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AEYAN MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
lONDON: PRINTED BY 
 
 STOTTISWOODE ATTD CO., NEW-STRKET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARMAMENT STRBPIT 
 
THE MYTHOLOGY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEOEGE W.yqpX, M.A. 
 
 LATE SCHOLAR OF TRIKITT COLLEGE, 
 OXFORD. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 
 
 1870. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 

 UNiVERSsTY 
 ^ LIBRARY^ 
 
 
 ^'f-f. 
 
 y 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 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 Mytho- 
 logy, 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 de- 
 velopements 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 phi- 
 losophy of other lands, must indefinitely 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 
 gratitude which lapse of time certainly has not weak- 
 ened, that Professor Max Miiller's Essay on Com- 
 parative Mythology first opened to me thirteen years 
 ago a path through a labyrinth 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 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 it is but bare justice to say that by it the ground 
 which it traversed was for the first time effectually 
 broken for English 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 astro- 
 nomer or the geologist feels in the ascertainment of 
 new facts : and I have written throughout under a con- 
 stant sense of the paramount duty of simply and 
 plainly speaking the truth. 
 
 Of one fact, the importance of which if it be well 
 ascertained 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 po- 
 sition is, in my belief, established by an amount of 
 evidence which not long hence wiU probably be re- 
 garded 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 wiU 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 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 evidence of language for the ultimate affinity of all the 
 Aryan nations, has been moulded into an infiiiite 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 foundation 
 the epic poets of these scattered and long- separated 
 children of one primitive family have raised their mag- 
 nificent fabrics or their cumbrous structures. Na}-, 
 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 m 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 con- 
 fidence in the assurance that in all important points I 
 am supported by the authority of such writers as 
 Grimm, Max Miiller, Br^al, 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 in- 
 stances 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 pro- 
 clamation 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 
 
vm PKEFACE. 
 
 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 mquiry 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 sketched out : and of these I 
 hope that I may be enabled to supply the details here- 
 after. The evidence thus far examined justifies the 
 assurance that these details will not affect the mam 
 conclusions already arrived at. 
 
 Some of the pages in the First Book have appeared 
 in articles contributed by me to the ' Edinburgh,' the 
 ' Fortnightly,' and the ' Saturday ' Reviews ; and I have 
 to thank the editors for the permission to make use of 
 them. 
 
 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 universally 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 un- 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 certain. 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 accept-- 
 ance or rejection of its method ui the philological 
 works chiefly used in our schools and universities. 
 Hence, in acknowledging thankfully the great improve- 
 ment 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 interpreted 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. The student is 
 now told that he must compare the Greek Charites 
 with 'the Sanskrit Haritas, the coursers of the sun,' 
 and that both received their name from a root ghar^ to 
 shine, or glisten. Zeus is referred to the Sanskrit 
 Dyaus, the brilliant being, Ouranos to Varuna, and 
 Erinys to Saranyu. It is only to be regretted that the 
 method has not been carried out more systematically. 
 In all doubtful cases a Lexicographer is fully justified in 
 keeping silence : but the afiinity of Ar^s and the Latin 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 Mars with the Sanskrit Maruts, the Greek Molion, the 
 Teutonic Miolnir, and of Athen^ with the Sanskrit 
 Ahana and Dahan^ and the Greek Daphne, is as well 
 established as that of Erinys and Saranyii, of Ouranos 
 and Varuna. Yet under Ar^s we read that it is ' akin 
 to appv]v, apo-i^s', as Lat. Mars to mas, perhaps also to 
 TJ'ofog, Lat. vir ; ' under Ath^nS we are referred to avQicu, 
 where it is said that ' avS is the root of avQos, perhaps 
 also of 'AStjvt] and dvi^voSe.' But to the Comparative 
 Mythologist the acceptance of his method will more 
 than atone for the few blemishes still remaining in a 
 great work, which must determine the character of 
 English scholarship. 
 
 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 diffi- 
 culties 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 
 
 THE riEST VOLUME. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 POPVLAB THEORIES ON THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH 
 OF MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Method of Inquiry ........ 1 
 
 The Nature of the Problem to be solved . . . . .2 
 
 Condition of Society in the Greek Heroic Age ... 2 
 
 Character of ' Homeric ' mythology /..... 3 
 
 Contrast between Mythological and Religious Belief . . 4 
 
 The Lyric and Tragic poets conscious of the Contrast . . .6 
 
 Historical Signification of Greek Mythology . . . . .7 
 
 Conflicting Views as to its Origin ..... 8 
 
 Hypothesis of an Original Eevelation . . . ■ .9 
 
 Extent of Original Eevelation . . . . . .10 
 
 Its alleged Perversion by the Greeks, as shown in the Attributes of their 
 
 Gods ........ 12 
 
 System of Secondaries . . . . . . .12 
 
 Inventive, as distinguished from traditive. Deities . . . .13 
 
 Nature of the Doctrines perverted in Greek Mythology . , .14 
 
 Attributes of Athene and ApoUon . . . . . .15 
 
 Relations of will between Zeus and Athene . . . . .17 
 
 Peculiar forms of Greek Mythology . . . . . .17 
 
 Consequences involved in the Perversion of an original Eevelation. . 18 
 
 Comparison of the Homeric with the Vedic Mythology ( . . .20 
 
 Methods of determining the Extent of Primitive Eevelation . . .22 
 
 Evidence of the Book of Genesis • j • • ■ • .22 
 
 Limits of this Evidence . . . . . . .24 
 
 Course of Eevelation in the Old Testament . . . . .25 
 
 Necessity of accounting |or the Character of Greek Mythology . . 25 
 
 Conditions of the Inquiry . . . . . . .26 
 
 Allegorical interpretation of Myths . . . . . .27 
 
 Lord Bacon's Method ....... 28 
 
 Its consequences ........ 29 
 
 Unscientific character of such Interpretations . ■ . .29 
 
XU CONTENTS OF 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RELATION OF MYTHOLOGY TO LANGUAGE. 
 
 rAGE 
 on 
 
 Origin of abstract Words ....•■ " 
 
 Expansive power of sensuous Words . . . o- 
 
 Origin of Language ... °^ 
 
 Immobility of Savage Eaces ... • "* 
 
 Historical Eesults of the Analysis of Language . . .36 
 
 Earliest Conditions of Thought .... 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SOURCE OF MYTHICAL SPEECH. 
 
 The Infancy of Mankind .... 39 
 
 Primary Myths .... . 42 
 
 Secondary Myths ...... .42 
 
 Polyonymy, as affecting the Growth of Mythology . . 43 
 
 Use of abstract and concrete Names ... . . 45 
 
 Myths arising from the Use of equivocal Words . . .47 
 
 Disintegration of Myths ... . .49 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DEVELOFEMENT OF MYTHS. 
 
 . 50 
 51 
 
 the Rig- Veda . 52 
 
 63 
 
 . 53 
 55 
 6'6 
 
 . 56 
 
 Elasticity of Mythical Speech 
 
 Eesults of Mythical Language 
 
 Evidence of this Developement furnished by 
 
 Relative Age of Greek Myths 
 
 Solar Myths .... 
 
 Changeful Action of the Sun . 
 
 Repulsive Developementfe of solar Legends 
 
 Origin of these Developements 
 
 Tendency to localize Mythical Incidents . 57 
 
 Vitality of the Mythoposie Faculty . . .68 
 
 Constant Demand for new Mythical Narratives . . 58 
 
 Groundwork of the Mythology of Northern Europe . . .60 
 
 Groundwork of the ' Homeric ' Mythology . . . 63 
 
 Comparison of Greek and Norse Mythology . . .66 
 
 Special Characteristics of Greek Mythology . ... 68 
 
 I'ull Developement of Greek Mythology . . 69 
 
 Arrested Growth of Northern Mythology . . 70 
 
 Light thrown on both by the Vedie Hymns . 71 
 
 Stages in the Growth of Mythical Systems . . .72 
 
THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 XIU 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GREEK CONCEPTIONS OF MYTHICAL TRADITION. 
 
 Gradual Assignment of an historical Character to Mythical Beings 
 
 Each Clan or Tribe regarded its own Traditions as distinct from any other 
 
 This Belief wholly without Foundation 
 
 Connection between the legends of Argos, Thebes, and Athen s 
 
 The Imagery of these Legends . . 
 
 Significance of the Names employed in Greek Legends 
 
 Opinions of Greek Writers, and their Value . 
 
 PAGK 
 
 76 
 77 
 77 
 78 
 81 
 82 
 83 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GREEK NOTIONS RESPECTING THE MORAL ASPECT OF 
 MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 Coarse Deyelopement of certain Mythical Phrases . 
 Protests of Greek "Writers ..... 
 Limits of their Knowledge ..... 
 Explanations of the seeming Immorality of Aryan Mythology 
 The Morality of the Hesiodic Poems 
 
 84 
 84 
 85 
 86 
 
 CHAPTER Vll. 
 THEORY OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY AS AN ECLECTIC SYSTEM. 
 
 Eeproduction of the same Myth under different Forms 
 
 No historical Conclusions to be drawn from the Complications so caused 
 
 Conclusions drawn from a Comparison of Greek with Teutonic Legends 
 
 Theory of Dr. DoUinger on the Origin of Greek Mythology . 
 
 This Theory starts on an Assumption for which there is no Evidence 
 
 Historical Speculations of Dr. Bollinger .... 
 
 They leave the real DifBculties of Greek Mythology unexplained 
 
 90 
 91 
 93 
 94 
 96 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE DIFFUSION OF MYTHS. 
 
 The common Element in Aryan Mythology . I . 
 
 The Greek Mythology of itself explains this common Element 
 
 The Teutonic Mythology points in precisely the same direction 
 
 The missing Link supplied in the older Vedic Poems 
 
 The Key to all Aryan Mythology 
 
 Germs of mythical Tales 
 
 Groundwork of Aryan Mythology 
 
 Greek dynastic Legends 
 
 Growth of popular Traditions 
 
 99 
 101 
 102 
 102 
 103 
 105 
 106 
 108 
 108 
 
XIV 
 
 CONTENTS OF 
 
 Legends not resolvable into Phrases relating to physical Phenomena 
 
 The Brahman and the Goat . 
 
 The Master Thief .... 
 
 The Legend of Ehampsinitos . 
 
 The Story of the Poor Mason . 
 
 The Stoiy of Karpara and Gata 
 
 The Story of Trophonios and Agamedes 
 
 The Shifty Lad . . . • 
 
 Point and Drift of these Stories 
 
 The Hellenic Ma.ster Thief . 
 
 The Origin of the Story 
 
 Limits to the Hypothesis of Conscious Borrowing 
 
 Framework of Popular Stories 
 
 The Dog and the Sparrow 
 
 The Nautch Girl and the Parrot 
 
 Origin and Growth of these Stories . 
 
 The Stories of Vicram and Hermotimos 
 
 The Table, the Ass, and the Stick . 
 
 The Brahman, the Jackal, and the Barber 
 
 The Lad who went to the North Wind 
 
 The Story of Punchkin 
 
 The Giant who had no Heart in His Body 
 
 Mythical Eepetitions and Combinations 
 
 Agency of Beasts in these Stories 
 
 The Two Brothers .... 
 
 Influence of written Literature on Folk-lore . 
 
 The Stories of King Putraka and the Three Princesses of Whiteland 
 
 Faithful John . 
 
 Kama and Luxman 
 
 Mythical Imagery of these Stories 
 
 The Pilgrim of Love . 
 
 The Spell of Mid-day . 
 
 The Sleep or Death of Summer 
 
 Origin of all Myths relating to the Charmed Sleep of beautiful Maidens 
 
 Charms and Spells in the Odyssey and in Hindu Stories 
 
 The Snake Leaves .... 
 
 Myths of the Night, the Moon, and the Stars 
 
 The Battle of Light and Darkness 
 
 Character of Aryan Folk-lore . 
 
 Historical Value of Aryan popular Traditions 
 
 PAGE 
 
 no 
 
 111 
 
 iir 
 
 113 
 115 
 11.5 
 116 
 116 
 118 
 119 
 120 
 121 
 123 
 124 
 125 
 128 
 129 
 131 
 133 
 135 
 135 
 138 
 140 
 140 
 142 
 142 
 144 
 145 
 148 
 149 
 151 
 153 
 154 
 156 
 158 
 160 
 164 
 165 
 166 
 168 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MODERN EUEMERISM. 
 
 The Method of Eulmeros .... 
 Its Antagonism with the Science of Language 
 The Science of Language in its Bearing on History ■ 
 The Wolfian Theory ..... 
 The real Question at Issue .... 
 
 170 
 171 
 174 
 174 
 175 
 
THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 XV 
 
 Eesiduum of historical Fact in the Iliad 
 
 The Test of Homeric Credibility .... 
 
 Laws of Evidence ..... 
 
 Their Application in English Courts of Justice 
 
 Application to Homeric History .... 
 
 Value of the historical Eesidiium in the Iliad 
 
 Difficulties involved in the traditional View . 
 
 Euemeristie Methods of Dealing with the Homeric Narratives 
 
 Their irreconcilable Eesults ..... 
 
 Value of traditional Impressions .... 
 
 The Legend of Eoland and the Nibelungenlied 
 
 Principles of Evidence ..... 
 
 The Homeric Controversy ..... 
 
 The Eeturn of the Herakleids .... 
 
 The Herakleid Conquests not historical 
 
 The Origin of the Traditions of the Herakleid Conquests 
 
 Materials of Epical Tradition .... 
 
 Materials of the Poems commonly called Homeric 
 
 Attempted Distinction between the Sciences of Language and Mythology 
 
 Assumed early Popularity of our Iliad and Odyssey . 
 
 The Evidence of the Case . . . . . ^ 
 
 The Homer of the Greek Tragic Poets 
 
 Eesults of the Inquiry 
 
 rAGK 
 
 176 
 177 
 178 
 17a 
 180 
 182 
 182 
 185 
 185 
 186 
 188 
 191 
 194 
 199 
 200 
 203 
 207 
 208 
 209 
 212 
 213 
 216 
 217 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CHABACTER OF GREEK DYNASTIC AND POPULAR LEGENDS 
 IN RELATION TO TRIBAL AND NATIONAL NAMES. 
 
 Fertility of mythical Phrases ..... 
 
 . 219 
 
 Legends of rival Greek Cities. .... 
 
 . 220 
 
 The Argive Story ...... 
 
 . 220 
 
 The Theban Story ...... 
 
 . 221 
 
 The Megarian Story ...... 
 
 . 223 
 
 The Athenian Story ...... 
 
 . 224 
 
 The Story of the Pelopids ..... 
 
 . 224 
 
 Connexion of these Stories with the Tribal or National Names 
 
 . 226 
 
 The Athenians ...... 
 
 . 227 
 
 lonians and Phenieians ..... 
 
 . 229 
 
 Argives and Arkadians ..... 
 
 . 230 
 
 Delians and Lykians ...... 
 
 . 232 
 
 Ethiopians ........ 
 
 . 234 
 
 Danaans and Achaians ..... 
 
 . 234 
 
 Hellenes and Aiolians ..... 
 
 . 236 
 
 Greeks and Hesperians ..... 
 
 . 237 
 
 Italian and Teutonic tribal Names .... 
 
 . 238 
 
 Ethnological Inferences ..... 
 
 . 240 
 
XVI 
 
 CONTENTS OF 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MYTHICAL PHRASES FURNISHING THE 
 HOMERIC POEMS. 
 
 MATERIALS OF THE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Extent of the old Homeric Literature ..... 241 
 
 Extent of Homeric Mythology ...... 242 
 
 The Tale of the Achilleis . . . . . . .245 
 
 The Close of the AchiUeis 2.52 
 
 The whole Achilleis a Solar Epic . . . . . .253 
 
 The Trojan War only one Scene of a long Drama .... 254 
 
 The Hias as contrasted with the Achilleis ..... 254 
 
 Groundwork of the Odyssey ...... 256 
 
 How much of the Iliad or the Odyssey belongs to the Invention of the Poet ' 258 
 The Portraits of the greater Chieftains and Heroes not true to national 
 
 Character . . . . . . . .261 
 
 The Character of Odysseus ....... 264 
 
 How far was the Character of Odysseus a Creation of the Homeric Poet . 266 
 The Character of Odysseus not Achaiau ..... 271 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 MYTHICAL PHRASES FURNISHING MATERIALS FOR THE TEU- 
 TONIC EPIC POEMS, AND THE LEGENDS OF ABTHUR AND 
 ROLAND. 
 
 Points of likeness between the Greek and Teutonic Epics 
 
 The Volsung Tale 
 
 The Story of Sigurd 
 
 The Story of Gudrun . 
 
 Helgi Sagas . 
 
 The first Helgi 
 
 The second Helgi 
 
 The third Helgi 
 
 Sigurd, Siegfried, and Baldui 
 
 The Story of Hagen . 
 
 The Vengeance of Kriemhild . 
 
 Historical Element in the Nibelungenlied 
 
 The Story of Walthar of Aquitaine . 
 
 Dietrich of Bern 
 
 The Great Eose Garden 
 
 The Romance of Eoland 
 
 The Story of King Arthur 
 
 The Birth and Youth of Arthur 
 
 The Bound Table and the San Greal 
 
 Arthur's Knights 
 
 Lancelot and Guinevere 
 
 The Death of Arthur . 
 
 . 
 
 . 272 
 
 . 
 
 . 273 
 
 . 
 
 . 276 
 
 . 
 
 . 283 
 
 
 . 285 
 
 . 
 
 . 286 
 
 . 
 
 . 286 
 
 
 . 287 
 
 . 
 
 . 291 
 
 
 . 295 
 
 . 
 
 . 297 
 
 . 
 
 . 301 
 
 . 
 
 . 302 
 
 
 . 305 
 
 
 . 307 
 
 
 . 307 
 
 
 . 308 
 
 
 . 309 
 
 
 . 311 
 
 
 . 312 
 
 . 
 
 . 314 
 
 , 
 
 . 313 
 
THE FIEST VOLUME. 
 
 XVll 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Guinevere and Diarmaid ..... 
 
 . , 316 
 
 Later Mediaeval Epics and Romances 
 
 . .Tie 
 
 Saga Literature of Europe 
 
 . 318 
 
 The Grettir Saga ... 
 
 . 319 
 
 The Character of Grettir 
 
 . 320 
 
 Materials of the Saga . . . • ■ 
 
 . 321 
 
 Grettir and Boots ...... 
 
 . 322 
 
 Parallelisms between the Grettir Saga and other Myths 
 
 . 322 
 
 The Avenging of Grettir ..... 
 
 . 325 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ETHEREAL HEAVENS. 
 
 Section I.— DYAUS. 
 
 Ideas of Heaven 
 
 The glistening Ether . 
 
 Dyaus and Prithivi 
 
 Ideas denoted by the name Dyu 
 
 326 
 
 327 
 328 
 328 
 
 Section II.— VAEUNA AND MITBA. 
 
 The solid Heaven 
 
 Moral Aspects of Varuna 
 
 Aryan Monotheism . 
 
 Aditi and the Adityas 
 
 The physical and spiritual Varuna 
 
 330 
 331 
 332 
 333 
 334 
 
 Section III.— INDRA. 
 
 The primary Conception of Indra purely physical 
 
 Action of the Vedic and Achaian Deities 
 
 Indra a God of the bright Heaven 
 
 Meaning of the Name 
 
 The Might and Majesty of Indra 
 
 Indra the Rain-bringer 
 
 Physical Conflict between Light and Darkness 
 
 The Wife of Indra .... 
 
 336 
 337 
 338 
 339 
 339 
 340 
 341 
 343 
 
 Section IV.— BRAHMA. 
 
 Place of Brahma in the Hindu Theogony 
 Praj&pati .... 
 Visvakarman .... 
 
 VOL. I. a 
 
 344 
 346 
 346 
 
XVIU 
 
 CONTENTS OF 
 
 Section V.— ZEUS. 
 
 The Dwelling of Zeus in Ether 
 
 The unchanging Light 
 
 The Idea of Zeus suggested by physical Phenomena . 
 
 The Latin Jupiter 
 
 Zeus Ouranion 
 
 The mythical and spiritual Zeus 
 
 The Zeus of the Tragic Poets 
 
 The name Zeus, and its Transformations 
 
 The Zeus of local Traditions . 
 
 The Birth of Zeus . 
 
 The Iniquities of Kronos 
 
 The War of the Titans 
 
 Other Forms of this Struggle 
 
 The Loves of Zeus 
 
 The twelve Olympian Deities 
 
 The Cretan and Arkadian Zeus 
 
 Lykosoura and Lykion 
 
 The Dodonaian and Olympian Zeus . 
 
 Limits to the Power of Zeus . 
 
 The Messengers of Zeus 
 
 Zeus the Judge 
 
 PAGE 
 
 347 
 347 
 348 
 349 
 349 
 349 
 352 
 353 
 355 
 356 
 357 
 358 
 369 
 359 
 360 
 361 
 363 
 364 
 364 
 366 
 367 
 
 Section VI.— ODIN, WODEN. WUOTAN. 
 
 Characteristics of Teutonic Mythology 
 
 Teutonic Theogonieg . 
 
 Genealogy of Odin 
 
 Odin as the Creator of Man 
 
 The End of the Asas or ^sir 
 
 The Name Wuotan 
 
 The one-eyed Wuotan 
 
 Odin the Eain-giver . 
 
 Odin the All-father . 
 
 Tyr and Odin 
 
 368 
 370 
 371 
 372 
 372 
 373 
 376 
 376 
 377 
 377 
 
 Section VII.— THUNDER, DONAE, THOE. 
 
 The Name Donar 
 Thor the All-father . 
 His triple Functions . 
 
 378 
 373 
 379 
 
 Eelations of Fro to Freya 
 
 Section VIII.— FEO. 
 
 381 
 
 Section IX.— HEIMDALL, BEAGI, AND OEGIE. 
 
 The Lord of Himinhiorg 
 Bragi, the Lord of Day 
 Oegir the Sea-god 
 
 381 
 382 
 382 
 
THE FIRST VOLUME. xix 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE LIGHT. 
 
 Section I.— StiKYA AND SAVITAR. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Surya, the pervading irresistible luminary ..... 384 
 
 The one-handed Savitar .... . . 385 
 
 The Power of Savitar ...... 335 
 
 Section II.— SOMA. 
 
 The physical and spiritual Soma ...... 386 
 
 Powers of Soma . . .... 389 
 
 Section III.- CORRELATIVE DEITIES. 
 
 Complementary Deities . . . . . .389 
 
 The Dualism of Nature . . 389 
 
 Punctions of the Asvins ... . 390 
 
 Parentage of the Asvins . .391 
 
 The Twins . . . .391 
 
 Soma and Sury^ . ... 393 
 
 Section IV.— THE DAWN. 
 
 The lonely Wanderer ... ... 394 
 
 Developement of the Myth . . 395 
 
 The Story of Urvasi . . . 396 
 
 Germs of the Story of Penelope . , . . 39g 
 The Dawn and the Waters . ..... 399 
 
 Eros and Psyche .... . 402 
 
 The Search of the Dawn for the Sun . . . . 403 
 
 The Search of the Sun for the Dawn ... . 404 
 
 Origin of these Myths ....... 406 
 
 East of the Sun and West of the Moon . . .408 
 
 The Wanderers in the Porest . . 409 
 
 The Spell of Moonlight . 410 
 
 The Seven Rishia . . . . 413 
 
 The Arkshas or Shiners . . 414 
 
 The Rishis and Manu . . 414 
 
 Section V.-DAWN GODDESSES. 
 
 Ushas and E6s . ... 415 
 
 . 417 
 
 . 418 
 
 . 419 
 
 . 420 
 
 . 421 
 
 Ushas the broad-spreading 
 Ahand 
 
 The Cows of Indra 
 
 The Fidelity of Sarami 
 
 Saranyu ... ... 422 
 
XX 
 
 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 Erinys 
 
 The Harpies . 
 
 Arjuni 
 
 The Horses of the Sun 
 
 ArushJ ' 
 
 Snakes and Dragons . 
 
 Sorcery and Witchcraft 
 
 The Story of Medeia . 
 
 The Myth of Prokris . 
 
 Eos and Tithonos 
 
 Hebfe and Ganymeda . 
 
 The Story of Dido and Anna . 
 
 Hfero and Leiandros . 
 
 The Brides of the Sun 
 
 The Arkadian Augfe . 
 
 EuropS and the Bull . 
 
 Althaia and the Burning Brand 
 
 PAGE 
 
 423 
 423 
 424 
 425 
 426 
 428 
 428 
 429 
 430 
 431 
 432 
 432 
 435 
 435 
 437 
 437' 
 438 
 
 Section VI.— ATHENE. 
 
 The original Idea of Athene purely physical . 
 
 Athens Tritogeneia ..... 
 
 Birth and Parentage of AthSn6 
 
 Athene Mother of Phoibos and Lychnos 
 
 Epithets of Athene ..... 
 
 Athene the Guardian of Heroes 
 
 The Latin Minerva ..... 
 
 439 
 440 
 441 
 442 
 443 
 444 
 445 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 I. The Antiquity of Written Poems 
 
 II. The historical Authority of Homer 
 
 III. The Myth of Oidipous . 
 
 IV. Swan-maidens . 
 V. The name Helene 
 
 VI. Lykanthropy . 
 
 447 
 449 
 454 
 456 
 468 
 459 
 
THE MYTHOLOGY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Method of 
 inquiry. 
 
 BOOK I, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 POPULAR THEOEIES ON THE OEIGIN AND GtEOWTH 
 OP MYTHOLO&T. 
 
 We cannot examine tlie words by which we express our ctjav 
 thoughts and onr wants, or compare the stories which En- I- 
 glish children hear in their nurseries with the folk-talk of 
 Germany and Norway, without speedily becoming aware that 
 the inquiry on which we hare entered must carry us back to 
 the very infancy of mankind. We have undertaken 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 expres- 
 sions, because no higher thoughts had yet been awakened in 
 the mind. But unless we choose to take refuge in assump- 
 tions, we must regard the question as strictly and simply a 
 matter of fact : and all that we have to do, is to examine 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The nature 
 of the 
 prDblem to 
 te solved. 
 
 Condition 
 of society 
 in the 
 Greek 
 heroic age' 
 
 MTTHOLOGT OF THE AETAIf KATIONS. 
 
 impartially the conditions of the problem, with the determi- 
 nation of evading no conclusion to which the eridence of 
 fact may lead us. 
 
 This problem is sufficiently startling, on whatever portion 
 of the subject we may first fix our minds. The earliest lite- 
 rature, whether of the Hindu or the Greet, points in the 
 direction to which the analysis of language seems to guide 
 us. In both alike we fiiid a genuine belief in a livmg Power, 
 to whom men stand in the relation of children to a father ; 
 but in both, this faith struggles to find utterance in namea 
 denoting purely sensuous objects, and thus furnishing the 
 germ of a sensuous mythology. Hence the developement 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 caU forth the ia- 
 dignant 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. 
 
 This antagonism reached its highest point among the 
 Hellenic tribes. Prom this point therefore we may most 
 reasonably work back to that indefinitely earlier condition 
 of thought in which 'the first attempts only were being 
 made at expressing the simplest conceptions by means of a 
 language most simple, most sensuous, and most unwieldy.' ' 
 The Hiad and Odyssey exhibit a state of society which has 
 long since emerged from mere brutishnegs 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 sxibmit 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 
 ' Max Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 354 
 
SOCIETY OF THE GREEK HEROIC AGE. 3 
 
 prudent counsels, and in the right of uttering them give the CHAP. 
 earnest of a yet higher and more developed freedom.' It Z" ■ 
 shows to us men who, if they regard all as enemies until by 
 an outward covenant they have been made their friends, yet 
 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,^ yet the love of wife and children and brethren is the 
 rule and not the exception ; and everywhere, in striking con- 
 trast with Athenian society in the days of Perikles and 
 Aspasia, we see men and women mingling together in 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 Character 
 at least had aU the vices and few of the virtues of their °^ ' ?.°" 
 
 menc my- 
 
 worshippers. They tell us of a supreme ruler and father thology. 
 
 ' ' It cannot, of course, be maintained of the Homeric society both in dis- 
 
 that this freedom was more than in its cussion and in the administration 
 
 germ. The king has his Bonle or of justice {History of Greece, ii. 
 
 Council, where he listens to the chief- 90-101). Mr. Gladstone presents the 
 
 tains whose judgment nevertheless he picture in a more favourable light 
 
 can override. There is also the Agora, {Homer and the Homerio Age, ii. 
 
 where the people hear the decisions of i22, &e.). 
 
 their rulers on questions of state, and ^ It is the praise of the wealthy 
 
 in which justice is administered. The Axylos (who is slain by Diomedes) that 
 
 case of Thersites is barely consistent , ■,-,„, 
 
 with an acknowledged right of oppo- , , J>^Kos livjvep^oiffiv 
 
 sition, while the complaints of the '^'»'™^ T^P </.iX«,7K6;/ 68^ em o.^k 
 
 Hesiodic poet show that an unjust """'"'• ^''- '^'- !*• 
 
 verdict could easily be obtained. But ' To this, more than to any other 
 
 it was everything that a people should cause, were owing even the politicnl 
 
 acknowledge Zeus to be the author of disasters of later Greek history. It 
 
 law — ■ may, perhaps, be said with truth that 
 
 SucaoTTiJXoi . . . B^iuffTos the evil did not exist in the Homeric 
 
 jrpjj Albs eipuaroi. Jl. i. 238 age, but the canker had eaten very 
 
 deeply into the heart of society before 
 
 and allow the superiority of mind over the days of Thucydides and Snkrates. 
 
 matter even in their chieftains. Mr. For its results see Thirwall's History of 
 
 Grote has brought out the imperfections Greece, viii. ch. bcvi. 
 
 B.2 
 
MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAIS' NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Contrast 
 between 
 mytholo- 
 gical and 
 religious 
 belief. ^ 
 
 of gods and men wlio had not 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 fero- 
 cious 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 series of Greek myths may be said to form a theology ; 
 and with the character of the people, this theology stands 
 out in marked contrast. It is impossible for us to determine 
 precisely the extent to which this mythical theology was 
 believed, because it is not in our power to throw ourselves 
 back wholly into their condition of thought ; but if the ab- 
 sence of aU doubt or reflection constitute faith, then their 
 faith was given to the whole cycle of fables which make up 
 the chronicles of their gods. But if 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, MUton or Butler. If the poet 
 recounts the loves of Zeus, the jealousies of Her^, 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 con- 
 trast 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 clear of hand and pure of heart.* If he 
 
 ' The identity of authorship for the 
 Hesiodic Theogony and the Works and 
 
 Bap is very doubtful: but the question 
 IS immaterial. Both poems exhibit the 
 
DISTINCTION BETWEEN MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION. 
 
 tells of horrible banquets to wbicli the more fastidious faith, 
 of the lyric poet refuses to give credence,' he bids all to 
 follow after justice, because the gods spend their tiftie, not 
 in feasting, but in watching the ways and works of men.'' 
 If -3iSchylos in one drama depicts the arrogant tyranny of 
 Zeus as a usurper and an upstart, 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),'' 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.'' 
 
 CHAP. 
 I. 
 
 sentiment of the same age, or of times 
 separated by no long interval ; and in 
 the latter poem the action of Zeus in 
 the legend of Pandora, (which is also 
 related in the Theogony) is utterly 
 unlike that of the Zeus who figures in 
 all the didactic portions of the work. 
 
 * ^juoi 5' &Kopa yaffTplfiap- 
 
 yov fxaKapaiv Tiy eiTretv* aipiffTaiiai, 
 PiNDAE, Olymp. i. 82. 
 
 Pindar's objection is a moral one ; 
 but Herodotos proceeded to reject on 
 physical grounds the legend which told 
 of the founding of the Dodonaian oracle, 
 (ii. 57), as well as some of the exploits 
 of Herakles (ii. 45.) It was, however, 
 a moral reason which led him practi- 
 cally to disbelieve the whole story of 
 Helen's sojourn at Troy, (ii. 120). See 
 also Grote, History of Greece, part i. 
 ch. XV. 
 
 " Worlcs and Bays, 247-253. 
 
 3 ZeUJ iffTTtS TTOT iffTlV. 
 
 Agamemnon, 160. 
 
 * Oid. Tyr. 863-871. The objection 
 that comparative mythology, while it 
 explains the Greek myths, fails ' to 
 explain the Greek religion, or to explain 
 how the mythology and the religion got 
 mixed up together,' turns on the meaning 
 of words. In one sense, their mythology 
 was at once their theology and their 
 xeligion ; but if we regard religion as a 
 
 rule of life based on a conscious sub- 
 mission to Divine Will and Law as 
 being absolutely righteous, and if we 
 ask how far the Greek had such a rule, 
 we enter on a question of the gravest 
 moment, which it is too much the 
 practice of the present day summarily 
 to dismiss. The acknowledged dislike 
 which some felt for at least part of their 
 theology, can be explained only by their 
 knowledge of a higher law. But if it 
 be maintained that the sense or the 
 sentiment, which lay at the root of this 
 dislike, is either some relic of earlier 
 and purer knowledge — in other words, 
 of an original common revelation — ' or 
 else a wonderful exercise of man's own 
 reflective power,' we may reply that this 
 is not the only alternative left open to 
 us. When St. Paul speaks of Gentiles 
 as being by nature a law to themselves, 
 he uses the word nature in a sense 
 which implicitly denies that they ob- 
 tained a knowledge of this law by a 
 mere exercise of their reflective powers, 
 and which implies that God had in aU 
 countries and ages left a witness of 
 himself in the hearts of men as well as 
 in the outward world. Surely we who 
 acknowledge that all holy desires, all 
 good counsels, and all just works proceed 
 directly from God, may well believe that 
 the religious sense which led Pindar to 
 reject some mythical tales, and Sokrates 
 
6 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 COUSCIOBS 
 
 of this 
 contrast. 
 
 BOOK It would be difficult to discover a more marvellous com- 
 
 - ... . bination of seemingly inexplicable contradictions, of belief in 
 
 The. lyric the history of gods utterly distinct from the faith which 
 poets were guided the practice of men, 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 
 systematized into a scheme more or less coherent, and im- 
 posed 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 our- 
 selves, for on its answer must depend our conclusions on the 
 
 to insist on a moral standard of which 
 our common practice falls sadly short, 
 ■was the direct work of the Spirit of 
 God. Language is as much the gift of 
 God, whether according to the popular 
 notion man spoke articulately from the 
 first, or, as the analysis of language 
 seems to show, acquired the power of 
 speech through a slow and painful 
 discipline; nor would many venture to 
 say that we learnt to walk or to judge 
 by sight or touch through powers origin- 
 ally acquired by ourselves. If then, 
 whatever of truth the Greek poets pos- 
 sessed came from God, that truth would 
 continue to grow, even while they spoke 
 of the Divine Being under a name which 
 had originally signified the sky. If 
 Comparative Mythology brings before us 
 a time during which men appear at first 
 to have little consciousness of a personal 
 Maker of the Visible World, it may also 
 show us how out of the darkness of their 
 earlier thoughts they were led to feel 
 that there was a Power — independent 
 of all things, yet pervading all things — 
 with which they had to do, and that 
 this Power was righteous and good. 
 But the Greek who like Xenophanes 
 (Max Miiller, Chips from a German 
 Workshop, i. 366), had this feeling and 
 was conscious of it, would still speak of 
 that Power as Zeus; nor has Christi- 
 anity itself banished from its language 
 names which come from the myth-mak- 
 ing ages. The Eomanee aid Teutonic 
 names for God remain what they were 
 before the growth of Christianity ; they 
 
 have merely acquired another conno- 
 tation. 
 
 If, then, we wish to have a true idea 
 of Greek religion in the highest sense 
 of the word, we must patiently gather 
 all the detached sentences bearing on 
 the subject which are scattered through- 
 out the wide field of their literature; 
 but without going over the ground 
 traversed by M. Maury, {Les Religions 
 de la Grece antique), the inquiry may 
 practically be brought into a narrow 
 compass. "We have abundant evidence 
 that the religion of the Greeks, like our 
 own, was a trust 'in an all- wise, all- 
 powerful, eternal Being, the Euler of 
 the world, whom we approach in prayer 
 and meditation, to whom we commit all 
 our cares, and whose presence we feel 
 not only in the outward world, but also 
 in the warning voice within our hearts.' 
 It is in this sense that Augustine speaks 
 of the Christian religion as existing 
 among the ancients ; but Professor Max 
 MiiUer, who rightly lays great stress on 
 this remark {Chips from a German 
 Workshop, i. xi.), has also pointed out 
 the little regard which Augustine paid 
 to his own doctrine. 'Through the 
 whole of St. Augustine's work, and 
 through all the works of earlier Christian 
 divines, as far as I can judge, there runs 
 the same spirit of hostility, blinding 
 them to all that may be good and true 
 and sacred, and magnifying all that is 
 bad, false, and corrupt in the ancient 
 religions of mankind.' (Lectures on 
 Language, second series, x, 421.) 
 
ALLEGORY IN MYTHOLOGY. 7 
 
 conditions of human life during the infancy of mankind. If CHAP. 
 the fragmentary narratives, which were gradually arranged ," 
 into one gigantic system, were the work of a single age or of 
 several generations who devoted themselves to their fabrica- 
 tion, then never has there been seen in the annals of 
 mankind an impurity more loathsome, an appetite more 
 thoroughly depraved, a moral sense -more hopelessly blunted, 
 than in those who framed the mythology of the Greek or the 
 Hindu. Of the answers which have been given to this 
 question, it can be no light matter to determine which fur- 
 nishes the most adequate solution. 
 
 The method which Mr. Grote, iu his ' History of Greece,' ' Historical 
 has adopted for the examination of Greek legend, appears ti^ of 
 rather to avoid the difficulty than to grapple with it. There ^^'^':^ 
 is unquestionably much personification in their mythology ; logy. 
 there is also undoubtedly a good deal of allegory ; but 
 neither allegory nor personification will famish a real ex- 
 planation of the whole. It may be true to say that Ouranos, 
 -N^yx, Hypnos, and Oneiros are persons in the Hesiodic 
 Theogony, although it is probably erroneous to say that they 
 are just as much persons as Zeus or Apollon ; and the suppo- 
 sition is certainly inadmissible ' that these legends could all 
 be traced by means of allegory into a coherent body of phy- 
 sical doctrine.'^ But there are beyond doubt many things 
 even in the Hesiodic Theogony which have at least no human 
 personality;' nor does the assertion of personality, whether 
 of Zeus or Herakles or Apollon, in the least degree account 
 for the shape which the narrative of their deeds assumes, or 
 for the contradictory aspects in which they are brought 
 before us. It does not in any way explain why Zeus and * 
 Herakles should have so many eai-thly loves, and why in 
 every land there should be those who claim descent from 
 bhem, or why there should be so much of resemblance and of 
 iifference between Phoibos and Helios, Gaia and Dem^t^r, 
 N'ereus and Poseid6n. But Mr. Grote was examining the 
 nythology of Greece as an historian of outward facts, not as 
 
 ' Part i. eh. i.-xvi. History of Christianity, i. 13, &c. 
 
 ^ Grote, History of Greece, part i. ' For instance, ovpia, /laKpi. — Theog , 
 
 h. i. See also Mure, Critical History 129 
 / Greei Literature, i. 104; Milman, 
 
O MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS, 
 
 BOOK one who is tracing out tie history of the human miad ; and, 
 
 • — ^ . from this point of view he is justified in simply examining 
 
 the legends, and then dismissing them as the picture ' of a 
 past which never was present.' To this expression Professor 
 Max Miiller takes great exception, and especially protests 
 against Mr. Grote's assertion of ' the uselessness of digging 
 for a supposed hasis of truth ' in the myths of the Greek 
 world.' But although it appears certain that the Greek 
 mythology points to an actual and not an imaginary past, a 
 past which must have for us a deep and abiding interest, it 
 would yet seem that Professor MiiUer has misinterpreted the 
 words of Mr. Grote, who by ' truth ' means the verification of 
 actual occurrences, and by a real past means a past of whose 
 events we can give an authentic narrative.^ In this sense, 
 to assert the truth of the lives and adventures of Zeus and 
 Herakles, after stripping away from them the clothing of the 
 supernatural, is to fall back on the system of Eu^meros, and 
 to raise a building without foundation. But it is obvious 
 that this method leaves the origin of this theology and the 
 question of its contradictions, and still more of its im- 
 purity and grossness, just where it found them. It carries 
 us no further back than the legends themselves, whUe it 
 fails to remove the reproach which heathen apologists 
 and Christian controversialists alike assumed or admitted 
 to be true.^ 
 Conflicting Two theories only appear to attempt a philosophical 
 ™Za ^^ analysis of this vast system. While one repudiates the im- 
 origin. putation of a deliberate fabrication of impurities, the other 
 asserts as strongly the wilful moral corruption exhibited in 
 the theogonic narratives of the Greeks. In the inconsistent 
 
 • 'Comparative Mythology,' Chips that having thus swept away its historical 
 
 from a German Wm-kshop, ii. 1, 67, 84. character, he should not have seen that 
 
 2 From this point of view it is im- there must be some reason for that 
 
 possible to deny the truth of Mr. Grote's singular agreement between Teutonic 
 
 statement, when, speaking of the North- and Greek mythology, which, at the 
 
 em Eddas, he says that ' the more least, he partially discerns, and that the 
 
 thoroughly this old Teutonic story has 'remarkable analogy' presented by the 
 
 been traced and compared in its various Volsunga Saga ' with many points of 
 
 transformations and accompaniments, Grecian mythical narrative ' is a fact to 
 
 the less can any well-established con- be accounted for. 
 
 , nection be made out for it with authentic ' Grote, History of Greece, pait i. 
 
 historical names or events.' History of ch. xvii, ' 
 Greece, part i. ch. xviii. It is strange 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SENSE. 9 
 
 and repulsive adventures of Zeus or HeraHes, it sees the chap. 
 
 perversion of liigli and mysterious doctrines originally im- . '^ — - 
 
 parted to man, and discerns in the gradations of the Olym- 
 pian hierarchy vestiges of the most mysterious doctrines 
 embraced in the whole compass of Christian teaching. By 
 this theory all that is contradictory, 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. 
 
 There are few subjects on which it would be more rash to Hypothe- 
 give or withhold assent to any statement without the clearest origina" 
 definition of terms. We may admit the truth of Bishop revelation. 
 Butler's assertion that the analogy of nature furnishes no 
 presumption against a revelation when man was first placed 
 upon the earth ; ' but it is obvious that they who agree in 
 asserting the fact of such a revelation may yet have widely 
 diEEerent conceptions of its nature and extent. And although 
 it is easy to see the place which Butler's statement holds in 
 the general connection of his argimient, it is not so easy to 
 ascertain what on this point his own judgment may have 
 been. Human feeling recoils instinctively firom any notion 
 that the Being who placed man in the world ever left him 
 wholly to himself ; but the repudiation of such an idea in 
 no way determines the amount of knowledge imparted to 
 him at the first. Nations have been found, and still exist, 
 whose languages contain not a single word expressive of 
 divinity, and into whose mind the idea of God or of any 
 religion seems never to have entered.^ If it be hard to 
 measure the depth of degradation to which the Abipones, 
 the Bushman, and the Australian may have fallen, it is im- 
 possible to believe that the struggles of men like Sokrates 
 and Plato after truth had no connection with a guiding and 
 controlling power. If in the former we discern the evidence 
 
 ' Analogy, part ii. ch. ii. § 2. Miiller, History of Sanskrit Literature, 
 
 ' ' Penafiel, a Jesuit theologian, de- 638. It is a miserable fact that this 
 
 clared that there were many Indians, condition of thought finds a parallel 
 
 who, on being asked whether during the among certain sections of Englishmen. 
 
 whole course of their lives they ever See also Farrar, Chapters on Language, 
 
 thought of God, replied J\?o, never.' Mas. iv. 45. 
 
10 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Extent of 
 
 original 
 
 revelation. 
 
 of -wilful corruption, we must recognise in the latter the 
 vigorous growth of a mind and spirit which seeks to obey 
 the law of its constitution.' In Bishop Butler's philosophy, 
 the reason of man is the Divine Eeason dwelling in him ; the 
 voice of his conscience is the word of God. That these 
 gifts involved a revelation of divine truth, it is impossible 
 to deny ; but whether this is all that he meant by the asser- 
 tion of an original revelation, the Analogy does not enable 
 us to determine with precision. He does, however, assert 
 that the question of the extent of that revelation is to be 
 considered ' as a common question of fact ; ' and too great a 
 stress cannot be laid on these words.'' 
 
 No such charge of ambiguity can be brought against the 
 view which Mr. Gladstone has maintained in his elaborate 
 work on ' Homer and the Homeric Age.' In his judgment, 
 all that is evil in Greek mythology is the result not of a 
 natural and inevitable process, when words used originally 
 in one sense came unconsciously to be employed in an- 
 other, but of a systematic corruption of very sacred and 
 very mysterious doctrines. These corruptions have, in his 
 opinion, grown up not around what are generally called 
 the first principles of natural religion, but around dogmas 
 of which the images, so vouchsafed, were realised in a long 
 subsequent dispensation. In the mythology of the Hellenic 
 race he sees a vast fabric, wonderfully systematized, yet in 
 some parts ill-cemented and incongruous, on the composition 
 of which his theory seems to throw a full and unexpected 
 light. In it he hears the key-note of a strain whose music 
 had been long forgotten and misunderstood, but whose 
 harmony would never of itself have entered into mortal 
 mind. It could not be supplied by invention, for ' invention 
 cannot absolutely create, it can only work on what it finds 
 already provided to hand.' ^ Eejecting altogether the position 
 that ' the basis of the Greek mythology is laid in the deifica- 
 tion of the powers of nature,'^ he holds that under corrupted 
 forms it presents the old Theistic and Messianic traditions ' 
 
 ' Butler, Sermons, ii. ' On Human » Homer and the Homeric Age, ii. 9. 
 ifature.' _^ ' Ibid. 10. ' Hid^ 12 
 
 ' Analogy, part ii. eh. ii. § 2. 
 
THEORY OF DEGEADATIOIf. 11 
 
 that by a primitive tradition, if not by a direct command, it 
 upheld the ordinance of sacriiice ; ' that its course was from 
 light to darkness, from purity to uneleanness.^ Its starting 
 point was ' the idea of a Being infinite in power and intelli- 
 gence, and though perfectly good, yet good by an unchange- 
 able internal determination of character, and not by the 
 constraint of an external law.' ^ But the idea of goodness 
 can be retained only by a sound moral sense ; the notion of 
 power is substituted when that sense is corrupted by sin.* 
 But siu has no such immediate action on the intellect. 
 Hence the power and wisdom of the Homeric Gods is great 
 and lofty, while their moral standard is indefinitely low.^ 
 But the knowledge of the Divine Existence roused the desire 
 to know also where He dwelt; and, in the mighty agencies 
 and sublime objects of creation in which they fancied that they 
 saw Him, Mr. Gladstone discerns the germs of that nature- 
 worship which was ingrafted on the true religion originally 
 imparted to mankind.^ This religion involved (i), the Unity 
 and Supremacy of the Godhead; (ii), a combination with this 
 Unity, of a Trinity in which the several persons are in some 
 way of coequal honour; (iii), a Redeemer from the curse of 
 death, invested with full humanity, who should finally 
 establish the divine kingdom ; (iv), a Wisdom, personal and 
 divine, which founded and sustains the world ; (v), the con- 
 nection of the Redeemer with man by descent from the 
 woman. With this was joined the revelation of the Evil 
 One, as a tempting power among men, and the leader of 
 rebellious angels who had for disobedience been hurled from 
 their thrones in heaven.' 
 
