of Job, among 
 the ministers of God ; but in later books we have a closer approxi- 
 mation to the Iranian creed. In the words of M. Breal, " Satan 
 assumes, in Zacharias and in the first book of Chronicles, the 
 character of Ahriman, and appears as the author of evil. Still later 
 he becomes the prince of the devils, the source of wicked thoughts, 
 the enemy of the word of God. He tempts the Son of God ; he 
 enters into Judas for his ruin. The Apocalypse exhibits Satan with 
 the physical attributes of Ahriman : he is called the dragon, the old 
 serpent, who fights against God and his angels. The Vedic myth, 
 transformed and exaggerated in the Iranian books, finds its way 
 through this channel into Christianity." The idea thus introduced 
 was that of the struggle between Satan and Michael which ended in 
 the overthrow of the former, and the casting forth of all his hosts out 
 of heaven ; but it coincided too nearly with a myth spread in 
 countries held by all the Aryan nations to avoid further modification. 
 
 1 Hercules et Cacus, 129. The same logy is taken by M. Maury, Croyances, 
 view of the origin of the Dualistic theo- &c, 97. 
 
ST. MICHAEL AND ST. GEORGE. 563 
 
 Local traditions substituted St. George or St. Theodore for Jupiter, chap. 
 
 Apollon, Herakles, or Perseus. " It is under this disgtiise," adds ■ X ' 
 
 M. Bre"al, " that the Vedic myth has come down to our own times, 
 and has still its festivals and its monuments. Art has consecrated it 
 in a thousand ways. St. Michael, lance in hand, treading on the 
 dragon, is an image as familiar now as, thirty centuries ago, that 
 of Indra treading underfoot the demon Vritra could possibly have 
 been to the Hindu." 1 
 
 That this myth should be Euemerised by Firdusi was natural and The epic of 
 inevitable, when once the poet had made Feridun a king of the first Flrdusi - 
 Persian dynasty. He could no longer represent Zohak as a monster 
 with three heads, three tails, six eyes, and a thousand forces ; 2 but 
 the power of the old myth gave shape to his statement that, after the 
 embrace of the demon, a snake started up from each of his shoulders, 
 whose head, like that of the Lernaian hydra, grew as fast as it was cut 
 off. Nor has it influenced the modern poet only. Cyrus is as his- 
 torical as Charlemagne ; but from mythical history we should learn as 
 much of the former as we should know of the latter, if our information 
 came only from the myth of Roland. What Cyrus really did we learn 
 from other sources ; but in the legendary story he is simply another 
 Oidipous and Telephos, compelled for a time to live, like Odysseus 
 and the Boots of German tales, in mean disguise, until his inborn 
 nobleness proclaims him the son of a king. But as in the case of 
 Oidipous, Perseus, Theseus, and many more, the father or the grand- 
 sire dreads the birth of the child, for the sun must destroy the darkness 
 to whom he seems to owe his life. This sire of Cyrus must belong 
 therefore to the class of beings who represent the powers of night — in 
 other words, he must be akin to Vritra or to Ahi ; and in his name 
 accordingly we find the familiar words. Astyages, the Persian Asdahag, 
 is but another form of the modern Zohak, the Azidahaka, or biting 
 snake, of Vedic and Iranian mythology ; and the epithet reappears 
 seemingly in the name of Deiokes, the first king of the Median 
 nation. 
 
 Section VIII.— THE SEMITIC AND ARYAN DEVIL. 
 
 Thus far it is only on Iranian soil that we have seen the struggle The Semi- 
 
 , tic Satan. 
 
 between day and night, the sun and the darkness, represented as a 
 conflict between moral good and evil, the result being a practical, if 
 not a theoretical dualism, in which the unclean spirit is at the least as 
 
 1 Herculeet Cacus, 138. * lb. 130. 
 
564 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Effect of 
 Christian 
 teaching. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 powerful as the righteous being with whom he is at war. This absolute 
 
 partition of the universe between two contending principles was the 
 
 very groundwork of Iranian belief; but the idea was one which could 
 
 not fail to strike root in any congenial soil. To a certain extent it 
 
 found such a soil in the mind of the Jewish people, who had become 
 
 familiar, by whatever means, with the notion of a being whose office 
 
 it was to tempt or try the children of men. The Satan who discharges 
 
 this duty is, however, one of the sons of God ; and in the book of 
 
 Job there is no indication of any essential antagonism between them. 
 
 The position of Satan in this narrative is indeed in strict accordance 
 
 with the Hebrew philosophy which regarded God as the author both 
 
 of good and evil, as the being who hardened Pharaoh's heart and 
 
 authorised the lying spirit to go forth and prevail among the prophets 
 
 of Ahab. But when a portion of the Jewish people was brought into 
 
 contact with the fully developed system of Persian dualism, the victory 
 
 of the Iranian theology seemed complete. Henceforth the notion of 
 
 two hierarchies, the one heavenly, the other diabolical, took possession 
 
 of their minds_ ; and Satan, who ruled over the powers of darkness 
 
 and exercised a wide dominion as prince of the air, was confined to 
 
 a level lower than that of Ahriman, only because he had once stood 
 
 among the most brilliant angels in the courts of heaven. At this level 
 
 he remained a fallen creature ruling over hosts of malignant demons 
 
 who did his will among mankind, plaguing them with sorrow, disease, 
 
 and madness, until the convictions of the first Christian societies 
 
 magnified him into proportions if possible more overpowering than 
 
 those of the Iranian enemy of Ormuzd. The Jew chiefly, if not 
 
 wholly, from the conviction which led him to regard God as the author 
 
 both of good and evil, drew no sharp distinction between mind and 
 
 matter as existing in irreconcilable antagonism ; and since as a nation 
 
 they can scarcely be said to the last to have attained to any definite 
 
 ideas either of the fact or the conditions of a life continued after death, 
 
 Satan could with them obviously have no definite dominion beyond 
 
 the bounds of our present existence. He could torture the bodies, 
 
 afflict the souls, or darken the minds of men ; but of his everlasting 
 
 reign over countless multitudes ruined by his subtle wiles we find no 
 
 very definite notion. 
 
 But Christianity, while it rested on a distinct assurance of personal 
 immortality altogether stronger than any to which the most fervent of 
 the Hebrew prophets had ever attained, took root among nations who 
 had filled all the world with gods or demons, each with his own special 
 sphere and office. These deities the Christian teachers dethroned ; 
 but far from attempting to destroy them, they were careful to insist 
 
DEMONOLOGY. 565 
 
 that they had always been, and must for ever continue to be, malig- CHAP. 
 
 nant devils ; L but unless their horrible fellowship was speedily to ^— ^ 
 
 come to an end, they must be under the rule of some king, and this 
 king they found in the Semitic Satan. Of the theology which sprung 
 from this root it is enough to say that it endowed the king of the fallen 
 angels with the powers of omnipresence and omniscience, and made 
 him so far a conqueror in his great struggle with the author of his 
 being as to succeed in wresting for ever out of the hands of God all 
 but an insignificant fraction of the whole race of mankind. The 
 victory of the Almighty God could not extend either to the destruction 
 of Satan and his subordinate demons, or to £he rescue of the souls 
 whom he had enticed to their ruin ; and if power be measured by 
 the multitude of subjects, his defeat by Michael could scarcely be 
 regarded as much impairing his magnificent success. Of the effect 
 of this belief on the moral and social developement of Christendom, 
 it is unnecessary to speak : but it must not be forgotten that this 
 particular developement of the Jewish demonology was the natural 
 outgrowth of passionate convictions animating a scanty band in an 
 almost hopeless struggle against a society thoroughly corrupt and 
 impure. It was almost impossible for any whose eyes were opened 
 to its horrors to look upon it as anything but a loathsome mass which 
 could never be cleansed from its defilement. What could they see 
 but a vast gulf separating the few who were the soldiers of Christ 
 from the myriads who thronged together under the standard of his 
 adversary ? Hence grew up by a process which cannot much excite 
 our wonder that severe theology, which, known especially as that of , 
 
 Augustine, represented the Christian Church as an ark floating on a 
 raging sea, open only to those who received the sacrament of baptism, 
 and shut both here and hereafter even to infants dying before it could 
 be administered. It was inevitable that under such conditions the 
 image of Satan should more and more fill the theological horizon for 
 the few whose enthusiasm and convictions were sincere. But these 
 conditions were changed with the conversion of tribes, in whom the 
 thought of one malignant spirit marring and undoing the work of God 
 had never been awakened ; and although henceforth the teaching of 
 the priesthood might continue to be as severe as that of Augustine or 
 
 1 The Christian missionaries were und siindlich, nicht als absolut nichtig 
 
 further conscious that their own than- schilderte : die Wunder des Christen 
 
 maturgy might be called into question,, erscheinen dadurch glaubhafter, dass 
 
 if that of the old creed were treated as audi dem althergebrachten Heidenthum 
 
 mere imposture or illusion. "Dieneue etwas ubernatiirliches gelassen wurde." 
 
 Lehre konnte leichter keimen und —Grimm, D. M, 757. 
 wurzeln wenn sie die alte a'.s gehassig 
 
tonic Devil. 
 
 566 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book Fulgentius, it was met by the passive resistance of men whose super 
 
 ■ ii ■ stitions were less harsh and oppressive. "The Aryan Nations," says 
 
 Professor Max Miiller, " had no devil. Pluto, though of a sombre 
 character, was a very respectable personage : and Loki, though a 
 mischievous person, was not a fiend. The German goddess, Hel, 
 too — like Proserpine — had seen better days." 1 It was thus no easy 
 task to imbue them with an adequate horror of a being of whose 
 absolute malignity they could form no clear conception. 
 The Teu- But these tribes had their full share of that large inheritance of 
 
 phrases which had described originally the covering or strangling 
 snake, Vritra or Ahi, who shuts up the rain-clouds in his prison-house. 
 Probably not one of the phrases which furnished the groundwork of 
 Iranian dualism had been lost or forgotten by any other of the Aryan 
 tribes ; but like Vritra or Ahi, like the Sphinx or the Python, like 
 Belleros or Chimaira, or Echidna, the beings to whom the German 
 tribes applied these phrases had already been overcome. The 
 phrases also had varied in character from grave solemnity to comedy 
 or burlesque, from the type of the Herakles whom we see in the 
 apologue of Prodikos to the Herakles who jests with Thanatos 
 (Death) after he has stolen away Alkestis. To the people at large 
 the latter mode of thinking and speaking on the subject was more 
 congenial ; and to it the ideas of the old gods were more readily 
 adapted. Hel had been, like Persephone, the queen of the unseen 
 land, — in the ideas of the northern tribes, a land of bitter cold and 
 icy walls. She now became not the queen of Niflheim ; but Niflheim 
 itself, while her abode, though gloomy enough, was not wholly 
 destitute of material comforts. It became the Hell where the old 
 man hews wood for the Christinas fire, and where the Devil in his 
 eagerness to buy the flitch of bacon yields up the marvellous quern 
 which is "good to grind almost anything." 2 It was not so pleasant, 
 indeed, as heaven, or the old Valhalla ; but it was better to be there 
 
 1 Chips, &c. , vol. ii. p. 235. Sir G. Church to prepare the soil for its recep- 
 
 Dasent's words are not less explicit. tion." — -Popular Tales from the Norse, 
 
 ' ' The notion of an Arch-enemy of God introduction, p. xcviii. 
 
 and man, a fallen angel, to whom power 2 " Why the Sea is Salt." Dasent, 
 
 was permitted at certain times for an Norse Tales, ii. This inexhaustible 
 
 all-wise purpose by the Great Ruler of qviern is only another form of the trea- 
 
 the universe, was as foreign to the sures of Helen or Brynhild. But though 
 
 heathendom of our ancestors as his the snow may veil all the wealth of 
 
 name was outlandish and strange to fruits and vegetables, this wealth is of 
 
 their tongue. This notion Christianity no use to the chill beings who have laid 
 
 brought with it from the east ; and their grasp upon it. These beings must 
 
 though it is a plant which has struck be therefore so hard pressed for hunger 
 
 deep roots, grown distorted and awry, that, like Esau, they may be ready to 
 
 and borne a bitter crop of superstition, part with anything or everything for a 
 
 it required all the authority of the mess of pottage or a flitch of bacon. 
 
WAYLAND. 567 
 
 than shut out in the outer cold beyond its padlocked gates. 1 But CHAP, 
 more particularly the devil was a being who under pressure of hunger x - 
 might be drawn into acting against his own interest ; in other words, 
 he might be outwitted, and this character of a poor or stupid devil 
 is almost the only one exhibited in Teutonic legends. 2 In fact, as 
 Professor Max Miiller remarks, the Germans, when they had been 
 "indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Satan or 
 Diabolus, treated him in the most good-humoured manner ; " and it 
 has been well said that " no greater proof can be given of the small 
 hold which the Christian Devil has taken of the Norse mind, than 
 the heathen aspect under which he constantly appears, and the 
 ludicrous way in which he is always outwitted." 3 
 
 But this freedom was never taken with Satan. While that name \y a land 
 remained unchanged in the language of theology, the word devil the Smith. 
 passed into an immense number of forms, the Gothic tieval, diuval, 
 diufal, the Icelandic djofull, Swedish djevful, all of them, together 
 with the Italian, French, and Spanish forms carrying back the word 
 StaySoXos to the same root which furnished the Latin Divus, Djovis, 
 and the Sanskrit deva. 4 To this devil were applied familiarly those 
 epithets which are bestowed in the Vedic hymns on the antagonist of 
 Indra. Like Vritra, he is often spoken of simply as the fiend or the 
 enemy (6 Trovrjpos) ; more often he is described as the old devil or 
 serpent, the ealda deofol of Casdmon, the old Nick, 6 old Davy, and 
 old Harry (Ahriman) of common English speech at the present day. 
 Like Pani, he is Valant, the cheat or seducer, 6 who appears in a female 
 form as Valandinne. 7 But to the Germans the fall of the devil from 
 heaven suggested the idea that, like Hephaistos, he must have been 
 lamed by the descent, and hence we have the lame devil, or devil 
 
 1 The Master Smith, in the heathen- legend of Eleemon may be compared 
 ish story so entitled, entraps the devil with any of the popular tales in which 
 into a purse, as the Fisherman entraps Satan is overmatched by men whom he 
 the Jin in the Arabian Tale, and the despises. — Grimm, 969. 
 
 devil is so scared that when the Smith * Dasent, Norse Tales, introd. ciii. 
 presents himself at the gate of hell, he * Grimm, Deutsche Mytlwloqie, 939. 
 gives orders to have the nine padlocks For the belief of the gipsy hordes re- 
 carefully locked. Sir G. Dasent remarks garding the heaven-god and the earth- 
 that the Smith makes trial of hell in mother see Tylor, Primitive Culture. 
 the first instance, for, "having behaved 5 This name, one of a vast number 
 ill to the ruler " of heaven, and " actu- of forms through which the root of the 
 ally quarrelled with the master " of hell, Greek vfix a > t0 swim, has passed, de- 
 he " was naturally anxious " to know notes simply a water-spirit, the nicor of 
 whether he would be received by either. the Beowulf, the nix or nixy of German 
 — Ibid. cii. fairy tales. The devil is here regarded 
 
 2 It has been said of Southey that as dwelling in the water, and thus the 
 he could never think of the devil name explains the sailor's phrase "Davy's 
 without laughing. This is but saying locker." — Grimm, D. M. 450. 
 
 that he had the genuine humour of our ' Nib. 1334. 
 
 Teutonic ancestors. His version of the 7 lb. 1686 ; Grimm, D. M. 943. 
 
568 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK upon two sticks, who represents the limping Hephaistos not only in 
 his gait but in his office. Like him, the Valant is a smith, and the 
 
 name, which has assumed elsewhere the forms Faland, Phaland, 
 Foland, Valland, passes into the English form Wayland, and gives us 
 the Wayland Smith whom Tresilian confronts in Scott's novel of Kenil- 
 worth. 1 Like the robbers who steal Tndra's cattle, he is also the 
 dark, murky, or black being, the Graumann or Greyman of German 
 folk-lore. 2 Like the Fauns and other mythical beings of Greek and 
 Latin mythology, he has a body which is either wholly or in part that 
 of a beast. Sometimes he leaves behind him the - print of a horse's 
 hoof, and the English demon Grant, another form probably of Grendel, 3 
 showed itself in the form of a foal. The devil of the witches was 
 a black buck or goat ; 4 that of the fathers of the Christian Church 
 was a devouring wolf. 5 Like Ahi, again, and Python and Echidna, he 
 is not only the old serpent or dragon but the hell-worm, and the 
 walfish or leviathan (a name in which we see again the Vala or de- 
 ceiver). 6 Like Baalzebub, he assumes the form of a fly, as Psyche 
 may denote either a good or an evil spirit. As the hammer which 
 crushes the world, and inflicts the penalty of sin on the sinner, he 
 plays the part of the Aloadai and Thor Miolnir. As the guardian of 
 the under world, he is the hellward and the hell-shepherd or host. His 
 gloomy abode lies towards the north, whether as the gloomy Ovel- 
 gunne, which has furnished a name for many places in Germany, — 
 the Hekelfelde, Heklufiall, or hag's fell, — or the nobiskroech, nobis- 
 krug, which answers to the gate beyond which the lost souls leave 
 hope behind them. 7 The same process, which converted the kindly 
 Holda into the malignant Unholda, attributed to the devil occu- 
 pations borrowed from those of the Teutonic Odin and the Greek 
 Orion. But it is no longer the mighty hunter following his prey on 
 
 1 Grimm, D. M. 945. In Sir W. suggested by an equivocal name ; and 
 Scott's romance, Wayland is a mere irn- the buck may be only a kindred form to 
 postor who avails himself of a popular the Slavish Bog, which reappears among 
 superstition to keep up an air of mystery us in the form of Puck, Bogy, and Bug. 
 about himself and his work : but the 5 Grimm, ib. 948. With these 
 character to which he makes pretence Grimm couples the hell-hound and 
 belongs to the genuine Teutonic legend. black raven, the former answering to 
 
 2 Grimm, £>. M. 945. This black the Hellenic Kerberos. He also corn- 
 demon is the Slavish Tschernibog (Zer- pares the Old German warg, a wolf, 
 nibog), who is represented as the enemy with the Polish ■wrog, the Bohemian 
 of Bjelbog, the white god, — a dualism wrah, the Slovinian vrag, an evil-doer, 
 which Grimm regards as of late growth, 6 Grimm, ib. 950. 
 
 £>. M. 936. ' Ib. 954. This word nobis is formed 
 
 8 Grimm, D. M. 946. from the Greek S,8uo-<ros, through the 
 
 4 Grimm, ib. 946-7. The buck was Italian form nabisso for in abysso — a 
 
 specially sacred to Donar or Thor ; but change similar to that which converted 
 
 it is possible that this transformation, is icvvas &dK\eii/ into aKvfiaAa. 
 
 like that of Lyka6n and Arkas, was 
 
POLYPH&MOS. 569 
 
 the asphodel meadow, or the god traversing his domain in stately CHAP. 
 
 procession. The brave and good who had followed tha midnight • — ~ • 
 
 journeys of Wuotan give place to the wretched throng of evil-doers 
 who are hurried along in the devil's train, or in that of some human 
 being, who for his pre-eminent wickedness is made to take the devil's 
 place. In Denmark the hunter is King Waldemar, in Germany 
 Dietrich of Bern, in France King Hugh or Charles V. ; in England 
 it is Heme the Hunter of Windsor, and the one-handed Boughton or 
 Lady Skipwith of Warwickshire tradition. 1 Other myths were sub- 
 jected to the same process of degradation. The kindly Demeter be- 
 comes the devil's mother, 2 grandmother, or sister, who still shows 
 something of her ancient character in the part which she plays 
 towards those who throw themselves on her protection. Thus she 
 shields Thor and Tyr in the house of Hymir, as the giant's mother 
 shelters Jack in the nursery story. 8 In the lay of Beowulf Grendel's 
 mother is less complying, and avenges on the hero the death of her 
 son. The binding of the devil, like that of Prometheus and Ahriman, 
 is implied in the phrase " the devil is loose," the sequel being " the 
 devil is dead." 
 
 One legend of the devil's death furnishes some singular points of The death 
 comparison with the myth of Polyphemos, 'although it seems rash to blinded 
 infer any direct derivation of the story from the Odyssey. The Devil - 
 devil asks a man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing ; 
 
 1 Dasent, Norse Tales, introd. Ixxxiv. the heathen Donar was lord of tfie 
 Grimm, D. M. 900, 958. In other atmosphere (ib. 965). His conduct to 
 legends it is Herodias, who, confounded his wife also carries us back to some of 
 with her daughter, is made to dance on the oldest mythical phrases. He is 
 for ever ; or Satia, Bertha, Abundia said to beat his wife when the rain falls 
 (names denoting kindliness, brightness, in sunshine, and the rapid alternation of 
 or plenty), who, with Frigga, and Freya, sunshine and shower is said to be caused 
 Artemis and Diana, are degraded into by his blanching his grandmother, 
 leaders of midnight troops. * For a list of the Adeva or oppos- 
 
 2 Here Dionysos is lowered to the ing powers of Northern mythology, with 
 same level with Orion or Wuotan, an analysis of their characteristics, see 
 Grimm, D. M. 961. The devil, of Brown, Religion and Mythology of 
 course, has his children, "devil'sbrood," Aryans of Northern Europe, §12. In 
 "devil's imps." Grimm remarks that this sombre catalogue Draug is of 
 Teufelskind is synonymous with Don- special interest as representing the 
 nerskind, and that here again we are Iranian Drukhs, which has dropped 
 confronted with old mythical expres- out of the Vedic mythology and survives 
 sions. Thunder is red-bearded, and the in Greek, it would seem, only in the 
 devil therefore has a beard of that colour, adjective o-Tpe«-7)j,and in Latin in trux. 
 and the 1 thunder-bolts are his followers. In Angurbodhe, the bode or messenger 
 Many expressions common to England of fear, we have one of the many names 
 and Germany come from the same which, like Anguis, Echidna, carry us to 
 source. The compassionate phrase the choking snake Ahi. In Garm, the 
 " der arme Teufel " was formerly " der devourer, and Managarms, the moon- 
 arme Donner ; " and the expletives eater, we have one of the gapers or 
 "Hagel' " Donner-wetter " and "un- swallowers, to whose company belong 
 ser Herr-Gott " point to the time when Charon, Gorgo, Lamia, Lemures, &c. 
 
S7o 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 and when the man answers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further 
 whether he can give him a pair of new eyes. 1 He is told to come 
 again another day ; and when he makes his appearance accordingly, 
 the man tells him that the operation cannot be performed rightly 
 unless he is first tightly bound with his back fastened to a bench. 
 While he is thus pinioned, he asks the man's name. The reply 
 
 * Grimm, D. M. 963-980. It is 
 unnecessary to trace in detail all the 
 fancies and notions on the subject of the 
 devil and his works which Grimm has 
 gathered together ; but it may be fairly 
 said that scarcely a single point men- 
 tioned by him is without its value, as 
 throwing light on popular forms of 
 thought and expression. 
 
 The blinded devil reappears in 
 Grimm's story of the Robber and his 
 Sons, which reproduces the narrative of 
 the Odyssey. Here the robber is the 
 only one who is not devoured by the 
 Giant, and he blinds his enemy while 
 pretending to heal his eyes. In the 
 sequel, instead of clinging to the ram's 
 fleece he clings to' the rafters of the 
 ceiling, and afterwards wraps himself in 
 a ram's skin, and so escapes between 
 the giant's legs. But as soon as he gets 
 out of the cave, he cannot resist the 
 temptation of turning round, like 
 Odysseus, fb mock at his enemy. The 
 giant, saying that so clever a man 
 ought not go unrewarded, holds out 
 to him a ring which, when placed on his 
 finger, makes him cry out, " Here I am, 
 here I am." But although he is guided 
 by the sound, the giant stumbles sadly 
 in his blindness, and the robber at last 
 makes his escape by biting off his finger 
 and so getting rid of the ring. 
 
 The blinded Kyklops forms the sub- 
 ject of the third voyage of Sindbad ; but 
 the myth has gained nothing by being 
 dressed out in Arabian garb. He is the 
 Urisk of the Western Fairy Tale. — 
 Keightley, Fairy Mythology, 396. The 
 Lap story runs as follows : " There was 
 a Karelian who had been taken by a 
 giant and was kept in a castle. The 
 giant had only one eye, but he had 
 flocks and herds. The night came and 
 the giant fell asleep. The Karelian put 
 out his eye. The giant, who now could 
 no longer see, sat at the door, and felt 
 everything that went out. He had a 
 great many sheep in the courtyard. 
 The Karelian got under the belly of 
 one of them and escaped." — Latham, 
 Nationalities of Europe, i. 227. 
 
 For some other versions of the myth, 
 see Sayce, Introduction to the Science of 
 Language, ii. 264. Mr. Sayce, giving 
 a list, perhaps not urgently called for, 
 of all recent works on mythology and 
 language, has been pleased to mention 
 this work, in the original edition, as a 
 book to be read with caution. The re- 
 mark applies to many attempts made 
 by pioneers in a new path ; but it would 
 not be easy for unprejudiced readers 
 to discern any material difference be- 
 tween my conclusions and those of Mr. 
 Sayce, or in the modes of presenting 
 the evidence of those conclusions, in his 
 pages or in mine. The only difference 
 is one of time, the Mythology of the 
 Aryan Nations having preceded the 
 Introduction to the Science of Language 
 by ten years. The remarkable agree- 
 ment of Mr. Sayce with many of my 
 conclusions which have been most dis- 
 puted,, might perhaps have furnished a 
 reason for some acknowledgement of 
 the work which I had done. My own 
 obligations to Professor Max Miiller I 
 had acknowledged, wherever I had the 
 opportunity, gladly and gratefully. 
 
 For myself, I confess that I am 
 but a learner ; and I confess not less 
 willingly that in some of my conclusions 
 ten or twelve years ago I was mis- 
 taken, and that in some I was altogether 
 wrong. I was especially wrong in 
 restricting within exceedingly narrow 
 limits the influence of Semitic upon 
 Greek thought ; but I hope it may be 
 found that this fault has been now 
 amended. I may plead, however, that 
 a very large amount of evidence, now 
 brought together, was then not avail- 
 able, and that I was attempting a task 
 of wider range than I think had been 
 attempted by those who had gone 
 before me. If I could at that time 
 have had the benefit of Mr. Brown's 
 researches, my treatment of the myths 
 of Dionysos, Orion, AphroditS, and 
 other mythical beings, might have been 
 less inadequate. I hope that at the 
 least the account given of them may be 
 neither partial nor distorted. 
 
THE DEATH OF THE BLINDED DEVIL. 57 ' 
 
 is Issi ("himself").. When the lead is melted, the devil opens his CHAP, 
 eyes wide to receive the deadly stream. As soon as he is blinded he • ■ ■ ' 
 starts up in agony, bearing away the bench to which he had been 
 bound, and when some workpeople in the fields ask him who had 
 thus treated him, his answer is " Issi teggi " (Self did it). With a 
 laugh they bid him lie on the bed which he has made ; " selbst 
 gethan, selbst habe." The devil died of his new eyes, and was never 
 seen again. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABA. 
 