 ' Homer and the Homeric Age, ii. 15. Gladstone has propounded it again in his 
 '^ Ibid. 17: 'The stream darkened parting address to the UniTersity of Ed- 
 more and more as it got further from inburgh (1865), and more recently "with 
 the source.' certain modifications in his volume eu- 
 » Ibid. 18. * Ibid. 19. ' Ibid. 20. titled Juventus Mundi (1868). These 
 ' Ibid. 31. modifications will be noticed in their seT- 
 ' Ibid. 42. This theory, put forth ten eral places ; but as his last work is in- 
 years ago, has been received with no tended to embody the greater part of the 
 great favour ; but nothing less than the results at which he arrived in \aa Homeric 
 repudiation of it by Mr. Gladstone him- Studies, and as his theory of the origin 
 self could justify our passing it by in of Greek mythology remains substanti- 
 silence, when our purpose is to show that ally what it was before, I have not 
 the problem can be solved only by the thought it necessary to alter the text 
 method of comparative mythology. But which was written long before the pub- 
 fer from retracting this hypothesis, Mr. lication of Juventus Mundi. Indeed, 
 
12 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Putting aside tlie question how far these ideas may reflect 
 
 . il-^ the thought of later ages, we must admit with Mr. Gladstone 
 
 Its alleged that from this shadowing forth of the great dogmas of the 
 perversion rj,^^^^^^ ^-^^ ^^^^ ^^^p ^-^j^^. ^^ -^^q Polytheism, and from 
 
 Greeks, that of the Incarnation into anthropomorphism or the re- 
 flection of humanity upon the supernatural world. ^ This 
 true theology, in the hands of the Greeks, was perverted into 
 a Trinity of the three sons of Eronos : Zeus, Hades, and 
 Poseidon. The tradition of the Eedeemer is represented by 
 ApoUon ; the Divine Wisdom is embodied in AthenS ; ^ and 
 Leto, their mother, stands in the place of the woman from 
 whom the Deliverer was to descend. The traditions of the 
 Evil One were stiU 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.' 
 as shown For these primitive traditions, which are delivered to us 
 tributes of ' either in the ancient or the more recent books of the 
 theirGods. Bible,' ■• Mr. Gladstone alleges the corroborative evidence 
 furnished by the Jewish illustrative writings during or after 
 the captivity in Babylon.* These writings bear witness to 
 the extraordinary elevation of the Messiah, and to the intro- 
 duction of the female principle into Deity, which the Greeks 
 adopted not as a metaphysical conception, but with a view 
 to the family order among immortals .* Thus in the Greek 
 Athfin^ and ApoUon respectively he distinguishes the attri- 
 butes assigned by the Jews to the Messiah and to Wisdom — 
 the attributes of sonship and primogeniture, of light, of 
 mediation, of miraculous operation, of conquest over the 
 Evil One, and of the liberation of the dead from the power 
 of hell, together with ' an assemblage of the most winning 
 and endearing moral qualities.' ' 
 System of This theory Mr. Gladstone has traced with great minute- 
 ness and ingenuity through the tangled skein of Greek 
 mythology. The original idea he finds disintegrated, and a 
 
 the slightness of the modification which its logical results. 
 
 his theory has undergone, renders it ' Homer and the Homeric Age, li. 43. 
 
 perhaps even more necessary to exhibit ' Ibid. 44. ' Ihid. 45. * j'bid. 48. 
 
 clearly the dilemmas and difficulties ' Ibid. 60. ' Ibid. 51. ' Ibid. 63. 
 involved in this theory, if carried out to 
 
 second- 
 
IDEA OF SECOND AET DEITIES. 13 
 
 system of secondaries is the necessary consequence. Tar CHAP, 
 above all are exalted ApoUon and AtMne, in tlieir personal . _ .' - 
 purity ' yet more than in their power, in their immediate 
 action,^ in their harmony with the will of the Supreme 
 King, and in 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.^ But som^e of their 
 attributes are transferred to other beings, who are simply 
 embodiments of the attribute so transferred and of no other. 
 Thus Athen^ is attended by Hermes, Ares, Themis, and 
 Hephaistos ; Apollon by Paieon and the Muses ; * as, simi- 
 larly, we have in Gaia a weaker impersonation of Dem^t^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 ofBce in the Homeric 
 theology, and she remains, from any view except this one, an 
 anomaly in mythological belief.* But the traditions which 
 relate to the under- world, which is the realm of Hades, are 
 not less full than those which tell us of the heavenly order 
 of Olympos. Amidst some little confusion, Mr. Gladstone 
 discerns a substantial correspondence with divine revelation, 
 and finds ia the Homeric poems the place of bliss destined 
 finally for the good, the place of torment inhabited by the' 
 Evil One and his comrades, and the intermediate abode for 
 departed spirits, whether of the good or the evil.* But while 
 the prevalence of sacrifice attests the strength of primitive 
 tradition, of the Sabbatical institution there is no trace.' It 
 was an ordinance ' too highly spiritual to survive the rude 
 shocks and necessities of earthly life.' 
 
 Of the other deities some owe their existence to invention, inventire, 
 which has been busy in depraving and debasing the idea g^i^Jj^^'^"" 
 even of those which are traditive.* Thus Here was invented from tra- 
 because Zeus must not live alone, and Ehea because he must deities. 
 have a mother ; and a whole mass of human adventure and 
 of human passion without human recognition of law is 
 
 ' Homer and the Homeric Age, ii. ' Ibid. 61. ' Ibid. 152. 
 
 87-107. « Ibid. 170. ' Ibid. 171, 172. 
 
 ' Ibid. 89-93. ' Ibid. 57. " Ibid. 173. 
 
14 
 
 MTTHOLOGT OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Nature of 
 the doc- 
 trines per- 
 verted in 
 Greek my- 
 thology. 
 
 heaped up round almost every deity (except the two who 
 stand out unsullied in their purity and goodness), not, how- 
 ever, without occasional protests from the poet who had not 
 yet become familiar with the deification of vicious passion. • 
 
 Thus, on the hypothesis of Mr. Gladstone, Greek mythology 
 is no distortion of primary truths which first dawn on the 
 mind of a child or are imparted to it, and which, it might 
 have been supposed, would form the substance 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, 
 of doctrines which the speculations of Jewish rabbis may 
 have drawn into greater prominence, but which form the 
 groundwork of Christian theology. 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 Infinite and 
 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,' while all are children of the dethroned 
 Kronos, in whom again the evil power finds an impersonation.' 
 When we survey the whole mass of mythological legend, 
 when we spread out before us the lives of Zeus and his 
 attendant gods (scarcely excepting even AthenS and Apoll6n), 
 we stand aghast at the boldness of an impiety which has 
 perhaps never had its parallel. The antediluvian records of 
 the Old Testament bring before us a horrible picture of brute 
 violence, resulting possibly from a deification of human will, 
 which, it would seem, left no room for any theology whatever ; 
 but this is an astounding parody which would seem to be 
 
 ' Homer and the Homeric Age, ii. 270. 
 
 * Ibid. 16+; see also National Beview, 
 July 1858, 53, &c. 
 
 ' Ibid. 207. "Writing some months 
 before the publication of Mr. Gladstone's 
 work on Homer, Professor Max Miiller 
 had remarked that 'among the lowest 
 tribes of Africa and America we hardly 
 find anything more hideous and revolt- 
 ing,' than the stories told of Kronos and 
 his offspring. ' It seems blasphemy,' he 
 adds, 'to consider these fables of the 
 
 heathen world as corrupted and mis- 
 interpreted fragments of a divine re- 
 velation once granted to the whole 
 race of mankind.' ■ Comparative Mytho- 
 logy:' Chips from a German Worksliop, 
 ii. 13. But the disposition so frequently 
 shown at present to explain the growth 
 of mythology by bold assumptions 
 renders it necessary to examine argu- 
 ments which might otherwise be passed 
 by in silence. 
 
THE IJfQUIRT STEICTLT HISTOEICAL. 15 
 
 founded not on dim foreshadowings of a true revelation, but CHAP. 
 on the dogmatic statements of tlie Athanasian Creed. 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 a phenomenon, if possible, still 
 more astonishing. On the supposition that Greek mythology 
 was a corrupted 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 pre- 
 sumption 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. 
 We remember that we are dealing not with a theme for 
 philosophical speculation, but with a common question of 
 fact,' and that Mr. Gladstone assumes not only that there 
 was a primitive revelation, but that it set forth certain 
 dogmas. With these assumptions the phenomena of my- 
 thology must be made to fit : a genuine historical method 
 excludes all assumptions whatsoever. 
 
 If, however, hypothesis is to be admitted, then it must be Attributes 
 granted that the attributes and functions of the Hellenic "f^'''^™'' 
 gods have seldom been analysed with greater force, clearness, ApoUon. 
 and skill ; nor can it be denied that Mr. Gladstone's hypo- 
 thesis, as in the case of Leto, furnishes a plausible explanation 
 of some things which appear anomalous.^ But it introduces 
 the necessity of interpreting mythology so as to square with 
 a preconceived system, and involves a temptation to lessen 
 
 ' See p. 1 0. But this is precisely the relation in 
 
 ' Mr. Gladstone {Somer, Sfc. ii. 155), which the mythical Night stood to the 
 
 dwells much on the indistinct colouring Day which was to he horn of her. It 
 
 which is thrown oyer L^o, and which was impossible that the original idea 
 
 leaves her ' wholly fuuctionlese, wholly could be developed into a much more 
 
 inactive,' and ' without a purpose,' except definite personality, 
 in so far as she is the mother of Phoibos. 
 
16 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 
 ApoUon represent severally the Divine Eedeemer and the 
 Divine Wisdom, their relation of wiU to the Supreme Father 
 becomes a point of cardinal interest and importance. But 
 when Mr. Gladstone asserts that, ' although Athen^ goes all 
 lengths in thwarting Jupiter ' in the Iliad,'' ' yet her aim is 
 to give effect to a design so unequivocally approved in 
 Olympus, that Jupiter himself has been constrained to give 
 way to it,' he places too far in the background certain other 
 Homeric incidents which imply a direct contrariety of wUl. 
 No weaker term can rightly characterise that abortive con- 
 spiracy to bind Zeus, in which she is the accomplice of HerS 
 and Poseid6n. In this plot, the deliverance comes not from 
 ApoUon, whose office it is to be ' the defender and deliverer 
 of heaven and the other immortals,' but from Thetis, the 
 silver-footed nymph of the sea ; ^ 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 Athen^ and ApoUon are never foUed, defeated, 
 
 ' See Chapter IX. of this book. we have not the slightest warrant for 
 2 Gladstone's Homer, ^c. ii. 70. regarding as the growth of ages later 
 ' Ibid. 72. This conspiracy is men- than those in which our Iliad and 
 tioned more than once by Mr. Glad- Odyssey assumed their present form, 
 stone, (75, 182): but he mentions it, In fact, the admission seems fatal to 
 not as a drawback on the traditive the theory ; nor can it be said that ' the 
 character of Athene, but as showing case of Apollo .stands alone as an ex- 
 first that Zeus himself might be as- hibition of entire unbroken harmony 
 sailed, and secondly that his majesty with the wiU of Zeus, which in all things 
 remained nevertheless substantially un- he regards.' — P. 272. In the myths of 
 impaired. Yet a reference to it, as Ask%ios and Adm^tos he draws on 
 bearing on the moral conception of himself the wrath and the vengeance of 
 Ath6n6, would seem to be indispen- Zeus for slaying the Kykl6pes as a 
 sable; and this reference Mr. Gladstone requital for the death of his son, the 
 has supplied in J«wmtos il/MMiii, p. 273. Healer; and we are fully justified in 
 He here states that 'we have in the laying stress on this fact, until it can 
 case of ApoUo an uniform identity of be proved that any one myth must 
 win with the chief god, and in the ease necessarily be regarded as of earlier 
 of Athtog only an exceptional departure growth than another, merely because it 
 from it.' The admission is important; happens to be found in qui Iliad and 
 and with it we must couple other tra- " ' 
 ditions, to be noticed hereafter, which 
 
MYTHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOMERIC POETS. 17 
 
 or outwitted by any other of the gods ; ' for Athen^ here is CHAP. 
 
 foiled by Thetis. Elsewhere we hare Apollon,'' like Poseidon, - ; 
 
 cheated by Laomedon whona he had served, and finding a 
 more congenial master, but yet a master, in Admetos ; ' while 
 the parentage of the three Kronid brothers '' and the double 
 character of Poseidon * stand forth as the most astounding 
 contradictions of all. 
 
 There are other legends which represent Athene in a light Eelations 
 inconsistent with the personification of the Divine Wisdom. twIenZeus 
 In the tale of Pandora, at the instigation of Zeus she takes ^^^^ 
 part in the plot which results in the increased wickedness 
 and misery of man ; ^ 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 feelings 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 refer- 
 ence to some myths, which are at once among the oldest 
 and the most beautiful ; and he certainly knew of the de- 
 thronement of Kronos, as well as of factions in the new 
 dynasty of the gods.'^ 
 
 But if the theory of religious perversion, apart from its Peculiar 
 moral difBculties, involves some serious contradictions, it S""™? °^ 
 
 ^ ^ ' Greek T113'- 
 
 altogether fails to explain why the mythology of the Greeks thoiogy. 
 assumed many of its peculiar and perhaps most striking 
 features. It does not show us why some of the gods should 
 
 ' Gladstone, Homer, ^c, ii. 74. change its iron band for a thread of 
 
 ^ Ibid. 75. silken slumber.' The question is further 
 
 ' Tiid. 81. K these legends are strictly examined p. 123 etc. : but the myths 
 
 deTelopements from old mythical phrases, developed from phrases ■which spoke 
 
 the meaning of which was only in part re- originally of the beneficent and destruc- 
 
 membered, there remains no difficulty tive power of the sun's rays and heat 
 
 whatever in such statements. In these perfectly explain every such attribute, 
 
 there is reflected upon Apolion an idea de- whether in ApoUon or Artemis, 
 rived from the toiling sun, which is ' Gladstone, Homer, ii. 162. 
 brought out in its fulness in the adven- ' VM. 206. 
 
 tures of Heraldes and Bellerophon. " Hesiod, Theogon., 573; Works and 
 
 Mr. Gladstone lays stress on the Bays, 63. 
 
 relation of Apollon and Artemis to ' Similarly, the Iliad says nothing 
 
 Death (p. 103), and holds that here wS about the death of AchiUeus : yet the 
 
 are on very sacred ground (p. 104) the poet is aware that his life is to be short, 
 
 traces, namely. ' of One who, as an all- „s.,.„ >„./ .'•>,' a's x 
 
 conquering King, was to be terrible Hyra 
 and destructive to his enemies, but who 
 
 was also, on behalf of mankind, to take is the frequent reproach of Achilleus to 
 
 away the sting from death, and to his mother Thetis, 
 
 VOL. I, C 
 
,18 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK be represented pure, others as in part or altogether immoral t 
 - ^' .. it does not tell us why Zeus and Herakles should be coarse 
 and sensual, rather than AthSn^ and ApoUdn ; it does not 
 explain why ApoUdn is made to serve AdmStos, why Herakles 
 bears the yoke of Eurystheus, and BellerophSn 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 Lyk46n, 
 Helios and Phaeth6n, should be attached to beings whose 
 mythical history is so different. If for these and other 
 anomalies there is a method of interpretation which gires 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 mytho- 
 logy of Greece, but to that of the whole Aryan race, nay, 
 even to a wider system still, a presumption at least is fur- 
 nished, that the simpler method may after all be the truest. 
 Conse- Yfit more, the hypothesis of a corrupted revelation involves 
 
 quences _ gome further consequences, which have a material bearing 
 the per- on the question. Tliat which is so perverted cannot become 
 Tersiouof clearer and more definite in the very process of cormpt 
 
 an original ^ ^^ _ -^ 
 
 revelation, devclopement. 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 woiild be more distinct and real ia 
 the earliest times than in the later. The ideas of the Tri- 
 nity, 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 sustained by new or con- 
 tinued 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 it. If, again, this coi-rupting process had for its 
 cause a moral corruption going on in the hearts and lives of 
 men, then this corruption would be intensified in proportion 
 to the degree in which the original revelation was overlaid.' 
 
 ' The same argument seems to be of revelation so extensive as that assumed 
 force against the supposition that a by Mr. Gladstone procedied the age 
 
MORALITY OF THE HESIODIC POEMS. 19 
 
 In the Hellenic mythology, this process is reversed. Even CHAP. 
 
 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 lite- 
 rature, the personality and attributes of each god as com- 
 pared with the conceptions of a previous age, it is obvious 
 that the general tone of feeling 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 Hiad and Odyssey is a question into 
 which it is unnecessary here to enter: but it must be ad- 
 mitted that if their theology is more systematised, and 
 their theogony more repulsive, their morality and philo- 
 sophy is immeasurably higher and more true. The latter 
 may not exhibit the same heroic strength, they may betray 
 a querulous spirit not unlike that of the Jewish preacher; 
 but they display a conviction of the perfect justice and 
 equity of the Divine Being, and an appreciation of good- 
 ness, as being equally the duty and the interest of man- 
 kind,' which we could scarcely desire to have strengthened.^ 
 With the growth of a mythology and its more systematic 
 arrangement the perception of moral truth has become 
 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.' 
 
 ■whose language gave birth to the later that this morality, many of the precepts 
 
 Aryan mythology. For a revelation so of which seem almost echoes from tho 
 
 corrupted implies a gradual degeneration Sermon on the Mount, was handed down 
 
 into coarseness, sensuality, even brutish- from an original revelation. If then, 
 
 ness ; but the mind of that early time, in this respect, the course was from the 
 
 as exhibited to us in their language, is lesser to the greater, the progress could 
 
 childish or infantile, but not brutish ; be the work only of the Spirit of God ; 
 
 and it is not easy to see how from a and the downward course of their my- 
 
 period in which they had sensualised thology from a positive revelation 
 
 and debased a high revelation men appears therefore the more mysterious 
 
 could emerge into a state of simple and and perplexing. 
 
 childish wonder, altogether distinct from ^ The Hesiodic WorTcs and Days seem 
 either idolatry or impurity, and in which to exhibit, along with some decline of 
 their notions as to the life of nature physical energy, a sensitiveness of 
 were as indefinite and unformed as their temperament to which the idea of over- 
 ideas respecting their own personality. bearing arrogance and wanton insult 
 ' See especially the striking analogy of threw a dark colouring over the whole 
 the broad and narrow ways leading re- course of human life. "With such a feel- 
 spectively to ruin and happiness {Works ing the mind may easily pass into a 
 and Days, 285-290). It is not pretended morbid condition. 
 
 C 2 
 
 I. 
 
20 
 
 MTTHOLOGT OF THE AKTAN NATIOXS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Compari- 
 son of the 
 Homeric 
 ■with the 
 Vedic my- 
 thology. 
 
 It is perhaps difficult to determine how far the charactera 
 of Phoibos and Ath^n^ have been drawn out and systematised 
 by the genius and moral instinct of the poet himself. We 
 have no evidence, in any extant literature, of the precise 
 state in which he found the 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 teU 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 
 hut the morning. But language has furnished evidence, which 
 it is impossible to resist, of the gradual process which im- 
 parted 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; hut in 
 that mythology beings, whose personality in the Homeric 
 poems is sharply drawn and whose attributes are strictly 
 defined, are still dim and shadowy. Even the great Olym- 
 pian king has not received the passions and appetites, and 
 certainly not the form of man. Nay, in that older mythology 
 their persons and their attributes are alike interchangeable. 
 That which 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. This difference, at first sight so perplexing, 
 may itself enable us to discover the great secret of the origin 
 and growth of aU mythology: but the fact remains indis- 
 putable that in the Veda, to use the words of Professor Max 
 Miiller, 'the whole nature of these so-called gods is still 
 transparent, their first conception in many cases clearly 
 perceptible. There are as yet no genealogies, no settled 
 marriages between gods and goddesses. The father is some- 
 times the son, the brother is the husband, and she who in 
 one hymn is the mother is in another the wife. As the 
 
 • Iliad, i. 400. 
 
EAELIER VEDIC LITERATURE. 21 
 
 conceptions of tlie poet vary, so varies the nature of these 
 gods. Nowhere is the wide distance which separates the 
 ancient poems of India from the most ancient literature of 
 Greece more clearly felt than when we compare the growing 
 myths of the Veda with the full-grown and decayed myths 
 on which the poetry of Homer is founded.' ' But the un- 
 formed 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 predominant priest- 
 hood, 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, in the words of Horace Wilson, ' 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 
 
 ' ' Comparative Mythology,' Chips bodied in him is that of the dark thief 
 
 from a German Workshof, ii. 75. This which steals away the twilight. It may 
 
 flexible nature of the earliest myths ex- be added that the very words which 
 
 plains someapparentcontradietions in the Professor Max Miiller quotes to show 
 
 Homeric mythology. To my conclusion that ' he whose destiny it is to kill 
 
 that some of the most strilang features • Achilles in the Western Gates could 
 
 in the character of Paris are reproduced hardly have been himself of solar or 
 
 in Meleagros and Achilleus, Professor vernal lineage,' would also prove that 
 
 Max Miiller has taken exception on the Phoibos ApoUon belonged to the ranks 
 
 ground that ' if the germ of the Iliad is of the powers of night, for the death of 
 
 the battle between the solar and noc- Achilleus is brought about by him no less 
 
 turnal powers, Paris surely belongs to than by Paris. Paris, however, is not 
 
 the latter.' — Lectures on Language, of solar or vernal lineage. He is essen- 
 
 second series, xi. I venture to think tiaUy the deceiver who draws away the 
 
 that in this instance Professor Max golden-haired Helen to his dusky dwell- 
 
 Miiller has answered his own objection, ing ; and all that I would urge is that 
 
 As the seducer of Helen, Paris repre- when thepoet described him as a warrior, 
 
 sents the treacherous night; but he is he naturally employed imagery with 
 
 also the fated hero doomed to bring which the solar heroes had made him 
 
 ruin on his kinsfolk, while he is further familiar, and wove into the tale the 
 
 known as Alexandres, the helper of men. incidents which make up the myth of 
 
 Hence in this aspect of his character, a Oindnfe and which recur in the stories 
 
 number of images which describe the of Sigurd and of Theseus, of Kephalos 
 
 solar heroes have been grouped around and of Herakles. The subject will be 
 
 his person, while the leading idea em- further treated in its proper place. 
 
90! 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AETAN NATIOXS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Methods of 
 dfitermm- 
 ing the 
 extent of 
 primitive 
 revelation. 
 
 ' 1 
 
 Eyidenee 
 of the 
 Book of 
 Genesis. 
 
 basis of the existing system, they completely overturn it, 
 The comparison is scarcely less fatal to the mythological 
 Trinity of the Greeks. 
 
 We come at length to the question of fact. What was the 
 measure of divine truth imparted to man on his creation, or 
 immediately after the fall, and under what forms was it con- 
 veyed? If, when stated thus, the question shoiild be one 
 which we cannot absolutely determine, we may yet ask, was 
 it a revelation as exphcit and extensive as Mr. Gladstone 
 represents it to have been ? To allege the rabbinical tradi- 
 tions and speculations of comparatively recent times ^ 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. Accordingly, although later traditions 
 appear to be blended in his idea of the primitive belief,' Mr. 
 Gladstone rightly insisfts that the Homeric mythology must, 
 if his hypothesis be correct, show the vestiges of a traditional 
 knowledge 'derived from the epoch when the covenant of 
 God with man, and the promise of a Messiah, had not yet 
 fallen within the contracted forms of Judaism for shelter,' * 
 and that these traditions must ' carry upon them the mark 
 of belonging to the religion which the Book of Genesis 
 represents as brought by our first parents from Paradise and 
 as delivered by them to their immediate descendants in 
 general.' ' 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 tradition we are confined to the first 
 eleven chapters of the book of Genesis. 
 
 Prom these chapters we must derive our proof that our 
 first parents and their immediate descendants possessed the 
 idea of an Infinite Being whose perfect goodness arose, not 
 
 ' Professor H. H. Wilson, in the 
 Edinburgh Beview for October 1860, 
 No. CCXXVIII. p. 382 ; and Vishnu 
 Purana, p. ii., where he emphatically 
 denies that the old Vedic religion was 
 idolatrous. His remarks on the general 
 
 character of the Vediereligion deserve the 
 deepest attention. They seem entirely 
 to subvert the hypothesis which Mr. 
 Gladstone has maintained. 
 
 ' Gladstone, Homer, ^c. ii. 50. 
 
 » Ibid. 48. * Ibid. 3. ' Ibid. 4. 
 
PRIMEVAL REVELATION. 23 
 
 from external restraints, but from an unchangeable internal CHAP. 
 
 determination of character ' — of a Trinity of Co-equal Per- . ]. — - 
 
 sons in the Divine Unity — of a Redeemer who should here- 
 after assume their nature and deliver from death and sin — of 
 a Divine Wisdom which was with God 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.* 
 
 Whether these early chapters may contain this theological its charac- 
 scheme by just and legitimate inference, whether the words *''^" 
 there written may contain the earnest and the warrant of the 
 full Christian revelation, are questions with which we are not 
 here concerned. It is not a question of doctrine or belief or 
 theological 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. Here, if anywhere, that purification of the in- 
 tellect would seem to be needed, the lack of which tends to 
 a substitution of traditional teaching or association for an 
 impartial sifting of evidence.' There was a time when these 
 early records formed the whole literature of the people ; and, 
 to adopt Mr. Gladstone's expression, it would not be ' safe to 
 make any large assumption respecting a traditional know- 
 ledge of any parts of early revelation ' beyond what those 
 records actually contain.'' 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 
 teU 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 at- 
 tempt to transfer the blame from the m.an to the woman, 
 
 ' Gladstone, Homer, ^c. ii. 18. fall strictly under this class. See Grrote, 
 
 ' Ibid. 42. History of Greece, part ii. ch. Ixviii. 
 
 ' The necessity of such ». process in vol. viii. p. 617, &c. 
 
 all questions of fact will scarcely he * Gladstone, Homer, ^c. ii. 40, 
 
 disputed, and the present would seem to 
 
24 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK from the -woman to the serpent — of a sentence of humiliation 
 
 • r — • 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. 
 Limits of If the doctrines which, in Mr. Gladstone's belief, made 
 dence7'" ^P ^^ primitive revelation, are contained in these chapters, 
 it is, he admits, by a dim and feeble foreshadowing.' They 
 teU 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 Eedeemer 
 delivering from sin and spiritual death. Still less do they 
 tell us of a Divine Wisdom, of an institution of sacrifice,'^ or 
 of a spiritual communion in prayer as existing from the first 
 between man and God. All these doctrines may be legiti- 
 mate deductions ; but if to us the record itself gives only 
 mysterious glimpses of a future fuUer 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 parents had a full apprehension of what 
 
 ' Gladstone, ifomer, %c. ii. 39. offering of Cain was rejected because it 
 
 '^ The fact of offerings is obviously was not one of blood; its rejection is 
 
 ■very different from an ordinance com- made to depend, not on the quality of 
 
 manding such offerings. The former the oblation, but on the moral condition 
 
 may exist without the latter. Nor is of him who brings it. 
 there the Slightest intimation that the 
 
ALLEGED COEEUPTION OF EEVBLATION. lo 
 
 even to us apart from later associations would be faint and CHAP. 
 
 shadowy ? Tor if on tlie revelation made to tliem the vast ^ — - 
 
 mass of Greek mythology grew up as a corrupt incrusfation, 
 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 anything 
 more than a dead unmeaning formula, waiting to be quick- 
 ened 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 Comse of 
 before others from the character of the Old Testament i^thfoid 
 records, it is that ideas, dim and feeble at first, acquire Testament. 
 gradually strength and consistency, that the clearness of 
 revelation is increased as the stream widens, and that all 
 positive belief is the result of years and generations of disci- 
 pline. 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. 
 
 If, further, an acceptance of the records of the book of Gree\ cot- 
 Genesis involves no assumption of the previous existence of ^"^'[""^^ 
 traditions or doctriaes not mentioned in those records, it 
 frees us not less from the necessity of supposing that in all 
 but the Jewish world a process was going on directly con- 
 trary to that under which the Israelites were being trained. 
 But while we assent to Mr. Gladstone's remark on the ease 
 with which these foreshadowings of the Trinity and of 
 Redemption might pass into polytheism and anthropo- 
 morphism, it would scarcely argue a spirit of irreverence if 
 we asked why doctrinal statements should have been given 
 which the receivers could not understand, and which under 
 these conditions rendered such a transition not merely likely 
 but inevitable. 
 
 There is an instinctive reluctance to accept any theory Necessity 
 which heightens human depravity and corruption, unles!3 ingfor'the" 
 there are weighty reasons for doing so.' And, unquestion- character 
 
 of Greek 
 ' For the mass of facts which seem tion fee Sir J. Lubbock's Prehistoric ™ytnoiogy. 
 to negative the hypothesis of degenera- Times, second edition, 1869. 
 
26 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 inquiry. 
 
 BOOK ably, on the hypothesis which has just been examined, th( 
 - ]■ . mythology of the Greeks exhibits an instance of wilful anc 
 profane perversion, to which perhaps we can find no parallel 
 But the character of that mythology still remains when w( 
 have rejected this supposition. We have still before us th( 
 chronicles or legends of gods who not merely eat and drinl 
 and sleep, but display the working of the vilest of humai 
 passions. Some process, therefore, either conscious or un- 
 conscious, must have brought about a result so perplexing 
 and if even for conscious invention there must have beei 
 some groundwork, much more must this be the case if w 
 take up an alternative which even less admits the exercis( 
 of a creative faculty. 
 Conditions If then, apart from the controversies which have gatherec 
 fr.^t^ round the documents which compose the book of Genesis 
 we gain from the earliest Jewish records no knowledge of thi 
 mode in which mythology was developed, it is clear that, i 
 the question is ever to be answered, we must seek the evi 
 dence in the history of language and of ancient civilisatior 
 If both alike seem to carry us back to a time in which tin 
 condition of man resembled most nearly that of an infani 
 we can but accept the evidence of facts, so far as those fact 
 are ascertained and understood. The results of archseologica 
 researches may not be flattering to human vanity. The; 
 may reveal a coarse brutality from which during a long serie 
 of ages man rose in the struggle for existence to some notio: 
 of order and law. They may disclose a state of society i 
 which a hard apathy and a stupid terror seemed to render a 
 intellectual growth impossible, and in which a religion of fea 
 found its universal expression in human sacrifices.' Yet tl 
 
 ' If the theories which make language the same process of slow and paini 
 
 the necessary adjunct and outcome of developement from the first faint dav 
 
 thought must be abandoned as incon- of intelligence. The conclusion mu 
 
 sistent with known facts, if we must indeed, be proved: but its establis 
 
 face the conclusion that man speaks not ment no more calls into question t 
 
 because he thinks, but because he wishes Divine Education of the world, than t 
 
 to share his thoughts with others, and slowness with which infants learn 
 
 hence that words are wholly arbitrary walk proves that our powers of moti 
 
 and conventional signs without the originate in ourselves; and certaii 
 
 slightest essential relation to the things the evidence both of archaeology a 
 
 signified, no reason for surprise remains language, so far as it has gone, tei 
 
 if human ideas of God and of the service more and more to exhibit mankind 
 
 due to him should be found to exhibit their primseval condition as passi 
 
COMPARISON OF LEGENDS. 27 
 
 picture, if it be gloomy, introduces no new difficulties beside CHAP. 
 
 those with which philosophers or theologians have to contend . ^ . 
 
 already in their attempts to explain the phenomena of the 
 material or moral world. The fact that there has been 
 growth, the fact that out of such poor elements there has been 
 developed a knowledge of the relations in which men stand 
 to each other and of the consequences which flow from these 
 relations, is of itself the evidence that at all times and in all 
 places the Divine Spirit has been teaching and educating 
 the children of men, that always and everywhere God has 
 been doing the work of which we now see darkly but a very 
 small part, and of which hereafter we shall better understand 
 the nature and purpose. 
 
 If then the mythology of the Aryan nations is to be Allegorical 
 studied to good purpose, the process applied to their J^jfJ^'^^^f 
 legends must be strictly scientific. In every Aryan land myths. 
 we have a vast mass of stories, some 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 differences by which inductive science has achieved its 
 greatest triumphs. Not a step must be taken on mere con- 
 jecture : 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 ac- 
 cording to their points of likeness and difference ; we must 
 seek to interpret the latter by the principles which have 
 been established and accepted as the laws of philological 
 analysis. It becomes therefore unnecessary to notice at 
 
 through forms and stages of thought in his masterly sketch. The developement 
 
 ■which the adoption of human sacrifices of the doctrine of sacrifice has been 
 
 universally would inevitably mark an traced with singular clearness and force 
 
 important stage. This subject has been by Dr. Kalisch, Historical and Critical 
 
 treated by Mr. E. B. Tylor in his ffis^ojy Commentary on the Old Testament, 
 
 of Early Civilisation, with a vigour and Leviticus, part i. See also the article 
 
 impartiality which justify the hope that 'Sacrifice' in the Dictionary of Science, 
 
 he may hereafter fill up the outlines of Literature and Art. 
 
28 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN KATIOXS. 
 
 BOOK length any of those hypotheses or assumptions which resolve 
 - ]' - the Aryan myths into allegories, or explain them as expres- 
 sions of high truth in theology, morality, or art. It would 
 scarcely be necessary to notice such theories at all, were it 
 not that they are from time to time revived by writers who 
 from their manifest earnestness and sincerity, and from the 
 grea.t good which they have done, may fairly claim to be 
 heard. It may, however, be enough to take some of these 
 theories, and to show that they are not true to the features 
 of the myths which they profess to explain, and that inter- 
 pretations which twist some of the incidents and names of a 
 story and ignore others, while they treat each tale as stand- 
 ing by itself, cannot be regarded as trustworthy. 
 Lord In the opinion of Lord Bacon, the story of the Sphinx was 
 
 Bacon's i ^^ elegrant and instructive fable,' ' invented to represent 
 
 method. ° • i _l- , tt- .. 
 
 science, especially as joined with practice. His reason for 
 so thinking was that ' science may without absurdity be 
 called a monster, being strangely gazed at and admired by 
 the ignorant and unskilful.' The composite figure of the 
 Sphinx indicates ' the vast variety of subjects that science 
 considers ' ; the female countenance attributed to her denotes 
 the ' gay appearance ' of science and her ' volubility of 
 speech.' Her wings show that ' the sciences and their in- 
 ventions must fly about in a moment, for knowledge, like 
 light communicated from one torch to another, is presently 
 caught and copiously diffused.' Her sharp and hooked 
 talons are ' the axioms and arguments of science,' which 
 ' enter the mind, lay hold of it, fix it down, and keep it from 
 moving and slipping away.' She is placed on a crag over- 
 looking the Theban city, because ' all science seems placed on 
 high, as it were on the tops of mountains that are hard to 
 climb.' Like her, ' science is said to beset the highways, 
 because, through all the journey and peregrination of human 
 life, there is matter and occasion offered of contemplation.' 
 If the riddles which the Sphinx receives from the Muses 
 bring with them trouble and disaster, it is because ' practice 
 urges and impels to action, choice, and determination,' and 
 thus questions of science ' become torturing, severe, and 
 trying, and unless solved and interpreted, strangely perplex 
 
LOED bacon's method OF DEALING WITH MYTHS. 29 
 
 and harass the human mind, rend it eyerj way, and perfectly CHAP. 
 
 tear it to pieces.' The fahle, in Bacon's judgment, a^ds with . ]. — - 
 
 the ' utmost elegance,' ' that, when Sphinx was conquered, 
 her carcass was laid upon an ass ; for there is nothing so 
 subtle and abstruse but, after being once made plain, intelli- 
 gible, and common, it may be received by the lowest capa- 
 city.' But he feels himself bound not to omit that ' Sphinx 
 was conquered by a lame man and impotent in his feet, for 
 men usually make too much haste to the solution of Sphinx's 
 riddles ; whence it happens that, she prevailing, their minds 
 are rather racked and torn by disputes than invested with 
 command by works and effects.' 
 
 A large number of the Greek myths are made by Lord Its conse- 
 Bacon to yield ' wisdom ' of this kind, and it is quite pos- 
 sible that the same process might be applied with equal 
 success to all Greek, or even all Aryan myths. Such inter- 
 pretations oertainly tend to show how great our debt of 
 gratitude must be to a set of mysterious philosophers, pro- 
 phets, or politicians, who, living before there were any con- 
 stitutions, alliances, confederacies, and diplomacy, furnished 
 in the form of amusing stories a complete code for the 
 guidance of kings, members -of parliament, cabinet ministers, 
 and ambassadors. It would be unfair to grudge to these 
 interpretations the praise of cleverness ■ and ingenuity ; but 
 the happy turns which they sometimes exhibit are more than 
 counterbalanced by misrepresentations of the myths them- 
 selves. The comparison of the claws and talons of the 
 Sphiux to the axioms and arguments of science may be both 
 amusing and instructive ; but the ass which carries her 
 carcass is seemingly a creature of his own imagining, and 
 Oidipous was neither lame nor impotent in his feet when he 
 came to the final conflict. The reason, also, by which Bacon 
 accounts for this fact, would be an argument for making 
 Oidipous not the conqueror, but only another of the victims 
 of the Sphinx. 
 
 But, ingenious as Bacon's interpretations may have been, such inter- 
 they were emphatically unscientific. To him these Greek pret^tions 
 stories were isolated or detached fables, whose growth it was tiflc. 
 superfluous to trace, and to each of which he might attach 
 
30 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ABYAIf NATIONS, 
 
 BOOK any explanation which might seem best to fit or to give most 
 
 - I: . significance to its leading incidents. In short, they were 
 
 things with regard to which he saw no need of following 
 rules which in all the processes of science and in all matters 
 of fact he wonld have held to be indispensable. Had he 
 followed these rules, he might, even without a knowledge of 
 the language or the myths of other cognate tribes, have seen 
 that the Hellenic legend of Oidipous and the Sphinx could 
 not be judged of rightly apart from a comparison with other 
 tales. He would have seen that Oidipous was not the only 
 child exposed on a mountain side, or rescued by a shepherd, 
 or doomed to slay his father or grandsire, and to conquer a 
 snake, dragon, or other monster. He would have seen that 
 these beings, with features more or less resembling each other 
 in all the stories, were yet each spoken of under a different 
 name, that the Sphinx of the Theban myth became the 
 Python or Echidna, the Gorgon or Minotaur or Chimaira or 
 Hydra of another, and that these names must be accounted 
 for not less than the incidents of the tale. He might have 
 perceived that the names in some or many of these legends 
 bore a certain analogy to each other, and that as the names 
 could not be the result of accident, the explanation which 
 would account for the myth must account also for them, and 
 that short of this result no interpretation could be accepted 
 as adequate. The discovery that Bacon's mode of extracting 
 from myths the ' wisdom of the ancients ' is thoroughly un- 
 scientific, releases us from any further duty of examining in 
 detail either his explanations or even others, urged by more 
 recent writers, which may resemble them in theory or 
 method. 
 
31 
 
 CHA.PTEE II. 
 
 THE RELATION OF MTTHOLOGT TO LANGUAGE. 
 
 The analysis of language has fuUy justified the anticipation CHAP. 
 
 )f Locke, that ' if we could trace them to their sources, we ■ ,J — - 
 
 ihould find in all languages the names which stand for Origin of 
 hings that fall not under our senses to have had their first words. 
 ■ise from sensible ideas.' So thoroughly, indeed, has this 
 ;onjecture been verified, that the assertion is fast passing 
 nto the number of trite and hackneyed sayings ; and though 
 ihe interest and vast importance of the fact remains, few are 
 low tempted to question the conclusion that every word 
 imployed to express the highest theological or metaphysical 
 !Onceptions at first denoted mere sensuous perception. 
 Spiritus,' says Professor Max Miiller 'is certainly derived 
 rom a verb spirare, which means to draw breath. The same 
 ipplies to animus. Animus, the mind, as Cicero says, is so 
 sailed from anima, air. The root is an, which in Sanskrit 
 neans to blow, and which has given rise to the Sanskrit and 
 jrreek words for wind an-ila and dn-emos. Thus the Greek 
 hymos, the soul, comes from thyein, to rush, to move violently, 
 he Sanskrit dhu, to shake. Prom dhu, we have in Sanskrit, 
 Ihuli, dust, which comes from the same root, and ' dhuma,' 
 imoke, the Latin fumus. In Greek the same root supplied 
 Tiyella, storm-wind, and thymos, the soul, as the seat of the 
 )assions. Plato guesses correctly when he says (Crat. p. 
 H9) that thymSs, soul, is so called airo t^j S^vascos koI ^sa-scos 
 ■rji ■\lrvxv'-' It is the same with the word soul. ' Soul is 
 he Gothic saivala, and this is clearly related to another 
 xothic word, saws, which means the sea. The sea was 
 jailed saivs from a root si or siv, the Greek seio, to shake ; it 
 
 1 Lectures on Language, 2nd series, Tiii. 343. 
 
32 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Expansive 
 power of 
 sensuous 
 ■words. 
 
 meant the tossed-about water in contradistinction to stag- 
 nant or running water. The soul being called saivala, we 
 see that it was originally conceived by the Teutonic nations 
 as a sea within, heaving up and down with every breath, 
 and reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the deep.' ' 
 If to these primaeval sensuous words we are indebted for 
 all the wealth of human language, these words must neces- 
 sarily have possessed 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 not only to its direct representatives 
 the Greek fiiiXr], 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 connection. In the Greek /j-dpvafj,ai, 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 de- 
 struction ; 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 ^poTos or mortal, the gods were d/j.^poToi, and 
 drank of the amrita cup of immortality.^ 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 
 m,are, mer, the sea. The root was fruitful in proper names. 
 The Greeks had their gigantic Moliones, or Pounders, while 
 the Norseman spoke of the hammer of Thor Miolnir. So, 
 again, the huge Aloadai derived their name from aXwrj, the 
 threshing-floor, a word belonging to the same root, as dXevpov, 
 corn, existed in the form fiaXsvpov. From the same source 
 came the Sanskrit Maruts, or Storms, the Latin Mars, the 
 Slavonic Morana, and the Greek dprjs and dper^. But the 
 root passes into other shades of meaning. Under the form 
 marj or mraj, it gave birth to the Greek /ieX^a), the Latin 
 mulgeo and mulceo, the English milJc (all meaning, originally, 
 to stroke) ; and in these words, as well as in the Greek /SXaf, 
 fiaXaxos, /jbakBdaaw, the Latin nmrcidus and mollis, the Greek 
 
 ' Lectures on Language, 2nd series ix. See also Dictionary of Science, &c. 
 a.y. Soul. ^ ^ Southey, Curse of Ke/iama,xx.i\. 10. 
 
STAGES IN THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE. 3 
 
 fisXi, and Latin mel, it passed into the ideas of softness, CF^P. 
 sweetness, languor, and decay. Trom the notion of melting ■_ , " . 
 
 Q 
 
 the transition was easy to that of desiring or yeamtng, and 
 we find it, accordingly, in this sense, in the Greek fisXeScovri 
 and sXSofiaL (which may on good ground be traced to an 
 older fj,s\SofjLai), and finally, in sKirls, hope. Not less strange, 
 yet not less evident, is the passage of the root ja^i from its 
 origiaal force of making or producing (as shown in the San- 
 skrit janas, the Greek '^kvos, yovsvs, and yovos, the English 
 hin ; in the Sanskrit janaka, the Teutonic honig, the English 
 king, in yw^, and queen, and guean) to the abstract idea of ^,,,-.^i. 
 knowing, as seen in the Sanskrit jnd, the Greek yvcovai, the ' 
 Latin gnosco, the English know. The close relationship of 
 the two ideas is best seen in the Teutonic kann (can) and 
 kenne (ken).' 
 
 The facts which the growth of these words bring before us oripn of 
 are in the strictest sense historical. The later meanings ^°S"^g^- 
 presuppose the 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 painfuUy 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 sig- 
 nificance 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,^ when the analysis of words exhibits 
 from the begipning the working of the same unvarying laws.^ 
 If the words denoting purely spiritual ideas are all evolved 
 from roots expressing mere sensuous perceptions, if these 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, ney has carried to its logical results 
 
 second series, vii. ; Chips, ii. 257. the proposition that man was born, not 
 
 * Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, with speech, hut simply with the 
 
 first series, 370, et seq. capacity for speech. His whole book is 
 
 ' Whitney, On Language and the an earnest and able defence of all the 
 
 Study of Language, passim. Mr. Whit- conclusions involyed in this proposition. 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
o4 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIO^^S. 
 
 BOOK words are .thus confessedly accidental or arbitrary or con- 
 
 - — ^ . Tentional signs, without any essential 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 worda 
 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 imderstood ; 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 deH- 
 cate engraving of a Bewick or an Albert Durer.' "We see, 
 further, that words drawn from imitations 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. 
 Immo- It may seem a poor foundation for a fabric so magnificent 
 
 ^^%f *® *^® language of civilised mankind ; = but whatever belief 
 races. may be entertained of the first beginnings of articulate 
 
 ' To thia Hat may te added tte that mean? Neither more nor less than 
 
 name for com as ground or crushed, m that in speaking as we do, we are using 
 
 the Scottish gtpid, the Lithuanian the same materials, howeyer broken up 
 
 .9i™os, the Gothic qumrmi^ OUT quern crushed, and put together anew, which 
 
 MaxMuller, ' Comparative Mythology,' were handled by the first speaker, i.e. 
 
 Chips Jrom a German Workshop, u. 43. the first real ancestor of 'our race '— 
 
 » 'Never m the history of man has Max Miiller, Chips, ii 265 
 there been a new Isinguage. What does 
 
LANGUAGE AND EACE, 
 
 3-1 
 
 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 fact that the one class of men has risen inde- 
 j&nitely in the scale of being, while the other exhibits no 
 power whether of self-culture or of imitation. These are facts 
 which, like other physical facts, we cannot gainsay, although 
 we may not be called on to determine the farther question of 
 the unity or plurality of the huma.n 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 aMn. 
 
 CHAP. 
 II. 
 
 ' Mr. Parrar, Chapters on Language, 
 iv. 42, &c, lays great stress on the 
 immobility of savage races and their 
 inherent and insuperable incapacity for 
 education. As directed against the 
 notion that the creation of man in a, 
 state of infancy is inconsistent with the 
 goodness of God, his argument seems to 
 be unanswerable. It is surely not more 
 difficult to believe that the first stage of 
 human existence exhibited the closest 
 analogy to that of childhood, than it is 
 to believe that God would now ' suffer 
 the existence of thousands who ace 
 doomed throughout life to a helpless and 
 hopeless imbecility, and that for no fault 
 of their own.' Nor can we well misappre- 
 hend Mr. Farrar's meaning when, ajfter 
 mentioning the Yamparico, ' who speaks 
 a sort of gibberish like the growling of 
 a dog, and lives on roots, crickets, and 
 several buglike insects ; ' the Veddahs 
 'of Ceylon, 'who have gutturals and 
 grimaces instead of language, who have 
 no God, no idea of time and distance, 
 no name for hours, days, months and 
 years, and who cannot count beyond five 
 on their fingers,' he adds, ' These beings, 
 we presume, no one will deny, are men 
 with ordinary human souls : ' p. 45. The 
 primaeval man was certainly not in a 
 worse condition than these miserable 
 races ; yet Mr. Fartar ends his chapter 
 with the assertion ' that Man is a very 
 
 much nobler and more exalted animal 
 than the shivering and naked savage 
 whose squalid and ghastly relics are 
 exhumed from Danish kjokken-mod- 
 dings, and glacial deposits, and the 
 stalactite flooring of freshly opened 
 caves,' p. 66. In other words, these 
 primaeval beings were not men with 
 ordinary human souls; and hence the 
 Teddahs, the Banaks, Dokos and the 
 rest, are Kkewise not men with ordinary 
 human souls. There could not weD be 
 a more complete contradiction. We 
 may the more regret this inaccurate 
 language, because it tends to keep up 
 mischievous distinctions on grounds 
 which may turn out to be purely fic- 
 titious, while the real question whether 
 these primaeval races were direct an- 
 cestors of the Aryan and Semitic nations, 
 is really unaffected by such suppositions. 
 The question of affinity, like that of an 
 original revelation, is simply one of 
 fact, and cannot be determined by our 
 belief. So far as the evidence carries 
 him, Mr. Farrar is quite justified in 
 avowing his opinion that the men who 
 have left their ghastly relics in kitcheu- 
 middens were not our ancestors, but he 
 is Hot justified in denying to them the 
 title of men and the possession of ordi- 
 nary human souls, unless he denies it to 
 existing races of savages, and to idiots. 
 
 » S 
 
36 
 
 MYTHOLOGY. OF THE ARYAN NATIONS, 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Historical 
 results of 
 the ana- 
 lysis of 
 language. 
 
 It can never be too often repeated that the facts laid bare 
 in the course of philological inquiry are as strictly historical 
 as any which are recorded of the campaigns of Hannibal, 
 Wellington, or 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. Pro- 
 fessor Max Miiller gathers 'that aU the Aryan nations 
 had led a long life of peace before they separated, and that 
 their language acquired individuality and nationality as each 
 colony started in search of new homes, new generations 
 forming new terms connected with the warlike and adventu- 
 rous life of their onward migrations.' • 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 multiplication of living images and objects, for 
 all names in the earliest stage's 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 in the speaker or thinker, would become an 
 article of belief sanctioned by the paramount authority of 
 names, and all descriptions of phenomena would bring before 
 them the actions of conscious beings. Man would thus be 
 
 ' So again from the fact that in 
 Sanslsrit, Greek, and Gothic, ' / know ' is 
 expressed hy a perfect, meaning origin- 
 ally ' I have perceiyed,' Professor Max 
 Miiller infers that ' this fashion or idiom 
 had become permanent before the Greeks 
 separated from the Hindus, before the 
 Hindus became unintelligible to the 
 Germans.' Such facts, he insists, teach 
 
 us lessons more important than all the 
 traditions put together, which the in- 
 habitants of India, Greece and Ger- 
 many, have preserved of their earliest 
 migrations, and of the foundations of 
 their empires, ascribed to their gods, 
 or to the sons of their ggds and heroines.' 
 — Chips, ii. 252. 
 