 Abaris, 351, 359 
 
 Abstract words, use of, 14, 25 
 
 Absyrtos, 286, 387 
 
 Abundia, 569 
 
 Acca Larentia, 323 
 
 Acerbas, 242 
 
 Achaia, 183 
 
 Achaimenes, 560 
 
 Acheron, 533 
 
 Achilleus, 8, 395 
 
 the womanly, 395 
 
 the bondman, 396 
 
 , armour of, 399 
 
 , horses of, 161, 262 
 
 , vengeance of, 399 
 
 Adam Bell, 339 
 Adeva, 149, 174. 5 01 
 Aditi, 154, 171 
 
 Aditya, 154, 155 
 
 Admetos, 287 
 
 Adonis, 40, 258, 350 
 
 Adrasteia, 180, 183, 269 
 
 Adrastos, 413 
 
 jEacus [Aiakos] 
 
 iEgina [Aigina] 
 
 jEgis [Aigis] 
 
 jEneas, 242 
 
 iEolus [Aiolos] 
 
 ASr, 151, 166 
 
 jEsculapius [Asklepios] 
 
 Aer6, 380 
 
 Aerth, 35s 
 
 Aeshma-daeva, 174 
 
 iEsir, 107, 156, 190 
 
 ^Ether [AithSr] 
 
 Aethlios, 277, 436 
 
 Agamedes and Trophomos, 61, 273 
 
 Agamemnon, 27, 396 
 
 Agathos Daimon, 269, 364 
 
 Agenor, 247, 325. 423 
 
 Ages, Hesiodic, 428 
 
 Aglaia, 254 
 
 Aglauros, 453 
 
 Agni, 53, 418 
 
 Agraulos, 521 
 
 Ahalya, 166 
 
 Ahana, 163, 230 
 
 ALC 
 
 Ahans, the two, 207 
 
 Aharyu, 159 
 
 Ahi, 29, 162, 538 
 
 Ahriman, 157, 427, 560 
 
 Ahura, 156 
 
 Ahuro-mazdao, 156, 561 
 
 Aiaia, 407 
 
 Aiakos, 328 
 
 Aias, 549 
 
 Aidoneus, 173, 333 
 
 Aid8s, 429 
 
 Ai6t&, 129, 239, 286, 469 
 
 Aigai, 329 
 
 Aigaion, 329 
 
 Aigeus, 240, 245, 306 
 
 Aigimios, 412 
 
 Aigina, 329 
 
 Aigis, 250 
 
 AiglaSr, 281 
 
 Aigia, 255, 261 
 
 Aigyptos, 482, 486 
 
 Aineias, 215, 256, 559 
 
 Aiolians, 385 
 
 Aiolic migration 
 
 Aiolidai, 385 
 
 Aiolos, 385, 406, 434, 464 
 
 Aipytos, 322 
 
 Air, 166 
 
 Ais, 531 
 
 Aisa, 266 
 
 Aison, 388 
 
 Aith&, 151, 166 
 
 Aithiopians, 242 
 
 Aithra, 244, 284, 310, 3S9 
 
 Ajax [Aias] 
 
 Akastos, 394 
 
 Akersekomes, 280 
 
 Akmon, 178 
 
 Akraia, 164, 262 
 
 Akrisios, 245, 303 
 
 Aktaia, 473 
 
 Aktaion, 502 
 
 Aktor, 470 
 
 Aktoridai, 470 
 
 Alalkomen§, 287 
 
 Alberich, 106 
 
 Alcis, 114 
 
574 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ALD 
 
 Alda, 133 
 
 Alebios, 543 
 
 Aleian Plain, 299, 488 
 
 Aleos, 246, 317 
 
 Alexandras, 320 
 
 Alexiar6s, 242 
 
 Alexikakos, 299, 548 
 
 Alfheim, 188 
 
 Alfur, 114 
 
 AU, 335 
 
 Alkaios, 292 
 
 Alkestis, 263, 287 
 
 Alkides, 292 
 
 Alkinoos, 408, 489 
 
 Alkmaion, 413, 415 
 
 AlkmSnS, 287, 289, 410 
 
 Alkyoneus, 545 
 
 Allegory in mythology, 176, 265, 268, 
 
 522 
 Allekto, 265 
 All-Father, 46, 186, 195 
 Aloadai, 14, 197, 470, 480 
 Alope, 307 
 
 Alpheios, 214, 241, 277 
 Althaia, 247, 393 
 Amaltheia, 76, 175, 180, 269 
 
 , horn of, 356 
 
 Amazo, 309 
 Amazons, 309, 375 
 Ambika, 205 
 Ambrosia, 186, 242 
 Ammas, 524 
 Amnisiads, 377 
 Amphiaraos, 413 
 Amphilochos, 413 
 Amphton, 275, 467 
 Amphithea, 402 
 Amphitrite", 249, 476 
 Amphitryon, 133, 289, 332, 353 
 Amshaspands, 1 56 
 Amulius, 307, 323 
 Amykos, 276, 386 
 Amymone, 484 
 Anadyomene, 244 
 Anakes, 528 
 Analkis, 391 
 Anank6, 184, 266 
 AnchirrhoS, 483 
 Anchises, 244, 256 
 Androgeos, 308, 477 
 Androgynous deities, 166 
 Andromeda, 246 
 Andvari, 48, 106 
 Angels, guardian, 270 
 Angiras, 163, 226, 229 
 Angurbodhe, 569 
 Angr6-Mainyus, 561 
 Anguitia, 249 
 Anik£tos, 242 
 Aniruddha, 229 
 Anna, 243 
 
 ARE 
 
 Anna Perenna, 243 
 Anostos, 224 
 Antaios, 296, 367 
 Anteia, 310 
 Antenor, 322 
 Ahtigon6, 315, 415 
 Antikleia, 315, 402 
 Antilochos, 242, 331 
 AntiopS, 310, 467 
 Antiphates, 407 
 Anubis, 301 
 Anygros, 24 1 
 Apala, 82 
 Apate, 36 
 Aphaia, 379 
 Aphareus, 321 
 Aphrodite - , 177, 253 
 
 AnadyomenS, 216, 253 
 
 Argynnis, 236, 255 
 
 the armed, 259 
 
 Enalia and Pontia, 254 
 
 , kestos of, 254 
 
 Ourania, 25s 
 
 PandSmos, 255 
 
 PhiIom£des, 177 
 
 Philomeides, 177 
 
 , ring of, 107, 1,19, 3S3 
 
 , shell of, 216, 253 
 
 Apis, 99, 327, 374 
 Apnapurna, 243 
 Apoll6n, 8, 270 
 
 Aguieus, 458 
 
 Akersekome"s, 280 
 
 Daphnephoros, 299 
 
 , Delphian, 273 
 
 Delphinios, 273 
 
 • • Hekalos, 332 
 
 • Klarian, 350 
 
 ■ Kyneian, 271 
 
 Lyke'gene's, 272 
 
 Lykeios, Lykios, 27 
 
 Nomios, 369 
 
 Olympios, 299 
 
 • Pangenet6r, 299 
 
 Phanaios, 272 
 
 Sminthios, 462 
 
 Thyrxis, 281, 357 
 
 , the four-armed, 188 
 
 Apples, golden, 284, 320 
 
 and sheep, 261, 538 
 
 Apsaras, 99, 475, 497 
 
 Aptya, 249, 560 
 
 Arachne, 496 
 
 Ara, 235 
 
 Arbhu, 64, 460 
 
 Arborvitae, 351 
 
 Arcturus [Arktouros] 
 
 Arei&n, 415 
 
 Areiopagos, 416 
 
 Arfe^ 179, 187, 254, 262, 469 
 
 Arete, 290 
 
INDEX. 
 
 .575 
 
 ARE 
 
 Arethousa, 162, 210, 241 
 
 ArgS, 508 
 
 Argeia, 414 
 
 Argeiphontes [Hermfis] 
 
 Argennos, 209, 236 
 
 Argentile and Curan, 103 
 
 Arghanautha, 362 
 
 Argiope, 317 
 
 Argives, 423 
 
 Argo, the ship, 107, 310, 354, 385, 461 
 
 Argonautai, 384 
 
 Argos Panoptes, 199, 250, 355, 373 
 
 Argynnis, 27 
 
 Ariadne, 244, 309 
 
 Ari6n, 274, 463 
 
 Arishta, 308 
 
 Aristaios, 381, 475, 526 
 
 Aristeus, 194 
 
 Aristhanas, 281 
 
 Aristodemos, 411 
 
 Aristomachos, 41 1 
 
 Aristomenes, 357 
 
 Arjuna, 209, 367 
 
 Arjun!, 236 
 
 Ark, 328, 354, 435 
 
 Arkadia, 325, 458, 519 
 
 Arkas, 281 
 
 Arkshas, or Shiners, 202, 226 
 
 Arktouros, 294 
 
 Arrows, poisoned, 34, 291 
 
 ArsinoS, 281 
 
 Artemis, 376 
 
 Diktynna, 303, 379 
 
 Orthia, 377 
 
 Patroa, 377 
 
 • Tauropola, 377 
 
 Arthur, 133, et setj., 226 
 Arthur's Round Table, 133 
 Arusha, 237 
 Arushi, 237 
 Aryaman, 155, 561 
 Arvan, 369 
 Asdahag, 324 
 Asgard, 186, 190 
 Ashera, 327, 349 
 Ashtaroth, 277, 375 
 Asklgpios, 280, 283, 326, 424 
 Askr, 268, 363, 412 
 Aslak, 340 
 Aslauga, 38, 54, 112 
 Asmodeus, 174 
 Asopos, 467 
 
 Asphodel meadows, 534. 
 Astarte, 326, 375 
 Asteria, 230 
 Asterion, 261, 328, 373 
 -Asterodia, 230, 277, 372 
 Asteropaios, 97 
 Astrabakos, 353 
 Astraios, 242 
 Astu Phoronikon, 423 
 
 BAL 
 
 Astyages, 250, 324, 583 
 Astydameia, 395 
 Astymedousa, 314 
 Asura, 156 
 Asuro-medhas, 561 
 Asvins, 206, 237 
 Atalantg, 277, 377 
 Ate, 183, 235, 268, 289 
 Atergatis, 215, 481 
 Athamas, 260, 350, 487 
 Athenai, 302, 410 
 Athene", 7, 248 
 
 ■ Ageleia, 251 
 
 Akria, 164, 250 
 
 AlalkomenS, 287 , 
 
 Chalinitis, 503 
 
 Glaukopis, 251 
 
 Koryphasia, 250 
 
 Ophthalmitis, 251 
 
 Optiletis, 251 
 
 Oxyderkes, 251 
 
 Pallas, 177, 355 
 
 , peplos of, 252, 327 
 
 . serpent of, 363 
 
 Tritogeneia, 248 
 
 Athwya, 249, 560 
 Atlas, 189, 261, 283, 427 
 Atli, 116, 163, 336 
 Atman, 190, 191 
 
 Atri, 162 
 
 Atropos, 266 
 
 Attes, 283, 355 
 
 Atthis, 520 
 
 Atys, 258, 495 
 
 Audhumla, 189 
 
 AugS, 244, 246 
 
 Augeias, 293, 470 
 
 Auramazda, 561 
 
 Avallon, 226 
 
 Aureola, 188 
 
 Aurinia, 109 
 
 Aurnavabha, 549 
 
 Aurora, 227 
 
 Ausera, 227 
 
 Aushasi, 343 
 
 Auster, 423 
 
 Austri, 190 
 
 Autolykos, 289, 373, 402 
 
 Autono£, 502 
 
 Avatars of Vishnu, 345 
 
 Avilion, 139 
 
 Azidahaka, 324, 364, 560 
 
 B 
 
 Baal, altar of, 350 
 Baal-peor, 350 
 Bacchos, 256, 509 
 Bala, 163 
 Balarama, 345, 367 
 
576 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 EAL 
 
 Balcan, 426 
 
 Bali, 343, 539 
 
 Balia, 133 
 
 Baldag, 333 
 
 Baldur, 188, 333, ct scq. 
 
 Balios, 161 
 
 Balmung, 126, 132 
 
 Barbarossa, 225 
 
 Bassarides, 507 
 
 Baubo, 362 
 
 Bears in mythology, 219 
 
 Beasts in mythology, 219, 221, 320 
 
 Beatrice, 499 
 
 Beauty and the Beast, 75, 220 
 
 Bebrykes, 295, 386 
 
 Beggars in mythology, 144, 219, 409 
 
 Bego, 140 
 
 Besla, Bettla, 189 
 
 Bellerophontes, Bellerophon, 245, 549 
 
 Belleros, 311, 549 
 
 Belos, 483 
 
 Beowulf, 108 
 
 Berchta, Frau, 518 
 
 Bertha Largefoot, 140 
 
 Besla, Bettla, 189 
 
 Bevis of' Hampton, 139 
 
 Bhaga, 333 
 
 Bharatas, 496 
 
 Bhava, 228, 273 
 
 Bhavani, 367 
 
 Bhayanana, 356 
 
 Bheki, 99, 215, 274, 412 
 
 Bhrigu, 226 
 
 Bhu, 155 
 
 Bhuranyu, 419 
 
 Bhuvana, 166 
 
 Biblindi, 194 
 
 Bif-rost, 199 
 
 Bikki, 112 
 
 Bjelbog, 333, 568 
 
 Blanche Flor, 140 
 
 Blarney, 193 
 
 Bleda, 116 
 
 Blindness of solar heroes, 315 
 
 Blodel, 125 
 
 Bludi, 116 
 
 Boabdil, 226 
 
 Boar, bite of the, 258, 350 
 
 , Kalydonian, 297 
 
 Bog, 333 
 
 Bogu, 333 
 
 Bogy, 568 
 
 Bolina, 277 
 
 Bblthorn, 189 
 
 Bondage of solar heroes, 8, 33, 263, 274, 
 
 297 
 Bo6tes, 27 
 Boots, 218 
 Bor, 189 
 Boreas, 242, 466 
 Bosi, 463 
 
 CHR 
 
 Bosporos, 374 
 Boutfe, 259 
 Bragi, 114, 198 
 Brahma, 164, 191, 343 
 Bran, 357 
 
 Breast of Light, 391 
 Breidablick, 336 
 Briareos, 178, 262, 523 
 Bridge of Heimdall, ig3 
 Brihaspati, 232 
 Brise"is, 233, 396 
 Brisingamen, 51, 197 
 Britomartis, 379 
 Brand, 333 
 Brontes, 425 
 Brownies, 287, 528 
 Brynhild, 54, 106 
 Bui, 336 
 Buri, 189 
 Burning brand, the, 247 
 
 Cabiri [Kabeiroi] 
 
 Cacus, 299, 329, 469, 545 
 
 Cseculus, 548 
 
 Caia, 150 
 
 Caius, 150 
 
 Cambara, 537 
 
 Camelot, 135 
 
 Camilla, 277, 377 
 
 Camulus, 377 
 
 Cap, Invisible [Tarnkappe] 
 
 Caradoc, 357 
 
 Caranus, 548 
 
 Cattle of the Sun, 408, 494 
 
 Cave of Dikte, 175 
 
 Latmos, 278 
 
 Lyktos, 175 
 
 Centaurs [Kentaurs] 
 
 Ceres, 520 
 
 Ceridwen, 357 
 
 Cestus [Kestos] 
 
 Chalybes, 375' 
 
 Chalk6d6n, 297 
 
 Chaos, 151, 180 
 
 Chando, the bull, 325 
 
 Chandragupta, 325 
 
 Charis, 26, 254 
 
 Charites, 27, 161, 237, 458 
 
 Charlemagne [Karl the Great] 
 
 Char6n, 378, 557 
 
 Charybdis, 476 
 
 Chatumerus, 333 
 
 Cheiron, 108, 281, 385 
 
 Chimaira, 311, 421, 503, 550 
 
 ChionS, 493, 530 
 
 Christianity, influence of, on mytho- 
 
 togy. 43. 127, 474. 564 
 Chronos [Kronos] 
 
INDEX. 
 