THE INFANCY OF THE AEYAN RACE. 37 
 
 living in a magic circle, in wMcli words would strengthen an CHAP, 
 illusion inseparable from the intellectual condition of child- - 
 
 hood. Yet we can scarcely fail to see the necessity of his 
 being left to ascertain the truth or falsehood of his im- 
 pressions by the patient observation of facts, if he was ever 
 to attain to a real knowledge 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 mam- 
 malia. Until it can be shown that our powers of sensation 
 and motion are self-originated, the developement of a higher 
 idea from a sensuous conception 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,' says Professor Max Muller, ' 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 Euler, a Father of man, 
 when the name of God was for the first time uttered in this 
 world.' ' 
 
 In that primseval time, therefore, after he had learnt to ^rliest 
 express his bodily feelings in articulate sounds, but before he of thought 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, aire et ne s'en digagea que peu-a-peu. 
 
 Beeond series, vii. 308 ; History of Sans- Quoique. I'lnde ait ktk plus tard le pays 
 
 hrit Literature, 62S,et seq. After tracing par excellence de la theologie, le Eig- 
 
 the erolution of a moral and spiritual VMa ne eontient de thiologie que dans 
 
 meaning from myths originally purely ses parties les moins anciennes. II en 
 
 physical M. Baudry concludes, ' Le faut prendre son parti ; la m^taphysique, 
 
 sentiment moral et religieux n'existait la morale elle-meme en tant qu'elle 
 
 qu'implicitempnt dans le naturalisme arrive a se formuler, sont des fruits du 
 
 primitif. L'idie du Dieu createur, p4re d^veloppement intellectuel et non des 
 
 des hommes, aimant le bien et menant souvenirs d'une antique sagesse,' — Ve 
 
 la creation vers ce but final, n'apparalt V InterprUation Mythologique, 30, 
 pas nettement dans la mythologie origin- 
 
38 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK had risen to any definite conception of a Dirine Being, man 
 
 '^ — - could interpret the world around him through the medium 
 
 of his own sensations. It was thus impossible that he could 
 fail to attribute sensations like his own to every object on 
 which his eyes rested in the material universe. His notions 
 about things external to himself would be the direct result 
 of his psychological condition ; and for their utterance he 
 would have in language an instrument of boundless power. 
 
89 
 
 CHAPTEE ni. 
 
 THE SOTJECE OP MTTHIOAL SPEECH. 
 
 Ip the analysis of language and tlie researclies of antiquarians CHAP, 
 bring before us, in tbe earliest annals of mankind, a state of >_ 
 
 society wbicb bears to our own a resemblance not greater Thein- 
 than tbat of infancy to mature manhood, we shall scarcely maiiind. 
 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 ex- 
 quisite 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 primseval humanity too fair and flattering. 
 
 No deep insight into the language and ways of children is Earliest 
 needed to dispel such a fancy as this. The child who will o^ijousht 
 speak of the dawn and the twilight as the Achaian spoke of and its 
 Prokris and Eos will also be cruel or false or cunning, ^uences. 
 There is no reason why man in his earliest state should not 
 express his sorrow when the bright being who had gladdened 
 
40 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAIS' IfATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 condition exhibits in him, as in children now, the 
 working of a feeling which endows all outward things with a 
 life not unlike his own. Of 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 him- 
 self no distinctions between consciousness and personality. 
 He knew nothing of the conditions of his own life or of any 
 other, and therefore aU 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 ne- 
 cessity, 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. Every object would be a living reality, 
 
 ' In his most able and interesting that exists around him, rather than as 
 preface to the edition of Warton's a separate being of a distinct and supe- 
 History of English Poetry, 1824, Mr. ri or order. His attention is arrested by 
 Eichard Price lays great stress on this the lifeless or breathing objects of his 
 tendency, from which he holds that daily intercourse, not merely as they 
 even advanced forms of society are by contribute to his numerous wants and 
 no means free. 'It is diificult,' he pleasures, but as they exhibit any 
 remarks 'to conceive any period of affinity or more remote analogy with 
 human existence, where the disposition the mysterious properties of his being, 
 to indulge in these illusions of fancy Subject to the same laws of life and 
 has not been a leading characteristic of death, of procreation and decav, or 
 the mind. The infancy of society, as partially endowed with the same passions, 
 the iirst in the order of time, also affords sympathies, and propensities, the speech- 
 some circumstances highly favourable to less companion of his toil and amuse- 
 the developement of this faculty. In ment, the forest in which he resides, 
 such a state, the secret and invisible or the plant which flourishes beneath 
 bands which connect the human race his care, are to him but varied types of 
 with the ammal and vegetable creation, his own intricate organisation In the 
 are either felt more forcibly in an age exterior form of these, the faithful record 
 of conventional refinement, or are more of his senses forbids any material 
 frequently presented to the imagination, change; but the internal structure, 
 Man regards himself then but as the first which is wholly removed from the view, 
 linkinthechainofanimateandinanimate may be fashioned and constituted at 
 nature, as the associate and fellow of aU pleasure.' — 26. 
 
THE MTTHOPCEIC STAGE OF LANGUAGE. 41 
 
 and every word a speaking picture. For him there would be CHAP, 
 no bare recurrence of days and seasons, but each niorning . -^Y' - 
 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 wotdd return leading her bright flocks, and the short- 
 lived sun would die. Tears might pass, or ages, before his 
 rising agajin would establish even the weakest analogy ; but 
 in the meanwhile man would mourn for 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 ex- 
 pression; 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 in- 
 consistent conceptions. But these conceptions and the words 
 which expressed them would exist side by side without pro- 
 ducing the slightest consciousness 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 in 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 
 bill 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 
 ilso ; of the thunder and the earthquake and the storm, not 
 [ess than of summer and winter. But it would be no per- 
 
42 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. ' 
 
 BOOK sonification, and still less would it be an allegory or metaplibi*,' 
 
 . l . It would be to him a veritable reality, wbich he examined 
 
 and analysed as little as be reflected on himself. It would 
 be a sentiment and a belief, but in no sense a religion. 
 Primary In these Spontaneous utterances of thoughts awakened by 
 
 ^^^- outward 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 em- 
 ployed 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 imagi- 
 nation. A thousand phrases would be used to describe the 
 action of the beneficent or consuming 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 soon as the 
 mind lost its hold on the original force of the name.' 
 Secondary Thus in the Polyonymy which was the result of the earliest 
 myths. form of human thought, we have the germ of the great epics 
 of later 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 
 varving 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 
 
 ' ' That Titanic assurance with which servitude, chained for a time, and bound 
 
 ■we say, the sun mttst rise, was unknown to obey a higher will, but sure to rise, 
 
 to the early worshippers of nature, or if like Herakles, to a higher glory at the 
 
 they also began to feel the regularity end of their labours.'— Max Miiller, 
 
 with which the sun and the other stars ' Comparative Mythology,' Chips, ^-c, 
 
 perform their daily labour, they still ii. 96. 
 thought of free beings kept in temporary 
 
THE PHENOMENA OF THE DAT. 43 
 
 of language. Tlie failure would be that of memory alone, — CHAP, 
 a failure inevitable, yet not to be regretted, wben we think . ,-1 — ' 
 
 of the rich harvest of beauty which the poets of many ages 
 and many lands have reaped from these half-remembered 
 words.' 
 
 It mattered little, then, of what object or phenomenon they Polyono- 
 might happen to speak. It might be the soft morning light Acting the 
 or the fearful storm-cloud, the wind or the thunder. In growth of 
 each case there would be Polyonymy, the employment of logy. 
 many names to denote the same thing. In each case, their 
 words would express truthfully the impressions which the 
 phenomena left on their senses, and their 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 darkness ; the dawn came before he was bom, 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 shud- 
 dered 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 
 
 ' In his Lectttres on Language, second fort injustement eL notre avis, car la 
 
 sprfes, 358, Professor Max MuUer asserts faute n'est qu'anx d^faillances de la 
 
 that ' whenever any word, that was at mimoire, qui a gardd le mot mais oubliA 
 
 tirst new metaphorically, is new without le sens. Ce mal arrive tantot pour un 
 
 a clear conception of the steps that led mot, tantdt pour une figure symbolique 
 
 to its original metaphorical meaning, dont on a perdu la clef. Mais parce 
 
 there is danger of mythology ; whenever qu'une repr^entation mal comprise 
 
 those steps are forgotten and artificial d'un ivfeque dehout devant des cattehu- 
 
 steps put in their places, we have mfenes ploughs dans la cuvebaptismale a 
 
 mythology, or, if I may so, we have donne lieu a laligende de saint Nicholas 
 
 diseased language, whether that Ian- ressuscitant les enfants, en faut-il con- 
 
 guage refers to religious or secular clureaussiquelasculpture^taitmalade?' 
 
 interests.' The mythology thus pro- But after all there is no real antagonism 
 
 diiced he terms the bane of antiquity, between the view taken by Professor 
 
 This view is opposed by M. Baudry Max MiiUer and that of M. Baudry. 
 
 in his able paper, De Vlnterpreta- With the former, mythology arises when 
 
 tiirn Mythologiqne- After quoting the the steps which led to a metaphor are 
 
 sentence just cited, ho adds, 'Voila le forgotten ; in other words, from a failure 
 
 langage accus^ de maladie et de r^volte, of memory, not from disease in language. 
 
44 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK brilliance 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 servi- 
 tude. His light and heat might give life or destroy it. Hia 
 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 unspeakable 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 Ms 
 enemies, or a wise chieftain skilled in deep and hidden know- 
 ledge. 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 con- 
 flicts 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 offspring would assume aspects 
 beautiful, strange, or horrible. His course might be brilliant 
 and beneficent, or gloomy, sullen, and capricious. As com- 
 pelled 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 aU whom he loved, he might slay the dawn with 
 his kindling rays, he might scorch the fruits who were his 
 children; he might woo the deep blue sky, the bride of 
 heaven itself, and an inevitable doom might bind his limbs 
 on the blazing wheel for ever and ever. Nor kt this crowd 
 of phrases, all of which have borne their part in the forma- 
 tion of mythology, is there one which could not be used 
 naturally by ourselves to describe the phenomena of the out- 
 ward world, and there is scarcely one perhaps, which has 
 
GEEMS OF EPIC POBTET. 45 
 
 not thus been used by our own poets. Tbere is a beauty in chap. 
 them, which can never grow old or lose its charm. Poets 
 
 of all ages recur to them instinctively in times of the d'eepest 
 
 grief or the greatest joy ; but, in the words of Professor Max 
 
 Miiller, ' it is impossible to enter fuUy into the thoughts and 
 
 feelings which passed through the minds of the early poets 
 
 when they formed names for that far east from whence even 
 
 the early dawn, the sun, the day, their own life seemed to 
 
 spring. A new life flashed up every morning before their 
 
 eyes, and the fresh breezes of the dawn reached them like 
 
 greetings wafted across the golden threshold of the sky from 
 
 the distant lands beyond the mountains, beyond the clouds, 
 
 beyond the dawn, beyond the immortal sea which brought 
 
 us hither ! The dawn seemed to them to open golden gates 
 
 for the sun to pass in triumph ; and while those gates were 
 
 open, their eyes and their minds strove, in their childish 
 
 way, to pierce beyond the limits of this finite world. That 
 
 silent aspect wakened in the human mind the conception of 
 
 the Infinite, the Immortal, the Divine; and the names of 
 
 dawn became naturally the names of higher powers. ' * 
 
 But ia truth we need not go back to that early time for XTse of 
 
 evidence of the fact that language such as this comes natu- ^.bstraet 
 
 ° ° and con* 
 
 rally to mankind. Abstract names are the result of long crete 
 
 thought and effort, and they 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 re- 
 lation with the impressions produced on our minds, that 
 the difference between the temperatures of Baise and Nova 
 Zembla is simply the difference of a few degrees more or less 
 of solar heat, as indicated by Eeaumur or Fahrenheit; that 
 the beautiful tints of morning and evening are being pro- 
 duced 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 
 
 ' Lectures on Language, second series, p. 500. 
 
46 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAlf NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and water, between fluids and solids, between beat and cold. 
 
 r — ' What if tbis knowledge were extended to all ? Would it be 
 
 a gaia if the language of men and women, boys and girls, 
 were brought into strict agreement with scientific facts, and 
 exhibit the exactness of technical definitions ? 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 phenomena 
 of the outward world take no notice of us. ShaU it then be 
 said that there is not One who does take note of the im- 
 pressions 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 themselves ? We cannot rid ourselves 
 of these impressions. They are part of us ; they grow with 
 our growth, apd it is best for us if they receive a wholesome 
 culture. Modem 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 changes of day and night, of light and darkness, 
 of summer and winter, with the passionless equanimity 
 which our philosophy requires ; 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, can- 
 not 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, wUl be none the better 
 if he parts with this feeling for some cold technical expres- 
 sion. 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 wiU never need to make any trespass on 
 the domain of the poet and the condition of thought which 
 
THE SEVEK STAES AND THE SEVEN SAGES. 47 
 
 finds its natural expression in the phrases that once grew up CHAP. 
 
 into a mythology.' r-^ — ■ 
 
 To the primary myths which spring from phrases em- Myths 
 ployed in their original meaning to express the phenomena f^^°^g 
 of the outward world, and to the secondary myths which use of 
 arose from a partial or complete forgetfulness of that mean- ^ords. 
 ing, must be added a third class, which came into existence 
 from the use of equivocal words. K, 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 my- 
 thology. Many of t"he tales belonging to the most compli- 
 cated mythical systems arose simply from the misinterpre- 
 tation of common words. Prom 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 
 {uKpros 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. In India, too, the 
 meaning of riksha was forgotten; but instead of referring 
 the word to bears, they confounded it with risM, and the 
 Seven Stars became the abode of the Seven Poets or Sages, 
 who enter the ark with Menu (Minos), and reappear as the 
 Seven Wise Men of Hellas, and the Seven Champions of 
 Christendom. The same lot, it would seem, befell another 
 name for this constellation. They who spoke of the seven 
 triones had long forgotten that their fathers spoke of the 
 stars as taras (staras) or strewers of light, and converted the 
 bearward into Bootes, the ploughman, while the Teutonic 
 nations, unconscious that they had retained the old root in 
 their word stern or sta/r, likewise embodied a false etymology 
 
 ' See further Max Miiller, ' Compa- ' Lectures on Language; second series, 
 lative Mythology,' Chi^s, ii. 96. 303. 
 
48 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK in wagons or wains. But when we turn to the Arkadian 
 — ^L_ tale, that KaUist6, the mother of the eponymous hero Arkas, 
 was changed into a bear by the jealousy of TL^v^, and im- 
 prisoned iu 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 vah, to convey (the Latia veho), gave 
 a name to the horse, to the flame of fire, and to the rays of 
 the sun. The magic wand of metaphor, without which 
 there can be no growth or expansion of language, soon 
 changed the rays of the sun into horses. But these horses, 
 vaJmi, had yet another epithet, Harit, which signified at first 
 the brilliance produced by fat and ointment. Like the Greek 
 words <Ti/yaX6sis and \nrap6s, applied to things anointed with 
 lard or oil, ghritd-prishthdh (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 Achilleus over 
 the plains of Hion. The Greek carried away the name at an 
 earlier stage ; and the Charites, retaining simply the quali- 
 ties 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. StUl, though even at 
 that early time Aphrodite was the goddess of sensuous 
 bfeauty 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 arjwmi, 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. From the shoulders of Phoibos 
 Lykegen^s, the light-bom, flow the sacred locks over which 
 no razor might pass. On the head of Msos, as on that of 
 ' See further Max MiiUei-, Eig Veda Sanhiid, vol. i. p. 26. 
 
MULTIPLICITY OF NAMES. 49 
 
 Samson,' they become a Palladion invested with a myste- CHAP, 
 rious power. Erom 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, AchiUeus, and Meleagros, of Herakl^s and Theseus, 
 of Artemis, Perseus, and Bellerophon, the poisoned arrows 
 which Philoktfit^s 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 Disinte- 
 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 con- 
 tinued 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 aU sensible phenomena as en- 
 dowed with a conscious life, found utterance in a multi- 
 plicity 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 confounded with words which 
 most nearly resembled them in sound. 
 
 ' Dean Stanley (Lectures on the likeness between the features of Samson 
 Jevmh Church,!. 368) points out the and those of H; 'O"^*.. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
50 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN KATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE DETELOPBMENT OP MTTHOLOGT. 
 
 BOOK When in the Vedic songs we read of Indra, tlie sun-god, as 
 ; _, fighting with Vritra, the dark power who imprisons the rain 
 Elasticity in the storm clond, or with Ahi, the throttling snake, or as 
 cal™peecii. pursuing the beautiful Dahana, of the dawn as the mother 
 or the bride of the sun, or of the sun as slaying the AsA 
 ■ parent from whom he has sprung, we feel at once, that in 
 such language we have an instrument of wonderfal 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 ren- 
 dered 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 understood. 
 Henceforth, the words which had denoted the sun and moon 
 would denote not merely living things but living persons. 
 Prom 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 ex- 
 pressions which had attached a living force to natural objects 
 would remain as the description of personal and anthropo- 
 
LOCALISATION OF MYTHS. 51 
 
 morphous gods. Every word would become an attribute, CHAP. 
 
 and all ideas once grouped round a single object would . ^ - 
 
 brancbi off into distinct personifications. The sun had been 
 the lord of light, the driver of tbe chariot of the day ; he 
 had toiled and laboured for the sons of men, and sunk down 
 to rest, after a hard battle, in the evening. But now the 
 lord of light would be Phoibos Apoll6n, while Helios would 
 remain enthroned in his fiery chariot, and his toils and labours 
 and death-struggles would be transferred to Herakles. 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 
 stiU 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 habi- 
 tation 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. 
 
 But in such a process as this, it is manifest that the men Eesults of 
 amongst whom it sprang up would not be responsible for the ™^'^,'f^^ 
 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 mar- 
 vellous 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 tim 3 
 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 similar debasing influence on the morality and practice of 
 the people. It had started with being a sentiment, not a 
 religion, — a personal conviction, but not a moral belief; 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Evidence 
 of this 
 develope- 
 ment fur- 
 nished by 
 the Eig- 
 Veda. 
 
 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 mythological 
 fabric assumed more stupendous proportions. But the first 
 condition of thought, which regarded every 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 
 passions, mingling with men, and sharing their partialities 
 and their feuds. 
 
 For the proofs of these assertions, we shall look in vain to 
 the earliest Hellenic literature. But the Vedic poems furnish 
 indisputable evidence, that such as this was the origin and 
 growth of Greek and Teutonic mythology. In' these poems, 
 the names of many, perhaps of most, of the Greek gods, 
 indicate natural objects which, if endued with life, have not 
 been reduced to human personality. In them DaphnS is 
 still simply the morning twilight ushering in the splendour 
 of the new-born sun ; the cattle of Helios there are still the 
 hght-coloured clouds which the dawn leads out into the fields 
 of the sky. There the idea of Herakles has not been sepa- 
 rated 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 Eurydike, 
 are exhibited in the form of detached mythical phrases, 
 which furnished for each their germ.^ The analysis may be 
 extended indefinitely : but the conclusion 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 
 
 • In the growth of a higher belief and 
 a purer morality by the side and in spite 
 of the popular mythology, we can see 
 only the operation of the Divine Spirit 
 ou the uiiud and hsiirt of miai. 
 
 * See the analysis of these myths in 
 Professor Max Miiller's essay on ' Com- 
 parative Mythology,' Chips from a 
 German Workshop, vol. ii. 
 
DEGEEES IN THE DEVELOPEMENT OF MYTHS. 5c 
 
 mythology of the Scandinavian and the Teuton. Both ahke chap, 
 
 have grown up chiefly from names which have been grouped . .,J 
 
 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 Eelative 
 independent legends, others have famished the groundwork ^^g°]^ 
 of whole epics, others have remained simply as floating tales myths. 
 whose intrinsic 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 which have not been systematised into coherent narra- 
 tives are the oldest, as not having sufB.ciently 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 
 Herakl^s, while the myth of Herakles has been arrested 
 at a less advanced stage than those of Zeus and ApoUdn. 
 But all alike can be translated back into mythical expressions, 
 and most of these expressions are found in the Vedas with 
 their strict mythical meaning. The marvellous exuberance 
 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, 
 Daphn^, the Pythian and Delian ApoUon, Phaethon and 
 Meleagros, Memn6n and Bellerophon. 
 
 That the form of thought which found utterance in myth- Soiar 
 ical language would lead to the accumulation of a vast ™y'''**- 
 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 
 is reproduced in the Homeric hymn, in which LSto, the power 
 
54 MTTHOLOGT OF THE AKTAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of forgetfalness and sleep, gives birtli to the lord of light in 
 
 I, 
 
 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 Lampetie, the bright and gleam- 
 ing 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 he 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 
 DaphnS, 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 Eurydik^, as the bride of the sun, loved 
 by him and returning his love, yet falling a victim to it, for 
 whether to Daphne or Eurydlk^ 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.' Eos seeks to 
 win Kephalos for herself; and her jealousy of Prokris is at 
 once explained. But again the dewdrops each reflect the 
 sun, and Prokris becomes faithless to her lover, while she 
 grants him her love under a new disguise ; and finally, when 
 her fault has been atoned, she dies by the spear of Artemis 
 (the fiery ray), 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. 
 
 ' In thia legend he goes to the aid of of course, be varied at -n-ill so long as' 
 Amphitryon ; but such details might, the movements are still to westwarcL 
 
MYTHS OF WANDERERS AND BONDMEN. 55 
 
 But, as we have seen, the sun may be spoken of as either CHAP. 
 beneficent or destructive, as toiling for the good of men or ._ .^ — . 
 as slaying them. Sometimes he may sink to rest in quietness Change- 
 and peace, while the moon comes to give him her greeting ^f t^g g^n 
 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 birth- 
 place 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 commonly 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 alter- 
 nations of light and shade are expressed in the sudden 
 exploits and moody suUenness 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 ApoUon, with his kinsman 
 Herakles, serves the Trojan Laomedon ; and so he dwells as 
 a bondman in the house of Admetos. So likewise, as Belle- 
 rophontes, he encounters fearful peril at the bidding of a 
 treacherous host, and dies, like Sarpedon and Memn6n, in a 
 quarrel which is not his own. But nowhere is his unutterable 
 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, 
 
 ' We have here only a reproduction the serpent Fafnir, and carries us to the 
 
 of the snakes which are killed by Hera- throttling snake, who, as Vritra, is 
 
 kles, and the serpent which stings Eury- smitten by the spear of Indra. 
 dike. It reappears in Norse myths as 
 
oG 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 HOOK 
 I. 
 
 dpvelope- 
 ments of 
 solar 
 legends. 
 
 I 'ngin of 
 1 hese 
 <lpvelope- 
 ments. 
 
 which stung to death the fair Eurydik^. fiis 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 
 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 lole 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 Herakl^s that the perfect truth of 
 the old mythical language gave rise more especially to that 
 apparently strange and perplexing meaning which repelled 
 and disgusted even the poets and philosophers of Greece. 
 Pindar refuses to believe that any god could be a sensuaUst 
 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 Herakl^s fights 
 with poisoned arrows, and leaves them as his bequest to 
 Philoktet^s. 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 ac- 
 counts 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 
 
REPULSIVE ASPECTS OF MYTHS. ht 
 
 land slie yields her special harvest of fruits and flowers, of CHAP, 
 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 repulsive that myth must become which, 
 in its primitive form, only told how 
 
 The sunlight clasps the earth, 
 And the moonbeams kiss the sea." 
 
 The same explanation removes the mystery of the even 
 greater degradation to which the Hellenic mythology reduces 
 Zeus himself, the supreme father of gods and men. He who 
 should be the very type of all purity and goodness becomes 
 the very embodiment of headstrong lust and passion, while 
 the holiness of the lord of life and light is transferred to 
 ApoU6n 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 slugs how 
 
 Nothing in the world is single, 
 
 All things by a law divine 
 In another's being mingle, 
 
 and how 
 
 The mountains kiss high heayen, 
 
 so Ouranos looked down on Gaia, and brooded over her in 
 his deep, unfailing, life-giving love. But these are phrases 
 which wiU 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. 
 
 The same process which insured this degradation insured at Tendency 
 the same time the local boundaries which were assigned to ^dj^'^eai'' 
 mythical heroes or their mythical exploits. When the ad- incidents. 
 ventures of Zeus 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 ApoUon 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 
 
 ' Shelley, Love's Philosophy. 
 
58 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Vitality of 
 the mytho- 
 poeie 
 faculty. 
 
 Constant 
 demand 
 for new 
 mythical 
 narratives 
 
 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 for ever, the form of thought which produced the old 
 mythical language had not altogether died away. Showing 
 itself sometimes in directly allegorical statement of historical 
 fact, sometimes lq similar descriptions of natural objects or 
 of the incidents of common life, it stiU 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 ia the Hesiodic 
 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.' 
 If again, the mythology of the Homeric poets, as handed 
 down to us, points to an age long anterior to their own, yet 
 the mythopceic 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 aU visible things, would suggest 
 an infinity of details illustrating each original' idea. The 
 multiplication of miracles and maivels 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 Herakles owed their 
 existence. The mere fact of their human personification 
 
 ' Max Miiller, ' Comparative Mythology,' Chi^s from a German Workshop, 
 ii. 64, et seq. 
 
AETIPICIAL MYTHS. 59 
 
 insured tlie growtli of innumerable fictions. If Zeus had CHAP, 
 tlie form and the passions of men, then the conditions gf 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 over- 
 thrown. 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.' Here there 
 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 H^re against 16, or Semele, or Alkm^n^ 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 idea of his toil and suffering 
 for a master weaker than himself; nothing must be told 
 of Athene which would rather caU up associations of the 
 laughter-loving Aphrodite. 
 
 And, finally, there would be a constant and irresistible Transmu- 
 temptation to sever historical incidents and characters from ^^^-^"^ °^ 
 
 '^ _ names 
 
 the world of reality, and bear them into the cloudland of my- really 
 thology. Round every hero who, after gi-eat promise, died ^^ °™* ° 
 in the spriag-time of his life, or on whom the yoke of an 
 unworthy tyrant lay heavy, would be grouped words and ex- 
 pressions which belonged to the myth of the brilliant yet 
 quickly dying sun. The tale of AchiUeus 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 inter- 
 woven with images borrowed from the myths of a bygone age, 
 
 ' Hence the mythical Prometheus. 
 
60 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book: 
 
 I. 
 
 Ground- 
 work of 
 the mytho- 
 logy of 
 Northern 
 Europe. 
 
 as to conceal for ever any fragments of history wliicli may lie 
 beneath tkem. Names apparently historical have been intro- 
 duced into the Nibelungen Lied which are not to be found 
 in the Bdda. The great Theodoric at Verona is transmuted 
 into Dietrich of Bern; while Siegbert, the Austrasian king, 
 and the infamous Brunehault' have taken the place of Sigurd 
 and Brynhild. 
 
 But if the mythical phrases which gave birth to the legends 
 of Herakles, Endymion, and Orpheus, of Phaethon, Meleagros, 
 and Bellerophontes, spoke of the daily course of the sun, 
 there were others which told of alternating seasons. For 
 the character of 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 teU rather of brilliance than of gloom, of hfe 
 rather than decay, of constant renovation rather than pro- 
 longed 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 
 woiild 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 
 cup 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 teU of a fair maiden, wrapped in a dream- 
 less slumber, from which the touch of one brave knight alone 
 could rouse her ; it would sing of her rescue, her betrothal. 
 
 ' In this instance 'the coincidence 
 between myth and history is so great 
 that it has induced some Euhemeristic 
 critics to derive the whole legend of the 
 Nibelunge from Austrasian histojy, and 
 to make the murder of Siegbert by 
 Brunehault the basis of the murder of 
 Sifrlt or Sigurd by Brynhild. Fortunate- 
 ly it is easier to answer these German 
 than the old Greek Euhemerists, for we 
 find in contemporary history that Jor- 
 
 nandes, who wrote his history at least 
 twenty years before the death of the 
 Austrasian Siegbert, knew already the 
 daughter of the mythic Sigurd, Swau- 
 hild, who was bom, according to the 
 Edda, after the murder of his father, 
 and afterwards killed by Jormunrek, 
 whom the poem has again historicised 
 in Hermanicus, a Gothic king of tlie 
 fourth century.' — Max Miiller, ' Compa- 
 rative Mythology,' Chips, ^e. vol. ii. 112. 
 
MYTHS OF SUMMER AND WINTER. 61 
 
 and lier desertion, as tlie sun, -who IbrougM back the spring, CHAP, 
 forsook her for the gay and wanton summer. It woi^d 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 
 wofiil tragedy, whose long sorrow called forth a deep and 
 intense sympathy which we, perhaps, can scarcely realise, is 
 faintly indicated in the beautiful hymn to DemStSr; 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 Yolsung 
 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 Muller has shown, 
 with a force and clearness which leaves no room for doubt.' 
 Like AchiUeus, 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 
 
 ' 'Comparative Mythology,' p. 108, MytTmlogij, vol. i. pp. 108; 113. Mr. 
 
 &c. The story of Sigurd and Brynhild Thorpe is aware of the resemblance of 
 
 comes up again in the legends of Ragnar the Northern mythology to that of the 
 
 and Thora, and again of Ragnar and Greeks, but he seems scarcely to have 
 
 Aslauga. Like Brynhild, Thora with understood its extent. In his explana- 
 
 the earth's treasure is guarded by a tions he inclines (vol. i. p. -122, &c.) to 
 
 dragon whose coils encircle her castle ; the opinion that real historical events 
 
 and only the man who slays the dragon hafe given rise to myths, a conclusion 
 
 can win her for his bride. But Ragnar which Mr. Grote refuses to admit. But 
 
 Lodbrog, who so wins her, is still the his method throws no light on the cause 
 
 son of Sigurd. Thora dies, and Ragnar of these resemblances between the my- 
 
 at length woos the beautiful Kraka, thological systems of nations utterly 
 
 whom, however, he is on the point of . severed from one another ; still less 
 
 deserting for the daughter of Osten, does it show why they should in each 
 
 when Kraka reveals herself as the case assume their particular form, and 
 
 child of Sigurd and Brynhild. The why it is that they could have assumed 
 
 myth has been weakened in its ex- no other. In this Teutonic story Sigurd 
 
 tension ; but the half consciousness of and Ragnar are each unfaithful to their 
 
 its origin is betrayed in the very betrothed brides : in the "Welsh legend 
 
 names and incidents of the story, even the faithlessness of Guenevere to Arthur 
 
 as, in the Iliad, the tears which Eos reproduces the desertion of Menelaos 
 
 sheds on the death of Memn6n are by Helen, who finds her Lancelot in 
 
 ' morning dew.' See Thorpe's Northern Paris. 
 
62 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Fafnir, and wins back the treasure of the Niflungar, -while 
 
 I. 
 
 he rouses Brynhild from her long slumber.' This treasure 
 is the power of vegetation, which has been lulled to sleep bj 
 the mists and clouds of winter ; the seeds which refuse to 
 grow while Dem^ter sorrows for her child Persepton^. The 
 desertion of Brynhild is the advance of spring iuto 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 heavUy on him, darker and more woful than 
 that which weighed down the toiling Herakl^s ; 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. Gudrum 
 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. Tet Gunnar, her 
 brother, cannot rest ; thfe wrath of the cold has been roused, 
 and he resolves to slay the bright and beautiful Sigurd. The 
 deed is done by Gunnar's brethren — the cloud, the wind, and 
 the storm; and Brynhild, filled again with her early love, 
 lies down to die with him who had forsaken her.' 
 
 ' The same myth, as we might ex- scarcely in point. The manifestations 
 
 pect, forms the subject of several of the of Moloch, Chemosh, and Milcom, maj 
 
 ' Sculptured Stones ' of Scotland. ' The originate in such a feeling ; but w 
 
 legend of a dragon holding a maiden in cannot at once assign a moral and a 
 
 thrall until he is slain by a valiant mythological origin to those of Zens and 
 
 knight, occurs more than once.' —Burton, Odin, Thor and Vishnu. If Zeus and 
 
 History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 150. Odin were once the heaven or the sky, 
 
 ^ Itis but another form of the jealousy then their human personification must, 
 
 of E6s and Prokris. It finds its most as we have seen, be followed by the 
 
 tender expression in the grief of Oinone developement of their special mythical 
 
 for the treachery of Paris. attributes and history, and could have 
 
 ' Mr. Dasent, who has very ably been followed by no others. The idea 
 traced the intimate connection of the of the mighty sun toiling for weak and 
 mythological systems of the Aryan race, worthless men would inevitably be de- 
 seems, like Mr. Gladstone, to attribute veloped into the strong Herakles, brave 
 their repulsive aspects to a moral cause, or coarse, grave or even comic, virtuous 
 His reasons, however, are very different, or immoral. The adventures of Zeus 
 The incessant display of the Hellenic may be ' tinged with all the lust and 
 and Teutonic gods he attributes to a guile which the wickedness of the 
 consciousness on the part of their natural man, planted on a hot-bed of 
 worshippers that they were subjective, iniquity, is capable of conceiving ; ' but 
 and hence non-substantial. He con- we shall scarcely trace them to a re- 
 trasts rightly the 'restlessness 'of a false ligious perversion, if we accept the 
 religion, 'when brought face to face with conclusions which a comparison of 
 the quiet dignitiy and majesty of the' Greek mythology with the earliest Vedic 
 true; but his instances appear to be literatui'e forces upon us. The main 
 
HOMERIC MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 63 
 
 Pkrases similar to those whicli gave birth to the legends CFAP. 
 of the Volsungs and the Mbelungs lie at the root ^i the . _ - 
 
 epics to which Greek genius has imparted such wonderful Ground- 
 consistency and beauty. Yet it can scarcely be too often ^"e'^, hq. 
 repeated, that these poets adopted as much of the popular meric' my- 
 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 AchUleus, 
 it appears not less manifest, that the idea of Oinon^ and of her 
 relations to Paris could not have dawned for the first time 
 on the mind of a later age. It was not part of the poet's 
 design to furnish a complete mythology ; and the Iliad ex- 
 hibits only that process of disintegration which was per- 
 
 difference between the adventures of 
 Odin and Zeus is that, while those of 
 the latter are chiefly erotic, the former 
 involve the exhibition of gigantic phy- 
 sical strength, — a distinction at once 
 accounted for by differences of soil and 
 climate.- — See Dasent, Popular Tales 
 from the Norse, Introduction, p. lix. 
 
 Whether the Beast epic of the North 
 had, or had not, its origin in a Nature- 
 worship, Mr. Dasent appears to include 
 in the various Beast epics of the Aryan 
 races some instances which seem not tb 
 belong to them. Thus, as illustrating 
 the transformation of men into beasts, 
 he mentions Eurfipe and her bull, Leda 
 and her swan — {Popular Tales, p. cxix). 
 If it be an illustration, it accounts for 
 all such transformations : but it does so 
 in a way which is completely subversive 
 of any hypothesis of Nature-worship. 
 Such myths may all be traced to mere 
 forgetfulness of the original meaning of 
 words. In the Vedas the image of a 
 bull is very commonly employed as ex- 
 pressing the power and speed of the 
 sun, and this image reappears in the 
 bull which bears Europe, the broad 
 spreading light, to the Western land. 
 Thus also, as we have seen, the seven 
 shiners become seven bears, and the 
 seven stars are converted into wains. 
 A similar confusion between words so 
 nearly alike in sound and origin as 
 \ivKos, shining, and Kvkos, a wolf, so 
 named from the glossiness of its coat, 
 produced the myth that Lykaon and 
 
 his children were turned into wolves, 
 and probably laid the foundations of a 
 superstition which has, from time to 
 time, raged with disastrous fury. See 
 Lecky, History nf the Bise and Influence 
 of Rationalism in Europe, vol. i. ch. i., 
 and the article 'Witchcraft,' in the 
 Dictionary of Science, JAterature, and 
 Art. But if the terrible delusion of 
 Lykanthropy arose from the mere use 
 of an equivocal word, we cannot cite 
 such legends as evidence in favour of 
 Dr. Dasent's hypothesis of a primaeval 
 belief that 'men under certain conditions 
 could take the shape of animals.' That 
 this belief prevailed in the time of 
 Herodotos, cannot be denied ; but in the 
 Iliad and Odyssey the power of assum- 
 ing different forms is reserved to the 
 gods only. A distinction may, however, 
 be fairly drawn between the involuntary 
 transformations of men in Norse mytho- 
 logy, and the genuine Beast epic, which 
 accurately describes the relations of 
 brute animals with one another, and of 
 which Dr. Dasent speaks as ' full of the 
 liveliest traits of nature.' But this very 
 fact seems to prove conclusively, that 
 this Beast epic never had anything to 
 do with Nature-worship. The Egyptian 
 who worshipped Apis was not likely 
 to appreciate most keenly the character 
 of the animal whom he reverenced. 
 Had Norsemen ever worshipped bulls, 
 bears, and wolves, they wo'dd not have 
 drawn their portraits with such nice 
 discrimination. 
 
64 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK petually 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 leadiag 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 
 Telling 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 Hion, He is beautiful, he 
 is brave, and he is fated to bring ruin on his parents: In 
 these characteristics he resembled Perseus, Telephos, Oidi- 
 pous, and Theseus ; and at once the mass of floating phrases, 
 which were always at hand to furnish germs for new myths, 
 fastened on Paris until the idea which had called him into 
 being is well nigh lost to sight. It is impossible to read the 
 story of Paris as given by ApoUodoros without perceiving the 
 double character thus assigned to the seducer of Helen. His 
 name, Alexandres, may certainly have borne at first a meaning 
 quite opposite to that which it afterwards assumed ; but the 
 modification of his character had already been effected when 
 Paris was described as the helper of men.' Henceforth the 
 story assigns to him attributes which cannot be explained hy 
 the idea of Night. Doomed to destroy his parents, the babe 
 is exposed on the slopes of Ida, like Oidipous on the slopes 
 of Kithair6n, as the rays of the newly risen sun rest level on 
 the mountain side. The child is nourished by a bear, but 
 the bear carries us at once to the legend of the Seven Stars, 
 and to the confusion of the name of the sun-god with that of 
 the wolf. He grows up beautiful in form ; and if his love is 
 
 ' According to ApoUodoros, vol. iii. to describe him as the enemy of man, 
 
 11, 5, he is so named as aiding the as aAeff/taicos denotes one who keeps off 
 
 herdsmen, or more strictly, the flocks, evil, and a\e^iyaii.os signifies one who 
 
 against robbers. But it is possible shuns or keeps off marriage, 
 that word itself might have been used 
 
PARIS AND OINOnS. 0-") 
 
 sensual, so also in many myths is that of Herakles.' If, again, CHAP. 
 
 after the seduction of Helen, his former bravery gives place to < ^ — - 
 
 sullen or effeminate inaction, this feature only marks more 
 curiously the affinity between the later conception of Paris, 
 and the original idea of Meleagros and Achilleus. If he is 
 capricious, so are they ; and each sits burnishing his golden 
 armour, in his tent or his secret chamber, mating ready for 
 the fight, yet doing nothing. If, again, it is by the weapon 
 of Paris that AchUleus is to fall in the western gates,^ the 
 arrow which slays Paris is drawn from the quiver of HeraMes. 
 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, Oinon^ stands before him. With a soft 
 and tender grief she gazes on £he face which had once filled 
 the whole earth for her with beauty. She sees his life-blood 
 flowing away ; but though she is of the bright race of the gods, 
 and 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 as the deadly mistletoe slew 
 the bright and beautiful Baldur. But with the death of him 
 who once was called Alexandros, the light of her life is 
 gone. Paris rests in the sleep of death, and Oinone lies 
 down to die by his side.^ 
 
 ' The term yvvaiiiairlis, as applied to guage, second series, ch. xi. But this 
 
 Paris, only translates in a somewhat passage of the Iliad would, if taken with 
 
 strengthened form a common epithet of this strictness, reduce Phoibos himself 
 
 Indra and Krishna, who, like the son of to the ranks of the dark powers ; nor 
 
 Priam, are 'the lovers of the girls,' 'the must it be forgotten that in the great 
 
 husbands of the brides.' The idea conflict the lord of life and light takes 
 
 would not fail to assume a sensual part with Hektor and his followers 
 
 aspect when the actors of the tale -were against the briglit and short-lived Achil- 
 
 invested with human personality. leus. The original idea of Paris is 
 
 ^ Professor Max Miiller, under the certainly not solar : but as he comes 
 
 impression that I had sought ' to show before us in the Biad, he exhibits many 
 
 that Paris belongs to the class of bright features which belong to purely solar 
 
 solar heroes,' lays stress on this fact, as heroes, and which went far to transmute 
 
 pointing to an opposite conclusion. ' If his character in later mythology, 
 
 the germ of the Iliad' he adds ' is the ' The parallelism seems complete, 
 
 battle between the solar and nocturnal while, if we bear in mind the flexible 
 
 powers, Paris surely belongs to the character of the earliest mythical gods, 
 
 latter, and he whose destiny it is to on which Mr. H. H. Wilson and Mr. 
 
 kUl Achilles in the western gates, Max Miiller have both laid great stress, 
 
 jf^oTi rif 'ore keV ire Udpts /col *oT/3os there is very little to perplex us in this 
 
 'AtiJaAoji' modification in the character of the 
 
 ea-e\hvi6yT'a\4(TaiiivM'SKam(mriKn<riv, seducer. This process, which must 
 
 could hardly have been himself of solar inevitably follow the disintegration of 
 
 or " vernal lineage." •—Lectures on Lan- '"y*^' ^« ^^^^ ^"^ ^"^^ S^™ '"^ ^^^ 'io'iMe 
 
 VOL. I. P 
 
66 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAX NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Com- 
 parison of 
 Greek and 
 Norse 
 mythology. 
 
 The Iliad is, in short, the Volsung tale, as wrought out by 
 the poets of a bright and fertile land.' Yet, if the harsh 
 climate of the north modified the Norse mythology, it also 
 moulded indefinitely the national character, and the two 
 acted and reacted on each other. Bred up to fight with 
 nature in a constant battle for existence, the Northman 
 became fearless, honest, and truthful, ready to smite and 
 ready to forgive, shrinking not from pain himself and care- 
 less of inflicting it on others. Witnessing everywhere the 
 struggle of conflicting forces, he was tempted to look on life 
 as a field for warfare, and to own no law for those who were 
 
 meaning attached to the name of Orthros, 
 who, as representing Vritra, would be 
 the enemy of gods and men, while, as 
 embodying the idea of daybreak, he 
 might readily assume the benignant 
 aspect of solar heroes. And, finally, 
 the idea of treachery is as naturally 
 suggested by the course of the sun, as 
 the idea of his beneficence, his toil, his 
 conflicts, and his early death. The 
 sun forsakes the dawn for the glare of 
 noonday, or the fair and blushing spring 
 for the more brilliant and flaunting 
 summer : and thus far the Trojan Paris 
 is simply the counterpart of Sigurd or 
 of Theseus. 
 
 ' 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 imparted 
 to it by the priests), the supposition 
 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, History of 
 Christianity, vol. i. p. 13. Compare 
 also the Surtr of the Icelandic mytho- 
 logy, Dasent's 'Norsemen in Iceland,' 
 Oxford Essays for 1858, p. 198. 
 
 The groundwork of the Volsunga 
 Saga, of the tales of Helen, Alkestis, 
 Sarpedfln, 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. Even in their worst 
 aspects, 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- 
 logy. In fact, the image of Demet^r 
 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 Aehillens, 
 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 
 Herakles; and accordingly there were 
 versions which affirmed that it was 
 ApoUon 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 DSmet^r for 
 Persephon^. In others, he remains four 
 months with Hades, four with AphroditS, 
 while the remaining four, being at his 
 own disposal, he chooses to spend with 
 the latter. But the myth had been not 
 merely corrupted: it was poisoned by 
 the touch of oriental sensuality. In 
 the VoUung tale, Sigurd dies as pure as 
 lives the Hellenic Phoibos: in the 
 eastern myth, from Adonis springs 
 Priapos. The mourning of the women for 
 Tammuz might well rouse the righteous 
 indignation of the Hebrew prophet. 
 The hymn of Dem^tSr would have called 
 from him a rebuke less severe. 
 
TRADITIONS OF NORTHERN EUROPE. 67 
 
 not bound witli him in ties of blood and friendsbip. Hence CHAPi 
 tbere was impressed on biln a stern and fierce character, ex- -■ 
 
 aggerated 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 m.ind of a less tumultuous age must be 
 simply distasteful 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. Mr. Dasent, who 
 accounts for the immoral or repulsive details of Greek 
 mythology entirely on moral and religious grounds, has 
 consistently assigned a purpose not less didactic to the 
 mythology of the North. In the Volsung tale he sees simply 
 men and women, whose history had never grown out of con- 
 ditions not belonging to human life. It speaks to him of 
 love and hate, of ' all that can foster passion or beget revenge. 
 Ill-assorted marriages . . . envyings, jealousies, hatreds, 
 murders, all the works of the natural man, combine together 
 to form that marvellous story which begins with a curse, the 
 curse of iU-gotten gold ; and ends with a curse, a widow's 
 curse, which drags down all on whom it falls, and even her 
 own flesh and blood, to a certain doom.' ' This picture of 
 mythology, the composition of which has been so strangely 
 and fuUy laid bare by comparative mythologists, is no fair 
 representation of the Northman. 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, in his eagerness to defend their domestic 
 morality, Mr. Dasent appears to be hurried into something 
 like injustice to the society of the Greek heroic ages. These 
 ages, to him, are polished and false,'' a period in which 
 woman was a toy, whereas she was a helpmeet to the 
 Teuton, a time in which men lacked in general the feelings 
 of natural affection. If the words refer to a later age, the 
 
 ' Jbpa?«r Tales from the Norse, introduction, Ixi. ' Hid. Issdr. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Special 
 character- 
 istics of 
 Greek 
 mythology. 
 
 BOOK comparison is scarcely relevant ; and of the Homeric society 
 — ^ — . the picture is scarcely true. The feelings of friendship are 
 even exaggerated in AchiUeus ; the pure freedom of domestic 
 equality is brought out with winning lustre in Nausika^ and 
 Penelope. 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 a 
 forgotten language. W-e 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 mournful wail of the waving pine-branches, 
 looking on the stem strife of frost and fire, witnessing year 
 by year the death of the short-lived 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 reflection 
 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. The Greek, dwelling in sunnier regions, where the 
 interchange of summer and winter brought with it no feelings 
 of overpowering gloom, exhibited in his words and songs the 
 happiness which he experienced in himself. 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 likeness 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,' but the sun- 
 god invested with a human personality. But (with whatever 
 
 ' The common mythology of the 
 whole Aryan race goes against the 
 eupposition that ApoUfin and Ath^n^ 
 owe their existence to man-worship and 
 woman-worship respectively. Athfenfe, 
 originally nothing more than the dawn, 
 was to the Greek am embodiment of 
 
 moral and intellectnal greatness. The 
 absence or di-terioration of the former 
 converts Athene into the Kolchian 
 Medeia. The latter type, when still 
 further degraded, becomes the Latin 
 Canidia, a close approximation to the 
 ordinary witch of modern superstition. 
 
COMMOIf ARYAN THADITIONS. 69 
 
 modifications caused by climate and circumstances) both CHAP. 
 
 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 gross- 
 ness of which they were not (as we have seen), and they could 
 not be, responsible. 
 