 577 
 
 CHR 
 
 Chrysaor, 270, 292, 304, 403, 542 
 
 Chryses, 396 
 
 Chrysippos, 313, 552 
 
 Chumuri, 163 
 
 Cinderella, 409 
 
 Ciza, 309 
 
 Clym of the Clough, 339 
 
 Clytemnestra [Klytaimnestra] 
 
 Clouds, 486 
 
 Cloudeslee, William of, 339 
 
 Codes, 329 
 
 Cocytus [Kokytos] 
 
 Ccelius Mons, 199 
 
 Consentes, Dii, 166 
 
 Consualia, 166 
 
 Consus, 166 
 
 Correlative deities and twin heroes, 
 
 206, 286 
 Correlatives, Asvins, 206 
 
 ■ Amphion and Zethos, 467 
 
 Ahans, 207 
 
 Danaos and Aigyptos, 482 
 
 Dioskouroi, 207, 234 
 
 Dyava-prithivi, 206 
 
 Eros and Anteros, 209 
 
 Eteokles and Polyneikes, 411, 413 
 
 Eurysthenes and Prokles, 41 1 
 
 ■ • Glaukos and Sarpedon, 
 
 ■ Grettir and Illugi, 146 
 
 Hengist and Horsa, 209 
 
 Herakles and Iphikles, 146, 289 
 
 Hermaphroditos, 202 
 
 Indragni, 206 
 
 Krishna and Arjuna, 209, 236 
 
 Patroklos and Achilleus, 209 
 
 Peirithoos and Theseus, 209 
 
 Pelias and Neleus, 209, 323 
 
 Phaeth6n and Helios, 209 
 
 Phoibos and Artemis, 376 
 
 Podaleirios and Machaon, 207 
 
 Prometheus and Epimetheus, 209 
 
 Rama and Luxman, 209 
 
 Romulus and Remus, 209 
 
 Rudrau, 207 
 
 Soma and Surya, 209 
 
 — — Telemachos and Odysseus, 209 
 
 Theseus and Hippolytos, 
 
 Uma and Soma, 205 
 
 Ushasau, 206 
 
 Varuna and Mitra, 206 
 
 Creusa, 244 
 
 Cross and Crescent, 352 
 Cross of Osiris, 352 
 Curetes [KourStes] 
 Cushna, 537 
 Cybele [KybelS] 
 CyclopesHKyklopes] 
 Cyclops [Kyklops] 
 Cyrus, 134, 3 I2 > 3 2 4> 5^3 
 
 DIE 
 
 D 
 
 Dag, 114 
 
 Daeva, 561 
 
 Dagon, 215 
 
 Dahak, 324, 560 
 
 Dahana, 29, 162 
 
 Daidalos, 241, 309 
 
 Daimones, 428 
 
 Daityas, 156 
 
 Daktyloi Idaioi, 182, 489, 525 
 
 Daksha, 155, 484 
 
 Damaskos, 507 
 
 Danae, 244, 303 
 
 Danaides, 386 
 
 Danaos, 482 
 
 Dancers, the mystic, 524 
 
 Dankwart, 122 
 
 Daphne, 31, 51, 230, 276 
 
 Daphnis, 276 
 
 Dasra, 234 
 
 Davy, old, 567 
 
 Davy's locker, 567 
 
 Dawn, S3, 211 
 
 Days of the year, 285 
 
 Dazhbog, 333 
 
 Deianeira, 248, 297 
 
 Deiokes, 325, 563 
 
 Deimos, 255 
 
 Deion, 331 
 
 Deiphobos, 390 
 
 DeipylS, 414 
 
 Delos, S3, 175, 270 
 
 Demeter, 48, 234, 510 
 
 Thesmophoros, 520 
 
 Demodokos, lay of, 254, 426, 472 
 
 Demons, 428 
 
 Demophoon, Demophon, 245, 511 
 
 Denis, St., 506 
 
 Deo, 511 
 
 Derketo, 215, 325 
 
 Derkynos, 543 
 
 Despoina, 180, 478 
 
 Deukalion, 328, 423, 435 
 
 Deva, 561 
 
 Devaki, 34S..36S 
 
 Devil, Semitic, 174 
 
 , Teutonic, 296, 429, 439, 567 
 
 , the word, 174, 567 
 
 Devil's dam, 569 
 
 Dew, myths of the [Prokris] 
 
 Dheanka, 552 
 
 Dhuni, 163 
 
 Dia, 310, 332, 382 
 
 Diabolos, 174 
 
 Diana, 174 
 
 Dianus, 174 
 
 Diarmaid, 139 
 
 Dido, 142 
 
 Dietrich, 109, 1 17, 123, 129 
 
 of Bern, 130 
 
 2 P 
 
578 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 DIE 
 
 Dietrich and Sigenot, 109 
 Dike, 265 
 Dikte, 175. 177 
 Diktynna, 183, 328 
 Diktys, 183, 303 
 DiomeclS, 401 
 Diomed£s, 252, 257, 472 
 
 , horses of, 294, 373 
 
 Di6n6, 180, 254, 260, 508 
 Dionysos, 245, 260, 326, 504 
 
 Dithyreites, 285 
 
 Antheus, 367 
 
 Dioskoitroi, 207, 234, 245, 310 
 
 Dirghotamas, 249 
 
 Diti, 155 
 
 Dius Fidius, 547 
 
 Djovis, 174 
 
 Dobruna, 280 
 
 Doliones, 386 
 
 Donar, 195, 569 
 
 Donnerskind, 569 
 
 Doris, 473 
 
 Dorkas, 238 
 
 Dracse, 353 , 
 
 Dragons in mythology, 90, 238, 322, 
 
 388. 554 
 Dragon's teeth, 327, 387 
 Drakon, 314 
 Draug, 569 
 Draupadi, 500 
 Drukhs, 235, 561 
 .Dryades, 474 
 Dryops, 466, 528 
 Dualism in theology, 45, 160, 264 
 
 , Iranian, 428, 561 
 
 in nature, 45, 264 
 
 Durandal, 104, 132 
 Durga, 163, 421 
 Dwarfs, 106 
 Dyaus, 149 
 , Dyauspitcir, 150, 168 
 Dyava-prithivf, 
 Dyava-Matar, 234 
 Dymas, 412 
 Dyotana, 230 < 
 
 Dyu, 150 
 
 Dwarf Incarnation, 343 
 Dwarfs in Hindu mythology, 539 
 Dwita, 249. 
 
 E 
 
 Echemos, 411 
 
 Echidna, 118, 538 
 
 Echo, 209, 242, 467 
 
 Ecke, 200 
 
 Ecke, Dietrich and, 130 
 
 Eckesax, 200 
 
 Egeria, 310 
 
 Egg, mundane, 155, 165, 437, 479 
 
 EUP 
 
 Egg of Nemesis, 269 
 
 Egill, 339 
 
 Eileithyia, 263, 270 
 
 Eilimir, 114 
 
 Eindridi, 340 
 
 Ekata, 249 
 
 Elaine, 136, 138 
 
 Elbe, 215 
 
 Elberich, 225 
 
 Elektra, 184, 235 
 
 Elektrian gates, 411 
 
 Eleusinian festival, 362 
 
 Eleusis, 511, 519 
 
 Eleutherai, 182 
 
 Elf, 198, 277 
 
 Elfland, 198 
 
 Elidoc, 441 
 
 Elissa, 243 
 
 Ellide, ship, 491 
 
 Elves, 198 
 
 Elysion, 208, 533 
 
 Endymion, 175, 209, 224 
 
 Enipeus, 323 
 
 Enkelados, 437 
 
 Ennosigaios, 479 
 
 Enosichthon, 556 
 
 Enyalios, 556 
 
 Enyo, 556 
 
 E6s, 32, 212, 240 
 
 Epaphos, 327, 374, 4S2 
 
 Ephialtes, 471 
 
 Epigonoi, 310, 415 
 
 Epimenides, 225 
 
 Epimetheus, 427, 433 
 
 Ercules, 458 
 
 Ercildoune, 224 
 
 Erebos, 151, 176 
 
 Erechtheus, 251, 363, 520 
 
 Erginos, 291 
 
 Erich thonios, 166, 360, 426 
 
 Erinys, 231, 234, 263 
 
 Eriphyle, 107, 254, 327, 413, 416 
 
 Eris, 36, 235, 261 
 
 Erlking, the, 462 
 
 Eros, 151 
 
 Er6s, 185, 193, 216 
 
 Erp, 112 
 
 Erymanthian boar, 293 
 
 Erysichthon, 529 
 
 Erytheia, 261, 543 
 
 Eryx, 543 
 
 Eteokles, 207, 314 
 
 Ether [Aither] 
 
 Ethiopians, 242 
 
 , table of the, 76, 357 
 
 Etzel, 116 
 Euenos, 248 
 Eumenides [Saranyu] 
 Eumolpos, 521 
 Eunomos, 285, 297 
 Euphorion, 390 
 
INDEX. 
 
 579 
 
 EUR 
 
 Europe, 242, 246 
 Euros, 423 
 Euryale, 380 
 Euryanassa, 212, 522 
 Eurybates, 554 
 Eurydike, 32, 210, 278, 459 
 Eurydomene, 255 
 Euryganeia, 229, 314 
 Eurykleia, 93, 315, 4°3 
 Eurykreion, 403 
 Eurylochos, 285 
 Eurynome, 179, 229, 425 
 Euryphassa, 212, 282 
 Eurysthenes, 411 
 Eurystheus, 288, 410 
 Eurythemis, 248 
 Eurytion, 310, 395 
 Eurytos, 289 
 Euthymos, 554 
 Evadn£, 322 
 Evanthes, 530 
 Excalibur, 104, 135 
 
 Fafnir, 38, 104, 106, 108 
 Fair Rosamond , 224 
 Fairy queen, 224, 230 
 Fatal children, 105, 136, 388 
 
 sisters, 136, 265 
 
 Fatum, 266 
 Faustulus, 323 
 Favonius, 444, 466 
 Faunus, 466 
 Fenia, 470 
 Fenris, 188, 558 
 Feridun, 249, 560 
 Fialar, 187 
 Fifty Argonauts, 385 
 
 children of Proteus and Dons, 47; 
 
 daughters of Asterodia, 278, 372 
 
 Danaos, 278 
 
 Selene, 278 
 
 Thestios, 291 
 
 sons of Aigyptos, 278 
 
 Pallas, 308 
 
 Priam, 372 
 
 Fionn, 139 
 
 Fire, myths of the [Agni] 
 
 , gods of the, 214 
 
 , Agni, 418 
 
 , Bhuranyu, 214 
 
 , Hephaistos, 238 
 
 , Hermes, 214 
 
 , Loki, 106 
 
 , Phoroneus, 214 
 
 . , Prometheus, 214 
 
 Fish, the emblem, 356 
 Fish-sun, 226, 274 
 Fitela, 108 
 
 GLA 
 
 Fleece, golden, 88, 239* 
 
 Flood, 435 
 
 Flora, 548 
 
 Fool, the Great, 80, 391 
 
 Forest, the dark, 222, 314 
 
 Forseti, 333 
 
 Fortuna Mammosa, 309 
 
 Fosite, 333 
 
 Freki, 194 
 
 Freya, 97, 190, 197 
 
 Frithjof, 354 
 
 Fro, Friuja, 198 
 
 Frodi, quern of, 357, 470 
 
 Frog-sun, 99, 274, 412 
 
 Frost giants, 189 
 
 Furies [Eumenides] 
 
 Fylfot of Thor, 352 
 
 Gaia, 150, 170, 177, 522 
 
 Galahad, 137, 246, 359 
 
 Galar, 187 \ 
 
 Galateia, 473 
 
 Galdner, 465 
 
 Gandharba-sena, 217 
 
 Gandharvas, 212, 282 
 
 Ganesa, 166, 462 
 
 Ganymede, 242 
 
 Ganym^des, 242 
 
 Ganzblick, 336 
 
 Garanus, 548 
 
 Gardens, Hyperborean, 131, 26L. 
 
 , Hesperian, 284 
 
 , Phaiakian, 490 
 
 Gari, 194 
 
 Garm, 569 
 
 Garshasp, 560 
 
 Garutmat, 421 
 
 Gala and Karpara 
 
 Ge PammStor [Gaia] 
 
 Gelanor, 484 
 
 Gemini, 208 
 
 Geography, mythical, 458, 519" 
 
 George, St., 563 
 
 Gerairai, 354 
 
 Gemot, 119 
 
 Geryon, Geryones, Geryoncus, 118, 18S, 
 
 294> 493. 543 
 Geyti, 340 
 Giants, 438 
 Gibicho, 128, 192 
 Gigantes, 438 
 Girdle of Aphrodite, 97, 262 
 
 Hippolyte, 295, 310 
 
 Giselher, 117 
 
 Glaive of Light, 80 
 
 Glam, 145 
 
 Glauk£, 239, 388 
 
 Glaukos, 95, 223, 257, 330, 474 
 
S8o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 GLE 
 
 Glenkundie, harp of, 464 
 Gnas, 539 
 Gnostics, 363 
 Goblin, 37S 
 Godiva, 65 
 Godmund, 330 
 Gokala, 368 
 Golden Age, 428 
 
 cups and beds, 285 
 
 fleece, 88, 239 
 
 shower, 250 
 
 Goodies, 528 
 
 Goose-girl, 141 
 
 Gopias, 369 
 
 Gorgo, 250, 557 
 
 Gorlois, 133 
 
 Gorgons, 304, 581 
 
 Govinda, 365, 370 
 
 Graces, 237 
 
 Graha, 539 
 
 Graiai, 304, 375 
 
 Grail, Holy, 99, 135 
 
 Grainne, 139 
 
 Graioi, 175 
 
 Gram, 88, 104 
 
 Granmar, 114 
 
 Grant, 426, 568 
 
 Gran, Grani, ic8 
 
 Gratiee, 237,452 
 
 Great P'ool, 80 
 
 Great Rose Garden, 131 
 
 Grein, 109 
 
 Grendel, 108, 364, 426, 555 
 
 Grettir, 42 
 
 Saga, 145 
 
 Greyman, 568 
 Grimhild, no 
 Gripir, 104, 108 
 Grom, 470 
 Guardian angels, 270 
 Gudrun, 38, 129 
 Guenevere, 135 
 
 , Round Table of, 135 
 
 Gunadhya, 465 
 ruvaijucu^s, 39, 109 
 Gundicar, 116 
 Gungnir, 193 
 Gunnar, 38, 1 10 
 Gunputti, 73 
 Gunther, 116 
 Guttorm, III 
 Gwyddno, basket of, 3S7 
 Gyas, 178 
 Gyges, ring of, 361 
 
 H 
 
 Habonde, Dame, 518 
 Hacon, 143 
 Haddingaheld, 1 15 
 
 HEL 
 
 Hadupracht, 333 
 Hades, 179, 333 
 
 , helmet of, 304, 53c 
 
 Hagene, Hagen, 90, ill, 120 
 
 Hagno, 180 
 
 Hag's fell, 568 
 
 Hahnir, 106, 190 
 
 Haimon, 316, 416 
 
 Hakolberend, 193 
 
 Halfdan, 115 
 
 Hall of slaughter, 1 25 
 
 Hamdir, 112 
 
 Hameln, piper of, 65 
 
 Hammer of Thor, 1 96 
 
 Hand of glory, 95 
 
 Hansavati Rich, 162 
 
 Hanuman, 496 
 
 Hapianch, 99 
 
 Hari, 237, 343, 365 
 
 Harits, 27, 161, 237, 254 
 
 Harmonia, necklace of, I07> -5±> 2 95> 
 
 416 
 Harold Fairhair, 143 
 
 Gormson, 339 
 
 Sigurdarson, 340 
 
 Harpagos, 324 
 
 Harpe, 304 
 
 Harpokrates, 300, 356, 512 
 
 Harps and horns, 
 
 Harpyiai, 184, 235, 386,' 498 
 
 Harry, Old, 567 
 
 Hartmut, 129 
 
 Havelok, 103, 281 
 
 Healers or Saviours, 207 
 
 Har-pi-chruti, 356 
 
 Heb6, 242, 299, 421 
 
 Hedin, 114 
 
 Heimdall, 197 
 
 Hekabe, 305, 319 
 
 HekalS, 308 
 
 Hekate, 239, 375, 510 
 
 Kourotrophos, 375 
 
 , three-handed, 188 
 
 Hekatoncheires, 439 
 
 Hekatos, 332 
 
 Heklufiall, 568 
 
 Hektor, 94, 256, 398 
 
 Hel, 188, 566 
 
 Helche, 121 
 
 Helen, 233, 310, 389, et seq., 534 
 
 Helene, 233, 451 
 
 Dendritis, 189, 241, 390, 394 
 
 Helgis, the three, 10S, 113 
 Heliades, 286 
 Helias, 499 
 Helikon, 478 
 Helios, 242 
 
 , cattle of, 494 
 
 , robe of, 
 
 Helle, 223, 244, 384, 417 
 Hellen, 488 
 
INDEX. 
 
 581 
 
 HEL 
 
 Hellenes, 488 
 Hellespont, 244, 488 
 Helmet of Hades [Tarnkappe] 
 Hemera, 151, 176, 259 
 Heming, 340 
 Heosphoros, 242, 284 
 Hephaistos, 238, 250, 421, 425, 
 Herakleids, 293, 302, 410 
 Herakles, 292 
 
 , labours of, 295 
 
 — — , Daphnephoros, 299 
 
 , Mainomenos, 292 
 
 , Panegenetor, 299 
 
 , pillars of, 268, 351, 543 
 
 Hercules, 299, 545 
 
 Herculus, 458, 547 
 
 HerS, 7, 179, 183, 260, et saj. 
 
 Herentas, 260 
 
 Hermanric, 112 
 
 Hermaphroditos, 166 
 
 Hermeias, 250, 451 
 
 Hermes, 63, 184, 233, 373, 446 
 
 ■ the god of day, 275, 447 
 
 the Master Thief, 64 
 
 ■ Psychopompos, 453 
 
 Trismegistos, 457 
 
 Agoraios, 457 
 
 Hermodhur, 114 
 Hermotimos, 72 
 Heme the hunter, 569 
 Hero, 244 
 Herodias, 569 
 Heroic life, 429 
 Herse, 48, 214, 240, 521 
 Herth, 355 
 Hesiodic ages, 428 
 
 Works and Days, 172 
 
 Hesione, 292 
 Hesioneus, 283, 382 
 Hesperides, 284 
 
 , apples of the, 284 
 
 Hesperos, 261, 284 
 Hestia, 261, 422 
 Hettel, 129 
 Hialprek, 105 
 Hiarbas, 243 
 Hierodouloi, 255, 354 
 Hilaeira, 281 
 Hilda, 129 
 Hildebrand, 126 
 Hildegund, 128 
 Himeros, 156, 253 
 Himinbiorg, 199 
 Hippodameia, 209, 277, 522 
 Hippokrene, 503 
 Hippolochos, 340 
 Hippolytl, 310 
 Hippolytos, 310 
 Hipponoos, 311, 549 
 Hippotes, 411, 47° 
 Hitopadesa, 57 
 
 IDA 
 
 Hjarrandi, 465 
 
 Hjordis, 105, 107 
 
 Hlodr, 187, 280 
 
 Hlorridi, 198 
 
 Hnikar, 194 
 
 Hnossa, 190 
 
 Hoard, the Niblung, 121, 242, 321, 382 
 
 Hodr, 301, 333 
 
 Hogni, in 
 
 Holda, 140, 518 
 
 Holle, 140 
 
 Hope, 434 
 
 Horai, 179, 261 
 
 Horant, 129 
 
 Horos, 301, 512 
 
 Horse, wooden, 405 
 
 Horses, immortal, 243 
 
 of the sea, 479 
 
 of the sun, 161, 257, 254 
 
 Horselberg, 98, 225 
 Hours, the, 179 
 Hrimgerda, 114 
 Hrimthursar, 189 
 Hrothgar, 555 
 Hrungnir, 187 
 Hugdietrich, 317 
 Huginn, 194 
 
 Humiliation, garment of, 94 
 Hunding, 105, 108 
 Hundingsbana, 114 
 Huon of Bordeaux, 225, 357 
 Hvergelmir, 268 
 Hyades, 182, 284, 500 
 Hydra, 293 
 
 and Lynkeus, 486 
 
 Hymir, 569 
 Hyllos, 302, 410 
 Hyperborean gardens, 131, 261 
 Hyperboreans, 183, 489 
 Hypereia, 411, 489 
 Hyperion, 176, 241 
 Hypermnestra, 484 
 Hypnos, 36, 184, 330, 461 
 Hypsipyle, 386 
 Hyrieus, 61 
 
 Iambe, 511 
 
 Iamos, 239, 244, 280, 322 
 
 Iao, 350, 372 
 
 Iasion, 363 
 
 Iasios, 183 
 
 Iason, 239, 363, 385 
 
 Iasos, 423 
 
 Iapetos, 176, 427 
 
 Iarnsaxa, 187 
 
 Ice, myths of the, 493 
 
 Ida, 167, 180 
 
 Idaian Daktyls, 182, 489, 525 
 
582 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 IDA 
 
 Idas, 183, 212 
 
 Id una, 512 
 
 Idyia, 239 
 
 Igraine, 133, 353 
 
 Ikaros, Ikarios, 24I 
 
 Iliad, 397 
 
 Ilion, 256, 318, 541, 558 
 
 Illugi, 146 
 
 Ilmarinen, 434 
 
 Ilmatar, 64 
 
 Ilsan the monk, 132 
 
 Incorruptible bodies, 94 
 
 Inachos, 422 
 
 Indra, 51, 157 
 
 • Parjanya, 160 
 
 ■ Savitar, 
 
 Sthatar, 161 
 
 the wanderer, 161 
 
 the rain-bringer, 161 
 
 the wife of, 163 
 
 Indragit, 159 
 
 Indu, 204 
 
 Indranl, 163 
 
 Ingebjorg, 224 
 
 Ino, 408, 481 
 
 Invisible cap [Tarnkappe] 
 
 16, 85, 372, 436, 482 
 
 Iobates, 311 
 
 Iokaste", 244 
 
 Iolaos, 244, 410, 512 
 
 Iole, 244, 296 
 
 Ios, poison, 318 
 
 , an arrow, 31S 
 
 Iphianassa, 278 
 
 Iphigeneia, 264, 379, 392 
 
 Iphikles, 289, 410 
 
 Iphimedousa, 470 
 
 Iphitos, 296 
 
 Iphthime, 527 
 
 Irinc, 125 
 
 Iris, 184, 198, 399, 511 
 
 Irmin, 114, 268, 412 
 
 Irminsul, 268 
 
 Iros, 185, 395 
 
 Ischys, 281, 321 
 
 Isco, 114 
 
 Isdubar, 298 
 
 Isfendiyar, 90 
 
 Isis, 301, 309, 374 
 
 Ismene, 314 
 
 Issi, 570 
 
 Iswara, 345, 362 
 
 Itys, 468 
 
 Ivan, 213 
 
 Ixion, 185, 252, 262, 276, 383 
 
 Janus, 174, 188 
 Januspater, 150, 1 74 
 
 KER 
 
 Jason [Iasfin] 
 
 Jemshid, 358, 560 
 
 Jonakr, 112 
 
 Jord, 190 
 
 Joseph of Arimathaea, 137, 358 
 
 Totunheim, 197 
 
 JStuns, 189 
 
 Juno, 263 
 
 Matrona, 263 
 
 Moneta, 227, 253 
 
 Virginalis, 263 
 
 Jupiter, 150 
 
 ■ Indiges, 244 
 
 ■ ■ Pistor, 523 
 
 • Pluvius, 194 
 
 • Stator, 161 
 
 Tonans, 196 
 
 K 
 
 Kabeiroi, 376, 526 
 Kadmos, 247, 326, 414 
 
 • the bondman, 327 
 
 Kaikias, 329, 469, 54S 
 
 Kalchas, 379, 395 
 
 Kale, 255 
 
 Kalewala, 139 
 
 Kali, 163, 188, 421 
 
 Kalinak, 370 
 
 Kalliope, 461 
 
 Kallirhoe, 1 18, 416 
 
 Kallisto, 27, 202 
 
 KalykS, 277, 436 
 
 Kalydonian boar, 376 
 
 Kalypso, 98, 224, 40S 
 
 Kama, 151, 189, 193 
 
 Kamsa, 367 
 
 Kampe, 507 
 
 Kara, 1 15 
 
 Karali, 421 
 
 Karl the Great, 225 
 
 Karme, 379 
 
 Karnos, 178, 411 
 
 Karneios, 178 
 
 Kasandra, 320 
 
 Kassiopeia, 246 
 
 Kastor, 289, 498 
 
 Kasyapa, 156 
 
 Kaunos, 35 
 
 Kebr£n, 320 
 
 Kedalion, 380 
 
 Keingala, 141 
 
 Kekrops, 181, 363, 521 
 
 Keleos, 511 
 
 Kentaurs, 268, 282, 292, 395 
 
 Kephalos, 32, 249, 331 
 
 Kepheus, 246 
 
 Kerberos, 291; 376, 531, 544 
 
 Kerdo, 422 
 
 Keves, 266, 548 
 
INDEX. 
 
 533 
 
 KER 
 
 Keresaspa, 559 
 
 Kerkopes, 307, 522 
 
 Kerkyon, 307 
 
 Keryneia, story of, 293 
 
 Keyx, 296 
 
 Kestos of AphroditS, 97, 184 
 
 Keto, 501 
 
 Kikones, 406 
 
 Kilix, 326 
 
 King and queen, the words, 15 
 
 Kipicho, 192 
 
 Kirk6, 407 
 
 Kistai mustikai, 356 
 
 Kleitos, 242 
 
 Kleodaios, 410 
 
 Kleopatra, 212, 24S, 394 
 
 Klete, 255 
 
 Klim of the Clough, 339 
 
 K16tho, 266 
 
 Klymene, 398 
 
 Klytaimnestra, 416 
 
 Klytia, 522 
 
 Knights of the Round Table, 99 
 
 Kobalos, 378 
 
 Kobold, 378 
 
 Koios, 176 
 
 Koiranos, 282 
 
 Kokalos, 328 
 
 Kokytos, 533 
 
 KorS, 510 
 
 Kor6nis, 194, 243 
 
 Korybantes, 380, 526 
 
 Korybas, 519 
 
 Korythos, 317 
 
 Kottos, 178 
 
 Kouretes, 180, 376, 380, 394 
 
 Kraka, 38 
 
 Kranaos, 520 
 
 Krataii's, 477 
 
 Kreon, 244, 298, 388 
 
 Kres, 329 
 
 Kresphontes, 411 
 
 Kretea, 180 
 
 Kriemhild, 116, 120 
 
 Krios, 176, 439 
 
 Krishna, 157, 209, 365 
 
 Krornmyon, sow of, 307 
 
 Kronidfe, 178 
 
 Kron!6n, 154 
 
 Kronos, 177, 432 
 
 Kteatos, 294 
 
 Kumara, 343 
 
 Kuvera, 532 
 
 Kyanean rocks, 386 
 
 KybelS, Kybebe, 355, 524 
 
 Kyklopes, 176, 180, 283, 438 
 
 Kyklops, 296, 406 
 
 Kyknos, 295, 472 
 
 Kymodoke, 473 
 
 Kynossema, 233 
 
 Kynthos, 270 
 
 T.IG 
 
 Kynosarges, 233 
 Kynosoura, 233 
 Kyrene, 381 
 Kyzikos, 386 
 
 Labyrinth, 309, 556 
 
 Lachesis, 266 
 
 Lada, 198 
 
 Lado, 198 
 
 Ladon, 270, 276 
 
 Laertes, 25:, 402 
 
 Laios, 245, 311, 551 
 
 Lake, Lady of the, 136 
 
 Lamed or limping gods, 502, 528, 533, 
 
 567 
 Lakshmi, 243, 520 
 Lamia, 477 
 Lamos, 407 
 Lampetie, 245 
 Lampos, 241 
 Lamyroi, 378, 407 
 Lancelot du Lake, 136, 360 
 Landnama-bok, 143 
 Laodameia, 329 
 Laokoon, 501 
 Laomedon, 279, 292, 481 
 Lap version of the myth of Polyphemos, 
 
 570 
 Lapithai, 386 
 Lar, 233 
 
 Lares, 170, 253, 528 
 Larvae, 528 
 Latinus, 546 
 Latmos, 175, 278 
 Lavinia, 243 
 Leander [Leiandros] 
 Lear, 249 
 Learchos, 488 
 Leda, 248, 390, 496 
 Leiandros, 244 
 Leimon, 485 
 Lemures, 378 
 Lenore, 115 
 Leopard and Lion, 2S5 
 Leophontes, 315, 550 
 Leos, 308 
 
 Lernaian hydra, 486 
 Lethe", 255 
 
 LetS, S, 255, 270, 493 
 LeukS, 390, 531 
 Leukippos, 281 
 Leukothea, 408 
 Liber and Libera, 198 
 Libya, 483 
 Lichas, 298 
 Lif, 188 
 
 Little John, 310 
 
 Lightning, myths of the, 95, 440 
 Ligyron, 395 
 
5 8 4 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 LIN 
 
 Linga, 166, 238, 350 
 
 Linos, 289, 469 
 
 Lion of Kithairon, 290 
 
 Nemea, 290 
 
 Litai, 268 
 
 Lituus, 351 
 
 Ljosalfaheim, 190 
 
 Loathly lady, 216, 218 
 
 Lodur, 190 
 
 Loki, 106, 186, 197, 426 
 
 Lotos, 356, 386 
 
 Lotos- eaters, 92, 356 
 
 Lucifer, 284 
 
 Lucius of Corinth, 217 
 
 Luck of Edenhall, 357 
 
 Luck-flower, 441 
 
 Lucna, 315 
 
 Lunus, 372 
 
 Lupercus, 130 
 
 Luxman, 84 
 
 Lychnos, 251 
 
 Lykabas, 244 
 
 Lykaian hill, 181 
 
 Lykanthropy, 182, 239 
 
 Lykaon, 181, 202 
 
 Lykastos, 327 
 
 Lyke, 276 
 
 LykegenSs, 272 
 
 LykomSdes, 311, 395 
 
 Lykoreia, 435 
 
 Lykos, 271, 295 
 
 Lykosoura, 180 
 
 Lykourgos, 315, 475 
 
 Lyktos, 175 
 
 Lympha, Lymphaticus, 474 
 
 Lynkeus, 483 
 
 Lyrkeios, 486 
 
 M 
 
 Ma, 524 
 Macduff, 13& 
 Machaon, 207 
 Madhu, 367, 371 
 Maghavan, 160 
 Magni, 187 
 