 But if the mythology of the Greeks is in substance and in Full de- 
 developement the same as that of the North, they differed '^^^ 
 widely in their later history. That of the Greeks passed of Greek 
 through the stages of growth, maturity, and decay, without j^gy, 
 any violent external repression.^ 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 
 beUef 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 
 
 ' In his analysis of the Volsung tale, sequence of motives and incidents is 
 
 Mr. Dasent very ably traces the marks such as might well perplex or even 
 
 left by the national character on the baffle the reader. It is impossible to 
 
 Norse mythology ; but he scarcely brings know what is coming. The ordinary 
 
 into sufficient prominence the fact that conditions of society wholly fail to 
 
 after all it was only modification, not explain the actions and purposes of the 
 
 invention. Sigurd is the very reverse chief actors in the story, and we are 
 
 of the orientalised Adonis ; but the in- left at a loss to know how such n 
 
 termediate link is supplied by the tangled web of inscrutable adventures 
 
 Hellenic Phoibos. In describing Sigurd, could ei^er have been woven by the 
 
 Mr. Dasent, perhaps uncoiiseiously, falls fancy of man. The key to the mytho- 
 
 into the Homeric phrases which speak logy of Greece also unlocks that of the 
 
 of the glorious sun-god. His beautiful North. The mystery is substantially 
 
 limbs, his golden hair, the piercing eye explained ; but the discovery involves 
 
 of which none dared to meet the gaze, the conclusion that the groundwork of 
 
 are all characteristics of the Homeric the story is not peculiar to the Norse, 
 
 Apoll6n. To these are undoubtedly and that its special forms of cause and 
 
 added the hardier virtues of the North, effect do not therefore represent the 
 
 which may to us make the picture ordinary motives and conditions of their 
 
 more attractive, and which appear in social life. 
 
 some degree to soften in Mr. Dasent's ^ Grote, History of Greece, part j. 
 
 eyes the harshness and extreme intricacy ch. xvli. 
 of the Northern mythology. The 
 
70 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Arrested 
 growth of 
 Northern 
 mytho- 
 logy. 
 
 worshipped, still less would this be the case with the poets 
 and philosophers of later times. To .ffischylos, Zeus was 
 the mere name' 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 conTiction of His eternity and His righteous- 
 ness." If from his own moral perception Pindar refused to 
 credit charges of gluttony or unnatural crime 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, Ehadamanthys, and Aiakos.' 
 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 witii the Greek, the mythology of Northern 
 Europe was arrested almost in its middle growth. After a 
 fierce struggle, Christianity was forced upon the reluctant 
 Northmen long before poets could rise among them to whom 
 the sensuality or ferocity of their mythology would be re- 
 pulsive or revolting, long before philosophers 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 -S]sir, the deities 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 ;* by the latter,- 
 the celestial hierarchy became malignant spirits riding on 
 the stormcloud and th^ whirlwind. If these gods had some- 
 times been beneficent before, they were never beneficent now. 
 All that was beautiful and good in the older belief had been 
 
 > Agamemnon^ 160. 
 
 ' (M. T^r. 903. 
 
 ' Plato, Qofgias, Ixxx. 
 
 * This idea Mr. Dasent seems to 
 regard exclueively as a characteristic 
 of Teutonic mythology. {Popular Tales 
 of the i/orsa, introdviotion, Ivii, Ixxv.) 
 
 It seems to be emhodied in the JEschy- 
 lean legend of Prometheus, although 
 other versions accounted for his deliver- 
 ance without the deposition of Zeus. 
 
 ' Grote, History of Greece, vol. i. 
 p. 264. 
 
DEGRADATION OF MYTHICAL BEINGS. 71 
 
 transferred to the Christian ideas of chivalry and saintliness, CHAP 
 
 which furnished a boundless field and inexhaustible nourish- -_ — ^ 
 
 ment for the most exuberant inventive faculty.' 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.^ 
 With Thor and Odin the transmutation was more rapid and 
 complete; and Prigga 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 unlawful knowledge 
 paved the way for that persecution of a fictitious witchcraft 
 which has stamped an indelible disgrace on mediseval 
 Christendom.' 
 
 So marvellous is that chronicle of heathen mythology, as I-iglit 
 it lies spread out before us in the light of the ancient speech, toth by°° 
 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 swaUow — 
 a standing miracle without purpose and without meaning. 
 To the earliest records of Aryan literature is due the dis- 
 covery that the vehement accusations of Christian contro- 
 versialists and the timid explanations of heathen apolo- 
 
 ' Grote, History of Cfreece, vol. i. p. Some valuable remarks on this subject 
 
 628. M. de Montalembert's History, may be found in Mr. Price's preface to 
 
 Les Moines d^ Occident, is a storehouse Warton's History of English Poetry. 
 
 of legends belonging to the ideal of (P. 57). It was this idea of a knowledge 
 
 saintliness. He appears, however, to gainedunlawfuUy from evil spiritswhieh, 
 
 treat some of them rather in the spirit of far more perhaps than a habit of sub- 
 
 Euemeros. See Edinburgh Beview, No. mission to church authority, impeded or 
 
 ccxxxii., Oct. 1861, p. 399. repressed all researches in physical 
 
 ' Grote, History of Grreeoe, i. 96. science. Gerbert of Ravenna (Syl- 
 
 ' See Mr. Dasent's sketch of the vester II.) and Roger Bacon alike 
 
 origin and developement of the modern acquired the reputation of dabbling in 
 
 ideas of witchcraft, Popular Tales from diabolical lore. In the time of Galileo, 
 
 the Norse, introduction, p. cvii., &c., and the accusers confined themselves to the 
 
 the more detailed account of Mr. Lecky, simple charge of an imlawful use of 
 
 in his History of the Rise and biflumce human intellect. 
 of 'Rationalism in Europe, vol. i., eh. i. 
 
72 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIOJfS. 
 
 BOOK gists were alike unfounded,' that tlie impersonations of the 
 
 ,1 — . 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 hope- 
 less that they should understand. To the language of the 
 early Vedic hymns we owe our knowledge that the develope- 
 ment of such a mythology was 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, from which 
 the purer feeling of later times would instinctively recoil. 
 stages in Step bjs step this analysis of mythology leads us back to 
 of'iny"^' what would seem to be the earliest condition of the human 
 thical mind, and from that onwards through the mythopceic age to 
 
 the philosophy of historical Greece. On the general cha- 
 racter 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.^ 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 same existence to all out- 
 ward objects, he did so, as we have seen, without drawing 
 any distinctions between consciousness and personality. 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 
 
 , 'Grote, History of Greece, part i. p. Ixrii. Max Miiller, ' Semitic Monothe- 
 ch. i. p. 15. ism;' Chips from a German Workshop, 
 
 ' Dasent, Norse Tales, introduction, vol. i. 
 
FETISH-WOESHIP. 73 
 
 •cotild believe in a malignant yet unconscious and nonsentient CHAP, 
 power residing in stones and rocks, there would at once be _ " - 
 developed a fetish worship, the most degrading and the most 
 hopeless, which, if expanded at all, could issue only in a 
 polytheism of devils. Tet 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 pos- 
 sible 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 grad- 
 ually awakened, the consciousness 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 continue to look upon them as beings con- 
 dem.ned 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 posses- 
 sion of the mind.' But it is not less clear that such a con- 
 viction 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 continue to gain 
 strength. In other words, the foundation of their moral 
 belief would at once be distinct from the foundation of their 
 future mythology. StiU, except to the thoughtful few, the 
 personality of the great objects of the natural world would 
 be more and more exalted, even while it assumed more and 
 more a strictly human form. The result would be a poly- 
 theism of anthropomorphous gods, in which the chief divini- 
 
 ' This state might also easily pass For the parallel growth of Hebrew 
 
 into Eastern dualism. The developement idolatry with that of the purer religion 
 
 of the Hellenic mind was more whole- of Jehovah, see Kalisoh, Historical and 
 
 some. The prevalence of evil never led it Critical Commentary on the Old Testa- 
 
 to regard evil as co-ordinate with good, ^nent, ' Leviticus,' part i. ch. xxiii. p. 380t 
 
74 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Mytho- 
 logy not 
 strictly a 
 religious 
 telief. 
 
 ties would be the heaven and the sun.' To the former, as 
 ^ corering and shielding all things, would be assigned those 
 attributes which almost make us look on the Olympian Zeus 
 and the Teutonic AKadir as faint reflections of him who has 
 made and loves mankind.' But neither for the majesty of 
 Zeus or Odin, nor for the unsuUied purity of Phoibos 
 ApoUon, of Athen^, or of Artemis, need we look further than 
 to mythical phrases, which spoke once of Dyaus, Varuna, or 
 Indra. 
 
 So might a mythology the most intricate and . a moral 
 belief entirely independent of it, go on side by side. Tor 
 the former had not sprung up from any religious conviction ; 
 and the latter might advance beyond the stage of infancy, 
 before the corruption of the true mythical speech led to the 
 multiplication of mythological narratives. In the absence 
 of any historical sense or any written literature, these tales 
 would be eagerly welcomed and disseminated without a donbt 
 of their truth. But the national character might exhibit 
 many good and noble qualities, even while that of its 
 greatest mythical heroes stood indefinitely lower. The 
 moody sullenness, the implacable passion, and the ferocious 
 cruelty of Achilleus ; the capricious jealousy, idleness, and 
 activity of Meleagros, are well-nigh incredible ; nor is there 
 any evidence either that those qualities were common 
 amongst the Greeks in the heroic age, or that they attracted 
 any great admiration or esteem. It can be no subject of 
 regret to learn that they were as little responsible for the 
 moral standard of Achilleus and Meleagros as for that of 
 Zeus and Herakles, and that the idea of each originated as 
 little with them as the conception of Odin and Baldur, of 
 Sigurd and Gunnar, originated in the mind of the Teuton. 
 So might the Spirit of God work in the human heart, even 
 while a vast fabric of mythology was assuming proportions 
 more and more colossal and systematic ; so, in spite of 
 sensual gods, the thought of whom made the poet shudder, 
 
 ' It is easy also to see how a suh- 
 stantial conviction of the Divine Unity 
 might co-exist with the worship of his 
 manifestation under the image of fire, 
 (he Yedic Agni, Ignis. This is again a 
 
 belief founded on the sun as the all- 
 seeing eye of day. 
 
 * Dasent, ' Norseman in Iceland,' Ox- 
 ford Essays for 1868, p. 187. 
 
CHAEACTEE OF MYTHICAL HEEOES. 7'^ 
 
 migM the real faith both of the poet and his hearers in an CHAP. 
 
 unseen Father continue substantially unshaken. So, while 
 he cared not to avow any disbelief in mythical stories of 
 Mobe or Prometheus, Sokrates might tell of One who made 
 men and watches over them for their good, and by the aid of 
 that unseen God strive to keep his hands clean and his heart 
 pure. 
 
 IV. 
 
76 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 GREEK CONCEPTIONS OP MYTHICAL TEADITION. 
 
 BOOK The exuberant growth of myths from a few roots ex- 
 ■[• . pressing originally mere bodily sensations or wants is 
 Gradual almost less astonishittg than the inability of the several 
 ^^Jf°"f Aryan nations to see through the thin disguise which dif- 
 historieal ferences of name and local colouring had thrown over 
 to rnytM^- legends identical in all essential characteristics. In India, 
 cal beings. ^}^q qI^^ phrases retained iu a high degree their primitive 
 significance ; but then these phrases remained comparatively 
 barren stocks. In the West, where their meaning was more 
 or less forgotten, the several sayings gave birth to indepen- 
 dent legends which were all regarded as genuine and 
 veracious history. The names Theseus, Perseus, Oidipous, 
 had all been mere epithets of one and the same being ; but 
 when they ceased to be mere appellatives, these creations of 
 mythical speech were regarded not only as different persons, 
 but as beings in no way connected with each other. Poli- 
 . tical alliances were made, and nationals quarrels excited or 
 appeased, by appeals to the exploits or the criuies of mythical 
 heroes. The Persian King, before setting foot on European 
 soil, secured, it is said, the neutrality of Argos by claiming 
 a national affinity with the son of Dana6.' On the eve of 
 the fight at Plataiai, the Tegeatans did not scruple to waste 
 precious moments in support of a claim founded on the 
 exploits of the fabulous Echemos, while the Athenians held 
 that they rebutted this claim by bringing up their ancient 
 kindness to the banished Herakleidai.'' The tale of Othryades 
 was regarded by Sparta and Argos as a sufficient ground for 
 
 ' Herod, yii. 150. • Ibid. ix. 26, 27. 
 
THIBAL LEGENDS, 77 
 
 inserting a special article into a treaty made during tlie CHAP. 
 
 Peloponnesian war.' . ^ — - 
 
 But if they were tlius convinced of tlieir historical tfuth, Each clan 
 they felt stUl more certain that the legends of one state or j-gg^rded 
 city were essentially distinct from those of another. The its own 
 
 , 1,1 i-niiTi Tj? traditions 
 
 Athenian was sure that the tales which he had heard oi as distinct 
 Erechtheus or Theseus had nothing in common with the ^j^™ ^"^ 
 legends of Argos, Thebes, or Pherai, beyond those incidents 
 of local intercourse which were acknowledged by the narra- 
 tive. The Arkadian, when he told the tale of Zeus and Kallisto, 
 never supposed that it was repeated by the Thessalian in the 
 story of Phoibos and Koronis. Perseus, Kadmos, lason, 
 Achilleus, moved each in their own circle, and had left 
 behind them a history seemingly as distinct as that of 
 Athens and Sparta from the days of Pausanias and Themis- 
 tocles. 
 
 This conviction was a dream. But it has its parallel in This belief 
 the scornful assurance with which the British soldier would ^t^^^" ^ 
 even now repudiate all affinity with the Hindu whom he founda- 
 holds in subjection. They who can see a little further know 
 that this kindred is a fact too stubborn to be denied, while 
 they perceive also that the national traditions of Hellenes, 
 of Dorians and lonians, with the poUtical legends of 
 Athenians, Thebans, Thessalians, Spartans, Argives, move in 
 the same charmed circle, and revolve more or less closely 
 round the same magic point. The great family legend of 
 the Perseids is as magnificent a subject for an epic as that 
 of the wrongs and woes of Helen. Its incidents are not less 
 marvellous, its action is scarcely less complicated. Like the 
 tale of Troy, it forms a coherent whole, and exhibits an 
 equal freshness of local life and colouring. It serves, there- 
 fore, the more completely to prove the extent to which the 
 Hellenic local legends sprung up from a common source, and 
 to furnish the means of detecting the common element in 
 isolated traditions with which they may seem to be not even 
 remotely connected. 
 
 To the citizen of the Peloponnesian Argos the mere name Connection 
 
 between 
 
 ' Thucyd. v. 41. Sir G. C. Lewis as historical. Credibility of early Bo- 
 accepts the groundwork of the legend man History, ii. 515. 
 
78 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 book! of Perseus sufficed as a conclusive mark, separating Mm 
 . ]• . from all who traced their origin to Theseus or to Kadmos. 
 the legends Yet his designation as a destroyer of noxious things linked 
 ThebS!" *^® son of Danae at once with other heroes of Greek mytio- 
 and \oQr^. If Perseus won or deserved his name because he slew 
 
 the deadly Gorgon or the Libyan sea-monster, Phoibos 
 ApoMn had also killed the mighty serpent Python, and 
 Hipponoos received his title Bellerophontes as the slayer of 
 the fearful Belleros. It was the arbitrary sentence of tBe 
 cruel and cowardly Polydektes which sent Perseus on his 
 weary errand to the caves of the Graiai and the Gorgons ; 
 but it was no less the relentless hatred of the mean and false 
 Eurystheus which made the life of the high-souled Herakles 
 a long series of unrequited labours. Nay, Apollon himself 
 was driven forth to serve as a bondman in the house of the 
 kindly Admetos, and, with Herakles, to look in vain for a 
 recompense from the treacherous Laomed6n. If, in doing 
 the bidding of the Seriphian king, Perseus encountered 
 overwhelming dangers, Theseus surmounted perils not less 
 appalling for the same reason and from the same motives, 
 while his victory over the Minotauros only repeats tlie 
 slaughter of the Libyan dragon by Perseus. Thus, then, as 
 unwilling workers, as destroyers of unclean or hurtful things, 
 Petseus, Theseus, Hipponoos and Herakles are expressions 
 of the same idea. If, again, his name as the child of the 
 golden shower points to the splendour of his birth, so also 
 Phoibos springs to light, in Delos or in Lykia, while the 
 gloomy prison-house or cave in which, like Zeus or Ki-ishna, 
 he is born, has its parallel in the sleep or death of Night, 
 which is the parent of the Delphian god. If it is the hope 
 and the boast of Perseus that before his life's labour is done 
 he will bring back Dana^ to the home which she had left 
 when he was a babe, so also Herakles meets at the close of 
 his toils the maiden whom he had wooed while his life was in 
 its morning. From the island in the Eastern sea Perseus 
 journeys through many lands to the dark home of the Graiai 
 in the far west ; but Herakles also wanders from Argos to 
 the distant gardens of the Hesperides, Hipponoos is driven 
 from Lykia, the land of light, and dies on the shore of the 
 
MYTHICAL HEROES. 79 
 
 western sea, while Kephalos seeks in the Leukadian gulf the CHAP, 
 love which he had lost in Attica. In his attack on the ; ^ 
 Gorgon maiden, Perseus is armed with the sword which slays 
 everything on which it falls ; but ApoUon is also the in- 
 vincible Chrys46r, and Artemis carries the unerring spear 
 which is fatal to the guileless Prokris and the less innocent 
 Koronis or EaUisto. On the golden sandals Perseus moves 
 through the air quicker than a dream; but the golden 
 chariot also bears Helios and Phaethon across the blue vault 
 of heaven, and when Achilleus tries his armour, it bears him 
 aloft like a bird upon the wing.' After slaying the sea- 
 dragon, Perseus wins Andromeda; after killing the Mino- 
 tauros Theseus wins Ariadne. In unselfishness of character, 
 and in the determination to face rather than to shrink from 
 danger, there is no difference between Perseus and Theseus, 
 until the latter returns from Crete ; or again between Perseus 
 and BeUerophont^s. Perseus is the strongest and the most 
 active among the people in all manly exercises. So, too, 
 none can vie with Apollon in the use of the bow, and the 
 children of Mob^ fall not less surely than the Pythian 
 dragon. If, again, Perseus is the child of a mother of whom 
 we know little more than the name, gentle, patient, and 
 long- enduring, the same neutral colouring is seen in lokaste 
 in the Theban legend of Oidipous ; in Leto, who gives birth 
 to Apollon in Delos ; and in Alkmene, from whom is born 
 the mightiest of heroes, Herakles. The life of Perseus 
 closes in darkness. He has slain his grandfather, and he 
 has not the heart to remain in his ancient home ; but 
 Kephalos also cannot abide at Athens after he has un- 
 wittingly slain Prokris, or Herakles in Kalydon after slaying 
 the boy Eunomos, and each departs to die elsewhere. 
 
 Without going further, we have here no very insufiELcient identity of 
 evidence, if we sought to prove a close connection, or even f^^ ^^^•■'■'^ 
 a complete identity, between Perseus, Bellerophon, Theseus, 
 Kephalos, Herakles, and Apollon. If we cease to confine 
 ourselves to a single legend, the coincidences might be inde- 
 finitely multiplied, while any other legend may be submitted 
 to the same treatment which has just been applied to that of 
 ' Iliad, xix. 386. 
 
80 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYATT NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Perseus. If Kephalos, having won the love of Prokris, is 
 
 I. 
 
 obliged to leave her for a time, ApoUon in like manner is 
 constrained to desert K:or6nis. If Prokris yields her affec- 
 tion to one whom she almost believes to be Kephalos, the 
 guilt of Koronis is not many shades deeper ; while both are 
 alike smitten by the fatal spear of Artemis. In the legends 
 of Thebes, Athens, Argos, and other cities, we find the 
 strange yet common dread of parents who look on their 
 children as their future destroyers. Thus Oidipous is cast 
 forth to die on the slopes of Kithair6n, as Paris is abandoned 
 on those of Ida or Arthur to the mysterious Merlin, while 
 Perseus is entrusted to the mercy of the deep sea. Nay, the 
 legends interchange the method by which the parents seek 
 the death of their children ; for there were tales which 
 narrated that Oidipous was shut up in an ark which was 
 washed ashore at Sikyon.' In every case the child grows 
 up beautiful, brave, and strong. Like ApoUon, Bellerophon, 
 and Herakles, they are all slayers of monsters. The son of 
 the gloomy Laios returns to destroy the dreaded Sphinx, as 
 Perseus slays the Gorgon, and the Minotauros falls by the 
 sword of Theseus. They have other features in common. 
 The fears of their parents are in all cases realised. Akri- 
 sios and Laios are killed by Perseus and Oidipous, as 
 Romulus and Cyrus bring ruin on Amulius and Astyages.' 
 All of them love fair maidens and are somewhat prone to 
 forsake them; and after doing marvellous things, they return 
 to the maiden whom they loved at the beginning of their 
 career, or to the mother from whom they had been parted 
 long ago. Herakles finds I0I6 by his funeral pile on Oita, 
 while in the myth which has invested his character with a 
 solar colouring Oinone cheers Paris in his last hour on Ida. 
 
 ' In this version of the myth he is a garded as banishing Cyrus wholly to 
 
 son of Eurykleia, a name which belongs the domain of mythology, although it 
 
 to the same class with Euryganeia, seems sufficiently to prove that to the 
 
 Eurydikfe, Eurymed^, etc. In the same person of the historical Cyrus, as to that 
 
 way Dionysos, who, in the Thehau of Charles the Great, a mass of floating 
 
 legend, was born amid the blaze of the mythology has attached itself, and that, 
 
 lightning which destroyed his mother, is from such traditions we cannot be said 
 
 in the Lakonian story placed in a chest to derive any part of our historical 
 
 with his mother and carried to Brasiai, knowledge. The conclusions which 
 
 where SemfelS was found dead. Paus. these facts seem to force upon us are 
 
 ii. 24, § 3. given elsewhere. (Ch. ix.) 
 ' This illustration must not be re- 
 
SNAKES IN MYTHOLOGY, 
 
 81 
 
 Still more significantly, Oidipous marries lokaste (the con- CHAP, 
 nection of the name with that of lolS is m.anifest),' and the -. 
 unwitting sin thus committed becomes the starting-point of 
 a more highly-complicated history. 
 
 Wonderful, again, as is the seeming variety of action and The ima- 
 incident in these legends, the recurrence of the same im- these" 
 agery, freshened by ingenious modifications, is not less re- legends. 
 markable. If Herakles begins his career of marvels by 
 strangling the serpents who have twined round his limbs, 
 the youthful ApoUon slays the huge snake Pytho, and Perseus 
 smites the snaky haired Medousa. The serpents, in their 
 turn, win the victory when Eurydike falls a victim on the 
 banks of the Hebros, or assume a more kindly form in the 
 legends of lamos and Melampous.^ The former they shelter 
 in the thickets, because, as with Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, 
 and Cyrus, his kinsfolk seek his death, while to Melampous, 
 
 ' The violet or purple colour can be 
 traced through a large number of Greek 
 mythical names. lolaos is the son of 
 Iphikles, the twin-brother of Herakles, 
 {Seut. Her. 74). Through Epaphos and 
 iSanaos, the line of Herakles is traced 
 back to lo, in whose story is brought 
 out the favourite image of the bull, as 
 a figure of Indra or the sun. T'he 
 names of lasion, whom DemSter loved, 
 and Zeus slew, of laso, the daughter of 
 AskUpios, and lason, were referred to 
 the idea of healing (toeris) ; but J5schylos 
 derived Lykios, as an epithet of ApoUfin, 
 from the destruction of wolves, 
 
 AuKei' fii/a|, AvKeios yevov 
 ffrpary Sai^. Theb. 145, 
 
 and thus unconsciously explained not 
 only the transformation of Lykaon into 
 a wolf, but the origin of the superstition 
 of Lykanthropy. See note 3, p. 62. In 
 short, the Greek poets were far more 
 frequently wrong than right in account- 
 ing for mythical names ; and thus the 
 names lason, lolaos, and the rest, may, 
 so far as their belief is concerned, have 
 had the same origin with that of lamos, 
 •which is directly referred to the violet 
 beds under which he was hidden by the 
 Drakontes, who, in the myth of lasonbear 
 the chariot of Medeia. There remain 
 some ' epithets, as leios, and lacchos, 
 both of which are commonly referred to 
 the cry li], an explanation supported by 
 
 VOL. I. ( 
 
 the known connection of words denoting 
 sound and colour. About these it may 
 be rash to speak positively, although 
 the opinion of Greek writers is not 
 worth much, and lacchos may be 
 another form of Bacchus, which Dr. 
 Latham connects with the Slavonic bog, 
 our bogy and Puck, the Welsh Pwcca, 
 &c. — Johnson, English Dictior.ary, s.v. 
 Bogy. 
 
 '' In the Gaelic story of Fearachus 
 Leigh (Campbell, Tales of the We.^t 
 Highlands, ii. 362) the snake is boiled 
 in a pot, round which paper is wrapped 
 to prevent the steam from escaping. 
 ' But he had not made all straight when 
 the water began to boil, and the steam 
 began to come out at one place. 
 
 ' Well, Farquhar saw this, and thought 
 he would push the paper down round 
 the thing; so he put his finger to the 
 bit, and then his finger into his mouth, 
 for it was wet with the bree. 
 
 ' So he knew everything, and the eyes 
 of his mind were opened.' 
 
 Farquhar now sets up for a doctor; 
 but the old myth of Asklepios must still 
 be fulfilled in him. ' Farquhar the 
 physician never came to be Farquhar 
 the king, for he had an iU-wisher that 
 poisoned him, and he died.' The poison 
 represents the thunder-bolt of Zeus in 
 the Greek story, and the ill-wisher is 
 Zeds himself. 
 
82 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Signifi- 
 cance of 
 the names 
 employed 
 in Greek 
 legends. 
 
 Opinions 
 of Greek 
 
 by cleansing Jbis ears, they impart a new power, so that lie 
 may understand the voices and the song of birds. The 
 spotless white buU bears Europe across the waters of the 
 sea: the glistening ram soars through the air with the 
 children of ISTephele, or the mist. Phaethousa and Lampetig 
 drive the cattle of Helios to their pastures, and Hermes 
 steals the herds of Apollon when he is scarce an hour old. 
 The cattle in their turn assume an unkindly aspect. The 
 Minotauros plagues the Cretans, the Marathonian bull ravages 
 the fields of Attica. The former is killed by the child of the 
 golden shower, the latter by the son of Aithra, the pure air. 
 
 The very names occurring in these tribal legends have 
 a significance which the Greek language itself interprets, 
 whenever they tell us of the great heroes, whose lives nm so 
 strangely in the same magic groove. Oidipous loves lokaste, 
 as Herakles loves lole ; but he is also the husband of Eury- 
 ganeia, who spreads the light over the broad sky. The names 
 of Phaethon, of Phaethousa and Lampetie, the chUdren of 
 ISTeaira, tell their own tales. In the obscure mythology of 
 Tegea, when the name of Herakles is introduced, the maiden 
 whom he chooses is Auge, the brilliant.' She too, like 
 Danae, is driven away by the terror of her father, and in the 
 far eastern land becomes the mother of Telephos, who, like 
 Oidipous and Paris, is exposed on the rough hill-side, and 
 whose office as the bringer of light is seen again in the name 
 of .T^lephassa, the mother of Europe. So, again, when the 
 genealogy of Phthia is to be mingled with that of Elis, it is 
 Protogeneia (the earliest dawn) who becomes the mother of 
 Aethlios (the toiling and struggling sun), who is the father 
 of Endymion, the tired sun at his setting, in whose child 
 Eurydike we see again the morrow's light restored to its 
 former brightness.^ 
 
 Thus in the marvellous tales which recounted the mighty 
 
 distinction withont a difference. Mi'. 
 Grote gives the several versions of the 
 myth (^History of Greece, i. 188 &e.): 
 but he is probably mistaken in suppos- 
 ing that the names Aethlios and Endy- 
 mion are of late introduction, although 
 their connection with the Olympic games 
 undoubtedly was. 
 
 ' Pans. viii. 4, 6 ; Grcte, History of 
 Greece, vol. i. p. 240. 
 
 2 Paus. V. 12. Aethlios is the 
 husband of Kalyke, the night. By some 
 canon of probability, better known to 
 himself than to others, Pausanias 
 chooses to marry Endymion to Astorodia, 
 rather than to Sel6n6, as the mother of 
 his fifty children. He was making a 
 
VALUE OF POPULAR TKADITIOKS. 83 
 
 deeds of Perseus and Herakles the people of Argos saw a CHAP, 
 coherent whole, — the chronicle of the great actions ^tfhich . 
 distinguished the founders of their state from those of any writers, 
 other. Yet the tale of Perseus, and still more that of ^^lue. ^^^ 
 Herakles, is re-echoed in the Attic legends of Theseus ; and 
 even more significant is the fact of their utter unconscious- 
 ness that the life of Perseus is, in aU its essential features, 
 repeated in that of his great descendant Herakles, through 
 whose career the epos of Argos is twisted into a complicated 
 chain with that of Attica. The conclusion is forced upon 
 us that the Greeks knew no more about the historical facts 
 possibly underlying these traditions than they knew about 
 the names which occurred in them. We see at once that 
 Athenians, Thebans, Argives, Spartans, regarded as inde- 
 pendent narratives tales which are merely modified versions 
 of the same story. Hence their convictions furnish not 
 even the faintest presumption that the actors in the great 
 dynastic legends ever had any historical existence, or that 
 the myths themselves point to any historical facts. 
 
 Q 2 
 
84" MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 GEEEK NOTIONS SESPECTING THE MOKAL ASPECT OP 
 MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 book; The method, which has enabled us to compare the story of 
 
 ^- _^. the Iliad with the Volsung Tale or the epic of Firdusi, tends 
 
 Coarse to show that, in many instances at least, even the grossest 
 
 dereiope- myths arose from phrases which were truthful and therefore 
 
 ment of •' . _ _ ^ 
 
 certain beautiful descriptions of phenomena. But it has also shown 
 phrased "® ^^^* these phrases, when translated into the conditions of 
 human life and morality, would inevitably give rise to pre- 
 cisely those tales which, related boldly and nakedly, must 
 appear coarse, repulsive, or disgusting. Nor can it be 
 denie'd, that if children or grown men are only to cram 
 their memories with a thousand tales which speak of Oidi- 
 pous as marrying his mother, of Tantalos as roasting his own 
 son, of Lykaon as placing a meal of human flesh before Zeus, 
 of Hephaistos as defiling Athene, of Herakles as a creature of 
 unbounded and indiscriminate lust, it must be in every way 
 better to remain ignorant of such things in spite of all the 
 allusions of poets and the suggestions of painters and sculp- 
 tors. If we are to know only these incidents or details, (and 
 the works which do not avowedly adopt the method of com- 
 parative mythology attempt nothing more,) the knowledge 
 must be simply unwholesome. 
 Protests of It is no wonder that a mythology which still drives some 
 critics to desperate shifts in their efforts to account for such 
 strange developements, and which the Greek shared with 
 barbarians, whose minds he despised and whose language he 
 could not understand, should perplex and bafile the poets 
 and philosophers of Hellas. Some little suspicion they had 
 of the meaning of a few mythical names and phrases : how 
 
 Greek 
 writers. 
 
PEOTESTS OF PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS. 85 
 
 the vast majority of them had come into being, they could CHAP. 
 
 VI. 
 
 have no idea. Still less, therefore, could they surmise that 
 these names themselves had given rise to the tales* which 
 charmed, bewildered, or horrified them. They knew that 
 Zeus sometimes meant the sky ; they knew that Selene must 
 be the moon ; they half fancied that Endymion m.ust be the 
 sleeping sun : but they did not know why Zeus and Herakles 
 must have many loves in many lands, why Kronos should 
 maim Jiis father Ouranos and swallow his own children, 
 why Tantalos should place the limbs of his son on the 
 banquet table of the gods, why Oidipous should marry his 
 mother and bring unimaginable woes on her, on himself, and 
 on his children. From all these horrors their moral sense 
 shrank with an instinctive aversion. The Zeus whom they 
 worshipped was the all-seeing ruler and the all-righteous 
 judge.' In him there was no passion and no shadow of 
 turning. He was the fountain of all truth and goodness, 
 from which could flow nothing impure or foul. How then 
 should he be envious or jealous, capricious, lustful, and 
 treacherous? ' The contradiction was glaring, and some 
 among them had trenchant m^ethods of dealing with it. 
 Later philosophers condemned in a mass the glorious epics 
 which bear the name of Homer : later poets contented them- 
 selves with rejecting every legend which was distasteful to 
 their moral sense. Plato would give no place to Homer in 
 his ideal commonwealth : Euripides, like Homeric heroes, 
 could tell Zeus to his face, that he and his kinsfolk had 
 done fearful thiugs, or when he cast aside his mythological 
 faith, could assert unequivocally, 
 
 If the gods do aught unseemly, 
 Then they are not gods at all.' 
 
 The power of resting content without seeking to account Limits of 
 for this portentous growth of an immoral theology seems knowledge. 
 
 ' Pragm., Selleroph. 300. It can either as true descriptions of deity, or 
 
 scarcely be deaied that, from his own as examples of human conduct.' Some 
 
 point of "riew, ' Plato was right in warn- remarks on the connection of this subject 
 
 ing the guardians of his ideal polity with that of modern education may be 
 
 against the danger to youth, if they found in Mr. H. B. Wilson's Introduction 
 
 were permitted to receive the Homeric to the Examination of Prevalent Opinions 
 
 tales concerning the gods and heroes of Inspiration {1861), 'p. :^y. 
 
86 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AK^AN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Explana- 
 tion of the 
 seeming 
 immorality 
 of Aryan 
 mytho- 
 logy. 
 
 to be reserved for modem minds. Examining this subject 
 at greater length, Mr. Max Miiller remarks tbab tbe Greets 
 ' would not have been Greeks, if they bad not perceived that 
 the whole of their mythology presented a problem that re- 
 quired a solution at the hand of a philosopher.' But, how- 
 ever great their efforts might be to explain its origin, the 
 same causes which prevented them from discovering the 
 affinity of their own language with that of Persians, Thra- 
 kians, or Italians, must have placed insuperable barriers in 
 their way ; and thus they were the more tempted to accept 
 a compromise, which saved them from antagonism with 
 ' some of the most venerable institutions' of their country.' 
 But if the examination of the most complicated epic 
 poetry discloses precisely the frame-work which we find even 
 in the most fragmentary legends,^ if Theseus and Sigurd, 
 
 ' Lectures mi Language, second series, 
 ix. 
 
 ^ It is impossible to determine the 
 aid which Comparative Mythology 
 might have received from the lost 
 poems of the so-called epic cycle. 
 There can, however, be little doubt, 
 that they would have made still more 
 evident the truth of facts which, even 
 without them, seem to be indisputably 
 established. We might also, with their 
 aid, have been better able to measure 
 exactly the knowledge which the poets 
 of the Iliad and Odyssey had of legends 
 which they have not mentioned or have 
 treated only incidentally. The epic 
 poem, which had for its subject simply 
 the capture of Oichalia by Herakles, 
 the Danais, the Europia, might have 
 added to our knowledge of the materials 
 with which all these poems were built 
 up. The Uiad and Odyssey have as- 
 sumed in our eyes more than their 
 fair proportions, from the mere fact that 
 they alone have survived unhurt the 
 wear and tear of ages. Whether our 
 Iliad and Odyssey are really the poems 
 which were known under those titles 
 to the Attic historians and trage- 
 dians is a graver question, which these 
 lost epic poems would have aided us 
 in answering, and which must be ex- 
 amined by the aid of such materials 
 and evidence as we have at our disposal. 
 That the fact of their transmission to 
 the present day is not to be explained 
 on the ground of their manifest supe- 
 
 riority to the lost poems, is at onee 
 clear, when we remember that the great 
 Athenian poets deliberately drew the 
 characters and incidents of their dramas 
 from poems' which we called cyclic, in 
 preference to those which we regard as 
 alone deserving to be called Homeric. 
 
 The so-called Orphic hymns consist 
 almost entirely of invocations to the 
 various beings with which the old 
 mythical language peopled the visible 
 world, followed by a string of all the 
 epithets which were held to be applic- 
 able to them. Almost every one of 
 these epithets may be made the germ 
 of a mythical tale. Thus the hyinn to 
 Protogonos (whose counterpart is Pro- 
 togeneia) hails him as born from the 
 egg (of night), and having the face of a 
 bull (Indra), as Phanes the brilliant, 
 and Antauges (Antigonfe), reflecting the 
 light of the Sun (vi.). Helios (viii.) is 
 Paian, the healer, merging into the idea 
 of Askl6pios ; he is also Zeus, a relic of 
 the interchangeable character of the 
 earlier Vedic gods, the moon being also 
 still male and female (ix.). HeraklSs 
 (xii.) is the father of Time, benignant 
 and everlasting, producing and devour- 
 ing all things, yet helping all, wearing 
 the dawn and the night round his head. 
 Adonis (Ivi.) dwells partly in Tartaros 
 and partly on Olympos. The rays of 
 the sun and moon cannot come without 
 the Charites, the Harits or glistening 
 horses of Indra (Is.). Asklepios is Paian 
 the healer as well as Helios, and he has 
 
MEANING OF REPULSIVE LEGENDS. 8T 
 
 Phoibos and Achilleus, Odysseus, Oidipous, and Perseus CHAP 
 
 are, though different, yet the same, — if their adventures or . ,' _, 
 
 their times of inaction are simply the fruit of an inevitable 
 
 process going on in all kindred languages, aU charges of 
 
 immorality founded on the character of these adventures fall 
 
 completely to the ground. It is simply impossible to believe 
 
 that the great Athenian poets were descended from a people 
 
 who, some centuries earlier, had deliberately sat down to 
 
 invent loathsome or ridiculous fictions about the gods whom 
 
 they worshipped and the heroes whom they revered. To the 
 
 mind of ^schylos there was a depth of almost inexpiable guilt 
 
 in the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. The imagination of Sopho- 
 
 kles was oppressed by the unconscious incest of Oidipous 
 
 and all its frightful consequences, while Pindar turned aside 
 
 with contemptuous indignation from the stories which told 
 
 of gods devouring their own offspring. But we, to whom the 
 
 tale of Kronos points to the Time which consumes the years 
 
 to which it has given birth, — we, for whom the early doom of 
 
 the virgin Iphigeneia, caused by the wrath of Artemis, is a 
 
 mere reflection of the lot which pressed alike on Dahan^ and 
 
 Daphne, on lole, and Brynhild, and Oin6n^, — we, who can 
 
 read in the woeful tale of lokast^ the return of the lord of 
 
 day, the slayer of the Sphinx and of the Python, to the 
 
 mother who had borne him in the morning, must feel, that 
 
 if Greeks or Northmen who told of such things are to be 
 
 condemned, they must be condemned on other grounds and 
 
 not because in Achilleus or Sigurd or Odysseus they have 
 
 given us pictures of obstinate inaction or brutal revenge. 
 
 Possibly, to some among those old poets, the real nature of 
 
 the tales which they were telling was not so completely hidden 
 
 as we may deem. It is not easy to think that the writer of 
 
 the Hymn to Hermes knew nothing of the key which was 
 
 to unlock all its secrets. The very form of their language 
 
 would warrant us in saying much more. But the words of 
 
 Kumarila prove, that among the Eastern Aryans the real 
 
 character of their mythology had not been forgotten. He, 
 
 Health as his spotless bride. The date belong, they lay bare not a few of the 
 of these hymns is a matter of little stages in the mythopceic poems, 
 moment. To whatever age they may 
 
88 
 
 MTTHOLOGT OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The mo- 
 rality of 
 Hesiod. 
 
 too, had to listen to compla.ints like those which Pindar and 
 Plato bring against the follies or the vices of the gods. His 
 answer is ready. 
 
 ' It is fabled that Praj^pati, the Lord of Creation, did vio- 
 lence to his daughter. But what does it mean? Praj4- 
 pati, the Lord of Creation, is a name of the sun ; and he is 
 called so because he protects all creatures. His daughter 
 Ushas is the dawn. And when it is said that he was in 
 love with her, this only means that, at sunrise, the sun 
 runs >fter the dawn, the dawn being at the same time 
 called the daughter of the sun, becauses she rises when he 
 approaches. In the same manner, if it is said that Indra 
 was the seducer of Ahalya, this does not imply that the god 
 Indra committed such a crime ; but Indra means the sun, 
 and Ahalya the night ; and as the night is seduced and ruined 
 by the sun of the morning, therefore is Indra called the 
 paramour of Ahalya.' ' 
 
 It is the legend of Oidipous and lokaste, one of the most 
 awful and, in some aspects, the most repulsive in the wide 
 range of Greek mythology.^ If the real nature of this tale 
 is laid bare before us, we may at once assure ourselves that 
 these, stories are not the fruit of depraved imaginations and 
 brutal lives. There is no longer any mystery in the strange 
 combination of repulsive legends with a sensitive morality in 
 the Hesiodic poems of the ' Works and Days.' "We cease to 
 wonder, that the same poet who has recounted the tale of 
 Pandora should tell us that the eye of God is in every place, 
 watching the evil and the good ; » that the duty of man is to 
 
 ' Max Miiller, History of Sanskrit 
 Literature, -p. 530. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 
 part iv. ch. i. sect. 2. 
 
 ' Nothing can exceed the coarseness 
 of the legend of Eriehthonios as giren 
 by Apollodoros, iii, 14, 6. It is, how- 
 BTer, nothing more than a strange 
 jumble of images which are found 
 scattered through a hundred legends, 
 and which may be translated into the 
 following phrases : — 
 
 The Dawn stands before the Sun, and 
 oaks him for his armour. 
 
 The face of the Dawn charms the 
 Sun, who seeks to embrace her. 
 
 The Dawn flies Irom the Sun, and a 
 soft shower falls on the Earth as his 
 piercing rays shoot across the sky after 
 her departing form. 
 
 From the soft shower springs the 
 Summer with its fruits. 
 
 The Dawn would make the Summer 
 immortal, and entrusts the Summer to 
 the care of the Dew. 
 
 The serpents of night lie coiled round 
 the Summer in the morning. 
 
 The sisters of the Dew are slain by 
 the Dawn. 
 
 ^ Wor/cs and. Bays, 252, 253, 266. 
 
HESIODIC THEOLOGY. 89 
 
 avoid the smootli road to evil,' and to clioose the strait path CHAP. 
 of good, whi 
 walk in it.'' 
 
 of good, which, rough at the first, becomes easy to those who , ^ 
 
 Works and Days, 286. 
 ■ fiaKphs Sg Kal upQios olfios iir' avrijp 
 
 KoX rpiJX^s rh irpuTov. en7]v 5' els 6.Kpov '(K7]ai, 
 prjiSiri St] iwenu ireAft, x"^^'"'!) "'ep loSira. — 3. 288. 
 
90 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THEORY OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY AS AN EGLECTIC SYSTEM. 
 
 BOOK. I^ET who have considered the subject at all wiU be disposed 
 
 I. 
 
 to deny that the Argive legends which relate the exploits of 
 Eeprodue- Perseus might well be expanded into a longer poem than the 
 Iliad. We have, therefore, the less reason to be surprised if 
 
 same 
 
 "5'tli the Iliad itself, on examination, is found to relate part only 
 
 different of a more extended legend, or to exhibit under a different 
 forms. colouring modified versions of a single story. K in the 
 mythology of Argos alone we have the ideal of Perseus 
 recurring in the tale of HeraklSs, there is the less reason for 
 wonder if the Hellenic Achilleus is but the counterpart of 
 the Lykian Sarp^don and Memnon, the son of Eos, — nay, if 
 the character of Achilleus recurs in that of other Achaian 
 heroes. The Hiad, or rather, as Mr. Grote would say, the 
 Achilleis,' sings of the wrath of the Phthiotic chieftain, who 
 is also the child of the sea-goddess Thetis, and this wrath 
 is followed by a time of gloomy and sullen inaction. The 
 glorious hero, the lightning of whose countenance struck 
 terror into his enemies, hangs up his weapons and hides his 
 face. The sun has passed behind the veil of the storm-cloud. 
 The expression is literally forced from us : we cannot withhold 
 the metaphor. But so was it with the men of Kalydon whUe 
 Meleagros lay sullen and angry in his secret chamber with his 
 beautiful wife IQeopatra. So complete is the identity of the 
 two characters, so thoroughly does it rebuke his moody anger, 
 that the episode of Meleagros is recited at length by Phoinix, 
 in the hope that it may appease the fury of Achilleus.^ But 
 the issue with both is the same. Meleagros comes forth at last 
 
 ' History of Greece, ii. 236. 2 Iliad, ix. 529-599. 
 
M1THICAL COMPLICjiTIONS. 
 
 91 
 
 to the aid of his people, and AchUleus, after a long struggle, CHAP. 
 
 makes np his quarrel with Agamemnon to avenge the death . ,J - 
 
 of Patroklos. Both again are doomed, after their time of 
 obstinate inaction, to an early and violent death, preceded hj 
 a brief outburst of their former splendour. That such was 
 to be the lot of his great hero, the Homeric poet knew well ; 
 but, ignorant though he may have been of the source of the 
 materials of which he made such splendid use, he chose, 
 with a poetical instinct rarely surpassed, to close his tale 
 when AchUleus grants the prayer of Priam, and yields to 
 him the body of his dead son, Hektor. 
 
 If, however, resemblances of detail are not wanting to No his- 
 show that Eastern and Western legends have in the Iliad '""^j^. 
 been blended together, it would follow that such a blending sions can 
 of the mythology of different cities or countries must issue from the 
 in a highly complicated story. But it is obvious, at the cpmplica- 
 same time, that no historical inferences can be drawn from caused. 
 the mere fact of such a complication. Rightly convinced 
 that the tale of Troy, with its marvellously vivid details and 
 astonishing incidents, must have some foundation. Bishop 
 Thirlwall is disposed to refer it to some great expedition in 
 which the chieftains of Western Hellas were combined against 
 an Asiatic power ruling in Ilion.' The evidence of such a 
 fact may possibly be found in isolated statements contained 
 in the Iliad, but scarcely in the plot of the story. If it may 
 be assumed, from the form of the prophecy of Poseidon, that 
 
 ' History of Greece, vol. i. ch. v. Dr. 
 Thirlwall is struck by the contrast of 
 the futile efforts of Agamemnon and his 
 host with the success of Herakles in his 
 attack on Troy during the reign of 
 Laomedon. He make* some plausible 
 historical conjectures to account for this 
 difference. But the tale explains itself. 
 Herakles is a transformation of the in- 
 ■rincible sun-god, and his might there- 
 fore beats down every enemy, when the 
 actual moment for conflict has come. 
 But Agamemnon and his host must 
 wait ten years before they can be per- 
 mitted to storm the citadel of Ilion. 
 They are the children of the sun, seeking 
 through the weaiy hours of darkness 
 the beautiful light, which after sundown 
 was taken away from the western sky. 
 
 They can do nothing, therefore, in spite 
 of their numbers, until at the fated 
 hour Achilleus comes forth to help them. 
 Such, at least, is the burden of the 
 Achillas. The interpolated Iliad was the 
 result of a patriotic feeling struggling 
 against the laws of mythical speech. Dr. 
 Thirlwall sees clearly that the abduction 
 of Helen may have been ' a theme for 
 poetry originally independent of the 
 Trojan war,' and he rightly insists that 
 the tale of the war, ' even if unfounded, 
 must still have had some adequate 
 occasion and motive.' This is indis- 
 putable: but hypotheses connecting it 
 with Greek colonies in Asia prove 
 nothing; the comparison of Greek 
 legends among themselves and with the 
 systems of mythology explains all. 
 
92 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATION'S. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 princes claiming descent from Aineias ruled in the poet's 
 time in the Troad/ no light is thrown by it on the existence 
 of that chief, or on the reality of the Trojan war. The 
 ruins of Tiryns attest to a certain extent the truthfulness of 
 Homeric description in the catalogue of the contending 
 forces ; ^ the walls of Myk^nai bear out the statement that 
 it was once the seat of a powerful dynasty, but archaeolo- 
 gical evidence tells us nothing of Perseids or of Pelopids. 
 Subetan- But if we can trace this recurrence of the same ideal in 
 t'ity o/"' different heroes and of the same imagery in the recital of 
 Greek and their adventures in Hellenic mythology alone, the marvel is 
 thology. intensified a thousandfold when we compare this mythology 
 with the ancient legends of Northern Europe or of the far- 
 distant East. There is scarcely an incident in the lives of 
 the great Greek heroes which cannot be traced out in the 
 wide field of Teutonic or Scandinavian tradition ; and the 
 complicated action of the Iliad, or rather of the whole legend 
 of which the Hiad forms a part, is reproduced in the Edda 
 and the lays of the Volsungs and the Nibelungs. It may 
 seem almost superfluous, and yet the persistency of traditional 
 opinion makes it necessary, to repeat, that if the Greek tales 
 tell us of serpent-slayers and of destroyers of noxious monsters, 
 the legends of the ice-bound North also sing of heroes who 
 slay the dragons that lie coiled round sleeping maidens. If 
 the former recite the labours of Herakles and speak of the 
 bondage of Apollon, Sifrit and Sigurd are not less doomed 
 to a life of labour for others, not for themselves. If Herakles 
 alone can rescue Hesione from a like doom with Andromeda, 
 or bring back Alkestis from the land of Hades, it is Sigurd 
 only who can slay the serpent Pafnir, and Eagnar Lodbrog 
 alone who can deliver Thora from the Dragon's grasp. If, 
 at the end of his course, Herakles once more sees his early 
 love ; if Oinone comes again to Paris in his death hour, so 
 
 > Iliad, XX. 307, 308. It is, after all, 
 the merest inference. — Grote, History 
 of Greece, i. 428. 
 
 ' It must, however, be remembered, 
 that alleged archaeological evidence must 
 not be accepted in every case without 
 question. It is now asserted that 'OfFa's 
 dyke ' is a natural work, and Offa him- 
 self is thus carrisd suspiciously near the 
 
 cloudland of mythology. The supposed 
 canal of Xerxes, at the base of mount 
 Athos, has shared the same fate; and 
 the suspicion of Juvenal, x. 74, that the 
 story was a myth has thus been unex- 
 pectedly verified. OfFa's dyke and the 
 canal of Xerxes are, in short, not more 
 artificial than Fingal's Cave or the 
 Giant's Causeway. 
 