 Magnus, Lay of, 426, 500 
 Mahadeva, 163, 165, 205, 
 
 , bow of, 165, 205 
 
 Mahakali, 356 
 
 Mahendra, 366 
 
 Maia, 447 
 
 Maimed deities, 188, 553 
 
 Mainades, 507 
 
 Maion, 415 
 
 Mamers, 523 
 
 Mannaheim, 190 
 
 Manduci, 378 
 
 Manes, 528 
 
 Mania, 253 
 
 MIS 
 
 Mann, 227, 412 
 Manu, 26, 226, 328 
 MAR, the root, 14 
 Marathonian bull, 308 
 Mars, 15, 523 
 Marspiter, 523 
 Marsyas, 530 
 Martanda, 155 
 Maruts, 15, 161, 444 
 Master Thief, 64 
 Matabrune, 499 
 Matarisvan, 421 
 Mater Dolorosa, 98 
 Matuta, 253, 389 
 Mayors, 523 
 Maypole [Phallos] 
 Medeia, 54, 238, 308, 3S8 
 
 , robe of, 54 
 
 Medeides, 505 
 
 Medousa, 250, 304, 501, 557 
 
 Megaira, 265 
 
 Megapenthes, 305, 390 
 
 Megara, 292 
 
 Megaros, 435 
 
 Meilichios, 178 
 
 Melampous, 413 
 
 Melanthios, 409 
 
 Meleagros, 247, 393 
 
 Melia, 422 
 
 Melikertes, 326, 481 
 
 Melkarth, 326 
 
 MelpomenS, 476 
 
 Melusina, 97, 216 
 
 Memnon, 183, 242, 268 
 
 Menelaos, 146, 321 
 
 Menestheus, 311 
 
 Menia, 470 
 
 Menoikeus, 415 
 
 Menoitios, 398, 427 
 
 Mentor, 227 
 
 Menu [Manu] 
 
 Mercurius, 457 
 
 Merlin, 135 
 
 Mermaids, 49S 
 
 Merope, 312 
 
 Meropes, 297 
 
 Metaneira, 51 1 
 
 Metaphor, 538 
 
 Me"tis, 177, 178, 250 
 
 Michael Scott, 358 
 
 Midas, 217, 495, 529 
 
 Midgard, 189 
 
 Milky Way, 199 
 
 Mimas, 268 
 
 Mimir, 193, 267, 268 
 
 Minerva, 194, 229, 253 
 
 Capta, 250 
 
 Minos, 27, 95, 245, 306, 326 
 Mmotauros, 245, 309, 328, 555 
 Miolnir, Thor, 14, 197 
 Mist, children of the [NephelS} 
 
INDEX. 
 
 58S 
 
 MIT 
 
 Mithras, 156, 561 
 
 Mitra, 152, 155, 156 
 
 Mnemosyne, 179, 439 
 
 Mnevis, 364 
 
 Modred, 138 
 
 Moira, 266 
 
 Moirai, 184, 247, 265 
 
 Molae Martis, 523 
 
 Moliones, 14, 197, 470 
 
 Moloch, 178, 294, 349 
 
 Momos, 36 
 
 Moneta, 227 
 
 Monk and the bird, 465 
 
 Monotheism, Aryan, 44, 153, 348 
 
 , Semitic, 153, 343, 562 
 
 Morana, 15 
 
 Mordur, 190 
 
 Morgan the Fay, 135 
 
 Mors, 266 
 
 Muninn, 194 
 
 Munja, 470 
 
 Murdered and risen gods, 242, 260, 
 
 33°. 35°. 356, 378, 506 
 MurdhS-divah, 248 
 Muses, 497, 503 
 Muspelheim, 51, 189 
 Mutinus, 530 
 Muttunus, 530 
 Mutunus, 530 
 Mylitta, 98, 255, 354, 360 
 Myrmidons, 82, 194, 219, 329" 
 Myrtilos, 387, 522 
 Mysteries, 349, 356, 361 
 
 , Eleusinian, 349 
 
 , Hellenic, 361 
 
 , Semitic, 361 
 
 Mystic chests, 356 
 
 N 
 
 Naiads, 194, 258, 474 
 
 Namuki, 163, 386 
 
 Nana, 512 
 
 Nanda, 365, 367 
 
 Nanna, 333 
 
 Naraka, 370 
 
 Narayana, 365 
 
 Narcissus, 512 
 
 Narkissos, 209, 243, 279, 450 
 
 Nasatya, 234 
 
 Naubandhana, 226 
 
 Nausikaa, 408, 492 
 
 Nausithoos, 489 
 
 Neaira, 245 
 
 Nebel-kappe, 532 
 
 Necessity, 263, 398 
 
 Nectar, 186, 204, 535 
 
 Neda, 180 
 
 NSis, 278 
 
 Neith, 301 • 
 
 CED 
 
 Neleus, 323, 385 
 Nemesis, 235, 269, 429 
 
 ■ , egg of, 269 
 
 Neoptolemos, 291 
 
 Nephele, 282, 383, 487 
 
 Neptunus, 482 
 
 Nereides, 246, 474 
 
 Nereus, 246, 473 
 
 Nerthus, 198 
 
 Nessos, 297 
 
 Nestor, 330 
 
 Nibelungenlied, 118, et seq., 336 
 
 Nick, 194, 567 
 
 Nicholas, St., 194 
 
 Nicolaitans, 363 
 
 Nicor, 194, 567 
 
 Nidhogr, 190, 286 
 
 Niflheim, 188 
 
 Niflungs, 38, 112, 118 
 
 , treasure of the, 121 
 
 Nikostratos, 390 
 
 Nine worlds, the, 199 
 
 Ninos, 215, 325 
 
 Niobe, 48, 246, 423, 468, 492 
 
 Niordr, 198 
 
 Nirjuts, 444 
 
 Nirriti, 164 
 
 Nishtigri, 164 
 
 Nisos, 28, 54, 477 
 
 Nixies, 194, 567 
 
 Njal, 125 
 
 Noatun, 190 
 
 Nobiskrug, 568 
 
 Nordri, 190 
 
 Norns, 114, 136, 184, 267 
 
 Nostoi, 402 
 
 Notos, 242, 469 
 
 Novensiles, 523 
 
 Numa, 315 
 
 Nuodung, shield of, 123 
 
 Nykteus, 467 
 
 Nymphs, 474 
 
 Nysa, 505 
 
 Nyssa, 363 
 
 Nyx, 36, 151 
 
 Oannes, 215 
 Oberon, 225, 357 
 Ocean, 200 
 Odin [Wuotan] 
 
 on Yggdrasil, 189 
 
 Odin's Rune Song, 189 
 
 Odur, 190 
 
 Odysseus, 127, 146, 214, 251 
 
 the womanly, 404 
 
 , vengeance of, 402 
 
 , weapons of, 28, 88 
 
 Qidipus [Oidipous] 
 
586 
 
 INDEX. • 
 
 OEG 
 
 Oegir, 198 
 
 Oegishialm, 200 
 
 Ogen, 200 
 
 Ogier the Dane, 225 
 
 Ogres, 199, 445 
 
 Ogon, 422 
 
 Ogyges, 200 
 
 Oiagros, 461 
 
 Oidipous, 245, 312, et seq. 
 
 Oineus, 247 
 
 Oinomaos, 522 
 
 Oinone, 40, 320 
 
 Oinopia, 329 
 
 Oinopion, 329 
 
 Okeanos, 176, 482 
 
 Olaf, 135, 143, 314, 353 
 
 Old Davy, 567 
 
 Old Harry, 567 
 
 Old Niclc, 567 
 
 Olger Dansk, 225, 332 
 
 Olive of Athene, 251 
 
 Olympian deities, 179 
 
 Olympos, 180 
 
 Olyseus [Odysseus] 
 
 Omphale, 297 
 
 On, Onnes, 215 
 
 One-eyed gods, 193 
 
 One-handed gods, 202 
 
 Oneiros, 36 
 
 Ophelia, 390 
 
 Ophites, 363 
 
 Ops, 520 
 
 Orchomenos, 323 
 
 Oreads, 474 
 
 Oreithyia, 467 
 
 Orestes, 412, 416 
 
 Orion, 241, 380 
 
 Ormuzd, 560 
 
 Oromazes, 561 
 
 Orpheus, 32, 210, 38-, 459 
 
 Orthros, 293, 531, 537 
 
 Ortlieb, 125 
 
 Ortwein, 129 
 
 Ortygia, 175, 272 
 
 Osc, Oski, 192 
 
 Osir-Hapi, 99 
 
 Osiris, 206, 301, 352 
 
 Oska-byrr, 193 
 
 Oska-stein, 192 
 
 Oskmeyjar, 193 
 
 Ossian, 139 
 
 Otnit, 130, 225 
 
 Otos, 471 
 
 Ouraniones, 438 
 
 Ouranos, 170, 253 
 
 and Gaia, 1 70, 439 
 
 Ovelgunne, 568 
 Owl, 251 
 Oxylos, 412 
 
 PER 
 
 Paieon, 283 
 Paionios, 183 
 Pakkels, 196 
 Palaimon, 326, 481 
 Palamedes, 404 
 Palatinus, 351 
 Pales, 351, 548 
 Palikoi, 351 
 Palnatoki, 339 
 Palladion, 54, 351 
 Pallantides, 308 
 Pallas Athene, 177, 355 
 
 the giant, 250 
 
 Pamphylos, 412 
 
 Pan, 372, 403, 444, 466 
 
 Pandia, 372 
 
 Pandion, 306 
 
 Pandora, 4, 215, 252, 434 
 
 Pandrosos, 521 
 
 Pani, 162, 184, 229 
 
 Pankoites, 532 
 
 Papas, 524 
 
 Parameshthin, 342 
 
 Parcae [Eumenides] 
 
 Parjanya, 160, 196 
 
 Paris, 39, 256 
 
 , judgment of, 255, 261 
 
 Pamassos, 273 
 
 PasiphaS, 245, 309 
 
 Pasupata, 209 
 
 Patala, 343 
 
 Patroklos, 286, 397 
 
 Paul Pry, 65 
 
 Pecheur, King, 359 
 
 Peeping Tom of Coventry, 65 
 
 Pegasos, 108, 311, 502, 550 
 
 Pehrkons, 196 
 
 Peirene, 550 
 
 Peirithoos, 224, 286, 292 
 
 Peitho, 423 
 
 Pelasgians, 423 
 
 Pelasgos, 423, 492 
 
 Peleus, 394 
 
 Pelias, 240, 323, 385 
 
 Pelles, 359 
 
 Pelopids 
 
 Pelops, 209, 240, 387, 522 
 
 Penates, 170 
 
 Penelope", 127, 210, 214, 403, 466 
 
 Pentheus, 506 
 
 Penthesileia, 401 
 
 Pephrgdo, 556 
 
 Peplos, 252, 327, 350 
 
 Peri, 498 
 
 Periklymenos, 415 
 
 Perilous Seat, 136 
 
 PeriphStSs, 307, 426 
 
 Peris, 498 
 
 Perkunas, 64, 196, 336, 37a 
 
INDEX. 
 
 587 
 
 PER 
 
 Persephon£, 40, 310, 510 
 
 Perseus, 245, 302 
 
 Perun, Peraun, 196, 197, 336 
 
 Piorun, 196 
 
 Phaenna, 255 
 
 Phaeth6n, 24 r, 242 
 
 Phaethousa [Lampetie] 
 
 Phaia, 307 
 
 Phaiakian ships, 491 
 
 Phaiakians, 489 
 
 Phaidra, 310 
 
 Phalaris, 387 
 
 Phallos, 250, 351 
 
 Phanaios, 272 
 
 Phanes, 272 
 
 Pharaildis, 518 
 
 Phegeus, 416 
 
 Phemios, 125 
 
 Phenix, 271 
 
 Phenicians, 247 
 
 Pheredur, 360 
 
 Philoktetes, 291, 322, 402 
 
 Philomela, 468 
 
 Phineus,_305, 386 
 
 Phix, 543, 551 
 
 Phlegrain fields, 297 
 
 Phlegyas, 281 
 
 Phobos, 255 
 
 Phoib£, 281, 545 
 
 Phoibos, 53 
 
 Akersekomes, 54 
 
 the bondman, 287 
 
 Delphinios, 273 
 
 LykSgenes, 272 
 
 Paieon, 283 
 
 Phanaios, 272 
 
 Phoinix and Achilles, 271, 393 
 
 Phol, 333 
 
 Phorkys, 196, 284, 475 
 
 Phoroneus, 250, 419 
 
 Phorkides, 495 
 
 Phosphoros, 284 
 
 Phrixos, 223, 384, 487 
 
 Phyleus, 298 
 
 Pickle, 196 
 
 Picumnus, 523 
 
 Pierides, 503 
 
 Pikollos, 196 
 
 Pilumnus, 523' 
 
 Pinarii, 299, 546 
 
 Piper of Hameln, 462 
 
 Pipers, mysterious, 462 
 
 Pipon, 163 
 
 Pillared saints, 351 
 
 Pillars of Atlas, 268 
 
 Dionysos, 351 
 
 Herakles, 268, 35 r, 543 
 
 Osiris, 351 
 
 Roland, 268 
 
 Sesostris, 351 
 
 Pinarius, 546 
 
 POP 
 
 Pitamaha, 366 * 
 
 Pitys, 466 
 
 Pityokamptes, 307 
 
 Pleiades, 284, 500 
 
 Pleione, 284 
 
 Plough and ship, 356 
 
 Plouton, 283, 5 3l 
 
 Ploutos, 519 
 
 Pluto, 283, 531 
 
 Podaleirios, 207 
 
 Podargg, 398, 469 
 
 Pohjola, 464 
 
 Poias, 298 
 
 Poisoned arrows, 34, 291 
 
 robes, 34, 88 
 
 Polybos, 312 
 
 Polydegmon, 188, 303 
 
 Polydektes, 188, 246 
 
 Polydeukes, 212, 289, 386 
 
 Polyidos, 95, 282, 441 
 
 Polykrates, 220 
 
 Polyneikes, 207, 413 
 
 Polyonymy, 23, 154 
 
 Polyphemos, 255, 406, 437 
 
 Polytheism, 44, 153, 562 
 
 Polyxena, 401 
 
 Polyxo, 390 
 
 Pomegranate seeds, 512 
 
 Pontos, 473 
 
 Popular tales, noticed or analysed : 
 
 Ahmed and the Peri Banou, 442 
 
 Ali Baba, 64, 441 
 
 Allad-ud-deen, 65, 216, 360, 441 
 
 Almond Tree, 281 
 
 Babes in the Wood, 95, 314 
 
 Battle of the Birds, 92, 293 
 
 Bearskin, 222 
 
 Beauty and the Beast, 75, 217 
 
 Best Wish, 93, 193 
 
 Big Bird Dan, 93, no, 491 
 
 Big Peter and Little Peter, 413, 
 
 494 
 
 Bluebeard, 283 
 
 Blue Bell, 315 
 
 Boots, 81, 93 
 
 Boots made of Buffalo Leather, 93 
 
 Boots who ate a Match with the 
 
 Troll, 296 
 
 Brahman and the Goat, 57 
 
 Brahman, Jackal, and Barber, 75 
 
 Brave Seventee Bai, 89, 92, 93 
 
 Briar-rose, 66, 514 
 
 Broken Oath, 85 
 
 Brother Lustig, 192, 240, 281 
 
 Brown Bear of the Green Glen, 80 
 
 Bushy Bride, 74, 234, 267 
 
 Catskin, 82 
 
 Champa Ranee, 65 
 
 Chundun Raja, 257 
 
 Cinderella, 81 
 
 Conall Gulban, 391 
 
588 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 POP 
 
 Popular Tales, continued: 
 
 Cuchullin and Ferdiah, 286 
 
 Dame of the Fine Green Kirtle, 
 
 118 
 
 Dapplegrim, 207, 274 
 
 Daughter of the Skies, 217 
 
 Dietrich and Sigenot, 109 
 
 Dog and the Sparrow, 67, 100 
 
 Donkey Cabbages, 193 
 
 • Drummer, 193, 221, 223 
 
 Dummling, 469 
 
 • Dwarfs, 514 
 
 East of the Sun and West of the 
 
 Moon, 221 
 
 Erlking, 64 
 
 Erlinton, 223 
 
 Faithful Beasts, 193 
 
 Faithful John, 84, 94, 495 
 
 Farmer Weathersky, 267, 274, 
 
 495. 525 
 
 Feather Bird, 283, 540 
 
 Ferdinand the Faithful and Fer- 
 dinand the Unfaithful, 413 
 
 Fisherman and the Jin, 446, 567 
 
 • Fisherman and his Wife, 119 
 
 Forty Thieves, 59 
 
 ■ Four Accomplished Brothers, 64 
 
 Frog Prince, 86, 99, 193 
 
 Garin the Lorrainer, 140 
 
 Giant who had no Heart in his 
 
 Body, 77, 79, 498 , 
 
 Glass Coffin, 443 
 
 Gold Child, 93, 119, 303 
 
 Golden Bird, 82, 93, 223 
 
 Golden Goose, 93 
 
 Good Bargain, 79 
 
 Goose-girl at the Well, 240 
 
 Grandfather Death, 281 
 
 Great Fool, 80 
 
 Gregory the Brave, 539 
 
 Hacon Grizzlebeard, 93 
 
 Handless Maiden, 202 
 
 Hans the Hedgehog, 222 
 
 Hansel and Grethel, 74, 218 
 
 House in the Wood, 515 
 
 How Six travelled through the 
 
 World, 199 
 
 Ill-tempered Princess, 516 
 
 Iron Stove, 221, 245, 283 
 
 Jack the Giant-Killer, 438, 464, 
 
 494 
 
 Jew among the Thorns, 64, 463 
 
 Jorinde and Joringel, 223 
 
 Jungfrau and Maleen, 515 
 
 Karpara and Gata, 60 
 
 Katie Wooden-cloak, 246, 249 
 
 King of Lochlin's Three Daughters, 
 
 109 
 
 • King of the Golden Mountain, 93, 
 
 94 
 King Thrushbeard, 79, 93 
 
 POP 
 
 Popular Tales, continued: 
 
 King who wished to marry his 
 
 Daughter, 140 
 
 King Putraka, 89, 93, 192 
 
 Knapsack, Hat, and Horn, 93, 
 
 193 
 
 Knight of the Swan, 499 
 
 Lad and the Devil, 447 
 
 Lad who went to the North Wind, 
 
 65. 75. 77, 89 
 
 Launfal and Tryamour, 225 
 
 Lavra Loingsech, 74, 217 
 
 Legacy of the Moor, 443 
 
 Little Brother and Sister, 218 
 
 Little Ass, 217 
 
 Little Farmer, 448, 494 
 
 Little Red Cap, 558 
 
 Little Snow White, 218, 281, 357 
 
 Mac Iain Direach, 220 
 
 Man who threw his Father's Head 
 
 in a Muck-heap, 60 
 
 Master Maid, 223 
 
 Master Smith, 192, 240, 425, 447, 
 
 567 
 
 Master Thief, 57 
 
 Maurice Connor, 464 
 
 Miller's Son and the Cat, 93 
 
 • Muchie Lai, 92, 158 
 
 • Nautch-girl and the Parrot, 69, 
 
 101 
 Nighean Righ Fo Thuinn, 216, 
 
 219 
 
 Nix of the Mill Pond, 515 
 
 Nuad of the Silver Hand, 202 
 
 Old Dame and her Hen, 516 
 
 Old Man and the Hind, 373 
 
 One who Travelled to learn what 
 
 Shivering meant, 79 
 
 Osgar, 176 
 
 Panch Phul Ranee, 90, 93, 94 
 
 Poor Man and Rich Man, 192 
 
 Princess on the Glass Hill, 93 
 
 Prince who was Afraid of No- 
 thing, 109, 315 
 
 Punchkin, 77, 223, 498 
 
 Queen Bee, 223 
 
 Rama and Luxman, 84, 86 
 
 Rapunzel, 314, 514 
 
 ■ Red Riding Hood, 558 
 
 Rider of Grianaig, 123 
 
 Rinkrank, 516, 532 
 
 Ritter Red, no 
 
 Robber and his Sons, 570 
 
 Rogue and his Master, 62 
 
 Roland, 274, 463 
 
 Rose of the Alhambra, 65, 464 
 
 Sea-maiden, 94 
 
 Seven Wise Masters, 60 
 
 Sharp Grey Sheep, 141 
 
 Shifty Lad, 58, 447 
 
 Shortshanks, 93, 97, 146, 445, 492 
 
INDEX. 
 
 S8 9 
 
 POP 
 
 Popular Tales, continued : 
 
 Sick Queen, 274 
 
 Sindbad, Voyages of, 526, 570 
 
 ■ Six Servants, 199 
 
 Six Swans, 218, 222 
 
 Snow- White and Rose-Red, 238 
 
 ■ Soaring Lark, 211, 220 
 
 - . Sodewa Ba.;, 92, 94, 257 
 
 Son of the Scottish Yeoman, 70 
 
 Soria Moria Castle, 93 
 
 Spirit in the Bottle, 281, 446 
 
 • Strong Hans, 109, 221, 223 
 
 Surya Bai, 81, 90, 516 
 
 Table, the Ass, and the Stick, 74 
 
 Tailor's Son of Basle, 225 
 
 Tatterhood, 373 
 
 ■ The Chest, 218 
 
 • The Pink, 192 
 
 The Soldier, 447 
 
 Three Feathers, 193 
 
 Three Little Men in the Wood, 74 
 
 Three Snake Leaves, 84, 94, 282, 
 
 441 
 
 Three Soldiers, 80 
 
 Three Widows, 494 
 
 Tom Thumb, 343 
 
 Travels of Dummling, 64 
 
 Treasures of Rhampsinitos, 59 
 
 True Bride, 109 
 
 True and Untrue, 315, 413 
 
 Truth's Triumph, 93, 98, 499 
 
 Tulisa, 220 
 
 Twelve Brothers, 218, 222 
 
 Two Brothers, 82, 95 
 
 Two Sisters, 78, 223 
 
 Two Step-sisters, 189, 293 
 
 Two Wanderers, 314, 502 
 
 Valiant Little Tailor, 456, 463 
 
 Valiant Tailor, 296 
 
 Vikram Maharaja, 538 
 
 Wanderings of Vicram Maharaja, 
 
 67 
 
 White and Black Bride, 499 
 
 White Snake, 219 
 
 Why the Sea is Salt, 357, 566 
 
 Widow and her Daughters, 283 
 
 Widow's Son, 93, 413 
 
 Wolf and Seven Little Kids, 177, 
 
 22 3 . . , 
 Wonderful Musician, 463 
 
 Woodcutter's Child, 109, 222, 283 
 
 Young Giant, 64 
 
 Young King of Esaidh Ruadh, 78 
 
 Portia, judgment of, 218 
 
 Poseidon, 7, 178. 246, 251, 406, 478 
 
 Asphaliaios, 481 
 
 Ennosigaios, 479 
 
 Gaieochos, 479 
 
 Pylaochos, 156, 178 
 
 the bondman, 481 
 
 , trident of, 352 
 
 RAV 
 
 Potitii, 299 . 
 
 Potitius, 546 
 
 Pradyumna, 274 
 
 Prajapati, 166, 207 
 
 Pramafctha, 421, 433 
 
 Priamos, Priam, 244, 457 
 
 Priapos, 198, 256, 530 
 
 Prisni, 445 
 
 Prithivl, 150, 206 
 
 Prodikos, 34, 131, 290 
 
 Proitos, 311 
 
 Prokles, 411 
 
 Prokng, 331, 468 
 
 Prokris, 32, 211, 240, 333, 371, 468 
 
 Prokroustes, 307 
 
 Prometheus, 7, 185, 252, 421, 427 
 
 Prophasis, 433 
 
 Proserpine [Persephone] 
 
 Proteus, 215, 254, 274, 525 
 , trident of, 352 
 
 Protogeneia, 277, 435 
 
 Prytaneion, 424 
 
 Psyche, 75, 216 
 
 Psychopompos, 194, 42 1 
 
 Puck, 568 
 
 Puncher, 340 
 
 Pururavas, 51, 212 
 
 Pushan, 342 
 
 Putana, 369 
 
 Pygmalion, 242 
 
 Pylades, 417 
 
 Pyrakmon, 425 
 
 Pyryphlegethon, 533 
 
 Pyronea, 519 
 
 Pyrrha, 395, 435 
 
 Pythagoras, 356 
 
 Pytho, 273 
 
 Python, 1,06, 272, 554 
 
 Quail [Ortygia] 
 Queen of the five flowers, 90 
 Queen, Fairy, 224, 230 
 Quern of Frodi, 357, 470 
 
 , wishing, 56b 
 
 Quirinus, 547 
 Qvasir, 187 
 
 R 
 
 Radha, 370 
 
 Ragnar Lodbrog, 38, 109 
 
 Ragnarok, 41, 436 
 
 Rakshasa, 160 
 
 Rama, 84, no 
 
 Ran, 200 
 
 Randver, 112 
 
 Ravana, no, 539 
 
590 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 RAV 
 
 Ravens, 568 
 
 Recaranus, 299, 547 
 
 Regin, 104, 105 
 
 Reidartyr, 195 
 
 Reidmar, 106 
 
 Remus, 286, 323 
 
 Rerir, 103 
 
 Rhadamanthys, 300, 326 
 
 Rhampsinitos, 59 
 
 Rhea, Rheia, 176, 261, 524 _ 
 
 Ilia or Silvia, 323 
 
 Rhodopis, slipper of, 92, 140 
 
 Rhodos, 387 
 
 Rhydderch, dish of, 76, 357 
 
 Ribhus, 64, 460 
 
 Rind, 187, 336 
 
 Rindhur, 335 
 
 Robin Hood, 310 
 
 Rings in mythology,. 107, 109, 353 
 
 Rishis, the seven, 226 
 
 River nymphs [Amnisiads] 
 
 Robes, poisoned, 34, 58 
 
 Roc, the, no, 495 
 
 Rod of plenty, 448 
 
 Rohits, 163, 236, 254 
 
 Romulus, 134, 215, 312 
 
 Roland, 117, 132 
 
 Rother, King, 129 
 
 Round table, 99, 135 
 
 Rudiger, 123 
 
 Rudra, 165, 366 
 
 the Master Thief, 65, 446 
 
 Rudrau, 207 
 Rustem, 90 
 
 Sacrifices, human, 377 
 
 Sacti, 352, 354 
 
 Saetere, 427 
 
 Saga, 194 
 
 Salmakis, 209, 280 
 
 Salmoneus, 323 
 
 Sambara, 163, 274, 291 
 
 Sammuramit, 481 
 
 Sampo, 464 
 
 Samsa, 342 
 
 Samvatsara, 421 
 
 Sancus, 547 
 
 Sangaros, 5L2 
 
 Sangreal,.99, 135, 357 
 
 Saparnas, 237 
 
 Sarama, 184, 231 
 
 Sarameya, 233, 250, 451 
 
 Saranyu, 207, 227, 234 
 
 Sarasvati, 164 
 
 Sarpedon, 167, 183, 223, 326, 399 
 
 Sarvara, 291, 544 
 
 Sassafras, 441 
 
 Satan, 427, 562 
 
 STL 
 
 Satavahana, 465 
 Saturnus, 427, 520 
 Saturday, 427 
 Satyavan, 460 
 Satyrs, 527 
 Saurli, 112 
 Savarna, 227 
 Savitar, 201 
 
 , one-handed, 202 
 
 , wanderer, 203 
 
 Saxifrage, 441 
 Sceaf, 280 
 Schamir, 441 
 Scheria, 408, 489 
 Scild, 280, 492 
 Seburk, 13a 
 Seilenoi, 256, 529 
 Seilenos, 495, 529 
 Seirens, 259, 388, 461, 476 
 Seirios, 381 
 Seistron, 351 
 Selene, 209 
 SemelS, 260, 506 
 Semiramis, 215, 325, 481 
 Semo Sancus, 546 
 Serapis, 99, 357, 374 
 Serpent of Askl6pios, 353 
 
 Athen6, 363 
 
 worship, 238, 294 
 
 Servius Tullius, 281 
 
 Sesame, 95, 441 
 
 Sesostris, 325 
 
 S'esha, 203 
 
 Seven Argive chiefs, 414 
 
 champions of Christendom 27, 
 
 225 
 
 clays of the week, 177 
 
 Rishis, 26 
 
 shiners, 26, 98, 202 
 
 sleepers of Ephesus, 98, 225 
 
 wise men of Hellas, 26, 227 
 
 Sheep and Apples, 261, 469 
 
 Ship, Panathenaic, 107, 252, 350, 355 
 
 of Isis, 107 
 
 Shortshanks, 146, 343 
 Sibyl, 465 
 
 Sibylline books, 465 
 Sichzeus, 242 
 Sidero, 323 
 
 Siegfried, 115, 121, 330 
 Siegvater, 192 
 Sigenot, 109, 130 
 Siggeir, 103 
 Sigi, 103 
 
 Sigmund, 104, 121 
 Signy, 103, 314 
 Sigrun, 114 
 Sigtyr, 195 
 Sigurd, 3S, 107 
 Sigurlin, 115 
 Silanus, 461, 530 
 
INDEX. 
 