EESULTS OF MYTHICAL PHRASEOLOGY. 93 
 
 Brynhild lies down to die -witli Sigurd who liad forsaken her. chap. 
 
 If Achilleus and Baldur can only be wounded in a single ^ ,-L— 
 
 spot, Isfendiyar in the Persian epic can be killed only by the 
 thorn thrown into his eye by Eustem. If the tale of Perseus 
 is repeated in the career of Herakles, the legend of Eagnar 
 Lodbrog is also a mere echo of the nobler story which told 
 of the sun-bright Sigurd. It is scarcely necessary to enter 
 into more minute detail. The chief features of Hellenic 
 mythology may be traced in the mythical system of all the 
 Aryan nations. 
 
 But at this point we encounter a difficulty which, if not Conclu- 
 removed, must prove fatal to the method which Comparative ^'"^^^ 
 Mythology apphes to the legends of the East and "West. If from a 
 that science has guided us to any measure of the truth, it of Greek 
 has taught us something not merely of the growth of tales ^'^'^ ^°^^^ 
 which recount the actions of deified heroes, but of the con- 
 ceptions from which sprang the highest deities of Olympos— 
 Artemis, Demeter, Apoll6n, and Zeus himself. It has iden- 
 tified Phoibos with Helios, Herakles, Pferseus, Theseus, Oidi- 
 pous, and many others. It has traced the several aspects of 
 his character through the phases presented in the legends of 
 Theseus, Kephalos, Daphne, Endymion, Bellerophontes, and 
 Meleagros. It has taught us that he is the child of Zeus 
 and Leto, while the maiden Persephon^ is sprung from Zeus 
 and Demeter. It tells us of Ouranos looking down on Gaia, 
 and of Gaia returning the love of Ouranos by her unbounded 
 fertility. It speaks of the toiling sun, visiting all the regions 
 of the earth as he ascends or goes down the slope of heaven, 
 and of earth as yielding to him her fruits wherever his light 
 may exercise its beneficent power. It speaks of Zeus as the 
 son or the husband of Gaia, and of the tears which fell in rain- 
 drops from the sky when he mourned for the death of his son 
 Sarp^don. It seems to teU us, then, of a mythological or 
 religious system which, simple at the first, became at the last 
 excessively complicated, and further that this system was the 
 result not of philosophical generalisations, but of the con- 
 sciousness of an exuberant life which was extended from 
 man to every object which he beheld in the visible creation. 
 It seems to show that once upon a time, while the ancestors 
 
94 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Theory of 
 Dr. 
 
 Dollinger 
 on the 
 origin of 
 Greek my- 
 thology. 
 
 of European nations and tribes were still comparatively 
 united, man had uttered as the simple plirases of every day 
 speech sayings which became afterwards the groundwork of 
 elaborate religious systems ; that once upon a time they 
 spoke of the dawn coming from the chambers of the night, 
 while the night herself was struggling with the birth of the 
 brilliant sun; that the new-born sun saw and loved and 
 pursued the dawn, which vanished at his touch. It seems 
 to teach us that from such phrases, which, slightly varied, 
 were expanded into the tales of Kephatos and Prokris, of 
 Koronis and Apollon, grew finally the more definite person- 
 alities of Zeus and Phoibos, of Leto and Daphne, of Arte- 
 mis and Herakles. Hence, whatever in the Greek religious 
 systems there was of direct anthropomorphism or of a fetish 
 nature-worship would be the result of later thought and of 
 attempts to arrive at philosophical abstractions, and not the 
 maimed and distorted relics of a higher knowledge once 
 possessed but now only not forgotten. 
 
 If the theory which makes the growth of Greek mythology 
 from the first a philosophical process can be established, then 
 the results of Comparative Mythology must be abandoned as 
 of no value, and we must be content to look on the points of 
 resemblance between Greek, Teutonic, Scandinavian, and 
 Eastern legends as a problem utterly beyond our powers to 
 solve or even to grapple with. In any case it is a question 
 of evidence ; and the objections, which seem to be conclusive 
 against the hypothesis of an original dogmatic revelation, of 
 such a kind at least as that of which Mr. Gladstone speaks, 
 have been considered already. But Dr. DoUinger's position' 
 lies open to no charges of fanciful extravagance ; it needs, 
 therefore, to be the more carefully examined, as professing 
 to be a legitimate deduction from the state of religion, or 
 rather of religious cultus, among the Greeks in historical 
 times. This state was, in the opinion of Dr. Dollinger, the 
 result of an attempt to reduce a variety of conflicting systems 
 and notions into one harmonious whole. In it were mingled 
 the mysticism of Egypt and the orgiastic ritualism of the 
 East, with the rude nature-worship of the older and less 
 ' The Gentile and the Jew in the Courts of tine Temple oj Christ, hook ii. 
 
ECLECTIC THEORIES. 95 
 
 civilised ages ; and his purpose is to trace tlie several ideas CHAP. 
 
 so amalgamated to their original sources. With this^ew . ,_— ', 
 
 he is obliged to assume that in his primaeval innocence man 
 was enabled ' to conceive of the Divinity as a pure, spiritual, 
 supernatural, and infinite being, distinct from the world and 
 exalted above it.' The loss of this conception, and the 
 yearning for something in its place, led to the deification of 
 material nature, which ' unfolded herself to man's nature as 
 a boundless demesne, wherein was confined an unfathomable 
 plenitude of powers, incommensurable and incalculable, and 
 of energies not to be overcome.' With this was developed a 
 sympathy for naturalism, ' and thus man, deeper and deeper 
 in the spells of his enchantress, and drawn downwards by 
 their weight, had his moral consciousness overcast in pro- 
 portion, and gave the fuller rein to impulses which were 
 merely physical.' ' This deification of natural powers led, 
 as Dr. DoUinger believes, first of all to the worship of the 
 elements — of ether as the vault of heaven ; of the earth as its 
 opposite ; of fire as the warming and nourishing, the con- 
 suming and destroying power; of water as the element of 
 moisture separated from that of earth. To this succeeded 
 astrolatry in the East, and geolatry in the West, where the 
 idea of the earth as a susceptible and productive agent led 
 to the distinction of male and female divinities. But the 
 actual Greek religion of the heroic and later ages was a 
 blending of the several notions derived from supplanted 
 races — Leleges and Karians, Thrakians and Pelasgians — 
 together with importations from Asia and Egypt.^ Thus 
 Gaia and Helios, Zeus and Here, belong to the Pelasgic 
 stock, while Poseidon was introduced by Karian and Phoe- 
 nician visitors of the coasts of HeUas.' Pallas Athene was 
 also Pelasgian, as a goddess of nature and the elements. 
 Apollon, likewise Pelasgian, ' has so many features in common 
 with Athene, that in many respects one might call him an 
 Athen^ of the male species.' Artemis was in continental 
 Greece Pelasgian, while at Ephesos she exhibits an Asiatic 
 character, and becomes ' a sort of Pantheistic deity.' Prom 
 
 ' The Gintile and the Jew in the Courts of the Temple of Christ, vol. i. p. 66. 
 2 Bid. p. 68. ' Ibid. p. 80. 
 
96, MYTHOLOGY OF THE ABYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK tte Pelasgians also came Hestia, Hermes, and Aphrodite; 
 -__,: — . but Ares was the god of the Thrakian race, * which, haying 
 penetrated into Boeotia and the Peloponnese, took his wor- 
 ship along with them.' Of the rest, Demeter was Pelasgic, 
 Hephaistos came from the Thrakians of Lemnos, and Dionysos 
 from the more distant East ; while Hades was almost an 
 afterthought, not much worshipped, and not greatly cared 
 for by the people.' 
 This The picture drawn by Dr. DoUinger of the great Olympian 
 
 etortYon deities may in all its particulars be strictly true. It is pos- 
 anassump- sible or probable that ideas utterly foreign to the Greek 
 whkh°'^ mind may have been imported from Phrygia, Phoenicia, or 
 there is no Egypt, and that the worship so developed may have embodied 
 philosophical conceptions of nature and of the powers at work 
 in it. But the question which calls for an answer cannot be 
 determined by the most masterly portraiture of the great 
 gods of Olympos : and Dr. DoUinger's hypothesis does not 
 enable us to answer it. It starts on an assumption for which 
 we have no evidence ; and all the evidence furnished by the 
 book of Genesis and stiU more all that is furnished by the 
 study of language, militates against the idea that man 
 started originally with a conception of God, 'as a pure, 
 spiritual, supernatural, and infinite being, distinct from the 
 world, and exalted above it.' How soon he might have risen 
 to this conception, had his lot been different from what it has 
 been, it is impossible to say : but if we are to argue simply 
 from statements before us, we may affirm that men were 
 from the first conscious of the existence of a Being more 
 powerful than themselves, whom they were bound to obey, 
 but we can scarcely maintain more. This sense of duty, and 
 still more the sense of shame following on the violation of it, 
 would show that the groundwork of that relation was the 
 goodness and justice of the Being with whom they had to do. 
 But in this conviction there was nothing to determine their 
 ideas in the objects and phenomena of the natural world. 
 Peeling a conscious life in himself, man would, until cor- 
 rected by experience, attribute the same conscious life to 
 everything he saw or felt. The sun and moon, the cloud and 
 ' The Gentile and the Jew in the Cotirts of the Temple of Christ, 93. 
 
ARYAN AND SEMITIC MONOTHEISM. 97 
 
 the wind, would be living beings not less than himself ; but CHAP. 
 
 he could not embody them in anthropomorphic forms so long . ,J — - 
 
 as the names by which he spoke of them retained their 
 real meaning. Still less could he start with a primary wor- 
 ship of the elements until he had learnt to regard as abstrac- 
 tions the objects or powers which, it would seem, he looked 
 upon only as living beiags. Three ways lay before him. 
 He might, like Abraham in the old Arabian legend,' be led 
 by the rising and setting of the sun and stars to the convic- 
 tion that they were simply passive instruments in the hands 
 of an almighty and righteous God ; or he might, as he forgot 
 his old language, invest with an anthropomorphic life the 
 deities with which he peopled the m hole visible creation ; or, 
 lastly, he might bow down crushed beneath the dead weight 
 of nature, and yield himself a living slave to a loathsome 
 and degrading fetishism. Of these three courses the first 
 was chosen by the Hebrew people, and even by them feebly 
 and fitfully ; ^ the second was followed by the tribes of the 
 Hellenic stock ; the third has been rejected by every portion 
 of the great Aryan family of nations. These, as they j ourneyed 
 from their ancient home, carried with them the old language 
 and the old morality ; but the measure in which they forgot 
 the meaning of proper names would determine the extent to 
 which new gods would be called into existence. This de- 
 velopement, as the result, primarily, of a corruption of lan- 
 guage, would not be in the strictest sense, a religion, and the 
 moral sense of the worshipper would not be darkened in pro- 
 portion to the number of the gods whom he venerated. Dr. 
 DoUinger's hypothesis, not less than the theory of Mr. Glad- 
 stone, would require a continually increasing degradation; 
 but the history of language, apart from the growth of Aryan 
 epic poetry, furnishes conclusive evidence against any such 
 idea. There is no evidence that the Greeks of the seventh 
 or sixth centuries before the Christian era had their ' moral 
 
 ^ Milman, History of the Jews, <rf the Babylonish captiTity the main 
 
 book i. body of the people was incurably poly- 
 
 ^ In truth, when we speak of the theistie. ' The history even of the 
 
 monotheistic faith of the Jewish people, Jews,' says Professor Max Muller ' is 
 
 we speak of their faith of their teachers, made up of an almost uninterrupted 
 
 AU the evidence at our command seems series of relapses into polytheism.' 
 
 to show that at least down to the time ' Semitic Monotheism,' Chirps, ^c. i. 365. 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 MYTHOLOGY OF THK ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK consciousness more overcast ' than the Greeks of the tenth 
 _-^l_ or twelfth ; there is much to lead us to the contrary con- 
 clusion. 
 Historical But Dr. DoUinger's theory requires him to deal with 
 tkiW Dr. Marians, Leleges, and Pelasgians ; and the chain of his ar- 
 DoUinger. gument becomes weakest where it should hare the greatest 
 strength. His speculations may be masterly, and his con- 
 clusions forcible; but we lack the means of determining 
 their truth. Mr. Grote, in his History of Greece, hesitates 
 to speak of any events as historical facts before the first 
 recorded Olympiad, i.e. 776 B.C. Sir Cornewall Lewis regards 
 the researches of scholars respecting the primitive history of 
 the Hellenic or Italian tribes as ' not less unreal than the 
 speculations concerning judicial astrology, or the discovery 
 of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life.' ' Dr. Bol- 
 linger must have evidence not accessible to either of these 
 writers, to warrant the assertion that the chief seats of the 
 Pelasgians were Arkadia, Argolis, and Perrhoibia, and that 
 the immigration of the Doric and Aiolic races took place 
 precisely in the year 1104 B.C.' 
 ^hey leave His analysis thus leaves the Greek mythology, as he found 
 difficulties ^^' ^ strange and perplexing riddle. It omits all notice of 
 of Greek the marvoUous likeness between Greek and Scandinavian 
 unex- legends ; it does not even attempt to explain why each 
 
 plained. Greek god should have certain special attributes and not 
 others. It does not tell us why Herakles, and Perseus, and 
 Bellerophon, and ApoUon should all be made to serve crea- 
 tures meaner and weaker than themselves, — why Herakles 
 and Zeus should have a thousand earthly loves, and Artemis 
 and Athene, according to some legends, have none. Still less 
 does it explain why the character of Herakles and Hermes 
 should sometimes assume a comic aspect, which is never 
 allowed to weaken the serious majesty of AthenS, Demeter, 
 or Apollon. 
 
 ' CrcdiHlity of Early Soman History, i, 297. 
 ' Jew and Gentile, ^c, vol. i. pp. 68, 74. 
 
99 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 DIFPUSION OP MYTHS. 
 
 If in the legends of any people we find a number of names chap. 
 whicli explain themselves, if further the exploits of the gods . ^^^" ^ 
 or heroes who bear these names are in strict accordance with The com- 
 those meanings, then at once we are warranted in conjectur- ™°„/i„" 
 ing that other names in the same legends not yet interpreted Aryan my- 
 may be of the same nature, while 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 
 inference is justified that a search into the mythical stores 
 of aU the Aryan tribes would disclose the same phenomenon. 
 If here too our conjectures are verified, it will be impossible 
 to withstand the conclusion 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 aU the actors, as well as in the 
 minor details of their career, would prove, in exact propor- 
 tion to the fidelity with which the essential type was pre- 
 served, 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 hypo- 
 thesis of any conscious borrowing or adaptation of myths on, 
 a large scale by one tribe from another after their separation 
 
 H 2 
 
100 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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. 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 be- 
 tween 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. 
 The Greek This is the goal to which we must be brought if the track 
 of itself bfi of this kind ; and the m.atter may perhaps be soonest 
 explains brought to an issue if we take the most complicated myths 
 of this of the Hellenic tribes as our starting point. We can scarcely 
 eiemZt. ^^^^ *^® legends of Herakles and Demeter, of Theseus, 
 Ifadmos, 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 Demeter 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 trea- 
 sures.' The tale of Endymion seems to speak for itself; 
 ' The moon comes to gaze on her beloved, the sun, as he hes 
 
COMMON ELEMENTS OF SOLAR MYTHS. ' 101 
 
 down to sleep in the evening.' In tlie story of Niob^, we CHAP. 
 
 seem to see the sun in his scorching power, consuming those . ,_J — - 
 
 who dare to face his dazzling brightness ; in that of Orpheus, 
 we seem to hear his lamentation 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 BuropS 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 Daphn^. 
 Prokris, even in the mouth of the Greek, is still the child of 
 Hers^, the dew : Eos is stiU the morning, Kephalos stiU the 
 head of the bright sun. In Daphne we seem to behold the 
 dawn flying from her lover and shrinking before his splen- 
 dour. In the Homeric Hymn, Leto, the night, dark and 
 still as death, promises that Phoibos shall long abide in 
 Delos, the bright land. Doubtless she made the same 
 promise to 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 toU 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, 
 
102 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK while the wild pursuit of the immortal Gorgons seems to be 
 
 ; — • the chase of Darkaess 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. 
 The Korse If the Greek legends by themselves thus exhibit, or seem 
 mythology ^^ exhibit, their ancient framework, the Norse tradition 
 
 points m ' . ,. . 
 
 precisely points with at the least equal clearness in the same direction. 
 
 direction. 1^ ^^7 "^w Can be found to assert that the one set of legends 
 were copied from the other, he not only maintains a theory 
 which, in Dr. Dasent's words, ' hangs on a single thread,' ' 
 but he displays a credulity which needs not to shrink from 
 the avowal that the whole of the Arabian Nights' Entertain- 
 ments is a genuine and veracious history. The wildest pre- 
 judice can scarcely shelter itself behind these treacherous 
 and crumbling barriers, although it may urge that, whether in 
 Teutonic or in Greek mythology, 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 
 allows that what he terms allegory is one of the constituent 
 elements of Greek mythology.^ But even if we admit the 
 objection in its full force, we lack but a single link to com- 
 plete the chain of evidence and turn an overwhelming pro- 
 bability into fact. Have we any records of that old time ia 
 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 Daphne as chased by Phoibos, even 
 while Daphn^ was still a common name of the dawn, and 
 Phoibos meant simply the sun ? 
 The mis- The Vedic hymns of the Mantra period stand forth to give 
 
 su"ppiied iu ■"S ^^^ answer, but they do so only to exhibit a fresh marvel. 
 the older While they show to us the speech which was afterwards 
 
 "Vcdic 
 
 poems. petrified into the forms of Greek and Norse mythology, they 
 
 ' Popular Tales from the Norse, iritroduction, p. xUii. 
 - History of Greece, vol. i. p. 2, 
 
MYTHICAL PHRASES. 103 
 
 point to a still earlier time, of whicli no record lias come CHAP, 
 down, and of wluch we can have no further evidence than ■ ,-1— 
 
 that which is furnished by the laws which deter mifte 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,' the whole 
 grammar is definitely fixed, and religious belief has assumed 
 the character of a creed. And if in them 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 aU-powerful, whose bidding is done 
 throughout the wide creation, and to whom men may draw 
 nigh as children to a father. 
 
 When, therefore, in these hymns, Kephalos, Prokris, The key to 
 Hermes, Daphne, Zeus, Ouranos, stand forth as simple all Aryan 
 names for the sun, the dew, the wind, the dawn, the heaven logy. 
 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 we 
 hear the people saying, ' Our friend the sun is dead. Will 
 he rise ? Will the dawn come back again ? ' we see the 
 death of Herakles, and the weary waiting while Leto strug- 
 gles with the birth of Phoibos. When on the return of day 
 we hear the cry — 
 
 ' Else ! 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 liglit on Delos.^ The tale of Urvasi and Puru- 
 ravas ^ (these are still the morning and the sun) is the tale 
 of Orpheus and Eurydike. Pururavas, in his dreary search, 
 
 • Max MiiUer, History of SansTcrit but a minute analysis of the play of 
 Literature, pp. 528, 557. Kalidasa on this subject. This poem is 
 
 * ^K S* iQopi -Kpb <p6{aff^e • fleal S' very instructive, as showing that the 
 
 6\6\v^av anaffat. character of the Homeric Achilleus ad- 
 
 Hymn to Apollo, 110. heres as closely to the original idea as 
 
 " In the essay on Comparative Mytho- do those of Urvasi and Pururavas in the 
 
 logy. Professor Max MiiUer has given later poetry of KalidAsa; 
 not only the older form.s of this myth, 
 
104 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK, hears tlie voioe of Urvasi saying ' I am gone like the first of 
 
 I. 
 
 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, Indra, a great hero hast ground to pieces. 
 
 ' 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 Daphn^, 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, Bury- 
 dik^), and moving towards every one. She grew in brightness, 
 wearing her brilliant garment. The m^other of the cows (the 
 morning clouds, the 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.' ' 
 
 ' Max Miiller, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 561. 
 
GEEMS OF DAWN MYTHS. 105 
 
 Still more remarkable, as exiiibiting the germs of the chap. 
 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 commence- 
 ment 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 weU-attired female, she 
 stands before our eyes (gracefully) inclining like (a woman 
 who has been) bathing (Aphrodite Anadyomene). 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.' ' 
 
 We can but wonder at the marvellous exuberance of Germs of 
 language, almost every expression of which may manifestly ^y'*^''*! 
 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 the strong prison : then the wind blows after his blast : 
 thy path, Agni (Ignis), is dark at once.' 
 
 The Latin carried with him the name of the Hindu Fire- Truthful- 
 god to little purpose. In the hands of the Greek similar thkalde^' 
 phrases on the searching breath of the wind grew up into scription. 
 ' H. H. Wilson, Big Veda Sanhita, vol. iii. p. 369. 
 
106 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Ground- 
 work of 
 Aryan my- 
 thology. 
 
 the legend of Hermes. Nor can it be said tliat the instinct 
 of the Gr^ek 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 truthfulness 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 bom 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.' 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 
 ApoUon 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.^ 
 
 Thus the great mystery of Greek as of other mythology is 
 dispelled like mist from the mountain-side at the rising of 
 the sun. All that is beautiful in it is invested with a purer 
 radiance, while much, if not 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 
 
 ' lv8a <re, ij'ie ioifie, Seal \oiov 8S0T1 
 
 ayvois Koi Kadapus' (nrdp^av 8* iv 
 
 (pdpe'C \€VK^ 
 Xeirry vTiyaTeo}. 
 
 Hymn to Apollo, 120. 
 This is the white and glistening robe 
 in which Cyrus and Arthur are wrapped, 
 when they are carried away from the 
 house in which they were born. 
 
 2 Airis y, ti.pyvp6rot,(, Sj/of, EKOT7)j3(iA' 
 "AttoWoi', 
 
 •jranra\6eVTOs, 
 &K\PTe 5' o5 vf]tTOVS T6 KaX kvipo-s 
 
 ilKdirxa^es • 
 
 irScroi Se iTKoirial re 0iAai Kol 
 
 ^pdoves &Kpoi 
 i\fi'n\a.v opwv, TOTa,fiLoi 0' fi\o5e 
 
 TTpoptoyres ' 
 
 aWh tri ^■liKif, ^otfie, fiiKiaT h-ntp- 
 weai ^Top. — Kpnn to Apollo, 140. 
 
GEOUNDWOKK OF ALL MTTHOLOGT. 
 
 107 
 
 the ordinary speecli whicli told of the interchange of day and CHAP. 
 
 night, of summer and winter; but into the superstructure . ,—1— 
 
 there may have been introduced 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 howerer this may be, the original matter 
 may still be traced, even where it exists only in isolated 
 fragments. The bull which bears Europ^ away from Kadmos 
 (Kedem, the East),' is the same from which the dawn 
 flies in the Vedie hymn. 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 Aigens 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 AchiUeus 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 stiug the beautiful Eurydik^. 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 ; ^ 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 
 
 ' 'Niehnhr, (in his Lectures on Ancient the Syrian Melkarth and Moloch, can 
 
 History, toI. i. p. 239) sees that the scarcely be questioned, 
 tale points to the East ; but from the ^ *d<;3o! axfpa(K6fvits [Iliad, xx. 39), 
 
 words Kadmos and Banna as occurring a significant epithet, ■which of itself 
 
 in the Boiotian dialect only he is per- would suffice to give birth to such ,. 
 
 fectly convinced of the 'Phcenician origin legend as that of Nisos and Skylla. The 
 
 of Thebes.' The identity of the name shearing of the locks of the sun must be 
 
 Melikertes (in the myth of In5) with followed by darkness and ruin. 
 
108 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK king, powerless as tlie shorn Samson in tlie arms of the 
 
 . r — . 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. 
 Greek If the greater number of Greek legends have thus been 
 
 legends. 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 method which has disclosed so 
 many secrets. For most other tales 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 L^to, Demeter and Persephone, 
 Kadmos and Europe, Daphne and ApoUon. Not an incident 
 remains unexplained in the legends of Herakles, of Althaia 
 and the burning brand, of Phaethon, Memnon, and Belle- 
 rophon. If there are bypaths in the stories of AriadnS, 
 Medeia, Semele, Prometheus, or of the cows of the Smi in 
 the Odyssey, they have been followed up to the point from 
 which they all diverge. 
 Growth of If then in the vast mass of stories which make up the 
 traditions, mythology of the Aryan na.tions there seems to be evidence 
 showing that in some cases the legend has been brought by 
 direct importation from the Bast to the West or from West 
 to East, the presumption of conscious borrowing cannot with 
 any fairness be extended to any 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 dis- 
 persion of the tribes, and during which aU 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 dif- 
 
THEOKT OF THE IMPORTATION OF MYTHS. 109 
 
 ference, which can be accounted for by conscious borrowing CHAP, 
 only on the supposition that the traditions of one country - 
 
 were a» 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 mythologisfcs, aided by the mighty m.achinery 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 practically 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 these 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 wearing borrowed plumage as with an 
 inborn grace. Unless we are 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 phe- 
 nomena have been kept alive by independent tradition from 
 the times of the first dispersion. 
 
 But if the story of Achilleus, as told in* the Hiad, is only Aryan 
 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 Charlemagne, in the lay of Beowulf and 
 the Shahnameh of Firdusi, and if further aU 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, 
 
110 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAIf NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of Greece and Eome, of Persia and Hindustan. On the 
 
 ; - ,' - liypothesis 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 sun 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 BrynhUd 
 
 and Gudrun, of Paris and of Lancelot, of AchiUeus 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 stUl 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. 
 
 Legends The wonder becomes greater when from the necessary 
 
 abie^Sto^' outgrowth of certain conditions of thought and speech we 
 
 phrases re- tum to popular stories which cannot be brought within this 
 
 phy^fcal class of epical legends, and which yet exhibit, in spite of 
 
 pheno- differences of detail and local colourinsr, a closeness of re- 
 mena. °' 
 
 semblance which establishes their substantial identity. If, 
 among the stories which Hindu, Persian, Greek, or Teutonic 
 mothers recounted to their children, we find tales which tum 
 on the same incidents, and in their most delicate touches 
 betray the influence of precisely the same feelings, we must 
 conclude either that these legends were passed from the one 
 tribe or clan to the other, or that before 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 nmnber 
 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, 
 
STORIES OF THE MASTER THIEF. Ill 
 
 indeed, be safer to affirm of any given story that it lias not CHAP, 
 been tlius 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 sight as though it had nothing to 
 do with the legends of the great Norse or Hellenic heroes, 
 and the resemblance of some of its incidents 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 Dimna. Professor Max Miiller 
 plainly avowing this belief, says that ' the story of the 
 Master Thief is told in the Hitopadesa.' ' The Sanskrit tale The 
 is that of the Brahman who, on hearing from three thieves ^^^ j.™*" 
 in succession that the goat which he carried on his back was goat. 
 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 Miiller, ' 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 The 
 others ; in the Norse legend the peasant deceives himself, ^''.^*/'^ 
 and the moral seems 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 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 
 
 ' CM^sfrom a German Workshop, ii. 229. 
 
112 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 'any harm. The lad accordingly puts a silver-buckled shoe 
 
 I. 
 
 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, haviog 
 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 untU 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.' 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,'' although even here the points of 
 difference are so great as to preclude the idea that the one 
 was derived from the other. The sequel of the Norse tale is 
 
 > Dasent, Norse Tales, 'The Master ' Cam-^heW, Popular Tales of the West 
 
 Thief,' 268. BigUands, toI. i. p. 320. 
 
EHAMPSINITOS AND THE MASTER THIEF. 113 
 
 Substantially the same as tlie Teutonic story of the Master CHAP. 
 Thief. This story has, therefore, really nothing to d(j with _ — ^^^ 
 the fable of the Brahman and the goat, and it may fairly be 
 doubted whether, on the supposition that the idea was gained 
 from the Hitopadesa, ' nothing was easier than to invent the 
 three variations which we find in the Norse Master Thief 
 and the Shifty Lad of Highland tradition. Professor Max 
 Miiller adds that ' the case would be different if the same 
 story occurred in Herodotos.' 
 
 'At the time of Herodotos,' he contimies,, ' the translations 
 of the Hitopadesa had not yet reached Europe, and we should 
 be obliged to include the Master Thief within the most pri- 
 mitive 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 
 Ehampsinitos did enter into the popular literature of 
 Europe, but through a different channel. We find it in the 
 ' Gesta Eomanorum,' where Octavianus has taken the place 
 of Rhampsinitos, and we can hardly doubt that there it came 
 originally from Herodotos.' ' But what are really the facts tj^^ , j 
 of the ease ? The evidence which proves that the Herodotean «* Rham- 
 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 extraor- 
 
 ' Chips from a German Workshop, ii. 231. 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 MTTHOLOGY OP THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 POOK dinary incidents and astounding tricks following eacli other 
 ^__,__ in the same order, although utterly different in their out- 
 ward 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.' In the latter, the younger of the two sons 
 who 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 anyone 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 pro- 
 posed to catch him, crowns his exploits by cheating the 
 king's daughter, and leaving a dead man's hand in hers. 
 His marriage with the princess follows, and he is held in 
 
 ' The groundwork of the Arabian but it is within the cave ; and it is 
 
 Nights' story of the Forty Thieves is taken away by the other brother, who is 
 
 manifestly the same, but tlie likeness impelled to this task, not by the mother 
 
 to the legend of Ehampsinitos is not of the dead man, but by his wife. The 
 
 nearly so close. Here, however, as in thieves are not less perplexed than 
 
 the Egyptian tale, we have two brothers, Ehampsinitos when they find that the 
 
 who become possessed of the secret of a body has been removed, and that thus 
 
 treasure-house. The king is replaced some one else is possessed of their secret, 
 
 by the forty thieves ; but it may be The spell which opens the cave connects 
 
 noted that Herodotos speaks of the the Arabian story with the vast mass 
 
 wealth of Ehampsinitos as amassed by of legends turning on substances which 
 
 extortion if not by direct robbery. Here have the power of splitting rocks, aud 
 
 also one of the brothers is unlucky; which Mr. Gould has resolved into 
 
 but although he is found alive in the phrases descriptive of the action of 
 
 cave, the thieves are none the wiser, lightning. — Curious Myths of the Middle 
 
 as he is immediately killed. Here too Jffcs, second series, ' Schamir.' 
 the body is nailed up against the wall, 
 
HINDU VERSION OF THE MASTER THIEF. 115 
 
 honour as the cleverest man of the cleverest people in the CHAP. 
 
 VIII. 
 world.' * , — - 
 
 This story in some of its leading features agrees closely with The story 
 the Adventure of the Mason, related by Washington Irving ^j'^^jf """^ 
 in his ' Tales of the Alhambra.' Probably Irving himself knew 
 nothing of the story of Ehampsinitos, and certainly was un- 
 acquainted with the Tales of the Master Thief and his fol- 
 lowers. Still a Spanish legend must be regarded with some 
 suspicion. In this case it must at least be admitted that the 
 traces of direct borrowing have been as skUfuUy hidden as if 
 the changes in the story had been the work of Hermes or 
 the Master Thief himself. Here the king is turned into a 
 priest, who is so far wiser than Ehampsinitos that he guards 
 against the knowledge of the mason by keeping him blind- 
 folded from the time of his leaving home to his return, 
 except while he is actually at work preparing the treasure- 
 chamber. In this case, then, the mason knows the secret 
 of the hidden wealth, but cannot teU in what house it is 
 stored up. The priest dies : but not only have his riches 
 vanished, but his ghost haunts the house, and no one will 
 become its tenant till the landlord chances to betake himself 
 to the poor mason, who declares that he is ' not to be 
 frightened by the devil himself, even though he should come 
 in the shape of a big bag of money.' When he is led to the 
 house, he finds that it is the very one in which he had worked 
 for the priest, and discreetly keeps the secret to himself, till, 
 like the Egyptian architect, he reveals it on his deathbed to 
 his son. 
 
 The Hindu version of the story of Ehampsinitos is less in- The story 
 genious than this Spanish story, and is in every way inferior °^ ^qP^^ ' 
 to the well-pointed legend of Herodotos. It is related by 
 Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmir in his ' Ocean of the Streams of 
 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 
 
 ' Horodotos, ii. 121, &c. ; Tales of Ancient Greece, 385. 
 I 2 
 
116 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 caught in the morning, is hanged, hut not hefore he has hy 
 signs bidden his brother Gata to carry off and sare the prin- 
 cess. 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 bums 
 the body of his brother Karpara, for whom he contrives to 
 perform the necessary amount of mourning by dashing on 
 the ground a karpara, or 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 proclama- 
 tion 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.' 
 
 The mason's secret is much more closely reproduced in the 
 story which Pausanias tells of Trophonios and AgamM^s, 
 the builders of the temple of Phoibos, after he had slain 
 the dragon at Delphoi. 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 AgamMes 
 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 Am- 
 phiaraos. 
 
 In the Scottish story the Shifty Lad goes through his ap- 
 
 ShiftyLad. prenticcship not among a company of thieves, but under the 
 
 sole charge of the Black Eogue, 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 story 
 of Tro- 
 phonios 
 and Aga 
 medes. 
 
 The 
 
 ' See Mr. Cowell's Paper 'On the 
 Hindu Version of the Story of Eham- 
 psinitos,' in the Journal of Philology, 
 No. I. p. 66. The imprisonment of the 
 king's daughter in the treasure-chamher 
 can scarcely fail to remind us of Bryn- 
 hild within her flaming walls; and thus 
 the myth seems to exhibit an affinity to 
 
 the legends which tell of unsuccessful 
 attempts to rescue the imprisoned 
 maiden, who is finally won only by the 
 peerless knight or irresistible warrior 
 who can leap the hedge of spears or 
 cross the fiery barrier. See also book ii. 
 oh. viii. sect. 2. 
 
STOKT OF THE SHIFTY LAD. 117 
 
 tte mode of effecting it differs widely. Having disposed of CHAP. 
 
 his master, he engages himself to a carpenter whom he per- . ,_ _- 
 
 suades 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 aU 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 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, ap- 
 proaches the soldiers as though h.e 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 fol- 
 lowed by others which occur in no other version : but the final 
 scene is a feast, at which, according to the Seanagal's predic- 
 tion, the Shifty Lad asks the king's daughter to dance. The 
 Seanagal upon this puts a black mark upou him, but the lad, 
 like Morgiana, in the story of ' Ali 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.' Mr. Campbell, who relates 
 
 ' The theft of treasure by a clever stories of ' The Four Accomplished 
 
 rogue occurs in the story of the Travels Brothers,' ' The Rogue and his Master,' 
 
 of Dummling, who is Boots under an- and of the 'Young Giant' In the 
 
 other name. Compare also Grimm's latter tale Hermes takes more the form 
 
118 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 J. 
 
 Point and 
 drift of 
 
 these 
 stories. 
 
 this story, gives Ml weight to the suggestion that the inci- 
 dents 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 Universi- 
 ties,' 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." 
 
 In the Norse and Teutonic versions it seems impossible 
 not to see the most striking incident of the Egyptian tale in 
 a connection and under forms which force on us the conclu- 
 sion that they are not related to each other in any other way 
 than by their growth from a common root. In these versions 
 the king is represented by a goodhumoured 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 Ehampsinitos 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 power- 
 description which reminds us of the 
 Hesiodic narrative of the toil of Hermes 
 the -whole night through. The only 
 reward which he asks is the pleasure of 
 kicking his master, who is sent spinning 
 into the air and is never more seen. 
 ' Tales of tlie West Highlands, i. 352, 
 
 of the Maruts, or Crushers ; and the 
 myth of the Molionids is re-enacted 
 with singular exactness. The young 
 giant brings up from the water a huge 
 mill-stone which he places round his 
 neck, and so keeps watch all night. 
 He is assailed by evil demons, but he 
 returns every blow with interest — a 
 
THE THEFTS OF HERMES. 119 
 
 fully drugged, soon puts tlie guards to sleep as soundly as CHAP. 
 
 the soldiers of tlie Egyptian king. In this version the thief . , L^ 
 
 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 un- The 
 called for. The story of the Master Thief was told in Europe, ^^"™.''' 
 probably ages before the Homeric poems were put together. Thief, 
 certainly ages before Herodotos heard the story of the 
 Egyptian treasure-house. In aU 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 m^ind : 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 defence wakes 
 a smile on the face of Phoibos,' 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 ApoUon with a smile, ' thou wilt 
 break into many a house, I see, and thy followers after thee ; 
 
 ' This is precisely reproduced by Te boves olim nisi reddidisses 
 
 Horace in his well-kiiowii ode, with an Per dolura amotas, puerum minaci 
 
 incident which is not mentioned in the Voce dnm terret, viduus pharetra 
 Homeric hymn, but is in close agree- Bisit Apollo. Carm. i. x, 
 
 ment with the spirit of the Norse tale : 
 
120 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and thy fancy for beef will set many a herdsman grieving. 
 
 .. ^- , But come down from the cradle, or this sleep wUl be thy 
 
 last. Only this honour can I promise thee, to be called the 
 
 Master Thief for ever.' * 
 
 The origin The thief in the northern stories marries the squire's 
 
 story^of daughter, as the architect's son marries the daughter of 
 
 the Master Riianipsinitos. The marriage represents the compact made 
 
 hetween 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 Eibhus, or of the Finnic Wainamoinen, the son of 
 
 Ilmatar, the daughter of the Air,^ 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 imusic lasts.^ He is the 
 
 * rovTo yb^p o^v Koi fir^na ju€t* aQav6.' makiDg or fire-bringing gods, so Wai- 
 
 Tois 7€'pas €^€11, namoinen catches the fish that has swal- 
 
 APX02 ^HAHTEflN KEKA^o-eai ^/uoTO lowid the fire-, which, struck by Ukko, 
 
 ■nikrTa. — Hymn toMemies, 292. the lord of the air, from the new sun 
 
 This may, I think, be considered de- and moon, has fallen into the sea. 
 monstrable evidence that the story of ' This story of ' The Jew among the 
 the Master Thief belongs to the class Thorns,' in Grimm's 5o2«S(AoW Tales,is 
 of myths which Professor Max Miiller reproduced under a hundred forms ; but 
 calls organic, as being legends ' which in few or none of these can it be main- 
 were known to the primeval Aryan tained with any show of reason that one 
 race, before it broke up into Hindus, has been deliberately adapted from 
 Greeks, Eomans, Germans, and Celts,' another. The fiddle which makes the 
 all stories imported in later times from Jew dance is reproduced in the form of 
 one literature into another being se- a stick in 'The Lad who went to the 
 condary or inorganic. The number of North Wind,' (Dasent, Nome Tales, 263V 
 stories belonging to the latter class is Tiie stick is of course the gift of the 
 probably much smaller than is generally wind, just as Hermes gives the harp to 
 
 Phoibos. In the German story the Jew 
 ^ As Hermes ia one of the fire- is made to yield up his purse to tha 
 
PAUL PRY AND PEEPING TOM. 121 
 
 Srlking, whose mysterious harmony is heard by the child CHAP. 
 
 nestled in his father's arms.* He is the piper of Hameln," . , _. 
 
 ■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 ofiBces 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 curioxis 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 Eudra, the ' bountiful,' the ' gracious,' the 
 god ' with braided hair ' (the streaming vapours), the ' thou- 
 sand 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.' ^ 
 
 Thus, then, in the story of the Master Thief, the idea of any Limits to 
 lateral transmission becomes inadmissible. But as this tale ti^esiJof' 
 in all its modifications can be traced back to phrases denot- conscious 
 ing physical phenomena, we have yet to see whether there °"^°^°s- 
 are other tales which apparently cannot be resolved into 
 such expressions, and for which the idea of any such borrow- 
 ing is equally imtenable or superfluous. If any such 
 stories are 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 
 
 fiddler, who, when hrought to trial, Alhamhra,' where it is applied with 
 
 excuses himself by a quibble like that great humour to cure the mad freak of 
 
 of Hermes. He had not robbed any Philip V. — Irving's Alhambra. 
 one : the Jew gave the money of his ' Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. 
 
 own free will. Hermes is a very trutliful ch. iii. section vii. Slightly altered, 
 
 person and knows not how to tell a lie. the story of Godiva in Coventry is told 
 
 ' ' Horest du nicht again in the tale of AUah-ud-deen, who 
 
 Was Erlenkonig mir leise verspricht ? ' sees through a crevice the king's 
 
 Goethe. daughter on her way to the bath, when 
 
 ' The magic pipe or lyre reappears it is death for any one to be seen 
 
 in the legend of ' The Rose of the abroad or to be found looking on her. 
 
122 MYTHOLOGY OP TEE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK phrases descriptive, of natural phenomena, the ideas of whicli 
 -_ ; _- 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 in 
 the tales which exhibit the closest likeness in their most 
 developed forms, the points of difference in detail and colour- 
 ing 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 bhe 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 hardihood to maintain that the countrymen of Herman 
 had access to the pages of Pausanias, or that the soldiers of 
 Varus had in their childhood 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, Eomans, Germans 
 and Scandinavians, and a likeness not less astonishing runs 
 through the popular tales of these races and those of the 
 Hindu.' In India, as in Germany, old women, who doubtless 
 thought themselves 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 roased and soothed by the stories of the sweet Star- 
 Lady and the lovely Queen of the Kve Flowers, just as the 
 young German and Norseman used to listen to the tale of 
 
 ' 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 
 
 Liberata de Souza, and translated by they came from the lips of the narrator, 
 
 Miss Frere. The stories are of great without additions or embellishments, 
 importance ; but their value is inde- 
 
TRAXSMISSIOK OF POPULAR TALES. 
 
 123 
 
 the beautiful Briar-rose sleeping in death-like stiUness until ^^^^• 
 
 the kiss of the pure Knight rouses her from her sUimber. . ^ 
 
 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 HeUas, we should in aU 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 in- 
 evitable destructive work; but we can as little doubt that 
 many an Athenian mother pointed on the slopes of Hymettos 
 to the spot where the glistening form of Prokris first met 
 the eye of Kephalos 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 Frame- 
 which have little or nothing in common with the epic poems popular 
 of the Aryan nations, but which exhibit a series of incidents stories. 
 in striking parallelism with those of the corresponding 
 Teutonic versions. These incidents are in themselves so 
 strange, and the result is brought about by turns so unex- 
 pected, 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 won- 
 derful even than the epic poems, the growth of which from 
 common germs would be inevitable if the theory of compara- 
 tive mythologists be regarded as established. The resem- 
 blances between these stories may perhaps bring down the 
 
124 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 lead- 
 ing idea. The fidelity with which the Hindu and the Ger- 
 man tales adhere to this framework is indeed astonishing. 
 The story One of the most remarkable of these coincidences is fur- 
 and'th?"^ uished by the story of the ' Dog and the Sparrow,' iu Grimm's 
 Sparrow. Collection, as compared with an episode in the ' Wanderings 
 of Vicram Maharajah.' 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 likeness, the sig- 
 nificance of which is heightened by points of singularly 
 subtle difference. In the German story, the sparrow is 
 offended because a carter, not heeding the warning which 
 she had given him, drove his waggon over a dog which she 
 had saved frotn 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. ' Wiat 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 aU 
 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 
 
GEEMAN AND HINDU STORIES. 125 
 
 the birds in the world, and there they sit among our corn, 
 and a,re 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 wiudow-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, 
 'KiQ 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.' 
 
 In the Hindoo story the bird is a parrot, and the dog's The story 
 place is taken by a poor woodcutter, from whom a dancing- ^ '^, 
 girl attempts to extort a large sum of money by deliberate girl and 
 falsehood. The girl thus represents the carter, and at once 
 the framework of the tale is provided ; but the method by 
 which the sparrow wreaks her vengeance on the man 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 wood- 
 cutter with the dowry which she said that he had promised 
 to pay on marrying her, the promise and the marriage being 
 
 ' This iRst incident is dearly the {Chips ^c. ii. 232) identifies with the 
 
 same as that which brings about the fable in Phsedrus, of the bald man who, 
 
 death of the bald carpenter, who being trying to kill a gnat, gives himself a 
 
 attacked by a mosquito called his son severe blow in the face, and he attri- 
 
 to drive it away. The son aiming a butes it, therefore, to some old Aryan 
 
 blow at the insect, splits his father's proverb. The German story of the 
 
 head with the axe. This story from carter has certainly all the appearance 
 
 the Pankatantra Professor Max Miiller of a more independent growth. 
 
 the Parrot. 
 
126 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK alike purely imaginary. Tlie rajah, being called to giye 
 ^_,1_^ 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 judgement 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. Tour 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 waU for carryiag 
 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, 
 
 ' 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 ? ' 
 
THE STORY OF CHAMPA EANEE. 127 
 
 With some little fear the parrot heard her words, for the CHAP. 
 
 loss of his wing feathers had left him unable to fly ; but at . , ' 
 
 length he contrived to find his way to a neighbouring temple, 
 and to perch behind the idol. It was the favourite god of 
 Champa Eanee, 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 sup- 
 plication, the parrot spoke, and the nautch-girl at once took 
 its words for the utterances of the god. 
 
 ' Champa Eanee, 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 ser- 
 vants and dismiss them. Level also your house to the 
 ground, that you may be wholly separated from earth. Then 
 you wUl be fit for heaven, and you may come, having done 
 all I command you, on this day week to this place, aad you 
 shall be transported thither body and soul.' ' 
 
 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 
 
 ' This incident recurs in the Norse you in a sack; and all your gold and 
 version of the Master Thief. Here, your silTer and all that you have of 
 however, there is no real bird, but only this -world's goods you - must lay to- 
 the thief disguised as a bird, nor are gether in a heap in your dining-room.' 
 the victims of the trick actually killed. Well, Father Lawrence fell on his knees 
 but they are grievously mauled, and before 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 Tvell sermon and gave it out how there 
 9ie property is in each case abandoned had come down an angel unto the big 
 by an act of their own free will. Hav- maple in his garden, who had told him 
 ing undertaken to cheat the priest and that he was to be taken up alive into 
 his 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 goose course that all who were at church wept, 
 and tied them to his back, and so both young and old.' — Dasent, Norse 
 climbed up into a great maple which Tales, 'Master Thief.' Here, as in the 
 stood in die priest's garden, and when Hindu story, the time is fixed, and the 
 the priest came home in the evening farewell sermon answers to the invitations 
 the youth began to bawl out, 'Father sent out by Champa Eanee to all her 
 Lawrence, father Lawrence,' — for that friends that they should come and witness 
 was the priest's name, 'Who is that herascension. Another priest is deceived 
 calling me,' said the priest. ' I am an in the admirable Gaelic story of the 
 angel,' said the Master Thief, ' sent ' Son of the Scottish Yeoman who stole 
 from God to let you know that you the Bishop's Horse and Daughter, and 
 shall be taken up alive into heaven for the Bishop Himself.' See also Mr. 
 your piety's sake. Next Monday night Campbell's excellent remarks on this 
 you must hold yourself ready for the story. Tales of the West Highlands, 
 journey, for I shall come then to fetch ii. 263. 
 
128 • MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK women whom slxe liad invited to be witnesses of her glori- 
 
 ^ fication. 
 
 As they waited, a flattering of little wings was heard, and 
 a parrot flew over Champa Eanee's head, calling out, 
 ' Nautch-girl, nautch-girl, what have you done ? ' Champa 
 Eanee recognised the voice as Vicram's : he went on, ' Will 
 yon go body and soiil to heaven ? Have you forgotten Polly's 
 words'? ' 
 
 Champa Eanee 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 
 Eanee, good bye; you ate a chicken's head, not mine. 
 Where is your house now ? Where are your' servants and 
 aU 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.' 
 
 Origin It is impossible to question the real idjentity of these two 
 
 andgrowth gtories, and incredible that the one could have been invented 
 
 of these ^ 
 
 stories. apart from the other, or that the German and. the Hind'u 
 tale are respectively developements merely from the same 
 leading idea. This idea is that beings of no repute may be 
 avengers of successful wrongdoers, or to put i% in the lan- 
 guage 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 vnrongdoer should punish 
 himself, and should seal his doom by swallowing his per- 
 secutor 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 
 
 ' Frere, Old Deccan Days, p. 127. 
 
IMPORTATION OP MYTHS. 
 
 129 
 
 family.' A series of incidents sucli as these could never have [CHAP. 
 
 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 maintain that the 
 story has in the one case or in the other been imported 
 bodily. Probably no instance could be adduced in which a 
 borrowed story differs 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.' 
 
 But the story of the nautch-girl is only one incident in a The stories 
 larger drama. The bird of the German tale is a common "^ ^ '^^^ 
 sparrow ; the parrot which brings about the death of Champa motimos. 
 Ranee is nothing less than the Maharajah Vicram, who has 
 
 ' Chi})s from a German Workshop, 
 ii. 233. 
 
 ^ It is scarcely an exaggeration to 
 say thrit tht-re is scarcely one important 
 feature of the Hindu popular stories 
 which are not to be found in those of 
 G-ermany and Scandinavia, and which 
 are not repeated in Celtic traditions. 
 ^n 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 
 identify 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 slirring and enter- 
 prising nations of the present day. Mr. 
 Campbell, in his invaluable collection 
 of Popu'ar 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 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
 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 
 assejts, 'After working for a yea? and 
 weighiiig all the evidence that has come 
 in my wa^% 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 body 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 go, unless many 
 hands combine, the net and the con- 
 tents will never be brought to shore ' 
 (ib. 229). It is not a litrle 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. 
 
130 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK received from the god of wisdom the power of transportmg 
 / . 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 mediseval importation. ^ The story of Vicram is essentially 
 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 Deccah tale, which 
 is also told by Pliny and Lueian, 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 : bat the real fun of the 
 Deccan tale rises from the complications produced by the 
 carpenter's son, who overhears the god Gunputti as he 
 teaches Vicram the mystic words which enable him to pass 
 from his own body into another ; but as he could not s^e 
 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-rajah 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 Eanee. 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-rajah. Butti accordingly submits his own ram to a 
 
MYTHS OP THE WINTEE. 131 
 
 training, whicli greatly hardens his horns ; and so when the CHAP, 
 fight hegan, the pretended rajah, seeing to his vexation that ._ , . '., 
 
 his favourite was getting the worst in the battle, transported 
 his sotil into the rain's body, to add to its strength and reso- 
 lution. 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 Persephone, of 
 Tammuz, 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 dislodged 
 — the deadly snake of winter and darkness, which stings the 
 beautiful Eurydike,, and lies coiled around the maiden on the 
 glistening heath. The rajah,, in his intolerable misery, leaves 
 his home, just as Persephon^ is taken away from DemSt^r, 
 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 Buccoulee, who had recog- 
 nised her destined husband under his sq[ualid rags as Bury- 
 kleia recognises Odysseus, had succeeded in freeing Vicram 
 from his tormentor,, and thus all three returned to the long 
 forsaken Anar Eanee. But before we examine incidents 
 which take 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 
 Woodciitter belongs. There are some which are even more 
 remarkable for their agreement in the general scheme with 
 thorough divergence in detail. 
 
 In the story entitled, ' The Table, the Ass, and the Stick ' The Table, 
 in Grimm's collection, a goat, whose appetite cannot be *^^^^f' 
 satisfied, brings a tailor into grievous trouble by leading him Stick. 
 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 
 
 k2 
 
132 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK presented a magnificent banquet; the second received a 
 ■ ^- . donkey, which on hearing the word 'Bricklebrit' rained 
 d©wn goM pieces,' and both were deprived of 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 the 
 sack heavier to carry. The stick, however, was endowed 
 with 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 
 
 ' This donkey is, in fact, Midas, at the -power of becoming more beautiful 
 
 whose touch everything turns tcgold — every day, and that a piece of gold shall 
 
 a myth which reappears in the Irish fall out of her mouth every word that 
 
 tradition of Lavra Loingsech, who had iShe speaks. But the has a stepsister, 
 
 horse's ears, as Midas had those of an the winter, who, not having her kindly 
 
 ass. The reeds betrayed the secret in feelings, refuses to share her bread with 
 
 the case of Midas ; the barber of iLavra the dwarfs, who decree that she shall 
 
 whispered the secret in the Irish story grow more ugly every day, and that 
 
 to a willow; the willow was cut down, toads shall spring from her month 
 
 and the harp made of the wood mur- whenever she speaks. This is the 
 
 mured ' Lavra Loingsech has horse's story of ' Bushy Bride ' in Dasent's 
 
 ears.' (Fergusson, The Irish, before the Nurse Talis. The dawn-children re- 
 
 Conqupst.') The horse and the ass appear in the story of Hansel and 
 
 doubtless represent the Harits of Hindu Grethel, who, wandering into the forest 
 
 mythology ; the production of gold (the (of night or winter), come upon a house 
 
 golden light) by the sun or the dawn with windows made of clear sugar (ice), 
 
 recurs again and again in Aryan where they fall into tlie power of a 
 
 legends. In Grimm's story of the witch (Hades), who, like the dwnrfs, 
 
 ' Three Little Men in the Wood,' the guards the hoard of treasure. The old 
 
 kindly dawn-child shares her bread witch is destroyed by Grethel after the 
 
 with the dwarfs, who, as in the Vol- fashion of the cannibal in the Zulu 
 
 sun tale, guard the treasures of the tale. (Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 21i.) 
 ear. j, and in return they grant to her 
 
GERMAN AND HINDU TALES. 
 
 133 
 
 the three gifts reach the tailor's house.'' As for the goat,, c^af. 
 
 whose head the tailor had shaven, it ran into a fox's house; r~^ 
 
 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 The 
 place pf the goat and the tailor : and the mischief is done, thT Jackal 
 not by leading the barber to expel his children, but by chea.t- ^"'^,"^® 
 ing him of the fruits of his 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 rajah, none other in short 
 than the Beast wha- 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 tradi- 
 tion. Bat before he wins his bride, the jackal-rajah ia 
 reduced to sore straits, a^id 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 sf> contracts the hide that he 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 ofiferings.' ' 
 my lord,' they cried, ' what offerings will please you P 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 the jungle. When again he was 
 
 ' The Norse story of ' The Lad who went to the North Wind ' turns on the 
 same machinery. 
 
134 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK nearly starved, he heard a Brahman bewailing his poverty, 
 
 I 
 
 and declaring that if a dog or a jackal were to ofiFer 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 Brah- 
 man himself opens a small withered melon, and learns how 
 he has been overreached. 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.' The Brahman now 
 lived in luxury ; but another Brahman informed the rajah of 
 the royal style in which his once poorer neighbour feasted, 
 and the rajah appropria;ted 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 experience of the powers of the stick, the 
 Brahman generously invited the rajah and his brother 
 
 ■ 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-failing 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. ch. ii. 
 assumed by the mysterious vessel which 
 
WISH. 135 
 
 Brahman to come and test the virtues of his new gift ; and a CHAP, 
 belabouring as hearty as that which the wicked innkeeper ' . 
 
 received in the German tale made them yield up the dinner- 
 making jar. The same wholesome measure led to the re- 
 covery of the precious stones from the jeweller, and the 
 melons from the woman who had bought them. It only 
 remained now, by burning the enchanted rajah's jackal- skin, 
 the lion-skiu of Herakles, to transform him permanently into 
 the most splendid prince ever seen on earth. ^ 
 
 The independent growth of these tales from a common The 
 framework is still more conclusively proved by the fact that ^^^^^° 
 the agreement of the Norse with the Hindu legend is far to the 
 more close and striking than the likeness which it bears to yf^^i 
 the German story. In the Norse version we have not three 
 brothers, but one lad, who represents the Brahman ; 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.'' The jackal 
 and the cloth are thus alike endowed with the mysterious 
 power of the Teutonic Wish. This power is exhibited 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 The story 
 story of Punchkin and the Norse tale of the ' Giant who had "f^"""*- 
 no Heart in his Body ' are perhaps still more striking. In the 
 former a rajah has seven daughters, whose mother dies while 
 they are stiU children, and a stepmother so persecutes them 
 
 ' In the mythology of Northern has been supposed (Nork, Heal-Wor- 
 EuTope the liun-skin becomes a bear- teri/uch, s.t.) to point to mulgeo, mulceo, 
 sack, and thus, MCCording to the story and thus to denote the wizard or the 
 ' of Porphyry, Zalmoxis, the mythical sorcerer. The story of his remaining 
 legislator of the Getai, was a Berserkr, hidden for years in a cave, and then 
 as having been clothed in a bearskin as reappearing among the Getai, is merely 
 soon as he was born. Probably the another form of the myths of Perse- 
 explanation is about as trustworthy as phone, Adonis, Baldur, Osiris, and other 
 that whuh traces the name Tritogeneia deities of the waxing and waning year. 
 to a Cretan word trito, meaning head. ^ Dasent, Tales from the Norse, xciv. 
 The other form of the name, Zamolxis, cxli. 266. 
 
136 MYTHOLOGY OP THE XRYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK that they make their escape. In the jungle they are found 
 
 I. 
 
 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 a.ppearance, and haying 
 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 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 his 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." 
 
 ' In the Gaelic story of the 'Young this etoiy, this puzzle is thus put, 
 King of Easaidh Iluadh,' which contains ' There is a great flagstone under the 
 
HINDU AND AEABIAN STORIES. 137 
 
 But tHs keep is guarded by myriads of evil demons, and CHAP. 
 
 Bain a 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, roUs him up in his 
 cloak. The magician in his dismay at seeing the parrot in 
 the youth's hands yields to every demand made by him, and 
 not only the seven princes but all his other victims are 
 restored to life — a magnificent array of kings, courtiers, 
 ojQBcers, and servants.' Still the magician prayed to have 
 his parrot given to him. 
 
 ' Then the boy took hold of the parrot, and tore off one of 
 his wings, and when he did so, the magician's right arm feU 
 off. 
 
 ' Punchkin then stretched out his left arm, crying, " Give 
 me my parrot." The prince pulled off the parrot's second 
 T^ing and the magician's left arm tumbled off. 
 
 ' " Give me my parrot," cried he, and fell on his knees. The 
 prince pulled off the parrot'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 mj 
 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, Punehkiu twisted round, and 
 with a fearful groan he died.' 
 
 threshold. There is a wether under guard it are represented by dismal cries 
 
 the flag. There is a duck in the and jeering voices which assail all who 
 
 wether's belly, and an egg in the belly attempt the task. The bird, as in the 
 
 of the duck, and it is in the egg that Hindu tale, is won by the youngest of 
 
 my soul is.' ^ the family, but it is the princess Parizade 
 
 ' This portion of the story is found disguised as a man who performs the 
 
 in the Arabian Mffhts' tale of ' Ihe tvQ exploit, haTing, like Odysse.us, as ha 
 
 Sisterswhowerejealous of their Xounger approached the Seiren's land, filled her 
 
 Sister.' Here also the enchantments ears with cloth. Nor is the bird less 
 
 are oTercome by gaining possession of a mighty than the magician, although he 
 
 bird, and the malignant demons who is not killed off in the same way. 
 
 VIII. 
 
138 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK In its key-note and its leading incidents this story is pre- 
 
 - i: . cisely parallel to the Norse tale of the ' Giant who had no 
 
 The Giant Heart in his Body.' Here, as in the Deccan legend, there is 
 no Heart in a king who has seven sons, but instead of all seven being 
 his Body, gg^^; Iq j^^^^ qj. ^qq^ jt^q youngest is left at home ; and the 
 rajah 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 aU who 
 wish to know whence the Aryan nations obtained the mate- 
 rials for their epic poems. Seemingly weak and often 
 despised, he has keener wit and more resolute will than aU 
 who are opposed to him. Slander and obloquy are to him aa 
 nothing, for he knows that in the end his truth shall be made 
 clear in the sight of all men. In Dr. Dasent's words, ' There 
 he sits idle whilst all work ; there he lies with that deep 
 irony of conscious power which knows its time must one day 
 come, and meantime can afford to wait. When that time 
 comes, he girds himself to the feat amidst the scoff and scorn 
 of his flesh and blood ; but even then, after he has done some 
 great deed, he conceals it, returns to his ashes, and again 
 sits idly by the kitchen fire, dirty, lazy, despised, until the 
 time for final recognition comes, and then his dirt and rags 
 fall off — he stands out in all the majesty of his royal robes, 
 and is acknowledged once for all a king." We see him in a 
 thousand forms. He is the Herakles on whom the mean 
 
 ' Daseut, Norse Tales, cliv. Some of who tames the pride of the princess as 
 
 ihe stories told of Boots are very signi- Indra subdues Dahanfi, ; or he is the 
 
 ficant. Among the most noteworthy is countryman who cheats the Jew in the 
 
 'Grimm's story of ' One who travelled to story of the ' Good Bargain.' He is the 
 
 learn what shivering meant.' The stupid young king of Easaidh Euadh in the 
 
 toy in this tale shows marvellous Scottish story, who gets for the giant 
 
 strength of arm, but he is no more able the Glaive of Light (Excalibur, or the 
 
 to shiver than the sun. At midnight spear of Achilleus), and who rides a dun 
 
 he is ftill quick with the' heat of fire, filly, gifted like the horse Xanthos with 
 
 which cannot be cooled even by contact the power of speech. He is the ' bald 
 
 with the dead. Like Sigurd, he recovers rough -skinned gillie' of tlie smithy in the 
 
 the treasures in the robber's keeping. Highland tale of ' The Brown Bear of 
 
 and he learns to shiver only when his the Green Glen,' on whose head the 
 
 bride pours over him at night a pail of mysterious bird alights to point him out 
 
 water full of fi,-h— in other words, when as the father of the dawn-child. In the 
 
 Helios plunges into the sea as Endym'on. story of the ' Three Soldiers ' in the same 
 
 Elsewhere, he is not only the wanderer collection, he is the poor soldier who is 
 
 or vagabond, but the discharged soldier, wheedled of his three wish-gifts, hut 
 
 or the strolling player, who is really the recovering them in the end is seen in his 
 
 king Thrushbeard in the German story, native majesty. 
 
 a f., . ;„„ X^.. W-a<: 
 
BOOTS AND CINDERELLA. 139 
 
 Eurystheus deligMs to pour contempt ; he is Cinderella sit- CHAP, 
 ting in the dust, while her sisters flaunt their finery abroad ; — , ' .- 
 he is the Oidipous who knows nothing/ yet reads the myste- 
 rious 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 despair, 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 threshold,'' 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. Kay, 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 be 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 ia his grasp.^ 
 
 He becomes, of course, the husband of Helen, 
 
 The mighty fool is his name, 
 
 And his wife is the young Fairfine j 
 The men of the world axe 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 shimbers a Gruagaeh gives her a 
 kiss, and like Helen ' the lady ■ was not ill-pleased that he 
 came.' But his coming is for evil luck, and the deceiver shall 
 be well repaid when the fool comes to take vengeance. 
 
 Still will I gire my rows, 
 Though thou thinkest mu",h of thy speech ; 
 When comes the Gruagaeh of the tissue cloak. 
 He will repay thee for his wife's kiss. 
 
 ' b /iijSei/ (ll^s Oi'Silrouj. ' Campbell, Tales of the West High- 
 
 Sophokles, Oid. Tyr. 397. lands, iii. 154. 
 , XTiii. 110. 
 
140 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Mythical 
 Tepetitions 
 and com- 
 binations. 
 
 Agency of 
 beasts in 
 these 
 (tories. 
 
 Boots then acts the part of Balna's son in the Hindu story, 
 "while the sorcerer reappears in the Norse tale as a giant, who 
 turns the six princes and their wives into stone. The inci- 
 dent is by no means 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, combinations, and adapta- 
 tions of a few leading ideas or of their developements, all 
 sufficiently resembling each other to leave no doubts of their 
 fundamental identity, yet so unlike in outward garb and 
 colouring, so thoroughly natural and vigorous under aU 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,' ' we may well feel the same astonishment 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 remon- 
 strances addressed to Balna's son in the Hindu story are 
 here addressed to Boots, whose kindness to the brute crea- 
 tures who become his 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 
 
 ' Universiti/ Sermovs, p. 348. In 
 these twostriries the Magician Punchkin 
 and the Heartless Giant are manifestly 
 only other forms of the dark beings, 
 the Panis, who steal away the bright 
 treasures, whether cows, maidens, or 
 youths, from the gleaming west. In 
 each case there is a long search for 
 them ; and as Troy cannot fall without 
 Aehilleus, cohere there is only one who 
 can achieve the exploit of rescuing the 
 beings who have been turned into stone, 
 as Niobfe is hardened into rock. The 
 
 youthful son of Balna in his disguise is 
 the womanlike Theseus, Dionysos, or 
 Aohilleus. Balna herself imprisoned in 
 the tower with the sorcerer whom she 
 hates is Helen shut up in llion with 
 the seducer whom she loathes ; and as 
 Helen calls herself the dog-faced, eo 
 Balna is transformed into, a dog when 
 Punchkin leads her away. The eagles 
 whose young he saves, like the heroes of 
 so many popular tales, are the bright 
 clouds who bear off little Surya Bai to 
 the nest on the tree top. 
 
AGENCY OF BEASTS IN MYTHOLOGY. 141 
 
 its back with the speed of light to the house of the giant CHAP, 
 who has turned his brothers into stone.' Then he fin(|s, not .-_ — ,_-- 
 his mother, like Balna's son, but the beautifal princess who 
 is t5 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 colloquies which lead at length to the true 
 answer exhibit the giant in the more kindly and rollicking 
 character frequently bestowed on trolls, dwarfs, elves, and 
 demons, in the mythology of the Western Aryans. The 
 final answer corresponds precisely to that of Punchkin. ' Par, 
 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 
 
 ' The constant agency of wolves and trother returns home is put on by him- 
 foxes in the German stories at once self. He has exchanged clothes -with a 
 suggests a comparison with the Myrmi- beggar ; the fox is of course enchanted, 
 dons whom the Homeric poet so elabo- and can only be freed by destroying the 
 rately likens to wolves, with Phoibos body in which he is imprisoned. But. 
 himself as the wolf-god of jEschylos, this idea of enchantment would inevi- 
 and with the jackal princes of eastern tably be suggested by the magic power 
 .story. In Grimm's story of 'The Two of Athene in seaming the face of Odys- 
 Brothers,' the animals succoured are sens with the wrinkles of a squalid 
 the hare, fox, wolf, and lion, and they old age, while the Christianised North- 
 each, as in the Hindu tale, ofiFer their man would convert Athene herself into 
 young as ministers to the hero who has a witch. In this story the mere presence 
 .spared their lives. In the beautiful of the disguised youth, who was supposed 
 legend of the Golden Bird, the youngest -to be murdered, just as the suitors sup- 
 brother and the fox whom by his kind- posed Odysseus to be dead, makes the 
 ness he secures as his ally, alike repre- golden bird begin to sing, the golden 
 sent the disguised chieftain of Ithaka, horse begin to eat, and the beautiful 
 and the rajahs of the Hindu stories, maiden to cease weeping. The meaning 
 The disguise in which the youngest is obvious. 
 
142 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OP THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The Two 
 Brothers. 
 
 Influence 
 of written 
 literature 
 on Folk- 
 lore. 
 
 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. 
 Tes, the giant was ready to do that, and he turned the sii 
 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.' 
 
 If the morality of myths be a fair matter for comparison, 
 the Eastern story has here the advantage. Balna's son 
 makes no definite promise to the magician ; but a parallel to 
 Punchkin, almost closer than that of the giant, is furnished 
 in Grimm's story of the Two Brothers, where a witch is 
 forced to restore all her victims to life. ' The old witch took 
 a twig ' and changed the stones back to what they were, and 
 immediately his brother and the beasts stood before the 
 huntsman, as well as many merchants, workpeople and shep- 
 herds, who, delighted with their freedom, returned home; 
 but the twin brothers,^ when they saw each other again, 
 kissed and embraced and were very glad.' ' 
 
 The supposition that these stories have been transmitted 
 laterally is tenable only on the further hypothesis, that in 
 every Aryan land, from Eastern India to the Highlands of 
 Scotland, the folk-lore of the 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 adapt- 
 ing 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 re- 
 ceived 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 
 
 • The rod of Kirke. The persons allurements or temptations of the place, 
 
 changed into stones represent the com- ' The Dioskouroi, or the Asvins. 
 
 panions of Eurylochos. They are petri- ' See also Campbell's Tales of the 
 
 fied only because they cannot resist the West Highlands, i. 103. 
 
THEORY OF BORROWED MYTHS. 143 
 
 under indefinitely varied forms, not by the scholars who im- CHAP. 
 
 ported the volumes of the Kalila and Dimna, or the Exploits ,_ 1_- 
 
 of the Romans, but by unknown men among the people. 
 The tales 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 philologists who have devoted their lives 
 to hunting them out. How then do we find in Teutonic or 
 Hindu stories not merely incidents which specially charac- 
 terise the story of Odysseus, but almost the very words in 
 which they are related in the Odyssey ? The task of analys- 
 ing 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 vnth them for the same end. Yet old 
 men and old women reproduce in India and Germany, in Nor- 
 way, 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 paral- 
 leled 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 re- 
 garded as indispensable. It can scarcely be necessary to 
 prove that the tale of the Three Snake Leaves was not 
 derived by the old German storytellers 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 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 216. 
 
144 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK western Aryans have been brougM to us in their eastern 
 
 ■ '^ — • versions only as yesterday. 
 
 The stories Among such tales is the story, cited by Dr. Dasent, of 
 Putraka, King Putraka, who wandering among the Vindhya moun- 
 and the tains finds two men quarreling for the possession of a bowl, 
 Princesses a siaS, and a pair of shoes, and induces them to determine by 
 Und running a race whose these things shall be. No sooner have 
 
 they started than Putraka puts on the shoes, which give the 
 power of flight, and vanishes with the staff and bowl also. 
 The story, which in this form has only recently been made 
 known in Europe through the translation of the tales of 
 Somadeva, is merely another version of the old Norse legend 
 of the Three Princesses of Whiteland, in which three brothers 
 fight for a hundred years about a hat, a cloak, and a pair of 
 boots, until a king, passing by, prevails on them to let him 
 try the things, and putting them on, wishes himself away. 
 The incident. Dr. Dasent adds, is found in Wallachian and 
 Tartar stories,' while the three gifts come again in the 
 stories already cited, of the Table, the Ass, and the Stick, 
 the Lad that went to the North Wind, and the Hindu tale 
 of the Brahman, the Jackal, and the Barber. But the gifts 
 themselves are found everywhere. The shoes are the 
 sandals of Hermes, the seven- leagued boots of Jack the 
 Griant Eiller ; ^ the hat is the helmet of Hades, the Tarn- 
 Kappe of the Nibelungen Lied;^ in the staff we have the 
 rod of Kirke, and in the bowl that emblem of fertility and 
 life which meets us at every turn, from the holy vessel 
 
 ' It occurs also in the German 
 legend of •* The King of the Golden 
 Mountain.' In the story of Gyges 
 (Plato, Pol. 360), this power of making 
 the wearer invisible resides in a ring, 
 ■whichhe discovers far beneath the sur- 
 face of the earth. This ring enables 
 him to corrupt the wife of Kandaules, 
 and so to become master of the Lydian 
 kingdom ; and thus it belongs to the 
 number of mysterious rings which 
 represent the Hindu Yoni. See also 
 the Gaelic tale of ' Conal Crovi.' 
 Campbell, i. 133. The triple power of 
 wish is invested in the stone given by 
 the dwarf to Thorston. Keightley, 
 Fairy Mythology, 71. 
 
 * The ladder by which Jack ascends 
 
 to heaven is not peculiar to this story. 
 It is possibly only another form of the 
 Bridge of Heinidall. 'Mr. Tyler,' 
 says Professor Max Miiller, ' aptly 
 compares the [Mandan] fable of the vine 
 and the fat woman with the story of 
 Jack and the Bean Stalk, and he 
 brings other stories from Malay and 
 Polynesian districts embodying the same 
 idea. Among the different ways by 
 which it was thought possible to ascend 
 from earth to heaven, Mr..Tylor men- 
 tions the rank spear-grass, a rope or 
 thong, a spider's web, a ladder of iron 
 or gold, a column of smoke, or the rain- 
 bow.' C/j/ps, ii. 268. 
 ' //. T. 845. 
 
QUESTION OF ADAPTATION. 145 
 
 which only the pure knight or the innocent maiden may! CHAP, 
 touch, to the horseshoe which is nailed for good luckfe sake j ^ 
 
 to the wall. These things have not been imported into 
 Western mythology by any translations of the folk-lore of the 
 East, for they were as well known in the days of Perikles as 
 they are in our own ; and thus in cases where there appears 
 to be evidence of conscious adaptation the borrowing must 
 be regarded rather as an exceptional fact than as furnish- 
 ing any presumption against stoi-ies for which no such 
 evidence is forthcoming. It will never be supposed that 
 the imagery and even the language of the old Greek epics 
 could be as familiarly known to the Hindu peasantry as to 
 the countrymen of Herodotos : and hence the greater the 
 resemblance between the popular stories of Greeks, Germans, 
 and Hindus, the less room is there for any hypothesis of 
 direct borrowing or adaptation. Such theories do but create 
 and multiply difficulbies ; the real evidence points only to 
 that fountain of mythical language from which have flowed 
 all the streams of Aryan epic poetry, streams so varied in 
 their character, yet agreeing so closely in their elements. 
 The substantial identity of stories told in Italy, Norway, 
 and India can but prove that the treasure-house of my- 
 thology was more abundantly filled before the dispersion of 
 the Aryan tribes than we had taken it to be. 
 
 Probably no two stories furnish more convincing evidence Faitbful 
 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 following 
 framework must have been devised before Hindus and Ger- 
 mans started on the long migration which was to lead the 
 one to the regions of the Ganges and the Indus, and the 
 other to the countries watered by the Rhine and the Elbe. 
 Even in those early days the 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 withheld from 
 seeking her.; that his faithful friend went with him and 
 VOL. I. L 
 
14G MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK helped him to win his bride; that certain wise birds pre- 
 
 I. 
 
 dieted 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 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.^ Having once seen it, he cannot be with- 
 held 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 supernatural iu- 
 
 ' This is substantially the Rabbinical the case before the Rabbis, ■who decide 
 
 story of ' The Broken Oath,' the differ^ that he must go back ; but on his per- 
 
 ence 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 
 
 forWdden 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 Fouqu^'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 them that he will pass 
 
 Ercildoune is set at nought by the hero examinations satisfactorily. Keightley, 
 
 of this tale. The forsaken fairy carries Fairy Mi/tkology, 606. 
 
 -X <- --Cv- - I Cm. t (-..^ 
 
 ; or.,.„ 
 
THE STORY OF FAITHFUL JOHX. 147 
 
 cidents would of course determine his choice. The next CHAP. 
 
 scene in the drama is a colloquy between three crows, whose . , " ^ 
 
 lanaruaare 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 marrow. 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 hea^. Nor is the prince more 
 safe even if the shirt be burnt, for during the dance which 
 foUows 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. 
 Tears 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. 
 
 l2 
 
148 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK In truth and tenderness of feeling this story falls far short 
 
 • i- . of the Deccan tale, in which the prince Eama sees the 
 
 Rama image of his future bride, not in a picture, but in a dream. 
 Liutman. 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 wiU be from a rotten branch of a banyan-tree, from 
 the fall of which Luxman will just save 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 faU on her forehead. 
 The wuzeer wiU 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 rajah will 
 be angry with him, and his reproaches will turn this poor 
 wuzeer into stone. 
 
 ' " Will he always remain stone ? " asked the ladv owl. 
 " Not for ever," answered the husband, " but for eight long 
 years he wiU remain so." "And what then?" demanded 
 she. " Then," answered the other, " when the young rajah 
 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 forfeited 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 rajah, of course, starts up just as his friend 
 is licking the blood from his wife's forehead, and, drawing 
 
HISTORY OF EAMA AND LUXMAN. 149 
 
 the same inference with, the German prince, overwlielms him CHAP, 
 with reproaches. ■ . 
 
 ' The rajah had buried hiis face in his hands : he looked 
 up, he turned to the wuzeer; hut from him came neither 
 answer nor reply. He had become a senseless stone. Then 
 Eama for the first time perceived the roll of paper which 
 Lukman 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.' ' 
 
 There is something more quiet and touching in the silent Mythical 
 record of Luxman which stands in the place of Faithful ™j^g^g 
 John's confession at the scaffold, as well as in the doom stories. 
 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 Mbeluugs, with 
 the mythical cycle of Arthur and Charlemagne, and the 
 Persian Eustem. 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 
 
 'The calamity which overtakes Henry is so grieved at the loss that he 
 
 Luxman and Paithfal John is seen in binds three iron bands round his heart 
 
 an earlier and less developed form in for fear it should break with grief and 
 
 the German story of the Frog Prince, sorrow. When the Frog Prince sets out 
 
 Here the faithful friend is overwhelmed with his bride in the morning, the iron 
 
 with grief because his master is turiied bauds break and Trusty Henry is set 
 
 into a frog. But this transformation ia free. This is the stony sleep of 
 
 merely the sinking of the sun into the Luxman, brought on by grief, and 
 
 western waters (see note 3, p. 165), and broken only by the light touch of early 
 
 the time of his absence answers to the morning, there represented by the 
 
 charmed sleep of Endymion. ' Trusty innocent child of Eama. 
 
i50 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 EOOK Deianeira and the poisoned coat which put an end to the 
 
 — ,1 • career of HeraHes. 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 connection must fail to discern their sequence, 
 origin, and meaning. In the legend of Deianeira, as in that 
 of lason 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.' ' 
 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 rajah'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 Apollo 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 tree trunk for Volsung to draw out and 
 wield, with the lion's skin of Herakles, with the jackal's 
 skin worn by the enchanted rajahs of Hindu story, with the 
 spear of AchiUeus 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 Patraka and of the Lad who went to the 
 North Wind, with the spear of Artemis and the unerring 
 darts of Meleagros. Whether under the guise of spears or 
 fieece or arrows, it is the golden hair on the head of Phoibos 
 ' Mas Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop, ii. 89. 
 
THE STORY OF PRINCE AHMED. i-0 
 
 Akersekomes, which no razor has ever touched. It is the CHAP. 
 wonderful carpet of Solomon, which figures in the Arabian > — ^J— 
 Mghts as the vehicle for relieving distressed lovers* from 
 their difficulties/ and bears away the Princess Aldegonda by 
 the side of the Pilgrim of Love in the exquisite legend of the 
 Alhambra. 
 
 This story is, indeed, only a more beautiful form of the The Pil- 
 German and Hindu tales. Here, as in the other legends, lotc.° 
 special care is taken to guard the young prince against the 
 dangers of love, and the lad grows up contentedly under the 
 care of the sage Eben Bonabben, until he discovers that he 
 wants something which speaks more to the heart than algebra. 
 Like Balna in the tower or Helen in Hion, he is prisoned in 
 a palace from which he cannot get forth ; but the sage Bon- 
 abben has taught him the language of birds, and when the 
 joyous time of spring comes round, he learns from a dove 
 that love is ' the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife 
 and enmity of three.' The dove does more. She tells him 
 of a beautiful maiden, far away in a delightful garden by the 
 banks of the stream from which Arethousa, Daphne, Athene, 
 Aphrodite, all are born; but the garden is surrounded 
 by high walls, within, which none were permitted to enter. 
 Here the dove's story, which answers to the picture seen in 
 the German tale and the dream of Rama, connects the 
 legends with the myths of Brynhild, Surya Bai, and other 
 imprisoned damsels, whom one brave knight alone is destined 
 to rescue. Once again the dove returns, but it is only to die 
 at the feet of Ahmed, who finds under her wing the picture 
 seen by the prince in the German story. Where to seek the 
 maiden he knows not ; but the arrow of love is within his 
 heart, and he cannot tarry. The princess too, to whom the 
 dove had carried the message of Ahmed, is yearning to see 
 him ; but she is surrounded by a troop of suitors as numeroas 
 as those which gather round Penelope, and she must appear at 
 a great tournament (the fight at Hion) which is to decide who 
 shall be her husband. But Ahmed, like AchiUeus after the 
 death of Patroklos, is unarmed ; how then can he think of 
 encountering the valiant warriors who are hastening to the 
 
 ' The story of Prince Ahmed and Pari Banou. 
 
152 ' MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK contest? In this dilemma he is aided by an owl (the white 
 -_ ^: . bird of Athene), who teUs him of a cavern (the cave in which 
 
 Zeus, Mithra, and Krishna alike are born) 'in one of the wUdest 
 recesses of those rocky cliffs which rise around Toledo ; none 
 but the mousing eye of an owl or an antiquary could have 
 discovered the entrance to it. A sepulchral lamp of ever- 
 lasting oil shed a solemn light through the place. On an 
 iron table in the centre of the cavern lay the magic armour ; 
 against it leaned the lance, and beside it stood an Arabian 
 steed, caparisoned for the field, but motionless as a statue. 
 The armour was bright and unsullied as it had gleamed in 
 days of old ; the steed in as good condition as if just from 
 the pasture, and when Ahmed laid his hand upon his neck, 
 he pawed the ground and gave a loud neigh of joy that 
 shook the walls of the cavern.' Here we have not only the 
 magic armoiir and weapons of AchiUeus, but the steed which 
 never grows old, and against which no human power can 
 stand. Probably Washington Irving, as he told the story 
 with infinite zest, thought little of the stories of Boots or of 
 Odysseus : but although Ahmed appears in splendid panoply 
 and mounted on a magnificent war-horse, yet he is as inso- 
 lently scouted by the suitors of Aldegonda as the Ithakan 
 chieftain in his beggar's dress was reviled by the suitors of 
 Penelope. But the same retribution is in store for both. 
 Ahmed bears the irresistible weapons of Odysseus. No sooner 
 is the first blow struck against the Pilgrim of Love (for 
 Ahmed again like Odysseus and Herakles must be a wan- 
 derer) than the marvellous powers of the steed are seen. 
 'At the first touch of the magic lance the brawny scoffer 
 was tilted from his saddle. Here the prince would have 
 paused ; but, alas ! he had to deal with a demoniac horse 
 and armour — once in action nothing could control them. 
 The Arabian steed charged into the thickest of the throng ; 
 the lance overturned everything that presented ; the gentle 
 prince was carried pell-mell about the field, strewing it with 
 high and low, gentle and simple, and grieving at his own 
 involuntary exploits. The king stormed and raged at this 
 outrage on his subjects and his guests. He ordered out all 
 his guards — they were unhorsed as fast as they came up. 
 
MYTHS OP THE NOON-DAY. 153 
 
 The king threw off his robes, grasped buckler and lance, and CHAP. 
 
 rode forth to awe the stranger with the presence of majesty 
 itself. Alas ! majesty fared no better than the vulgar — the 
 steed and lance were no respecters of persons : to the dismay 
 of Ahmed, he was borne full tilt against the king, and in a 
 moment the royal heels were in the air, and the crown was 
 rolling in the dust.' It could not be otherwise. The suitors 
 must aU fall when once the arrow has sped from the bow of 
 Odysseus ; but although the Ithakan chief was earnest in 
 liis revenge, the involuntary exploits of Ahmed are matched 
 by many an involuntary deed of Herakles or Oidipous or 
 Perseus. That the horse of Ahmed belongs to the same 
 stock with the steeds of Indra it is impossible to doubt as 
 we read the words of the Vedic poet : — 
 
 ' These thy horses, excellent Vayu, strong of limb, youthful 
 and fall of vigour, bear thee through the space between 
 heaven and earth, growing in bulk, strong as oxen ; they are 
 not lost in the firmament, but hold on their speed, unretarded 
 by reviling ; difficult are they to be arrested as the beams of 
 the Sun.' i 
 
 The incidents which follow present the same astonishing The spell 
 accordance with old Greek or Hindu traditions. No sooner °^™"i"<^'*y-' 
 has the sun reached the meridian than 'the magic spell 
 resumed its power; the Arabian steed scoured across the 
 plain, leaped the barrier, plunged into the Tagus, swam its 
 raging current, bore the prince breathless and amazed to the 
 cavern, and resumed his station like a statue beside the iron 
 table.' The spell is, in fact, none other than that which 
 sends the stone of Sisyphos rolling down the hill as soon as 
 it has reached the summit ; the Tagus is the old ocean stream 
 into which Helios sinks at eventide, and the cave is the dark 
 abode from which the wandering Sun had started in the 
 morning, and to which he must come back at night. But 
 further, Ahmed appears in the sequel as Paieon, the healer. 
 Aldegonda is sick with love for the beautiful prince who has 
 gladdened her eyes but for a few brief moments. In vain do 
 hosts of physicians seek to cure her. The power to do so 
 rests with Ahmed only, and the owl, coming to his aid as 
 
 ' Big Veda Sanhita, H. H. Wilson, vol. ii. p. 51. 
 
154 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAIf NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK zealously as Athene Glaukopis (the owl-eyed or bright- 
 > faced) to that of Odysseus, advises him to ask as his reward 
 
 the carpet of Solomon, on which he soars away with Alde- 
 gonda, like the children of ISTephele on the Golden Fleece. 
 The force of these astonishing parallelisms is certainly not 
 weakened by any suggestion that some of these incidents 
 may be found in legends of the Arabian Nights. The en- 
 chanted horse reappears in the Dapplegrim of Grimm's 
 German stories, in the steed which carries the Widow's Son 
 in the Norse tales, and the marvellous horse of Highland 
 tradition. • In a burlesque aspect, it is the astonishing horse 
 in the Spanish story of Governor Manco,^ who is outwitted 
 by the old soldier precisely as the Sultan of Cashmere is 
 outwitted by the possessor of the Enchanted Horse in the 
 Arabian Nights story. 
 The sleep In the Hindu story, as in the Spanish tale, the bride of 
 or death Rama is won after an exploit which in its turn carries us 
 
 oi bum- ^ _ 
 
 mer. away to the deeds of Hellenic or Teutonic heroes. When 
 
 the prince tells Luxman of the peerless beauty whom he has 
 seen in his dream, his friend tells him that the princess lives 
 far away in a glass palace,^ ' Round this palace runs a large 
 river, and round the river is a garden of flowers. Eound 
 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 recur- 
 rence 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 Eama 
 it has lost much of its old significance. The death-like cold 
 of a northern winter gives place to the mere notion of sohtude 
 and seclusion. Eunning streams and luxuriant gardens show 
 
 ' Campbell, Tales of the West High- Alhambra. 
 lands, ' The Young King of Easaidh = The glass or marble of the Hindu 
 
 Kiiadh.' tale answers to the ice of the Norse 
 
 ^ Washington Irving, Tales of the legends. 
 
 cf 
 
THE QUEEN OP THE FIVE FLOWERS. 155 
 
 ttat the myth has been long transferred to a more genial CHAP. 
 
 climate ; but it is scarcely necessary to say that the chtnges ,_ L.- 
 
 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 assumes a form more closely akin 
 to the imagery of Teutonic mythology ; and there we find a 
 prinpess who declares that she wiU 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 Maharajah the parents of Anar Eanee ' 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 bat 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, how- 
 ever, 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 Eakshas 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 
 foUowing 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 
 
maidens . 
 
 156 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK smitten by Hagene (the Thorn), of Isfendiyar slain by the 
 
 . ; — • thorn or arrow of Rustem, 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 braye and pure smitten by the fatal mistletoe, of the 
 sweet Briar Eose plunged in her slumber of a hundred years. 
 Origin of The idea that all these myths have been deliberately 
 relating to transferred from Hindus or Persians to Greeks, Germans, 
 charmed ajj^ Norsemen may be dismissed as a wild dream.' Yet of 
 beautiful their substantial identity in spite of aU 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 keynote 
 of almost all ; and this keynote runs practically through the 
 great 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 hke 
 Pausanias or Diodoros. If then all these tales have some 
 historical foundation, they must rela.te 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. The 
 question must be more fully examined presently ; but unless 
 we are to adopt the hypothesis of conscious borrowing in its 
 most exaggerated form, the dream of a historical Ilion and a 
 historical Carduel must fade away before the astonishing 
 multitude of legends which comparative mythologists have 
 
 ' Of these stories, taken aa a class, dawn, and their belief in the bright 
 
 Professor Max Miiller says ' that the gods of hearen, possessed in their Tery 
 
 elements or seeds of these fairy tales language, in their mythological and 
 
 belong to the period that preceded the proverbial phraseology, the more or less 
 
 dispersion of the Aryan race ; that the developed germs, that were sure to grow 
 
 same people who, in their migrations to up into the same or very simil:ir plnnta 
 
 the north and the south, carried along on every soil and under every sky.'— 
 
 with them the names of the sun and the Chips, ii. 226. 
 
DEAGONS AND SLEEPING MAIDENS. 157 
 
 traced to plirases descriptive of physical phenomena. At CHAP, 
 the least it must be admitted that the evidence seams 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 
 combinations 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 
 deathlike trances, from which the touch of one brave man 
 a.lone can rouse 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 every- 
 where the same incidents in the same sequence. Tet every 
 fresh addition made to our stores of popular tradition does 
 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 Ehodopis, which 
 an eagle carries off and drops into the lap of the Egyptian 
 king as he sits on his seat of judgement at Memphis.' This 
 slipper reappears in the beautiful Deccan story of Sodewa 
 Bai, and leads of course to the same issue as in the legends 
 of Cinderella and Ehodopis. The dragon of the Glistening 
 Heath represents the seven-headed cobra of the Hindu story, 
 > ^lian, V. H. xiii. 33 ; Strabo, xvii. p. 808. 
 
158 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARl'AS NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Charms 
 or spells 
 in the 
 
 and in 
 Hindu 
 
 stories. 
 
 and in tlie legend of Brave Seventee Bai the beautiful Bryn- 
 hild becomes bis daughter, just as tbe bright Pboibos 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 lamos 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 rajahs and princes of these Hindu stories 
 are subjected to the same lot with Herakles and Odysseus, 
 Oidipous and Sigurd, Kephalos and Prokris, Paris and Oin6ni 
 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 dis- 
 creetly avoids. The Lotos-eaters and their magic fruit 
 reappear in the nautch-people or conjurors, whom the rajah 
 who has married Panch Phul Ranee, the Lady of the Pive 
 Plowers, asks for rice and fire. The woman whom he ad- 
 dresses 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 rajah receive them than he forgot about his 
 wife and little child, his journey and all that had ever hap- 
 pened 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." Unless the translator has 
 designedly modified the language of the Deccan tale-teller 
 (and in the absence of any admission to this effect we cannot 
 
 ' This forgetfulness of his first love 
 on the part of the solar hero is brought 
 about in many of the German stories by 
 his allowing his parents to kiss him on 
 one side of his face, or on liis lips. In 
 
 the Gaelic story of the Battle of the 
 Birds neither man nor other creature is 
 to kiss him, and the mischief is done by 
 his greyhound, who recognises him as 
 Argos knows Odysseus. Campbell, i. 34. 
 
THE EOD AND THE LOTOS. 
 
 159 
 
 suppose tMs), we may fairly quote tlie words as almost a 
 paraphrase from tlie Odyssey : — , 
 
 Ttiiv S' Ss Tis X<jno"o (pdyoi ^ueAiTjSea KafnT6vf 
 ovK 6t' ttTraYyelKai irdKtv fjdfKev otiSe peeffdaif 
 &\K' avTov ^oiXovro fxtr avbpdin Auro^dyoitriv 
 Awrij' ipeiTTSfievoi fiej/efiey v6(rrov t€ AaSetrdat,^ 
 
 The nauteh-woman here has also the character of Kirke, 
 and the charm represents the (pap/xaKa Xvypa which turn the 
 companions of Eurylochos into swine, while KirkS's wand is 
 wielded by the sorcerers who are compelled to restore to life 
 the victims whom they had turned into stone, and by the 
 Eakshas from whom Eamchnndra, 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 your 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 Eanee and 
 Seventee Bai have the insight of Eurykleia, and discern his 
 true majesty beneath the fakeer's garb.^ ' The rajah came 
 
 CHAP. 
 VIII. 
 
 ' Od. i"x. 97. 
 
 ^ This garment of humiliation appears 
 in almost innumerable legends. In the 
 German story of the Golden Bird the 
 prince puts it on when, on approaching 
 liis 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 produce any number of 
 men, and a horn (the horn of the Ma- 
 ruts) at whose blast the strongest walls 
 fall down. He thus takes on his enemies 
 a vengeance precisely like that of Odys- 
 seus, and for the same reason. In the 
 story of the Golden Goose, Dummling, 
 the hero who never fails in any exploit, 
 is despised 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 re- 
 peats the story of King Putraka, and 
 shows the Gold Child, in a sheplierd's 
 ragged frock. Elsewhere he is seen as 
 the poor miller's son (the Miller's Son 
 and the Cat), and he becomes a dis- 
 charged soldier in the story of 'The 
 Boots made of Buffalo Leather.' The 
 beggar reappears in the Norae 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 reflection of Odysseus, not only in 
 his vengeance, but in his bodily form. 
 Odysseus is Shortshanks when compared 
 with Menelaos (Iliad in. 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 reverse 
 of the Pysche story) he is Halvor who 
 grubs among the ashes — the connection 
 with fire and light being never forgotten 
 in these stories, for these ashes are al- 
 ways 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 or stronghold 
 of the robber demolished than, like Odys- 
 seus, he begins to feel an irresistible 
 
I. 
 
 160 ' MYTHOLOGT OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK towards tliem so changed that not even Ms own motlier 
 knew him ; no one recognised him but his wife. For 
 eighteen years he had been among the nantch-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 — 
 
 ^i/Soi/ filv Sii 35' airhs ^yti, Kaiiii iro\\ct iioyl)<ras, 
 ijXvdov emoffrtf ?Tei' is iraTplSa yaiav.^ 
 
 or of his disguise, when Athene 
 
 foi/flis cK Ke<j)a\ris S\firf Tpi'xar, afiipl Se Scpua 
 vdvTefftriv [x^Ki^fffTi iraXaiOv Qy\Ke y4povTos, 
 Rp^^a!ffiv 5e ol iatre irdpos nepiKaWe' i6vTe' 
 a;U(pl S4 liiv lidxos &K\o Kaxhy pdKfv riSh x'™''<t 
 pioya\ea pviriavra, KaKQ fj.efiopvyfi4va Katrv^,^ 
 
 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 Eajah, which re- 
 mained 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' and of Hektor'' which Aphrodite or ■ 
 ApoUon anointed with ambrosial oil, and guarded day and 
 night from all unseemly things. 
 The Snake But though the doom of which Achilleus mournfully com- 
 plained 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-Eose 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 pro- 
 vide an antidote which will bring back life to the dead. In the 
 story of Panch Phxal Ranee these beneficent physicians are 
 jackals, who converse together like the owls of Luxman or 
 
 longing to see his father and his home Campbell, 1. 101. 
 
 once more. ' Od. xvi. 207, xxi. 208. 
 
 The story of Shortshanks is told in * Ibid. xiii. 435, xvi. 1 75. 
 
 the Gaelic tale of the Sea-Maiden, • B. xix. 32. * lb. xxiv. 20. 
 
 'Leaves. 
 
THE SNAKE LEAVES. 161 
 
 the crows in tlie tale of Faithful John. ' Do you see this chap. 
 
 tree ? ' says the jackal to his wife. ' Well, if its leaves were ..^ ,— 
 
 crushed, and a little of the juice put into the rajah'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 weU as ever.' These leaves reappear in 
 Grimm's story of the Three Snake Leaves, in which the 
 snakes playthe part of the jackals. In this tale a prince is 
 buried alive with his dead wife, and seeing a snake approach- 
 ing 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 wound, and the dead snake was 
 alive again. The prince applying the leaves to his wife's 
 body restores her also to life. The following are the words 
 of Apollodoros in relating th,e story, also told by ^lian, 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.'' 
 
 These magic leaves become a root in the German story of The Two 
 the 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 
 
 ' Apollodoros, iii. 3, 1. Mr. Gould, cave, and finally the Tulgar hand of 
 
 referring to this story as introduced in glory, which, when set on fire, aids the 
 
 Fouqu^'s 'Sir Elidoc,' places these treasure-seeker in his search. All these 
 
 flowers or leaves in the large class of fahles Mr. Gould refers to one and the 
 
 things which have the power of restoring same object — lightning; and thus a 
 
 life, or splitting rocks, or opening the multitude of popular stories again 
 
 earth and revealing hidden treasures, resolve themselves into phrases origin- 
 
 The snake leaves represent in short the ally denoting merely physical pheno- 
 
 worms or stones which shatter rocks, mena. Curious Myths of the Middle 
 
 the sesame wfiich opens the robbers' Ages, second series, p. 145, &c. 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
162 MyTHOLOGT OF THE ABYAN KATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 eyery 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 hunts- 
 man gives them a knife, telling them that if, in case of sepa- 
 ration, 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 sym- 
 pathetic trees, gems, and stones, it is not less noteworthy 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 hfe, 
 promises to give up two leverets. The hare is suffered to go 
 free, and the huntsnien also spare the leverets, which foUow 
 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 victoiy 
 of the sun is followed by the sleep of winter, and the hon, 
 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 aU are stUl. The Marshal of the kingdom, 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 faiUng 
 to keep watch. The charge is passed from one beast to the 
 
THE TWO BROTHERS. 163 
 
 other, nntil the hare, unable to utter a word in its defence, chap. 
 
 VIII 
 begs for mercy, as knowing where to find a root which, hke -~ — ,— L> 
 
 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 
 sweetmeats, and drink of his finest wine. These are seve- 
 rally 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 handkerchief be- 
 stowed on him by the princess, and by showing the necklace, of 
 which she had given a portion to each of his beasts, and 
 which is, in fact, the necklace of Freya and the Kestos or 
 cestus of Aphrodite. 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 coui-se, as in the myth of Baldur, the avenger of his 
 brother, and the witch undergoes 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 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAX NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Myths of 
 the Night, 
 the Moon, 
 and the 
 Stars. 
 
 its last incident, runs into the tales of Sigurd and the Arabian 
 AUah-ud-deen.' 
 