 59 1 
 
 SIL 
 
 Silvanus, 523 
 
 Sindhu, 155 
 
 Sinfibtli, 104, 10S 
 
 Sinis Pityokamptes, 307 
 
 Sisupala, 540 
 
 Sisyphos, 185, 240, 262 
 
 Sita, no, 366, 539 
 
 Siva, 208, 446 
 
 Skadi, 190 
 
 Skalds, 267 
 
 Skambha, 203, 204, 283, 342 
 
 Skephros, 485 
 
 Skidbladnir, 198, 491 
 
 Skiron, 307 
 
 Skuld, 267 
 
 Skylla, 476 
 
 Skyrios, 306 
 
 Slaughter, hall of, 165 
 
 Sminthos, 462 
 
 Sleepers, Seven, 225 
 
 Sleipnir, 194, 334 
 
 Sneekoll, 145 
 
 Snake leaves, 95 
 
 Snakes, 238, 412, 557 
 
 Sol, 284 
 
 Solomon, ewer of, 89, 99 
 
 Solymoi, 311 
 
 Soma, 186, 201, 203 
 
 Somadeva Bhatta, 60 
 
 Sorcery, 239, 363 
 
 Spear of Abaris, 359 
 
 Spells and talismans, 92 
 
 Sphinx, 313, 551 
 
 Spirit, 562 
 
 Sraddha, 164 
 
 Sri, 520 
 
 Stauros, 195, 352 
 
 Stentor, 445 
 
 Steropes, 425 
 
 Stheino, Stheno, 380 
 
 Stylites, 351 
 
 Stymphalian birds, 294 
 
 Styx, 532 
 
 Sudra, 190 
 
 Suitors of Penelope, 403 
 
 Summer, death of, 512 
 
 Sun, the fish, 273 . 
 
 , brides of the [Prokns, Eos, 
 
 Kor6nis] 
 
 , cattle of the, 408, 494 
 
 , horses of the, 237, 254 
 
 Sunbeam, 332 . 
 
 Superstitions arising from equivocal 
 
 words, 182 
 Surya, 201 
 Surya, 207 
 Sushna, 163 
 Sutata, 166, 208 
 Svar, 238 
 Svarog, 333 
 Svayambhu, 227 
 
 THA 
 
 Swadha, 368 t 
 
 Swaha, 368 
 
 Swan, knight of the, 499 
 
 Swanhild, 112 
 
 Swan-maidens, 219, 475, 495 
 
 Swans, the singing, 497 
 
 Swarog, 201, 422 
 
 Svvava, 114 
 
 Swiss myth of Tell, 337 
 
 Sybaris, 554 
 
 Sympathetic gems and stones, 216 
 
 Symplegades, 375, 386 
 
 Syrinx, 461, 467 
 
 Table of the Ethiopians, 357 
 
 , Round, 357 
 
 Tages, 528 
 
 Taliesin, 358 
 
 Talisman, 351 
 
 Talismanic tests, 360 
 
 Talaos, 496 
 
 Talos, 329 
 
 Tamlane, 216, 222, 224, 352 
 
 Tammuz, 258, 350 
 
 Tanarus, 196 
 
 Tanhaiiser, 225, 407, 442 
 
 Tantalos, 182, 285, 522 
 
 Tara Bai, 97, 223 
 
 Taranis, 196 
 
 Tarnkappe, 304, 532 
 
 Tarquin, 465 
 
 Tartaros, 151, 178, 534 
 
 Tegan Euroron, 357 
 
 Teiresias, 252, 255, 408 
 
 Telauge', 402 
 
 Telchines, 380, 480, 524 
 
 Teleboans, 332 
 
 Telegonos, 404 
 
 Telemachos, 251 
 
 Telephassa, 35, 247 
 
 Telepheian wounds, 318 
 
 Telephos, 245, 317 
 
 Tell, William, 337 
 
 Tellus, 523 
 
 Telodike, 423 
 
 Telphoussa, 273 
 
 Temenos, 411 • 
 
 Temessa, hero of, 554 
 
 Tereus, 468 
 
 Termagant, 457 
 
 Terra, 523 
 
 Tests, talismanic, 360 
 
 Tethys, 176, 261 
 
 Teutamidas, 305 
 
 Teuthras, 246, 317 
 
 Thalassa, 524 
 
 Thaleia, 351 
 
 Thanatos, 287, 330, 566 
 
592 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 THA 
 
 Thaumas, 184, 235, 474 
 Thebes, founding of, 509 
 Theia, 284 
 Theiosoa, 180 
 Themis, 179, 439 
 Theodore, St., 563 
 Theogony, 151 
 
 , Hesiodic, 3, 156, 453 
 
 , Orphic, 437 
 
 Theophane", 385 
 Thersandros, 415 
 Theseus, 245, 306 
 
 the womanly, 307 
 
 Thestios, 291 
 
 Thetis, 7, 107, 394, 475 
 
 Thiassi, 190 
 
 Thoas, 386 
 
 Thomas the Rimer, 224 
 
 Thoosa, 438 
 
 Thor, 195 
 
 , hammer of, 178, 352 
 
 , horn of, 188 
 
 Miblnir, 14 
 
 Thorgerda, 353 
 
 Thraetana, 249, 559 
 
 Three Children, the, 338 
 
 Thriai, 267, 449 
 
 Thrinakia, 149 
 
 Thrym, 197 
 
 Thunder, 195 
 
 Thunder-bolt, 442 
 
 Thursar, 197 
 
 Thyrsos, 351 
 
 Thyrxis, 281 
 
 Time, 177 
 
 Tirfing, 135 
 
 Tisamencs, 412 
 
 Tisiphone", 265 
 
 Titania, 217 
 
 Titans, 178, 431, 437 
 
 Tithonos, 202, 228, 241, 249 
 
 Tityos, 247, 377 
 
 Tiw, 174 
 
 Tlepolemos, 292, 390 
 
 Traitana, 249 
 
 Transformation, power of, 254 
 
 Treasure, the lost or stolen, 121, 242, 
 
 321, 3S2 
 Tree and serpent worship, 353, 362 
 Tribute children, 328 
 Trident, 352 
 Trikorythos, 411 
 Trimiirtti, 165, 201 
 Triptolemos, 395, 520 
 Tristram, 96, 136 
 Trita, 249 
 Trito, 248, 476 
 Tritogeneia, 248 
 Triton, 249 
 Tritonis, 249 
 Tritopat6r, 249 
 
 VAM 
 
 Trivikrama, 366 
 
 Trojan war, 256 
 
 Trolls, 222, 296, 524 
 
 Trophonios, 61, 273 
 
 Troy, 91, 536 
 
 True Thomas, 222 
 
 Tschernibog, 568 
 
 Tuisco, 174 
 
 Tullius, Servius, 281 
 
 Tvashtar, 207 
 
 Twilight of the gods, 41, 186 
 
 , sister of Night, 230 
 
 Twelve Olympian gods, 179 
 Twins, 208 
 
 Twin deities [Correlative deities] 
 Tyche - , 269 
 
 Agathg, 269 
 
 Akraia, 269 
 
 Tydeus, 414 
 
 Tyndareos, 321, 414, 498 
 Typhaon, 245, 272 
 Typhoeus, 178, 179, 437 
 Typhon, 242, 544 
 Tyr, 174, 188, 194 
 Tyro, 323, 468 
 
 u 
 
 Ukko, 64 
 
 Ulysses, Ulyses, 403 
 Uma, 163, 205 
 Una, 246 
 Undine, 215 
 Unholda, 568 
 Unicorn, 373 
 Uokesahs, 200 
 Upendra, 366 
 Uranus [Ouranos], 
 Urd, 267 
 Urisk, 528, 570 
 Ursula, St., 98, 223, 408 
 Urvast, 51, 212 
 Ushapati, 229, 238 
 Ushas, 9, 207, 227 
 Uther, 133, 353 
 
 Vach, 164 
 
 Vahni, 236 
 
 Vaiswanara, 420 
 
 Vaivasti, 227 
 
 Vala, 233, 249 
 
 Valandinne, 567 
 
 Valant, 567 
 
 Valhalla, 193 
 
 Vali, 187 
 
 Valkyrie, 1 10, 193, 497 
 
 Vampire, 182 
 
INDEX. 
 
 593 
 
 Vanaheim, igo 
 Vanamali, 367 
 Vanir, 190, 198 
 Varuna, 149, 151, 162 
 
 , horses of, 152 
 
 VAS, the root, 423 
 Vasishtha, 212 
 Vastoshpati, 233 
 Vasu, 162, 365, 420 
 Vayu, 444 
 
 Vedic hymns, 10, 50 
 Vedjovis, Vejovis, 174 
 Venus, 216, 224, 352 
 
 barbata, 259 
 
 calva, 259 
 
 Cloacina, 259 
 
 ■ equestriS;. 259 
 
 militaris, 259 
 
 Myrtea, 259 
 
 Venusberg [Ercildoune] 
 Verdandhi, 267 
 Verethragna, 559 
 Vertumnus, 272 
 Vesica Piscis, 362 
 Vesta, 170, 423 
 Vestal virgins, 354. 
 Vestri, 190 
 Vibhvan, 343 
 Vikramaditya, 103 
 Virbius, 310 
 Virochana, 343 
 Vishnu, 341, et seq. 
 
 , Avatars of, 345 
 
 , dwarf incarnation of, 343 
 
 , the four-armed, 368 
 
 , three strides of, 342 
 
 Visvakarman, -150, 166 
 Vivanghvat, 208, 560 
 Vivasvat, 208, 227 
 Volker, 122, 124 
 Volos, 285 
 Volsung, 103 
 Volundr, 330 
 Vbluspa Saga, 188 
 Vor, 197 
 
 Vrishakapayi, 207 
 Vritra, 29, 162, 238, 536 
 Vritrahan, 206, 420 
 Vulcanus, 421 
 Vurdh, 267 
 Vyansa, 160 
 
 w 
 
 Wali, 33S 
 
 Wainiimbinen, 64, 139, 454, 4"4 
 
 Waltam, 334 
 
 Walthar of Aquitaine, 128 
 
 Wanderer, Bellerophon the, 299 
 
 , Britomartis the, 379 
 
 XAN 
 • 
 Wanderer, Dionysos the, 507, 
 
 , Dummling the, 469 
 
 , Grettir the, 145 
 
 , Herakles the, 291 
 
 , Indra the, 161 
 
 , 16 the, 309 
 
 , the Jew, 228 
 
 , Odysseus the, 405 
 
 , Oidipous the, 312 
 
 , Perseus the, 304 
 
 , Phoibos the, 271 
 
 , Seigfried the, 128 
 
 , Sigurd the, 109 
 
 , Theseus the, 306 ,. 
 
 , Wuotan the, 335 
 
 Water, myths of the, 473 
 Wayland, 129, 240, 309, 426, 568 
 Weapons, mythical, 28, 88 
 
 , poisoned, 28, 88 
 
 Web of Penelope, 403 
 Wegtam, 203, 334 
 Weird sisters, 136 
 Werewolf, 182 
 Werdandi, 136, 267 
 White Flower, 140 
 William of Cloudeslee, 335 
 William of Orange, 140 
 
 Tell, 335 
 
 Winds, the, 406 
 
 Winter, myths of the [Chimaira] 
 
 Wish, 151, 188, 192 
 
 breeze, 119, 193, 491 
 
 maidens, 193 
 
 Wishes, the three, 192 
 
 Witchcraft, 239, 363, 376 
 
 Witege, 123 
 
 Wodan, Woden, Odin [Wuotan] 
 
 Wolfdietrich, 120 
 
 Wolves in mythology [Lykanthropy] 
 
 Womanly aspect of mythical heroes, 81, 
 
 197. 297. 3°7, 395. 4°4» 5°8 
 Wooden horse, 405 
 Words, use of abstract, 14 
 
 equivocal, 182 
 
 Wunsch [Wish] 
 Wuotan, 103, 187, et seq. 
 
 All-father, 186, 194 
 
 Hakolberend, 193 
 
 Harbard, 193 
 
 , one-eyed, 192 
 
 Siegvater, 192 
 
 the healer, 194 
 
 Wegtam, 203, 334 
 
 on Yggdrasil, 189 
 
 Wind, 136, 267 
 
 X 
 
 Xanthos, 175, 332 
 the horse, 161, 262 
 
 2Q 
 
S94 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 YAM 
 
 Yama, 164, 208 
 
 , dogs of, 208 
 
 Yaman, 208 
 
 Yamen, 208 
 
 Yami, 208 
 
 Yavishtha, 238, 421 
 
 Yggdrasil, 103, 188 
 
 Yima, 208, 560 
 
 Yima-Kshaeta, 559 
 
 Yimir, 189 
 
 Yng, 412 
 
 Yoni, 107, 327. 35°. 354 
 
 Zagreos, 506 
 Zaleukos, 315 
 Zalmoxis, 77> 22 4 
 Zamolxis, 77 
 Zen, 174 
 
 Zenoposeidon, 53 1 
 Zephyros, 185, 242, 406 
 Zernibog, 568 
 Zethos, 467 
 
 ZOR 
 
 Zeus, 7, 42, 149, 166, ei saf. 
 
 the judge, 158 
 
 Arkadios, 180 
 
 Aigiochos, 166 
 
 , Cretan, 182 
 
 Daphnephoros, 299 
 
 Dodonaios, 182 
 
 Herkeios, 299 
 
 ■ Heuresios, 546 
 
 Katachthonios, 531 
 
 Kenaios, 298 
 
 Kerauneios, 196 
 
 Lykaios, 180 
 
 Meilichios, 178, 377, 509 
 
 Olympios, 182 
 
 Ombrios, 194 
 
 — — Ouranion, 170 
 
 Pangenetor, 299 
 
 Pater, 150, 168 
 
 Pistios, 547 
 
 Poseidon, 323, 478 
 
 Sabazios, 363 
 
 Swan-shaped, 498 
 
 Zio, 174 
 Zizi, 3°9. 355 
 Zohak, 324, 364, 560 
 Zoroaster, 532 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLBS. 
 
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