 If we sought to prove the absolute identity of the great 
 mass of Hindu, Greek, Norse, and German legends, we surely 
 need go no farther. Tet there are other points of likeness, 
 at least as striking as 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 Eajah 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 fuU of 
 gentle majesty.' But.TaraBai is the star (boy) chUd, or 
 maiden, the Asteropaios of the Hiad, 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.^ Elsewhere she rea.ppears as Polydeukes, the ght- 
 tering 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.' In 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 wander- 
 ings.'' 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 
 
 Vedic Apsaras, or water-maidens, of 
 Vedie mythology, and the swan maidens 
 of Teutonic legend. She thus helongs 
 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. 
 
 * Od. V. 60, &c. 
 
 ' The Norse tale of Shortshanks 
 (Dasent) is made up in great part of 
 the materials of this story, 
 
 2 11. xxi. 166, &c. 
 
 ' The name Melusina is identified by 
 Mr. Gould with that of the Babylonian 
 Mylitta, the Syrian moon-goddess. — ■ 
 Curious Myths of the MiddleAges, second 
 series, ' Melusina.' 
 
 Mr. Gould, in his delightful chapter 
 on this subject, connects Melusina, as 
 first seen close to a fountain, with the 
 
MYTHS OF THE WIGHT. 165 
 
 rather two companies, of English ladies, martyred by the CHAP. 
 
 Huns at Cologne, but whose mythical home is onHorsel- • ,. _.- 
 
 berg, where the faithful Eckhart is doomed to keep his weary 
 watch. Labouring on in his painful rationalism. Cardinal 
 Wiseman tells us of one form of the legend which mentions 
 a marriage-contract, made with the father of St. Ursula, a very 
 powerful king, how it was arranged that she should hare 
 eleven companions, and each of these a thousand followers.'' 
 There are thus twelve, in addition to the eleven thousand 
 attendants, and these twelve reappear in the Hiudu 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 rajah 
 has twelve wives, but no 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 
 the struggle of these fairy beings, which is the warfare J'.*^'^''^^ °^ 
 between, light and darkness. But the bright beings always darknees. 
 conquer in the end, and return like Persephone from the 
 abode of Hades to gladden the heart of the Mater Dolorosa.^ 
 The child in the Deccan stories appears not only as Guzra 
 Bai, but as Panch Phul Eanee, as Surya Bai, as the wife of 
 Muchie Lai, the fish or frog-sun.^ All these women are the 
 
 ' Essays on Eeligion and Literature, the horizon in 'the morning, ' he is 
 
 edited by Abp. Manning (1865), p. 252. ApoUou swathed by the water-maidens 
 
 '' Grote, History of Greece, i. 55. in golden bands, or the wounded and 
 
 ^ The frog prince or princess is only forsaken Oidipous ; as lingering again 
 
 one of the thousand personifications of on the water's edge before he vanishes 
 
 names denoting originally the pheno- from sight, he is the frog squatting on 
 
 mena of day and night. As carrying the the water, a homely image of Endymion 
 
 morning light from the east to the west, and Narkissos. In this aspect the sun 
 
 the sun is the bull bearing Eiir6pe from is himself an apsara, or water-maiden ; 
 
 the purple land (Phoiuikia) ; and the and thus the Sanskrit Bhekl is a beauti- 
 
 same changes which converted the Seven ful girl, whom a king wins to be his 
 
 Shiners into the Seven Sages, or the wife on the condition that he is not 
 
 Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, or tlie Seven to let her see a drop of water. Of 
 
 Champions of Christendom, or the Seven course the king one day forgets his 
 
 Bears, transformed the sun into a wolf, promise, shows her water, and Bhekl 
 
 a bear, a lion, a swan. As resting on vanishes. This is the counterpart to 
 
166 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAK NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Character 
 of Aryan 
 folklore. 
 
 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, mUk, 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, the ivory ewer containing the book of Solomon's 
 occult knowledge, which Eehoboam 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. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to go further. If we do, we shall 
 only be confronted by the same astonishing parallelism which 
 is exhibited by the several versions of the stories already 
 cited. The hypothesis of conscious borrowing is either 
 superfluous or dangerous. It is- unnecessary, if adduced 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 Pro- 
 fessor Max MiiUer, ' was known at the 
 time when Kapila wrote his philo- 
 sophical aphorisms in India, for it is 
 there quoted as an illustration. But 
 long hefore Kapila, the story of Bliekl 
 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 compelled 
 to jump into the fountain, out of which 
 only the youngest daughter of the king- 
 has the power of drawing him. These 
 daughters again are the companions of 
 Ursula ; the daughters of the rajah 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 tbe 
 enchanted rajah's jackal skin in the 
 Hindu tale. The sun leaping fully 
 armed into the heaven as ChrysSor 
 might well be another being from the 
 infant whom the nymphs swathe with 
 golden bands in his gleaming cradle. 
 "The warrior comes to life on the death of 
 the child, and the frog on being dashed 
 against the wall becomes 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 ot 
 Achilleus. But with Achilleus comes 
 Patroklos ; and as Luxman attends on 
 Kama, so ' Trusty Henry ' who comes 
 with the carriage of the Frog Prince, 
 represents the Faithful John of the 
 Teutonic legend. (See note ', p. 149-) 
 
GROWTH OF POPULAR STORIES. 
 
 167 
 
 explain the distant or vague resemblances in one story, wliile ^^J' 
 
 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 
 intercourse 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 ex- 
 plained 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 maiutained; 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 
 dead 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 vsTitten by Grimm 
 himself in imitation of some other Aryan tale. The im- 
 portation 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 sub- 
 sequent to their dispersion from a common home. We thus 
 have before us a vast mass of myths, fables, legends, stories, 
 or by whatever 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 first denoted 
 
168 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Historical 
 value of 
 
 physical phenomena ; and enough has perhaps been abeadj 
 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 which seem to have had their 
 origin in proverbs or adages ; and it is, 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,* 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 famished 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 stories of Boots and Cinderella, of Logedas Eajah, 
 
 ' Seep. 31, &e. 
 
THE WAE OF ILION. 169 
 
 and Surya Bai, are the story also of Achilleus and Oidipous, CHAP 
 of Perseus and Tlieseus, of Helen and Odysseus, of Bg,ldur ._. , '.. ^ 
 and Eiustem and Sigurd. Everywhere there is the search Aryan 
 for the bright maiden who has been stolen away, everywhere traditions, 
 the long struggle to recover her. The war of Ilion has been 
 fought out in every Aryan land. Either, then, the historical 
 facts which lie at the* root of the narrative of the Hiad took 
 place before the dispersion of the Aryan tribes from their 
 common home, or they are facts which belong to the beau- 
 tiful cloudland, where the misty Hion ' rises into towers ' at 
 early dawn. In either case the attempts recently made to 
 exhibit the war in the plains of Troy to the south of the 
 Hellespont as an historical reality are rendered plausible 
 only by ignoring the real point at issue. 
 
170 
 
 MTTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 MODBEN ETJEMBEISM. 
 
 The 
 
 Method of 
 Euemeros. 
 
 Its results. 
 
 Whatever may have been tlie sins of Euemeros against 
 truth and honesty, his method aimed simply at the extraction 
 of historical facts from the legends of his country by stripping 
 them altogether of their supernatural character, and rejecting 
 all the impossible or improbable incidents related in them. 
 Making no pretence of access to documents more trustworthy 
 than the sources from which the poets had drawn their 
 inspiration, he claimed to be regarded as a historian, merely 
 because, after depriving him of aU. divine powers, he left Zeus 
 a mortal man, who, for benefits done to his fellows, was 
 worshipped as a god.' 
 
 Although in more recent times this system has been 
 eagerly adopted and obstinately maintained, Euemeros was 
 not popular among his countrymen. To them the process 
 which reduced the gods to the level of mankind seemed to 
 resolve itself into mere atheism. StiU, except as applying 
 his method to the stories of the gods as well as to the legends 
 
 ' Por a detailed account of EuSmeros, 
 see Grote, History of Greece, part i. 
 ch. xvi. His method has been repro- 
 duced in all its completeness or naked- 
 ness in the article on Mythology inserted 
 in the EncycloptBdia Britannica. Having 
 told us that ' the adventures of Jupiter, 
 Juno, Mercury, ApoUo, Diana, Minerva 
 or Pallas, Venus, Bacchus, Ceres, Pro- 
 serpine, Pluto, Neptune, and the other 
 descendants and coadjutors of the 
 ambitious family of the Titans, furnish 
 by far the greatest part of the mytho- 
 logy of Greece,' the -writer with pro- 
 digious assurance adds, ' They left 
 Phoenicia, we think, in the days of 
 Moses ; they settled in Crete, a large 
 and fertile island ; from this region they 
 
 made, thejr way into Greece.' There 
 they introduced art, religion, law, cus- 
 tom, polity, and good order ; but, oddly 
 enough, in spite of all these wholesome 
 and sobering influences, the Greeks re- 
 mained a ' deluded rabble, who insisted 
 on paying them divine honours.' The 
 mere enunciation of such absurdities is 
 disgraceful in any work which professes 
 to speak to educated readers, and would 
 deserve even a severer condemnation if 
 addressed to the unlearned. But.it is 
 altogether inexcusable, in an article to 
 whicli are affixed references to the works 
 of Grimm, K. 0. Miiller, Max Miiller, 
 Hermann, and others. For the amusing 
 Euemerism of the Abb^ Banier, see 
 Max Miiller, Lectures, second series, 400. 
 
ETIEMEEISM AND PHILOLOGY. 
 
 171 
 
 of the epical heroes, he gave no cause of offence which had '^^^^■ 
 not already been given by Herodotos and Thucydides., To - — .-^ — 
 the historian of the Persian war the legends of 16 and 
 Eiirop^, of Medeia and Helen, were valuable simply as 
 supplying links in the chain of human causes which led to 
 that great struggle. For this purpose he either availed 
 himself of the least improbable versions of- these myths 
 current in his own day, or he placed the myths, full as they 
 were of dragons and speaking heifers, into the crucible of 
 probabilities, and was rewarded with a residuum of plausible 
 fiction which would have gladdened the heart of De Foe. 
 This method, as applied by Thucydides to the story of the 
 Trojan war, produces results which make it difB.cult to believe 
 that his knowledge of that strife was obtained only from the 
 poems which told of the wrongs and woes of Helen. Yet so 
 it is. Although in these poems their career was inwoven 
 into the whole fabric of the narrative, Helen is gone, and 
 Paris and Achilleus; Hektor and Sarpedon have vanished, 
 with Memnon and Ath^n^ and Aphrodite ; and there remains 
 only a chieftain who undertakes the expedition not at all to 
 rescue a woman who may never have existed, and a war 
 which lasted ten years, not because Zeus so willed it,' but 
 because want of men made- it necessary that part of the 
 forces should betake themselves to tilling the ground and 
 raising crops on the Thrakian Chersonesos, while the rest 
 carried on the siege.^ 
 
 That such a method should find favour at the present day Its anta- 
 with writers who have made themselves in any degree ac- with ^e 
 quainted with the results of comparative grammar is indeed {'^j,™f^®„°^ 
 astonishing. Argynnis and Phoroneus, Briseis and Achilleus, 
 Paris and Helen, names of persons in Hellenic legend, are in 
 the earliest songs of the Aryan family found still in their 
 original application as names of the morning, of the sun, or 
 of darkness ; and as it is with these, so is it also with Ker- 
 beros and the Charites, with Orthros, with Varuna, and Zeus 
 himself. That these names and these tales could have over- 
 run the world from chance, or that the incidents which they 
 relate could have a distinct historical foundation in a series 
 ' Mad, ii. 328. « Thuoyd. i. S-11. 
 
372 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAX NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of incidents occurring in the same sequence and with the 
 
 > ^ — • same results in every Aryan land, are positions which few 
 
 would now venture to maintain ; yet such were the theories 
 which attempted, with some show of reason, to account for 
 their origin and dififusion before the sciences of comparative 
 grammar and mythology came into bejng. There can scarcely 
 be a greater extravagance of credulity than that which frames 
 an infinite series of the most astounding miracles in the vain 
 effort to solve mysteries which must aU be opened by one and 
 the same key, or by none, No absurdity needs to startle us 
 if we are ready to believe that four or five independent writers 
 could describe a series of events in exactly the same words ; ' 
 it is, if possible, even more absurd to suppose that tribes, savage 
 and civilised, many of them utterly unknown to each other, 
 should hit upon the same stories, should disfigure them by 
 ■ the same indecencies, should atone for these blots by the 
 same images of toiiching pathos and grace and be^juty. Yet 
 some such demand is made on our powers of belief by a writer 
 who holds that ' they who literally accept Scripture cannot 
 afford to ridicule mythology,' and who, looking about for 
 traces of an historical character in Greek mythical tradition, 
 concludes that ' there are the fairest reasons for supposing 
 that Hercules was not an allegorical hero, typical of ideal 
 prowess, endurance, and physical strength ; but a real man, 
 who, living in very remote times, and in some part of the 
 world where the land was infested with savage beasts and 
 perhaps the sea with pirates, earned the gratitude of a 
 defenceless people by clearing earth and sea of monsters, as a 
 remarkably uniform tradition ascribes to him. The Cyclopes 
 were probably a race of pastoral and, metal-working people 
 from the East, characterised by their rounder faces, whence 
 
 ' In the supposed case of a number his own original observation, an English 
 
 of special correspondents sending home jury would sooner believe the whole 
 
 to English journals accounts of a battle party perjured than persuade themselves 
 
 or a campaign, the narrative of which that so extraordinary a coincidence 
 
 was in all nearly word for word the could have occurred.' — Short Studies on 
 
 same in several passages, Mr. Froude Great Subjects, i. 246. 
 says that, ' were the writers themselves. It is enough to say that the appli- 
 
 with their closest friends and com- cation of any such hypothesis of inde- 
 
 panions, to swear that there had been no pendent origination to the mythology of 
 
 intercommunication, and no story pre- the Aryan nations involves difficulties, 
 
 existing of which they had made use, if possible, still more stupendous, 
 and that each had written bond fide from 
 
GEKEK MYTHICAL NAMES. l73 
 
 arose the story of their one eye.' In the myth of Atlas, the CHAP. ' 
 
 same writer thinks it 'impossible to doubt that we l^ve a . 
 tradition of the Garden of Eden.' If it be said that these 
 traditions are common to many nations, he is ready with the 
 reply that the real Herakles or the real Theseus lived very 
 long ago, and that the other nations got these, as they got 
 most of their mythical heroes, from the Etruscans. We find 
 ' Adrastus, Tydeus, Odysseus, Meleagros, Polydeuces, written 
 Atresthe, Tute, Utwye, Melacre, Pultuke ; and similarly Aga- 
 memnon, Thetis, Perseus, Polynices, Telephus, represented by 
 Achmien, Thethis, Phajse, Phulnike, Thelaphe. So Apollo 
 is Apulu, Hercules is ilrcule, Alexander is Elchentre.' It 
 might as well be said that English names are French in 
 their origin because London and Dover are written Londres 
 and Douvres, and Sir Humphry Davy has been designated 
 ' Sromfredeve.' It can scarcely be maintained with serious- 
 ness that that which is only in. part obscure, and elsewhere 
 is wonderfully luminous, can be illustrated by what is utterly 
 dark. These names in their Etruscan dress have absolutely 
 no meaning ; in their Grfeek form most of them are trans- 
 parent. But when AchUleus is found in Greek and Aharyu in 
 Sanskrit tradition, when Briseis reappears as the child of Bri- 
 saya, Helen as Saram4, Ouranos as Vafuna, Orthros as Vritra, 
 and when the meaning of these names is perfectly plain, we 
 are forced to the conclusion that no explanation can be 
 received which does not apply to Greek, Sanskrit, and Teu- 
 tonic names alike. It would be more reasonable, failing this, 
 to fall back upon the ingenious theory by which Lord Bacon, 
 in his ' Wisdom of the Ancients,' converted the whole cycle 
 of Greek legend into wholesome advice for princes, cabinet 
 ministers, and heads of families.' 
 
 • Eome and Foreign Review, No. yil., than Mr. Paley. If he has examined 
 
 p. Ill, 1864. It is possible, and even the question since the time when his 
 
 likely, that the distinguished critic whose article appeared in the Hom£ and 
 
 well-known initials appended to this Foreign. Seview, he will probably have 
 
 article make it unnecessary to keep up seen, with Professor Max Miiller 
 
 any disguise may have modified or {Lectures on the Science of Language, 
 
 rejected these conclusions. It is un- second series, ix.), that we cannot 
 
 necessary to say that among modern accept any etymology for a Greek name 
 
 thinkers none can be found actuated by which is not equally applicable to the 
 
 a more earnest and single-minded desire corresponding terms in Sanskrit and 
 
 to ascertain the truth of facts without Latin, 
 regard to any secondary considerations 
 
 IX, 
 
174 MTTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 I 
 
 BOOK But tlie science which, traces both the names of Greek 
 mythical heroes and the incidents in their career to the 
 
 The earlier forms in which their orierinal signification becomes 
 
 language apparent, completely strips of all historical .character the 
 ibearin localised wars of Troy or Thebes, and the traditions which 
 on history. Speak of Kolchis as the scene of the exploits of lason. It is 
 possible that there may have been. a war undertaken to avenge 
 the wrongs of an earthly Helen ; that this war lasted ten 
 years, and that ten years more were spent by the chiefs in 
 their return homewards ; that the chief incident in this war 
 was the quarrel of the greatest of all the heroes with a mean- 
 spirited king, a quarrel in which a truce of gloomy inaction 
 is followed by the magnificent victory and early death of the 
 hero. But if such a war took place, it must be carried back 
 to a time preceding the dispersion of the Aryan tribes from 
 their original home, and its scene can be placed neither in 
 the land of the Five Streams, nor on the plains of the Asiatic 
 Troy, not in Germany or Norway or Wales. The comparison 
 of the Aryan languages sufficiently establishes these con- 
 clusions ; but the denial of any historical character to the 
 general narrative of the Trojan war, as given whether by the 
 Attic tragedians or by our so-called Homeric poems (be these 
 earlier or later than the days of JEschylos and Sophokles), 
 makes it a matter of justice to examine patiently and im- 
 partially the arguments and alleged facts adduced by those 
 who still maintain the positions of Euemeros with regard to 
 the story told in all its supernatural detail in the Iliad, and 
 pared down to the plausible prosiness of Eobinson Crusoe by 
 Thucydides. 
 The Wol- At the outset it may be safely affirmed that undue stress 
 Theory. has been laid on the Wolfian theory respecting the origin and 
 structure of the Hiad as affecting the attitude of historical 
 critics at the present day towards the momentous topic of 
 Homeric credibility. There is really no ground for the notion 
 that doubts as to the historical credibility of the poems to 
 which we give the name of Homer can be entertained only 
 by those who accept the position of Wolf and his followers. 
 The Wolfian theory, to speak briefly, maintains that the 
 IHad is made up of a number of songs which existed at first 
 
THE THEORY OF WOLF. 176 
 
 as detached poems, and -which were handed down from gene- 
 ration to generation hy a school of rhapsodists or profes|ional 
 minstrels. It was not, therefore, the work of any one man, 
 and possibly not even of any one age. This conclusion is 
 grounded partly on the absence of writing at and long after 
 the time when these poems first came into existence, and in 
 part on the incoherence and contradictions which an exami- 
 nation of the poems brings prominently into view. It follows 
 that there was no one author of the Hiad, or in other words, 
 that Homer is a name, not a person. This hypothesis has 
 found its extreme expression in the ' Klein-lieder Theorie' of 
 Kochly. 
 
 But if this notion were exploded utterly,' the real question The real 
 at issue would probably be in no degree affected. Thus, ^g"ue.'°°* 
 although Mr. Grote may have affirmed that ' Homer is no 
 individual man, but the divine or heroic father of the gentle 
 Homerids," he nowhere argues from this statement as a pre- 
 miss, while he is careful to add that the Odyssey is indubi- 
 tably one poem written by one man, and that the Hiad in its 
 present form, although it contains an Hias and an AchUlMs 
 combined, is probably the work of one and the same poet, 
 who pieced together two compositions which he had wrought 
 out for two different purposes. If we further take his con- 
 clusion, that the Odyssey in aU likelihood was not composed 
 by the author of the Iliad, even then we have only two, or 
 at the utmost only three poets, to whom we are indebted for 
 the great Greek epics which have been handed down to us. 
 Whether these conclusions are hasty or extravagant, whether 
 
 ' At present it cannot be regarded as either not recognised or, not promul- 
 
 exploded at aU. Dr. Latham's words gated was, the essentially rhapsodic 
 
 have here great weight : — ' The Wolfian character of all known poems belonging 
 
 doctrine of the rhapsodic character of to that stage of civilisation to which the 
 
 the Homeric poems, had the existing Homeric compositions are referred, 
 
 state of knowledge been sufficient for With the recognition of this, the me- 
 
 the criticism, would scarcely have been thod, as the details, of the criticism 
 
 paradox. As it was, it dealt with the wants changing ; and it is not so much 
 
 Iliad and Odyssey as ordinary epics, a question whether the facts in the 
 
 comparing them only with those of structure of two wonderful poems justify 
 
 Virgil, Tasso, Ariosto, Camoena, Er- the hypothesis that they arose out of tie 
 
 cilia, and Milton: epics of which the agglutination of rhapsodies,, but whether 
 
 single-handed authorship was a patent there is even a presumption against their 
 
 historical event, as clear as that of the having done so.' — Nationalities of Europe, 
 
 authorship of Falconer's Shipwreck or i. 207. 
 Glover's Leonidaa, The fact that was * History of Greece, part i. ch. xxi. 
 
176 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Eesiduum 
 of histori- 
 cal fact in 
 the Iliad. 
 
 they run counter to tlie evidence of facts or are opposed to 
 common sense, it is clear that the ppems are not invested 
 with more of a historical character because we hold that thej 
 are the work of three or two authors, or' of one. Such a 
 result is impossible, unless we can prove that the poet (or 
 poets) lived in or near to the time of which the history is 
 professedly narrated, and if his (or their) statements are 
 borne out by other contemporary writers. K the story which 
 the poet relates had come down from a period remote even in 
 his day — if its general character, both in the causes and the 
 sequence of incidents, exhibits a close resemblance to the 
 traditions of distant cotmtries with which the Hellenic tribes 
 could not possibly have had any intercourse — if the very 
 names of the actors and the deeds attributed to them are 
 found in the legends of other lands or other ages — we are 
 obviously just where we were before, so far as the attainment 
 of historical fact is concerned, even when we have succeeded 
 in proving that there was only one Homer, and that he was 
 born at Smyrna. Whether we believe in twenty Homers or 
 in one is, in one sense, a matter of supreme indifference in 
 comparison with the inquiry which is to determine whether 
 the events recorded in the poems are to be considered his- 
 torical. 
 
 On such a subject as this all reference to consequences is 
 out of place, and of itself suffices to show that we are not 
 actuated wholly and solely by a disinterested and unswerving 
 resolution to reach, so far as may be in our power, the truth 
 of facts. The question must be treated altogether as one ot' 
 evidence only, and no pain which we may feel at the possible 
 necessity of parting with old associations should have the 
 slightest weight with us. Even if we had to abandon a rich 
 inheritance of poetical beauty, the sacrifice ought to be 
 cheerfully made. The fear that any such sacrifice vrill be de- 
 manded of us is idle and groundless ; but for those who deny 
 the historical credibility of the Hiad or Odyssey it is neces- 
 sary to know how much of real history their opponents sup- 
 pose these poems to contain. Happily, this question is 
 answered with most satisfactory clearness by the latest and 
 the most strenuous of the champions of the traditional theory. 
 
mSTOmCAL RESIDUUM OF THE ILIAD. 177 
 
 In' the belief of Mr. Blackie, the residuum of fact is, it seems, CHAP. 
 
 IX 
 
 this : ' That there was a kingdom of Priam, wealthy^ and ^ — r- — ' 
 powerful, on the coast of the Dardanelles ; that there was a 
 great naval expedition undertaken against this Asiatic 
 dynasty by the combined forces of the European Greeks and 
 some of the Asiatic islanders, under the leadership of Aga- 
 memnon, king of Mycenae ; that there was a real Achilles, 
 chief of a warlike clan in the Thessalian Phthiotis, and a 
 real quarrel betwixt him and the general-in-chief of the 
 Hellenic armament; tha.t this quarrel brought about the 
 most disastrous results to the Greek host, in the first place, 
 and had nearly caused the failure of the expedition ; but that 
 afterwards, a reconciliation having been effected, a series of 
 brilliant achievements followed, which issued soon after in 
 the capture of the great Asiatic capital.' ' 
 
 If this outline of Homeric history were placed before one The test of 
 who had never heard of Homer, and if he were further told ^edibility 
 that the outline is the picture, what would be his reply ? Must 
 he not say, ' Tou do not ask me to believe much, and indeed 
 you have only sketched out some incidents of not uncommon 
 occurrence; I suppose, however, that you have obtained 
 them from some narrative which gives no ground for calling 
 its trustworthiness into question, and which is corroborated 
 by the testimony of competent witnesses. In other words, 
 you have doubtless gained this knowledge precisely in the 
 same way as I have learnt that some eight hundred years 
 ago there was a great struggle which ended in the death of 
 the English king at Hastings, and the forced election of 
 William the Norman in his place ? ' 
 
 ■The admission that he must look for nothing of the kind, Eesults ot 
 and that the process by which these historical results are '^'^ *'^'*" 
 obtained is of a wholly different nature, would probably 
 cause him some perplexity, and might possibly waken in him 
 a vague feeling of distrust. If he were possessed of the 
 critical faculty, and still more, if he had any acquaintance 
 with the applications of the laws of evidence to alleged facts 
 
 ' Blackie, Homer and the Iliad. Mr. residuum of the Odyssey, although that 
 Blackie does not point out with the poem has an important bearing on the 
 same clearness the precise historical theory which he so zealously upholds. 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of the present day, he would naturally begin to examine with 
 
 • r — ■ some care the statements brought before him, and the groimds 
 
 on which they rest. The examination would be followed by 
 unfeigned astonishment, for he would find himself asked to 
 believe in pohtical struggles between conflicting empires on 
 the authority of a narrative in which from first to last there 
 is not a semblance of political motive, and where, instead of 
 a chain of causation like that which obtains in ordinary life, 
 there is throughout a thaumaturgic plot in which gods and 
 men are inextricably mingled together. He is introduced to 
 a struggle which lasts ten years, because so it had been 
 ordained of Zeus according to the sign of the snake and the 
 sparrows, and which is brought about and turns solely on the 
 theft of the Spartan Helen by Paris, once or otherwise called 
 Alexandres. Apart from this, there is absolutely no motive 
 for the war, nor without it is there anything left of the stoiy. 
 It is of the very essence of the narrative that Paris, who has 
 deserted Oin6ne, the child of the stream Kebren, and before 
 whom Here, Athen^, and Aphrodite had appeared as 
 claimants for the golden apple, steals from Sparta the 
 beautiful sister of the Dioskouroi ; that the chiefs are sum- 
 moned together for no other purpose than to avenge her woes 
 and wrongs ; that Achilleus, the son of the sea-nymph Thetis, 
 the wielder of invincible weapons and the lord of undying 
 horses, goes to fight in a quarrel which is not his own ; that 
 his wrath is roused because he is robbed of the maiden 
 BrisMs, and that thenceforth he takes no part in the strife 
 until his friend Patroklos has been slain ; that then he puts 
 on the new armour which Thetis brings to him from the 
 anvil of Hephaistos, and goes forth to win the victory. The 
 details are throughout of the same nature; Achilleus sees 
 and converses with Athen^ ; Aphrodite is wounded by Dio- 
 mMes, and Sleep and Death bear away the lifeless SarpMon 
 on their noiseless wings to the far-off land of light.' 
 
 I,aws of By what standard, then, or by what tests is this story to 
 
 evidence. 
 
 ' ' The contents of the two great lying apart from this connection : these 
 
 poems of Homer are ... of an entirely eeries are, moreover, so handled as to 
 
 mythic character. They treat divers form each a rounded-off and complete 
 
 series of legends which stand in close whole.' — K. 0. Miiller, Introduetwn to 
 
 uninterrupted concatenation, and only a Scientijw Mythology, p. 24. 
 here and there take notice of others 
 
JUDICIAL TESTIMONY. 179 
 
 be judged, and how are we to measure its historical value ? CHAP. 
 
 Mr. Elackie pauses in some vehement denunciatioins' of ,J - 
 
 modem sceptical tendencies, to refer us to Sir Cornewall 
 Lewis's volumes on the Credibility of Early Eoman History, 
 ' a work distinguished by all that comprehensiveness of plan, 
 massive architecture, and substantial workmanship, so cha- 
 racteristic of its author.' The reader who is unacquainted 
 with the book might well suppose, from the absence of aU 
 other reference to it, that on the whole it bears out Mr. 
 Blackie's method of dealing with the Homeric poems. He 
 would again be perplexed at finding there a merciless de- 
 molition of all his theories and all his conclusions. But at 
 the least he would be under no doubt as to Sir Cornewall 
 Lewis's meaning, and he would find principles laid down 
 which claim to be of universal application, and which must 
 be false if exceptions are to be admitted. ' It seems to be 
 often believed,' says Sir G. C. Lewis, ' and at all events it is 
 perpetually assumed in practice, that historical evidence is 
 different in its nature from other sorts of evidence. Until, 
 this error is effectually extirpated, all historical researches 
 must lead to uncertain results. Historical evidence, like 
 judicial evidence, is founded on the testimony of credible 
 witnesses. Unless, therefore, a historical account can be 
 traced by probable proof to the testimony of contemporaries, 
 the first condition of historical credibility fails.' 
 
 How then would a British jury deal with a charge brought Their ap- 
 against the chief of one Scottish clan of murdering the chief plication m 
 of another clan, in feuds which, if now unknown, were courts of 
 familiar enough not many generations ago ? What if the Justice. 
 witnesses came forward to say that even before his birth the 
 slain chief had been marked as the future destroyer of his 
 kinsfolk ; that deserting his own wife, he ha,d requited the 
 hospitality of the accused by carrying off his young bride ; 
 that thence had sprung a feud between their clans, which 
 the seanagals or soothsayers had said should last for ten 
 years ; that before the final conflict, in which the aggressor 
 was slain, strange sights Were seen in the heavens, and 
 strange sounds were heard in the air; that in the battle 
 itseK the progenitors of the clans had been seen fighting 
 
 N 3 
 
180 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAK NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Applica- 
 tion to 
 Homeric 
 history. 
 
 ■witli the warriors of flesh and blood, and that by the death 
 of the betrayer, according to the ancient tokens, the wrong 
 had been at length atoned ? According to the theory which 
 finds a real historical residuum in the Iliad, the verdict 
 ought to be one of guilty ; for, although certain parts, nay, 
 indeed all parts, of the story were in one sense incredible, 
 yet 'the materials, so far as they assume the human and 
 narrative form, are in their root and scope historical mate- 
 rials ; ' ' and therefore as there must be some foundation for 
 the tale, it may be fairly concluded that the one chief had 
 killed the other, although there was strong reason for think- 
 ing that the cause and duration of the quarrel were not at 
 all what they had been represented to be. This, however, 
 could make no difference, for so long as the existence of a 
 feud had been shown, it really mattered very little how it 
 had been brought about, or whether either chief had a wife 
 at all. 
 
 This process, which we laugh at as midsummer madness 
 when applied to recent incidents, becomes, it seems, not 
 only legitimate but indispensable, when we have to deal 
 with legends which have flowed down the sea of tradition 
 through centuries or even millenniums. No injustice is done 
 to Mr. Blackie in thus putting the matter.^ It is his own 
 
 ' Blackie, Homer and the Iliad. 
 
 ' It can scarcely be necessary to say 
 that the arguments of the Edinburgh 
 Professor of Greek are here cited, only 
 because they are the most recent, and 
 probably the most able, exposition of 
 the traditional theories. 
 
 The Euemeristie method, for so it 
 may be most conveniently termed, has 
 been applied to the unwieldy Hindu 
 epic, the Mah^bhirata, by Professor 
 Lassen and Mr. Wheeler. The results 
 obtained are sufficiently contradictory. 
 The poem, or collection of poems, is as 
 full of supernatural or impossible in- 
 cidents as the Jliad or the Odyssey, or 
 any other Aryan epic ; but the main 
 story turns on a struggle between the 
 Kauravas and the PAndavas, as fierce 
 and protracted as the warfare between 
 the Trojans and Achaians, while the 
 return of the Pandavas to the inheritance 
 of which they had been deprived presents 
 in many of its incidents a tolerably close 
 
 parallel to the return of the Herakleids. 
 Many of the marvels in the poem are 
 met with also in Greek and Teutonic 
 tradition. Arjuna, the child of the sun, 
 is wedded to a serpent princess, as in 
 the story of Herakles and Echidna, or 
 of Eaymond of Toulouse and Melusina. 
 To get at the cajmt mortv/um of history 
 supposed to be contained in the poem, 
 all these wonders are of course to be 
 rejected. Thus far both critics are 
 agreed: but for all practical purposes 
 here the agreement ends. Professor 
 Lassen looks on the chief actors in the 
 drama not as real persons, but only as 
 symbolical representations of conditions 
 and events in the early history of India. 
 Thus the polyandrie marriage of Drau- 
 padi would point to the five tribes of 
 the people of P^nch^a, and the whole 
 poem would exhibit the subjugation of 
 the aboriginal inhabitants by the Aryan 
 invaders. Accepting this view of the 
 purport of the poem, Mr. Wheeler, in 
 
EUEMEEISM OJF HERODOTUS. 181 
 
 assertion that ' wlietlier tlie treacherous abduction of the fair CHAP. 
 Helen was the real cause of the Trojan War or not, is a >_ — ^ — 
 matter of the smallest moment. That there- were such 
 abductions in those times, and in those parts of the world, 
 is only too certain.' It might well be thought that the 
 writer of these words had before him some irrefragable 
 evidence of this fact; but the reader who is here referred 
 ' particularly (to) what Herodotus says in the well-known 
 Introduction to his History,' is doomed to a fresh surprise. If 
 he is approaching the subject for the first time, he wUl read a 
 perfectly probable, although somewhat dull, story of a young 
 lady of Argos who went down to buy wares from a Phenician 
 merchant-ship, and either with or against her own wUl was 
 carried off by the captain. The refusal of the Phenicians 
 to make reparation leads to retaliation, and the Argive chiefs 
 steal away Europe, the daughter of the Tyrian king. Thus 
 far the game was equal, for neither side would make amends ; 
 but some time afterwards the quarrel was renewed by the 
 Greeks who took Medeia from Kolchis, and thus led to the 
 seduction of Helen by Paris. Thus was brought about the 
 expedition of Troy, in requital of which Xerxes invaded 
 Europe, leaving it to Alexander the Great to clear off old 
 scores at Issos and Arbela, On turning to what are called 
 the original authorities for these events, the much-suffering 
 reader would find that the young Argive lady was one of the 
 many loves of Zeus, who changed her into a heifer ; that in 
 this form, chased by the gad-fly of Here, she wandered over 
 mountains and deserts, until she came to the desolate crags 
 where Prometheus was paying the penalty for his love of 
 man; that the Phenician maiden is the sister of Kadmos 
 the dragon-slayer, and is borne on the back of the white bull 
 across the western waters ; that the daughter of the Kolchian 
 
 his History of India, looks on the five say that the gleanings of Professor 
 
 husbands of Draupadl as contemporary Lassen and Mr. Wheeler are no more 
 
 princes, and regards her polyandrie the story of the MahabhArata than the 
 
 marriage as a historical incident in the Trojan -war of the Euemerists is the 
 
 lives of these five men. It is obvious Trojan war of our Eiad and Odyssey, or 
 
 that both these conclusions cannot be of the great lyric and tragic poets of 
 
 accepted, and as no valid reasons can Greece. See the Westminster Beviiw, 
 
 be given for preferring either, we are April, 1868, p. 406, &c. ; Max Miiller, 
 
 bound to reject both. It is enough to Sanskrit Literature, p. 4.6, &c. 
 
182 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 I. 
 
 The Talue 
 of the 
 historical 
 residuum 
 in the 
 Iliad. 
 
 Difficulties 
 inrolFed 
 in the 
 traditional 
 Tiew. 
 
 king is the wise woman, who enables Ias6n to overcome the 
 fire-breathing bulls after destroying the offspring of the 
 dragon's teeth, who is carried through the air in her dragon 
 chariot, and who possesses the death-dealing robe of Helios. 
 If on being thus brought into the regions of cloudland, the 
 reader asks whether Herodotos had not before him some 
 evidence different in kind from that which has come down 
 to us, or from that which is given in his Introduction, the 
 answer is that he obtained his very prosaic and likely story 
 from precisely those legends and those legends only, with 
 which we are scarcely less familiar than he was. 
 
 The result then is briefly this, that Mr. Blackie has before 
 him a singularly circumstantial and complicated narrative, 
 in which the motives of the actors and their exploits are 
 detailed with the most minute care, and in which no dis- 
 tinction whatever is drawn between one kind of causation 
 and another. This narrative he reduces to the merest caput 
 mortuwm. The causes of the war, the general character of 
 the struggle, the plans and objects of the combatants, all 
 vanish. Nothing remains but the bare fact that there was 
 a quarrel of some kind or other ; and the conclusion forced 
 upon us is this, — that in all traditional narratives which in- 
 volve thaumaturgic action, or which exhibit a causation dif- 
 ferent from that which we see at work in the world around 
 us, the historical residuum, according to Mr. Blackie, must 
 be sought by rejecting all motives and incidents which tran- 
 scend the course of ordinary experience. All such things 
 are the mere husk or shell, of no consequence whatever, 
 as long as we admit the naked fact which- is supposed to lie 
 beneath. This is, in truth, to lay down a canon in com- 
 parison with which the Wolfian hypothesis becomes weak 
 and almost pointless ; and they who commit themselves 
 to this position must take the consequences which cannot 
 fail to follow the application of these principles to all records 
 whatsoever. 
 
 At once, then, two questions may be asked : (1) Why, if 
 we are thus to pick and choose, should we accept precisely 
 the fare which Mr. Blackie puts before us, neither more nor 
 less ? (2) Why should we af&rm the historical reality of the 
 
THE PRESENCE OF HELEN AT ILION. 183 
 
 residuum, merely because we decline formally to deny its CHAP. 
 
 existence ? If tke story of Jack tlie Giant- Killer be qjipped 
 and pared as tbe traditionalists kave pared down the ' tale of 
 Troy divine,' the beanstalk-ladder to heaven, the giant, and 
 the giant's wife, all go into thin air together, and there re- 
 mains only some valiant John who overcomes and punishes 
 some tyrant or oppressor. Giants do not exist, and bean- 
 stalk-ladders to the moon conflict with the theory of gravi- 
 tation. Yet it is not easy to see why out of such wealth 
 of materials we should retain so little, or why, in the latter 
 case, we should not say boldly and candidly that we do not 
 believe any part of the story. This was the straightfor- 
 ward and manly course adopted by the poet when he said 
 emphatically, 
 
 oi/K %tTr^ %rvfios \6yos outo?, 
 ou5* cJSas ey vrivfflv €Vfj^\fxois, 
 ovS^ Vk60 vipyafjLo. Tpolas. 
 
 That whole nations should fight year after year for the sake 
 of one woman, and that the Trojans should allow their city 
 to be beleaguered when her surrender would have set every- 
 thing straight at once, was to Herodotos simply incredible, 
 and therefore he caught eagerly at the version which said 
 that Helen, instead of being at Troy, was detained at the 
 court of Proteus, King of Egypt.' The same disbelief of the 
 Homeric legend led Thucydides quietly to ignore Helen, to 
 substitute a political for a personal motive in the case of 
 Agamemnon, and to account for the length of the war by 
 the alleged fact that from lack of numbers the Achaians 
 were driven to divide their forces, some betaking themselves 
 to agriculture in the Chersonesos, and others to piracy, while 
 the . rest maintained the siege of Ilion. All that can be 
 said on this poiat is, that the scepticism of Thucydides is 
 far less than that of the modem Euemerists. ' If the great 
 historian,' says Mr. Grote, ' could permit himself thus to 
 amend the legend in so many points, we might have ima- 
 
 ' Herodotos, i. 112. This Proteus, Lewis remarks that 'much of what is 
 
 however, is simply the wise man of the called Egyptian history has evidently 
 
 Sea, the fish-god of Ninevites and been borrowed from Greek mythology.' 
 
 Philistines. — Od. iv. 385, &c. On this — Astronomy of the Ancients, ch. vi. 
 
 narrative in Herodotos Sir Cornewall sect. viii. 
 
 IX. 
 
184 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK gined that a simpler course would have been to include the 
 v_-^^ duration of the siege among the list of poetical exaggera- 
 tions, and to affirm that the real siege had lasted only one 
 year instead of ten. But it seems that the ten years' 
 duration was so capital a feature in the ancient tale, that 
 no critic ventured to meddle with it.' ' If with Mr. Blackie 
 we set aside even the abduction of Helen as a matter of not 
 the slightest importance, we may very reasonably set aside 
 the period assigned to the war ; but having gone so far, why 
 should we not at once adopt the version of Dion Chryso- 
 stom, which gives an account of the war diametrically op- 
 posed to that of the Iliad, representing Paris as the lawful 
 husband of Helen, and AchiUeus as slain by Hektor, while 
 the Greeks retire, disgraced and baffled, without taking Troy ? 
 It is hard to see why the residuum of modern Euemerists 
 should be preferred to that of a Greek writer certainly much 
 nearer to the time when the events took place, if they 
 ever took place at all. The ruins of Mykenai and Tiryns, 
 even if they attest the fidelity of Homeric epithets, and the 
 existence of an ancient and powerful state in the Pelopon- 
 nesos,^ cannot of themselves prove that the kings or chiefs 
 of those cities were successful in all their expeditions, and 
 
 ' History of Greece, part i. ch. xv. of Mr. Clark, who, in his Peloponnems, 
 '' With the geographical accuracy of p. 206, asserts that ' Sometimes the 
 the Homeric poets of the Iliad and story and the language are in strict ac- 
 Odysseywe are only indirectly concerned, cordance with the observed facts of geo- 
 If the epithets so freely inserted in the graphy and topography; sometimes in 
 Catalogue and elsewhere themselves striking contradiction.' Mr. Clark adds 
 point to poems of which portions have the explanation of this fact. 'Each city 
 been absorbed into our Homer, the com- has its own heroes and legends, and its 
 posite character of these poems is still own bards to celebrate them. A multi- 
 further established, and a fresh diffi- tude of smaller epics have been absorbed 
 culty placed in the way of those who in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the 
 claim for them a definite historical epithets attached inalienably to this 
 value, And it may be fairly urged that city and that, are among the relics of 
 a great deal too much has been made of those perished songs : and the audience 
 this supposed exactness of description, required no more.' This is as far ad- 
 The reviewer of Mr. Gladstone's Homeric vanced as the scepticism of Kochiy, 
 Studies, in the Edinburgh Eeview for while the reviewer's conclusion (that the 
 October 1858, p. 511, boldly avers that author of the Miad was well acquainted 
 of any personal acquaintance on the with the region round Troy and with 
 part of the poet with the interior of parts of the Egean coast, and that the 
 Northern Greece, or the Peloponnesos, author of the Odyssey was personally 
 or many even of the principal islands, familiar with the western side) implicitly 
 there is no evidence beyond that of the denies the common authorship of the 
 epithets by which places are described, two poems which seems to be conceded 
 and especially in the Catalogue ; and in by Mr. Grote. 
 support of this position quotes the words 
 
AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLEUS. 185' 
 
 therefore that they did not fail at Ilion. The reality of 
 the struggle is unaffected by the victory or the de^at of 
 Agamemnon. If it be urged that the West ultimately 
 achieved a supremacy, it does not follow that the fall of 
 Ilion was the beginning, any more than that it was the 
 consummation of their triumphs. 
 
 But not only does Mr. Blackie (and here it must be re- Eueme- 
 peated that his arguments are cited only as the latest Methods of 
 and perhaps the most able defence of the conservative dealing 
 theory) misrepresent or keep out of sight the real position Homeric 
 taken upon such subjects by the most rigorous historical narratives, 
 critics in this country : he also uses ambiguous words in 
 defining his own conclusions, or substitutes in later passages 
 expressions which alter or take away the force of statements 
 previously made. In one page we are told that the Homeric 
 narrative sets forth some historical facts, as in the passage 
 already quoted,' one of these facts being that Achilleus had 
 a real quarrel with the general-in-chief of the Hellenic 
 armaments.^ In another, the facts resolve themselves into 
 impressions which the facts may have left on the minds of 
 the poets, but which, far from being in accordance with the 
 incidents as they actually occurred, may, he admits, be 
 altogether at variance with them.^ In another, the quarrel 
 itself of AchUleus fades away like every other feature of the 
 story, for ' whether we suppose Agamemnon and Achilles, 
 the representatives of southern and northern Greece, to have 
 actually set out together in the same expedition, or to be 
 the distinct captains of two separate armaments confounded 
 in the popular imagination, so far as the essentials of history 
 are concerned, both the men and the facts remain.'^ 
 
 Can anything be more amazing ? We are told first that Their iiTe- 
 the quarrel and the subsequent reconciliation of the two "^o^c'iable 
 chiefs form an essential part of the history of the Hiad, and 
 next, that it really makes no difference if we suppose that 
 the king and the hero never met at all. This is, iu truth, 
 to blow liot and to blow cold from the same mouth ; and all 
 that we can do is to oppose a determined front to such 
 
 ' Bcmer and the Iliad, toI. i. p. 177. ^ Und,. i. 31. 
 
 ' Slid. i. 33. < Ibid. i. 79. 
 
186 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK arbitrary demands on our credulity, or to surrender ourselves 
 
 ,1 — . bound hand and foot to a despot who is to dictate to us from 
 
 moment to moment the essentials, as he is pleased to term 
 them, of historical tradition. We have a right to ask not 
 only what we are to receire as facts of history, but also by 
 what method these facts are ascertained. If the method be 
 worth anything, its working must be regular, and its appli- 
 cation ought to yield the same results in every hand ; but 
 we have already seen that the system (if it can be called 
 such) followed by the Euemerists has produced one version 
 of the Trojan war by Thncydides, another by Stesichoros 
 and Herodotos, another by Dion Chrysostom, and two more 
 by Mr. Blackie ; every one of these being irreconcilable with 
 the rest. If we choose anyone of these summaries of his- 
 torical residues at the expense of the others, what is this 
 but to cheat ourselves with the conceit of knowledge without 
 the reality ? 
 Value of But although it is impossible to grapple with canons of 
 
 impres-"^ interpretation so supple and elastic, it is possible to show 
 sions. that they cannot be applied except on the basis of pure 
 
 assumption. The broad statement that the Hiad gives us an 
 account of certain incidents which really took place, resolves 
 itself in other passages into the assertion that the oral tradi- 
 tion of a people may, after hundreds or even thousands of 
 years, ' be more true to the real character of the fact than 
 the written testimony of this or that contemporary witness.' 
 But a fact is one thing, and the impression produced by a 
 fact is another ; and if the impression leads to the ascription 
 of an historical character to incidents which confessedly 
 never took place, then it is certain that we cannot from this 
 impression derive any historical knowledge. We can only 
 suppose that the impression was caused by something we 
 know not what, and cannot say when or how, unless we have 
 authentic contemporary narratives to explain it ; but even in 
 this our knowledge is derived (and too great a stress cannot 
 be laid on this fact) wholly from the historical document, 
 and not from the floating popular tradition. That this is so 
 will be made clear by examining those very instances which 
 Mr. Blackie brings forward in support of a different con- 
 
VALUE OF POPULAE TBADITIONS. 187 
 
 elusion. The first is the tradition which points, out the 
 summit of a flat- topped conical hill near Scarborough ^as the 
 spot where Cromwell encamped during the siege of the castle 
 in the great rebellion. ' This,' he tells us, ' is the tradition 
 of the place. But on looking at the topographical autho- 
 rities, we learn from Parliamentary papers that Cromwell 
 was not there at the period implied, and in fact never could 
 have been there, as at that time he was conducting military 
 operations in another part of the country. Here is a plain 
 case of local and oral tradition at issue with authentic 
 written evidence ; but what points does the issue touch ? 
 Only this, that at the siege of a particular castle, at a certain 
 date in the great civil war, the future head of the great 
 English commonwealth and virtual king of the British em- 
 pire was not bodily present. This, however, is a compara- 
 tively small matter ; the triple fact remains, that there was a 
 great civil war in England between the Crown and the Com- 
 mons at the time specified ; that in this war the castle of 
 Scarborough was an object of contention between the parties ; 
 and that iu the same war a man called Oliver Cromwell was 
 one of the principal generals of the popular party.' ' Here 
 the tradition relates to a time for which we have confessedly 
 the most ample and minute contemporary information in 
 written documents : but we must suppose that our whole 
 knowledge of the great struggle in the time of Charles I. is 
 derived from the Scarborough tradition, before we can have 
 the slightest warrant for comparing it with the Homeric 
 story. How would the case stand then ? It would simply 
 assert an incident to be a fact which, as it so happens, we 
 Imow to be not a fact, and we should have a vague idea of 
 some contest without knowing anything about its causes, its 
 character, or its issue. All that can be said is that, as it so 
 happens, the known history of the time enables us to account 
 for the impression, but that from the impression itself we 
 derive no historical knowledge whatever. It is the same 
 with the next alleged instance of the two women, M'Lachlan 
 and Wilson, who are said to have been exposed on the beach, 
 and drowned at the mouth of the Bladnoch water.^ In this 
 ' Somer and the Iliad. ' Ibid. 
 
188 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The 
 
 legend of 
 Eolaud, • 
 and the 
 Nibelun- 
 gen Lied. 
 
 case Mr. Blackie thinks it more litely that certain legal 
 documents may have been lost than that the sentence was 
 not carried out ; but even admitting that the women were 
 reprieved, he thinks that nothing more is disproved than the 
 fact that they were drowned, ' not that there was no inten- 
 tion to drown them, not that the act of drowning them, if 
 carried out, was not in harmony with the whole character of 
 the government by whose minions they had been condemned.' 
 Here again we are thoroughly acquainted with the character 
 of the government from other sources ; but if we were con- 
 fined to the tradition or to others like • it, we should have 
 before us only a string of incidents, none ofwhich took place, 
 while we should be left to guess the causes which led to such 
 false impressions. But history is not a field for conjecture, 
 however ingenious. 
 
 Nor is it more reasonable to dismiss the Carolingian epic 
 cycle as worth little, because in its ultimate form we see 
 ' that wanton play of fancy, and that intentional defiance of 
 all probability ' which makes Ariosto useful to the student of 
 Homer only 'as presenting the greatest possible contrast." 
 The reality of this contrast is a mere assumption which, as 
 we have seen, was denied by Stesichoros, Herodotos, and 
 Dion Chrysostom. The very pith and marrow of the Iliad 
 lies in the detention of Helen at Troy while the ten years' 
 siege went on ; and so great, and so thoroughly intentional 
 in their eyes was this defiance of probability, that they 
 altogether denied the fact. But the Carolingian legends, 
 like the Scarborough tradition, relate to a time for which we 
 have contemporary historical information ; and in support of 
 the story of Roland, who fell at Eoncesvalles, the statement 
 of Eginhard has been adduced that in a battle with the 
 Basques there was slain, along with others, ' Hruodlandus 
 Britannici limitis prsefectus.' It is therefore argued that we 
 may expect to find in the Trojan legend about the same 
 amount of truth which the Carolingian myth is supposed to 
 contain. The answer to this is, that apart from the words 
 of Eginhard we could not af&rm the death of Eoland as a 
 fact, although we could not in terms deny it. But the slender 
 ' Homer and tlie Iliad, i. 55. 
 
THE LEGEND OF EOLATfD. 189 
 
 trust to be reposed even in the names preserved by popular CHAP. 
 
 tradition is bronglit out prominently by the remarkaljle song . ^ — • 
 
 of Attabiscar.^ In this song (wMch seems to relate to the 
 fight at Eoncesvalles, although the place is named Ibaneta), 
 the Frank king mentioned in it is called Carloman. 
 
 Fly, ye who hare the strength : fly, ye who have horses ; 
 
 Fly, King Carloman, with thy sable plumes and scarlet mantle. 
 
 This, as Grimm and Michelet have supposed, was the real 
 name of Charles during his lifetime, Carolus Magnus being 
 merely the Latinised form of Carloman. But as Charles had 
 a brother named Carloman, who survived his father Pippin 
 three years, it is possible that the Basque poet may have 
 confused the names of the two brothei-s, although Carloman 
 died seven years before the fight of Eoncesvalles. But for 
 the crucial instance of the fallacious nature of popular tra- 
 dition we are forced back upon the Nibelungen Lied, which 
 tells us of Gunther, the Burgundian king, conquered by the 
 Huns of Attila, and relates the murder of Siegbert, king of 
 Austrasia, who defeated the Huns. From independent con- 
 temporary historians we know that these persons actually 
 lived, and these deeds were actually done. The conclusion, 
 that here we may really separate the historical element from 
 the fictitious, seems at first sight irresistible. Yet every one 
 of these incidents and almost aU the names are found, as we 
 have already seen, ia the older Saga of the Volsungs. We 
 can measure, therefore, the value to be assigned to the state- 
 ment that ' the general character of this Teutonic epic is dis- 
 tinctly historical.'' The true facts are these. We have in 
 the later poem the names which are supposed to denote 
 Siegbert, Brunhilt, Attila, Gunther, Swanhild, while in the 
 older lay we have Sigurd, Brynhild, Atli, Gunnar, Swanhild ; 
 the incidents recorded of each being in both cases the same. 
 It is unnecessary here to urge that the Yolsung story of 
 Sigurd, Brynhild, and Gudrun is precisely the same as the 
 story of Paris, Helen, and Oinone, and many others in the 
 Greek cycle, for even without this parallelism, close as it 
 seems to be, we see beyond all possibility of doubt that our 
 
 ' Michel, Le Pays Basqm, p. 236. ' See page 60. 
 
 ' Blackie, Homer and the Iliad, 
 
190 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK knowledge of the supposed Austrasian actors in the Nibelung 
 - .. ," song is in no way derived from that poem, and that in at- 
 tempting to separate the historical from the mythical ele- 
 ments we are only following a will of the wisp. Far, there- 
 fore, from furnishing any warrant for the conclusion that 
 there was a real Agamemnon and a real Achilleus, the great 
 German epic justifies a strong suspicion even of the names 
 which are embodied in the oral traditions of a people. Far 
 from being able to extract any history from the Nibelung 
 tale, we should even be wrong in thinking that the legend 
 reflected the history of the age of Attila, Theodoric, and 
 Gundicar. The names and incidents alike recede into the 
 beautiful cloudland, where they mingle with the parallel 
 legends of Agamemnon and Odysseus, of Isfendiyar and 
 Peridun ; and the distinction which some have sought to 
 establish between quasi-historical myths, as those of the 
 Trojan and Carolingian cycle, and those which, like those 
 of Herakles and Perseus, are termed quasi-theological, falls 
 to the ground, or at the least, becomes for all practical pur- 
 poses worthless.' If we know that Hruodland died at Eon- 
 cesvalles, it is only because we happen to have for that fact 
 the testimony of the contemporary Eginhard ; and the same 
 contemporary evidence shows that the popular tradition is 
 wrong in the very substance of the story which takes the 
 great Karl himself as a crusader to the Holy Land. But the 
 more ancient epics of the Aryan nations cannot be checked 
 by any such contemporary history ; and the results as ap- 
 plied to the Carolingian myths is not sufficiently encourag- 
 ing to justify our regretting that the process is in the case 
 of the Trojan legends impossible. AU the stories stand, in 
 short, on the same level.* The myth of Herakles enters into 
 the so-called history of Laomedontian Troy as much as that 
 of Agamemnon into the annals of the Troy of Priam ; and 
 there is no reason why the capture of the city by Herakles 
 should not be as historical as its overthrow by the confede- 
 rated Achaians. The quasi-theological myth of Herakles is 
 
 ' Fortnigh&y Beview, No. XXIV. Max Miiller, Leetures on Language, 
 May 1, 1866. second eeriee, 399. 
 
 " Qrote, History of Greece, i. 636. 
 
LAWS OF EVIDENCE. 191 
 
 thus also quasi-historical ; and from both alike it is impossible CHAP. 
 
 to reap any harvest of historical facts. • ^-^ — - 
 
 In reality, we have to go back to first principles. Sir Principles 
 Cornewall Lewis has laid down certain canons of credibility ^ence. 
 which are at the least intelligible, and which are exclusively 
 acted on in English courts.' The modern Euemerist lays 
 down none : and even in cases where he abandons existing 
 incidents as given in the popular tradition, even where he 
 admits that the legends contradict each other or themselves, 
 even where he puts aside, as matters of no importance, the 
 cardinal facts on which they turn, he yet insists on retaining 
 what he calls the central fact, and on maintaining the gene- 
 ral truth of popular impressions, while he imparts to that 
 fact and to those impressions the particular form which may 
 best suit his present purpose. AH that can be said is, that 
 the application of such principles to alleged facts of the 
 present day would issue in the total collapse of justice, and 
 set up a reign of universal terror. Where narratives or 
 chronological schemes, of whatever kind, or of whatever age, 
 contradict themselves or each other, we are bound, according 
 to Sir Cornewall Lewis,^ to reject them all, unless we have 
 good grounds for adopting one to the exclusion of the rest. A 
 mere isolated name, and a bare fact, can be of no use to us. 
 If the Homeric poems (and to this, after all, even Mr. Blackie 
 finds himself reduced) tell us no more than that there was a 
 king named Agamemnon, and a chief called Achilleus, who 
 may never have been at Troy, (for Cromwell was not at Scar- 
 borough), and that there was also a struggle of some sort, 
 although we know not what, at Ilion, we have before us a 
 barren statement of which we can make nothing. Such a 
 war may be matched with that Arabian invasion which, ac- 
 cording to Assyrian tradition, cut short the so-called Chal- 
 dean empire. Of this invasion Mr. EawJinson admits that 
 he can say but little. " Indeed, we do not possess any dis- 
 tinct statement that it was by force of arms the Arabians 
 imposed their yoke on the Chaldean people. The brief 
 
 ' Credibility of 'Early Soman History, torical Credibility.' 
 vol. i. ch. iv. See also Dictionary of ' Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 348. 
 Science, Literature, and Art, article 'His- 
 
192 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAIST NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK summary of Berosus's narrative preserved to us in Eusebius 
 
 . r — - does but say that after the Chaldean dynasty which held the 
 
 throne for 458 years, there followed a dynasty of nine Arab 
 kings, who ruled for 245 years. Still, as we can scarcely 
 suppose that the proud and high-spirited Chaldeans would 
 have submitted to a yoke so entirely foreign as that of Arabs 
 must have been, without a struggle, it seems necessary to 
 presume a contest wherein, the native Hamitic race was at- 
 tacked by a foreign Semitic stock, and overpowered so as to 
 be forced to accept a change of rulers. Thus, then, the 
 Chaldean kingdom perished." Certainly, if ever there was 
 such a kingdom, it may have so fallen ; but to say that it 
 did so, is the purest guess-work ; and it may be enough to 
 quote the words of the 'Edinburgh Review," on a like re- 
 constrviction of English history, after the narrative has beea 
 lost. ' The dynasty of the Stuarts,' it may then be said, 
 ' seems to have given four kings to England, and many more 
 to Scotland, when it was expelled by Dutch invaders. Of 
 this invasion we have no details. Indeed, it is not distinctly 
 stated that the Dutch yoke was imposed by force of arms 
 upon the English people. StiU, we can scarcely think that 
 proud and high-spirited Englishmen would submit, to so 
 foreign a nation as the Dutch without a struggle, especially 
 when we have reason for thinking that a rebellion, headed 
 by one who called himself Duke of Monmouth, was vigor- 
 ously put down not long before. It seems necessary, then, 
 to presume a contest in which the native English population 
 was attacked and overpowered by the men of Holland. Thus, 
 then, the Stuart dynasty perished.' The conjecture would in 
 this instance be utterly false, although no objection on the 
 score of improbability could be urged against it. In such a 
 case, a genuine historian would simply suspend his judgment. 
 He would not deny that there was a Stuart dynasty, or that 
 it was expelled : he would only decline to lay down any con- 
 clusions on the subject, adding that the alleged facts, thus 
 standing bare and isolated, could have for him no use. This 
 is all that the most sceptical of critics have affirmed in the 
 
 ' Eawlinson, Ancient Eastern Monarchies, vol, i. p. 223. 
 2 January 1867, p. 140. 
 
THE TROJAN WAK. 193 
 
 case of the Homeric and early Roman traditions ; and it is CHAP. 
 
 a mere misrepresentation to speak of tliem as denying the . ■_• 
 
 possible occurrence of some contest on the plains of the Helles- 
 pontian Troy. Like them, the modern Buemerists reject all 
 the inarveUous and supernatural incidents, and the mingling 
 of gods and men. The cause and character of the war, its 
 duration, and the mode in which it was carried on, they regard 
 as points of very slight consequence ; and having thus destroyed 
 the whole story, they come forward with surprising assurance 
 to demand our acceptance of a residue of fact which by some 
 divining process they have discovered to be historical. When 
 Sir Cornewall Lewis dismisses the accounts of the Decemviral 
 legislation at Rome as involved in inextricable confusion, he 
 does not deny the existence of Decemvirs ; he merely says that 
 the narratives which have come down to us are self-contra- 
 dictory from beginning to end, and untrustworthy in all 
 their particulars. In like manner, of such a Trojan war as 
 that in which the Euemerists would have us believe, ' with- 
 out Helen; without Amazons, without Ethiopians under the 
 beautiful son of Eos, without the wooden horse,' nay, as they 
 admit, perhaps without a quarrel between Agamemnon and 
 Achilleus, and possibly without even their presence in the 
 Argive camp, Mr. Grote only says that ' as the possibility of 
 it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality of it be 
 afBrmed.' One step further we may, however, take. What- 
 ever struggle may have taken place within fifty miles of the 
 southern shores of the Sea of Marmora, that struggle is "not 
 the subject of the Homeric poems. History does not repeat 
 itself with monotonous uniformity in every country ; and 
 the story of Helen and Achilleus is the subject of the popular 
 traditions in every Aryan land. ' If then the conflict, a few 
 scenes of which are described in our Iliad, belongs to the 
 history of men and women of like passions with ourselves, 
 this conflict arose out of events which happened before the 
 separation of the Aryan nations from their common home. 
 To convert a bare possibility of this sort into an historical 
 fact is indeed to build a house on sand ; and while we are 
 wasting time on this worthless task, the early language of tha 
 Aryan peoples points to that real conflict in the daily and 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
194 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 E;OOK yearly drama of the outward world which must strike the 
 - ]' - deepest chords of the human heart, so long as men continue 
 
 to be what they are. 
 The But the question must be carried still further into that 
 
 coXo"'' domain of Hellenic tradition which is supposed to be the 
 veisy. border land between mythology and history, and to exhibit a 
 larger amount of fact than of fiction. The inquiry may not 
 be wholly new : but if, in spite of all that has been said by 
 those who maintain the unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey 
 and attribute to their narratives a historical character, their 
 opponents are not satisfied, it is clear that the question can- 
 not be regarded as settled, unless dogmatic assertion on the 
 one side is to overbear the patient statement of facts on the 
 other. If the conclusions of the modern Euemerists are to 
 be received, then, on the faith of a supposed general consent 
 of critics through a long series of centuries, we are bound to 
 believe that the events of which the Homeric poets sang were 
 historical incidents which materially affected the later his- 
 tory of the Greeks, in spite of all contradictions in the narra- 
 tive, and in spite of all other difficulties which the literature 
 whether of the Greeks or of any other people may force on 
 our attention. If we are not as yet told that, the historical 
 foundation of the legends being established, we are bound to 
 receive all the marvellous details of the picture with a ready 
 acquiescence, still the method by which the upholders of 
 the so-called Homeric history seek to sustain these conclu- 
 sions may well appal the sober seekers after truth, who see 
 the havoc thus made in those canons of evidence which 
 should guide the statesman and the judge not less than the 
 scholar. When we have before us narratives full of extra- 
 ordinary incidents and exhibiting throughout a super- 
 natural machinery, when we see further that these narra- 
 tives contradict themselves on vital points, it is our duty, it 
 seems, not to reject those narratives, but to pare away all 
 that is miraculous or hard to believe, and then to regard the 
 naked outline as fact. It cannot be too often or too earnestly 
 repeated, that by any such method the ascertainment of the 
 truth of facts becomes impossible. The Euemerists charge 
 their opponents with robbing us of large treasures of in- 
 
HOMEEIC CKITICISM. 195 
 
 horited belief;' but it is not too mueb to say that their own CH VP. 
 
 criticism is far more unsettling and destructive, and ^at it . \' - 
 
 tends to blunt that instinct of truthfulness, and that im- 
 partial determination to seek truth only, without which all 
 criticism is worse than worthless. If we are to hold with 
 ilr. Blackie in one place that ' there was a real kingdom of 
 Priam on the coast of the Dardanelles, and a real expedition of 
 the western Greeks against this kingdom,' with a real Achil- 
 leus,and'areal quarrel between him and the general-in-chief of 
 the Hellenic armament,' and in another, that the impressions 
 left by the facts on the minds of the poets might be ' alto- 
 gether at variance with the incidents as they occurred,' while 
 in a third we are to admit that the historical character of 
 the legend is not affected, even though Agamemnon and 
 Achilleus may never have met at all, and no Helen may have 
 existed to give cause to the war, then it is clear that all free- 
 dom of judgment is gone. But no one can submit to be thus 
 bound, who believes that his powers of thought are given to 
 him as a sa'cred trust, and that, unless he seeks to know facts 
 as they are, he is chargeable with the guilt of wilfully blind- 
 ing himself. It matters not how great may be the array of 
 authorities on the other side ; he dares not to give his assent 
 to these conclusions, if facts in his judgment contradict or 
 appear to contradict them. To profess a belief in the pro- 
 position that the Iliad and Odyssey moulded the intellectual 
 life of the Greeks from a time long preceding that of Hero- 
 dotos and Thucydides, would be to him an act of sheer dis- 
 honesty, if he is not convinced that the proposition is true ; 
 and if, after a careful survey of the field, he still retains his 
 doubts, he is bound to state his reasons, and thus to do what he 
 can towards solving the problem. The attitude of all critics 
 towards this subject ought to be that of patient seekers after 
 truth, who are quite prepared to receive any conclusions to 
 which the evidence may lead them. K we wish only to 
 ascertain facts, we shall be ready to believe indifferently that 
 the Iliad and Odyssey were composed by one poet or by 
 twenty ; that they were written within a few years or many 
 centuries after the incidents which they profess to record ; 
 
 ' Blackie, Iliad, i 
 o2 
 
196 ■ MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATION'S. 
 
 BOOK that then- narratives are partly historical or wholly mythical, 
 ^' . if only the propositions are irrefragably established. But 
 whatever be the result, the statement of the grounds of 
 doubt calls. for gratitude rather tha,n blame, and the tone 
 adopted by some wlio have lately taken part in these dis- 
 cussions is a matter, to say the least, of very grave regret. 
 Thus in the book which he is pleased to call the 'Life of 
 Homer,' Mr. Valetta has ridiculed those who range them- 
 selves on the side of Lachman, Eochly, or Mr. Grote, as 
 overshooting their mark, one condemning one third, a,nother 
 another, aud a third the remaining third of the twenty-four 
 books of the Iliad. Such assertions can gain at best but a 
 temporary advantage. None who go beneath the surface of 
 the question can fail to see that the. critiCs thus censured do 
 not reject each a different portion of the Iliad ; that tlie at- 
 tribution of the first book of the Iliad to one poet, and of tlie 
 second book to another, is really no condemnation whatever, 
 and that Mr. Grote at all events regards the Hiad as made 
 up of only two poems, both of which he believes to be the 
 work of the same poet. In fact, the points on which these 
 critics fasten are not in each case different. The same 
 difficulties have forced themselves on the attention of all, 
 and some of the most strenuous asserters of Homeric unity 
 are not slow in acknowledging their force. Even Mr. 
 Blackie admits that Homer composed the Iliad 'in piece- 
 meal,' and strung his songs together ' with a distinct know- 
 ledge that they would be used only in separate parts,' and 
 that ' not only the separate materials, but the general scheme 
 of the Iliad existed in the Hellenic mind before Homer." It 
 is hard to see how this position differs materially from that of 
 the writer in the Edinburgh Review, who, while maintaining 
 the unitarian hypothesis, asserts that ' the text was handed 
 down in fragments from remote antiquity, that those frag- 
 ments were cast and recast, stitched together, unstitched 
 again, handled by uncritical and unscrupulous compilers in 
 every possible way.'^ Like Mr. Blackie, Colonel Mure allows 
 
 > Blackie, Iliad, i. 206, 222. Odyssey. As Mr. Grote insists, it is 
 
 "' ifo. pcxx. October 1858, p. 503. impossible to shut our eyes to the unity 
 
 It is unnecessary to enter at length into of plan which perv.ides th s poem. In 
 
 the question relating to the unity of the the Iliad we look in vain tor any such 
 
HOMERIC HISTOKY. 
 
 197 
 
 that ' the circumstaHces under which the texts were trans- CHAP. 
 
 IX 
 
 mitted, render" it next to impossible but that their original -_ — ^ — 
 purity must have suffered," and that Homer was probably 
 * indebted to previous traditions for the original sketches of 
 his principal heroes.'^" Bishop Thirlwall, while he refused to 
 commit himself to any positive conclusion on the subject, 
 saw long ago, with his usual sagacity, that the unity of 
 Homer, even if universally conceded, would add little or 
 nothing to the value of the Iliad or Odyssey as historical 
 records. In his words, ' the kind of history for which Homer 
 invoked the aid of the Muses to strengthen his memory was 
 not chiefly valued as a recital of real events,' and ' if in de- 
 tached passages the poet sometimes appears to be relating 
 with the naked simplicity of truth, we cannot ascribe any 
 higher .authority to these episodes than to the rest of the 
 poem-.' With a singular anticipation of the course into which 
 the discussion has now drifted, he adds that 'the campaigns 
 of Nestor, the wars of Calydon, the expeditions of Achilles, 
 probably appear less poetical than the battles before Troy, 
 only because they stand in the background of the picture, 
 and were perhaps transferred to it from other legends in 
 which, occupying a different place, they were exhibited in a 
 more marvellous and poetical shape.' ^ Thus, in Bishop 
 ThirlwaU's judgment, every incident nakedly recorded in the 
 Iliad received its full clothing of the supernatural in other 
 epic poems now lost ; and since to incidents so clothed no 
 credit is to be given, the tissue of wonders in which all are 
 involved puts completely out of sight any possibly historical 
 incidents on which they may have been founded, and makes 
 them for us as though they had never been. This emphatic 
 verdict scatters to the wind all inferences respecting the age 
 of Homer drawn from the silence of the Homeric poems as 
 to the return of the Herakleids. These inferences involve the 
 
 unity, and are forced to strange shifts lay of Demodokos and of the episode of 
 
 in order to establish a continuous unity the tolar herds in Thrinakia, as wfJl as 
 
 of any kind. But on the other hand it of many other incidents of the poem, 
 
 is impossible to prove that no pans of ' Critical History of Greek hltera,- 
 
 the Odyssey ever existed in the form of ture, book ii. ch. iv. § 4. 
 
 separate lays. The tale of the death of ^ Ibid, book ii. ch. iv. § 5. 
 
 Aehilleus points to a different conclusion, ' History of Greece, vol. i. ch. v. 
 and this may also be said of the longer 
 
198 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK assumption that the return of, the Herakleids was a cause of 
 ■ ^' - such thorough change in the Greek dynasties as .well as in 
 Asia Minor, that if the poet had written after that event, his 
 language must have exhibited some know:ledge of its results. 
 The argument is commonly urged by writers who further 
 assume that Homer wrote within a generation or two of the 
 Trojan war,' and that Thucydides has assigned the right date 
 for the conquest of Peloponnesos by the Herakleids. Thus 
 the whole Hiad, as we have it now, was composed within 
 eighty years at furthest from the fall of Hion, and perhaps 
 much earlier. Here then we are enabled to measure at once 
 the value of that ancient tradition which, it is said, no Greek 
 author of note has disputed of doubted, when it is submitted 
 to the fast and loose method of critics who maintain the 
 unity of Homer. The whole character of the tradition is 
 essentially changed, if in one statement the poet is a con- 
 temporary writer, and in another is separated by a vast 
 interval of time from the events which he professes to 
 describe. " In the one view, the composition of the Eiad 
 within eighty years after the recovery of Helen is indispens- 
 able to the historical authority of Homer. According to the 
 other, which is adopted by Thucydides, Homer lived ' a very 
 long time ' after the Trojan war ; ^ while the poet, who may 
 surely be allowed to tell his own tale, clearly speaks of the 
 actors in his great drama as belonging to an order of men 
 no longer seen upon the earth.^ The special pleading of Mr. 
 Gladstone limits the meaning of the phrase to a period of at 
 most forty or fifty years. Few, probably, will attach much 
 weight to the argument. All that l^estor says in the passage 
 on which Mr. Gladstone^ relies for the truth of his interpre-' 
 tation, is that none then living could fight as Perithoos and 
 other heroes had fought in the days of his youth.' In all 
 
 ' Gladstone, Homer and the Homeric To Thucydides the absence of all 
 
 Age, i. 37. reference to the Herakleid conquests in 
 
 ^ Thno. i. 3. The contradiction can- our Hiad and Odyssey (if he ever saw 
 
 not be laid to the charge of Thucydides, those poems), involved no sort of 
 
 who clearly regarded Homer as living necessity for supposing that the poet 
 
 at a time long subsequent ' to the return lived before the so-called Dorian setde- 
 
 of the Herakleids. A statement so clear ment of the Peloponnesos. 
 
 can scarcely be set aside with con- * }l. v. 304. 
 
 sistency by critics who are eager on all * Homer and the Homeric Age, i. 37- 
 
 possible occasions to shelter themselves ° LI. i. 272. 
 
 under ' the authority of the ancients.' 
 
VALUE OF HOMERIC TRADITION. 
 
 199 
 
 the other passages where a like phrase occurs, the poet in ^^^^• 
 
 his own person ascribes to Aias, or Hektor, or Aineias the ^ — - 
 
 power of hurling boulders, scarcely to be lifted by two men, 
 as easily as a child might throw a pebble.' The change of 
 which Nestor speaks is only one of degree. The poet, had 
 he lived in times so close to the events which he relates, 
 wonld rather have gloried in the exploits of his own kinsmen, 
 and allowed their fame to shed some portion of its lustre on his 
 living countrymen. 
 
 But if the alleged event which is called the return of the The retui-n 
 
 . .01 the 
 
 Herakleids led, as we are told, to such thorough changes m Hera- 
 the (historical) dynasties of Eastern and Western Greece, l'^«"^^- 
 and if this event, the belief of Thucydides to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, occurred within a century after the fall of 
 Troy, and if the Iliad and Odyssey, as we now have them, 
 were composed in the interval between these two events, the 
 upholders of Homeric unity have fairly established their 
 position. What then is the value of the traditions which 
 relate this so-called historical event ? In plain speech, they 
 are narratives which exhibit a singular parallelism with 
 other incidents in the mythical history of Hellas, and from 
 which the' residuum of historical fact, if it can be extracted 
 at all, must be extracted by the same method which Thucy- 
 dides, Herodotos, Dion Chrysostom and the modern Buemerists 
 apply to the story of Troy, namely, by stripping off the whole 
 clothing of the supernatural which has been thrown around 
 them, and by ingenious conjectural arrangement of the little 
 that then remains. In truth, argument here becomes really 
 superfluous. It may be fairly said, and it should be said at 
 once, that the most vehement defenders of the historical 
 character of the Iliad have themselves acknowledged that 
 we can get nothing out of it which deserves the name of 
 history. The whole thaumaturgy of the poem they shatter 
 at a blow : and although we are told in one breath that there 
 was a real expedition from Mykenai to Troy, with a real 
 AchUleus and a real Agamemnon, whose quarrel was an 
 actual fact, we are told in another that Agamemnon and 
 \chilleus may have been leaders of successive expeditions 
 
 ' n. xii. 383, 449 ; xx. 287. 
 
200 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and may never have met at all, and that there may, there- 
 - — -^ — - fore, have been no quarrel and no Helen to give cause for 
 the war. This, according to their own admissions, is no 
 caricature, and hence it may be said that the critics who 
 are represented by Mr. Blackie have torn to shreds the 
 historical character of the Iliad. Bishop Thirlwall, while 
 he accepts the fact of some war as the basis of the story, 
 has dealt not less cruelly with the narrative. He has swept 
 away all belief in the detailed narratives of the Iliad and the 
 Odyssey, while his statements that the incidents cursorily 
 noticed in these poems were exhibited in full mythical garb 
 in other epics destroy all belief in the remainder. It must 
 therefore be emphatically repeated thait on the historical 
 character of the Trojan war, the unitarians are in substan- 
 tial agreement with their antagonists. There may have been 
 a war at Ilion on the Propontis : but as we cannot deny, so 
 we cannot say that thei'e was, and about it we know nothing. 
 The Hera- Do we know anything more about the return of the Hera- 
 quests not, kleidsP Mr. Grote, it is true, asserts that at this point we 
 historical, pass, as if touched by the wand of a magician, from mythical 
 to historical Greece.' But he connects the myth with the 
 subsequent historical distribution of the Greek states, only 
 because it happens to come latest in order of sequence, and 
 the story itself he at once banishes to the region of myths. 
 The traditions again are contradictory^ and Bishop Thirlwall 
 especially notes that, while one version represents Pamphylos 
 and Dymas as falling in the expedition by which their 
 countrymen made themselves masters of the Peloponnesos, 
 another speaks of Pamphylos as still living in the second 
 generation after the conquest. If then we say that in 
 Greece, when it becomes historical, we find a certain ar- 
 rangement of Dorian, Ionian, and other tribes, but that we 
 know nothing of the events which led to it, our conclusion is 
 simply that of Dr. Thirlwall, and Dr. Thirlwall is commonly 
 regarded as free from the scepticism of Mr. Grote. 'It is 
 much less probable,' in his judgment, ' that the origin of the 
 Dorian tribes, as of all similar political forms which a nation 
 has assumed in the earliest period of existence, should have 
 ' History of Greece, part i. ch. xviii. § 1. 
 
THE KETUKN OF THE HBKAKLEIDS. 201 
 
 been distinctly remembered, than that it should have been CHAP. 
 
 forgotten, and have then been attributed to imaginary — -V - 
 
 persons.' ' Have we then any adequate grounds for be- 
 lieving that there was any historical reconquest of the 
 Peloponnesos by the Herakleids? Mr. Grote, who accepts 
 the fact, although he rejects the legends which profess to 
 account for it, urges that no doubt is expressed about it 
 even by the best historians of antiquityj and that ' Thucy- 
 dides accepts it as a single and literal event, having its 
 assignable date, and carrying at one blow the acquisition of 
 Peloponnesos.' ^ But no' one has shown more forcibly than 
 Mr. Grote himself the utter worthlessness of the method of 
 Thucydides when applied to the Trojan war, which also has 
 its assignable date, for Thucydides marks it as preceding 
 the return of the Herakleids by eighty years. When, again, 
 Thucydides sets down the expulsion of the Boiotians from the 
 Thessalian Ame as an event occurring sixty years after the 
 war at Troy, Mr. Grote rejects his statement summarily, on 
 the ground that he ' only followed one amongst a variety of 
 discrepant legends, none of which there were any means of 
 verifying.' ^ But this remark applies with equal force to the 
 traditions of the return of the Herakleids, and it has been 
 well said that ' the tendency of the Greeks in the historic 
 age to assign definite, dates to uncertain events was very 
 likely to lead them into statements not chronologically 
 correct,'"' and that the dates assigned by Thucydides, for 
 example, to the various immigrations into Sicily ' must surely 
 be received with great caution.' They are, at the least, as 
 trustworthy as the tabulated results of Ghaldtean and As- 
 syrian chronology by M. Gutschmid and Mr. Eawlinson ; 
 and they all rest alike on the shifting sands of ingenious 
 conjecture.'' The last argument of Mr. Grote for the his- 
 torical return of the Herakleids has been refuted by Sir 
 Comewall Lewis. This event, if it be an event, does not lead 
 us at once from mythical to historical Greece. The whole 
 history of Athens for many centuries later either is a blank, 
 
 " Thirlwall, Greece, i. 257. ^ F. A. Paley, ' The Iliad of Homer,' 
 
 ^ History of Greece, part i. ch. xviii. (in the Bibliotheca Classica), introd. xix. 
 
 § 1. * Kdhiburgh Review, January 1867, 
 
 ■' Ibid. § 2. p. 128. 
 
202 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK or exhibits a series of fables ; and tbe conclusion is that ' it 
 , ]■ . seems quite impossible to fix any one period for the com- 
 mencement of authentic history in all the different Greek 
 states.' Of the string of dates assigned to the various 
 alleged immigrations from Western Hellas, some may pos- 
 sibly be correct ; but ' how far these dates are authentic, we 
 have little means of judging, but the colonial legends con- 
 nected with the early foundations are for the most part 
 fabulous.' It follows that ' a connected account of the affairs 
 of the principal Greek States begins about a century before 
 the birth of Herodotus, and that a continuous narrative of 
 the principal transactions is carried on from the time of 
 Croesus and Cyrus, when the Ionic Greeks first became 
 subject to the Lydian and Persian kings. As soon as we 
 ascend beyond the memory of the generation which preceded 
 Herodotus and his contemporaries, we find the chronology 
 uncertain, the order of events confused, and the narrative 
 interspersed with legend and fable. As we mount higher 
 the uncertainty increases, until at last the light of history is 
 almost quenched, and we find ourselves in nearly total dark- 
 ness." To this region of the Graiai and the Gorgons we 
 must, therefore, assign the return of the Herakleids, with all 
 the incidents which are said to have preceded it, and not 
 a few which are said to have followed it. If any real facts 
 underlie the tradition — if any names of real Achaian or 
 Hellenic chieftains have been preserved in it, we cannot 
 separate them from the fictions beneath which they are 
 buried. To us they are lost beyond recall: and for us, 
 therefore, the tales of Troy and of the return of the Hera- 
 kleids are not history, and cannot possess any historical 
 value.^ 
 
 ' Credibility of Earhj Roman History, as a son of Hippotas, dwelling in the is- 
 
 ch. xiv. § 18. land Aiolia (Odyssey, x. 2). Hence Mr. 
 
 ^ Unless it can be shown that we have Grote {History of Greece, part i. ch. vi.) 
 
 better historical information for the so- infers that Aiolos is older in the legend 
 
 called Aiolio migration than we have for than Hell^n and the rest. Yet Helliis 
 
 the Herakleid conquests, the Aiolic mi- in these poems is a well-defined though 
 
 gration ceases to be for us a fact from small district, while of Aiolians and lo- 
 
 which we can reason to any conclusions nians it can scarcely be said that they 
 
 respecting the IHad or the Odyssiy. have any local habitation. It is, there- 
 
 These poems' know nothing of indi- fore, mere labour lost to make attempts 
 
 vidual eponymoi named Hellfen, Ion, or to determine whether these two poems 
 
 Achaios, and Aiolos is mentioned simply are to be regarded as Ionic or Aiolic. 
 
NEGATIVE KESULTS. 
 
 203 
 
 Here, then, the inquiiy ends so far as it belongs to the 
 province of historical credibility; and it must n^ver be 
 forgotten that the negative conclusions thus reached are 
 the result of mere historical criticism, and that they can in 
 no way be affected by the failure of any theories which may 
 
 We have no more means for ascertaining 
 this point than we hare for writing the 
 history of the inhahitants of Jupiter; 
 and to ask with the writer in the Quar- 
 terly Eeview (October 1868, p. 446), how 
 the same body of poems can be Aiolic in 
 its original materials, the theatre of its 
 action, and the interests to which it was 
 first addressed, and Ionic in its ultimate 
 form and language, is to entangle our- 
 selves in difficulties which exist only in 
 our own imaginations. 
 
 It may be remarked that the Quarterly 
 reviewer, who professes to take the con- 
 servative position, is quite as destructive 
 in his criticism as Mr. Blackie. With 
 him the name Homeros can hardly mean 
 anything but ' fitted together, harmo- 
 nious,' and Homer, like Eumolpos or 
 Daidalos, is ' the personification of an 
 art, and the eponymous ancestor of 
 an hereditary guild.' The reviewer, 
 having thus destroyed the personality of 
 Homer, assumes that the Iliad and 
 Odyssey are the first of a long series of 
 once familiar poems (ibid. p. 460), the 
 latter being the so-called cyclic poems, 
 which are extensions from the Iliad, and 
 took that poem as their basis and model. 
 This priority of the Iliad and Odyssey 
 in point of time to the other poems of 
 the epic cycle is asserted repeatedly. It 
 is enough to sny that there is no sort of 
 proof that these poems are later than 
 our Homer, or that they were in any 
 sense extensions of it. The fact, ad- 
 mitted by the reviewer, that the tragic 
 poets followed the cyclic stories, is proof 
 of their wide difference from the legends 
 of the Uiad or the Odyssey. But accord- 
 ing to Colonel Mure all these poems 
 were immeasurably inferior to the 
 Odyssey; why then did ^schylos and 
 Sophokles always follow them ? The re- 
 viewer adopts the answer of Aristotle, 
 that the Iliad and Odyssey possessed too 
 much unity and completeness in them- 
 selves, that they were, in short, already 
 too dramatic to be made a quarry of sub- 
 jects for the stage [ihid. p. 468). What- 
 ever authority the judgment of Aristotle 
 may carry with it on facts which he had 
 himself ascertained, it would be a plain 
 
 breach of truthfulness to refrain from 
 saying that these assertions are both 
 false and absurd. The Iliad and the 
 Odyssey are very mines of tragic sub- 
 jects, and we might as reasonably ac- 
 cept his monstrous dictum'dividing all 
 mankind into </>i5(ret &pxovTes and ipi(ret 
 Sov\ot as justifying the perpetuation of 
 slavery. To Mr. Paley's conclusion that 
 the tragedians followed ' the more savage 
 old epics which had none of the virfue, 
 the chastity, the gentle humanity that 
 have made our Uiad and Odyssey the 
 admired of all subsequent ages,' the re- 
 viewer, replies by saying that 'scholars 
 have usually attributed this difference 
 to the exigencies of the stage.' It is 
 well, perhaps, to know that a certain 
 amount of savagery, brutality, and im- 
 purity are necessary requirements of the 
 stage: but unfortunately this theory, 
 while it might explain the popularity of 
 the drama of Charles the Second's time, 
 fails to account for the greater purity of 
 the drama of Shakspeare. But in fact 
 it is impossible to maintain that trage- 
 dians in any age could be driven 'to 
 choose anything lower than the highest 
 models, or that poets like ^schylos 
 and Sophokles would of their own will 
 select the coarser-grained and ruder 
 material. The very thought is a slander 
 on our common humanity ; and we can 
 but wonder at the shifts to which critics 
 are driven who will not put aside old 
 prejudices and associations, and confine 
 themselves resolutely to the examination 
 of facts. With the Quarterly reviewer 
 the wonder becomes the greater, because 
 he maintains that ' the Iliad represents 
 not the beginning, but the culmination 
 of a great school of poetry' {ibid. p. 
 471). It was, therefore, in his power to 
 say that the tragic poets drew their ma- 
 terials from these earlier poems ; but it 
 is unfortunate that no such earlier 
 poems are anywhere spoken of or re- 
 ferred to, and the so-called cyclics can- 
 not be both older and -later than the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey. If this is all that 
 can be said, the battle of the Euemerists 
 and traditionists is lost. 
 
 CHAP. 
 IX. 
 
 The origin 
 of the 
 traditions 
 of the 
 Herakleid 
 conquests. 
 
204 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK profess to account for the origin and growth of these tradi- 
 
 v_ — ,: . tions, although the fact that their historical character has 
 
 been disproved already must tend to strengthen any theory 
 which gives a consistent explanation of the whole, and which 
 rests on a comparison of these traditions with the myths of 
 other countries. ' The siege of Troy is,' in Professor Max 
 Miiller's words, ' a repetition of the daily siege of the East by 
 the solar powers that every evening are robbed of their 
 brightest treasures in the West.' ' Few — probably none— 
 will venture to deny that the stealing of the bright clouds of 
 evening by the dark powers, the weary search for them 
 through the loug night, the battle with the robbers as the 
 darkness is driven away by the advancing chariot of the lord 
 of light, are favourite subjects with the poets to whom we 
 owe the earliest Tedic songs. How far the names occurring 
 in this most ancient Hindu literature are found in Hellenic 
 legends, how far the incidents connected with these names 
 are reproduced in the so-called Homeric poems, may be 
 gathered in some measure from what has been said already. 
 But whether the old Vedic hymns contain the germ of the 
 Iliad and Odyssey, or whether they do not, it seems im- 
 possible to shut our eyes to the fact that the whole mythical 
 history of Hellas exhibits an alternation of movements from 
 the West to the East, and from the East back to the West 
 again, as regular as the swayings of a pendulum. In each 
 case either something bright is taken away, and the heroes 
 who have been robbed, return with the prize which, after a 
 long struggle, they have regained ; or the heroes themselves 
 are driven from their home eastward, and thence return to 
 claim their rightful heritage. The first loss is that of the 
 Golden Fleece ; and the chieftains led by lason set forth in 
 the speaking ship on their perilous voyage to the shores of 
 Kolchis. Before the fleece can be regained there are fearful 
 tasks to be done : but the aid of the wise Medeia enables 
 lason to tame the fire-breathing bulls, and to turn against 
 each other the children of the dragon's teeth. Then follows 
 the journey homeward, in which Medeia again saves them 
 from the vengeance of Aietes, and lason reigns gloriously in 
 
 ' Lectures on the Science of Latic/iiage, second series, p. 471. 
 
HELEN AND PENELOPE. " 205 
 
 lolkos after his long wandej-ings are ended. This tale is CHAP. 
 
 repeated again in the story of the wrongs and woes of J3elen. ^J — - 
 
 She, too, is stolen, like the Golden Fleece, from the western 
 land, and carried far away towards the gates of the morning, 
 • and a second time the Achaian heroes are gathered together 
 to avenge the disgrace, and to bring back the peerless queen 
 whom they have lost. Here again is the weary voyage, 
 lengthened by the wrath of the gods, and the perilous war- 
 fare which must precede the ruin of Ilion. But the aid of 
 Athene, answering to that of Medeia, wins the victory at 
 last for Achilleus, and then follow again the wanderings of 
 the heroes as they return each to his home in the far west. 
 Here, too, the help of Athene, when her first anger has 
 passed away, supports Odysseus on his toilsome pilgrimage, 
 and beats down his enemies beneath his feet. With the 
 scene in which Odysseus and Penelope appear in 'all the 
 splendour of their youthful beauty after the fall of the 
 suitors, the second westward movement comes to an end. 
 But the enmity which darkened the life of Herakles con- 
 tinued to cast its shadow over his children ; and if we follow 
 the mythographers, we have before us, in a series many 
 times repeated, the expulsion of the Herakleids and their 
 attempts to return and take possession of their inheritance.' 
 
 ' The writer in the Quarterh/ Beview parently Messenian, represented her as 
 
 (October, 1868), whose arguments on carried off by the twin heroes Idas and 
 
 the age of the Biad and Odyss'y hare Lynkeus. Again, the anger of Achilles 
 
 been already noticed (note 2. p. 202), ad- finds an almost perfect parallel in that 
 
 mits that Comparative Mythology may of Meleager, as told in the ninth book of 
 
 perhaps furnish a complete answer to. the Iliad. Finally, the taking of Troy 
 
 the question. What are the germs or out- is an exploit of Hercules as well as of 
 
 lines out of which the Trojan story was Agamemnon.' The inference from these 
 
 formed? (p. 453). Decliningto enter in- coincidences is that 'the incidents of the 
 
 to this subject generally, he asserts that Iliad are not a mere distortion of actual 
 
 'Even without goingout of the narrower events, but originally and properly my- 
 
 circle of Greek tradition we may derive thical : that the myth is the primary and 
 
 valuable suggestions frotn the compara- essential, the history only the secondary 
 
 tive method,' and adds that ' the main and accidental ingredient.' Unfortu- 
 
 incidents of the Riad — the abduction of nately these secondary ingredients (if 
 
 Helen, the anger of Achilles, the taking there were any such) are so buried be- 
 
 of Troy — are found repeated, with slight neath the former as to be lost beyond 
 
 modilications, in the mythology of other recovery. The reviewer has, therefore, 
 
 parts of Greece. Theseus, like Paris, only to account for the shape atsumed 
 
 carried off Helen, and the Dioscuri led by the Iliad story, and his answer is, 
 
 an expedition into Attica for her reco- ' First, the personality of Achilles, as it 
 
 very, which exhibits on a smaller scale was conceived by the primitive tradition, 
 
 the essential features of the expedition must have exerted in itself an over- 
 
 of Agamemnon. Another tradition, ap- powering attraction on the story. Se- 
 
206 MYTHOLOGY OP THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 The so-called Dorian migration is the last in the long series 
 of movements from east to west. The legends which 
 I)rofess to relate its history have doubtless lost in great 
 degree the freshness and charm of the myths which had 
 gathered round the fair-haired Helen and the wise Medeia. 
 This poverty may arise from their comparative nearness to 
 an historical a^e, and from the intermixture of real incidents 
 on which the floating myths of earlier times had fastened 
 themselves. That this may have occurred again and again 
 is a matter not of mere conjecture, but of certainty, although 
 the fact of the intermixture furnishes, as we have seen, no 
 ground of hope for those who seek for history in mythology. 
 Unless they are known to us from contemporary writers, the 
 real events, whatever they may have been, are disguised, 
 distorted, and blotted out as effectually as the stoutest trees 
 in American forests are killed by the parasitical plants 
 which clamber up their sides. But, meagre as these later 
 myths may be, the ideas and incidents of the older legends 
 not unfrequently reappear in them. The disasters which 
 befall the Herakleid leaders before they gain a footing ia 
 the Peloponnesos answer to the troubles and losses which 
 Odj'sseus undergoes on his homeward voyage. The story 
 of the soothsayer Karnos, whose death draws down on them 
 the wrath of ApoUon, carries ns to the legend of Chryses in 
 the tale of Troy : and the three sons of Hyllos answer to the 
 three sons of Arkas in the Arkadicin stories, and to the three 
 sons of Mannus in the mythology of the Teutonic tribes. 
 Whether the eastward migrations, which are described as 
 the consequences of the return of the Herakleids, represent 
 
 condly, the incident of a ■wrathful inac- from one end to the other. If the hooks 
 tivity must have been felt to be pecu- to which Mr. Grote gives the distin- 
 liarly fit to he the turning-point of a guishing name of Urns were inserted in- 
 long poem. This fitness appears to to an older or an independent AchiU^is, 
 consist in the facility which it offered this prior fitness is converted into a 
 for the addition of episodes, celebrating mere accident. In any case we cannot 
 the other national heroes of the different assume in such an inquiry as this that 
 Greek states' (ib. p. 464). But to the the poem was composed at the first in 
 first of these points the reviewer has its present form, i.e. with a book re- 
 liimself reiilied that Achilleus in the counting the causes of the wrath of 
 earlier tradition is Meleagros, that the Achilleus, followed by others relating 
 wrath of the one is the wrath of the the exploits of various heroes who stand 
 other. The second assertion assumes forth in his place, and by a sequel which 
 that one and the same poet sate down narrates the reconciliation and victory 
 and composed the Iliad as we have it, of the Phthiotic chieftain. 
 
RECUERING LEGENDS. 207 
 
 any real events, we cannot tell, although we cannot in terms CHAP. 
 deny it ; but the fact remains that they are moyQjments ■ — t-^ — 
 eastward, corresponding in many of their features to other 
 movements which are said to have preceded them. All that 
 can be said further about these legends as a whole is that 
 ' matter of fact (if any there be), is so intimately combined 
 with its accompaniments of fiction as to be undistinguishable 
 without the aid of extrinsic evidence ; ' ' and no such evidence 
 is forthcoming. The pendulum which had marked the lapse 
 of the mythopceifc ages is here arrested in its even beat. The 
 mighty stream, which had brought down on its waters the 
 great epical inheritance of mankind, is lost in the sands of 
 the barren centuries which intervene between the legfend- 
 making age and the period of genuine contemporary history. 
 
 Thus, then, we have before us a cycle of legends many Materials 
 times recurring, with differences of local colouring, but with "rad^tion 
 a general agreement in essential features. The search for a 
 stolen treasure, and the homeward return either of- the con- 
 querors who have smitten the robbers, or of the heroes who 
 come to claim their rightful kingdom, form the burden of all. 
 In other words, we are brought back to the favourite theme 
 of the Vedic poets — to the liymns which tell us of the Sun- 
 god robbed of his cows in the west, of the mission of Sarama 
 to discover the fastnesses where the thieves have hidden 
 them, of their resistance until Indra draws nigh with his 
 . irresistible spear, of his great vengeance and his beneficent 
 victory. Carrying us back yet one step further, these legends, ' 
 it must be repeated, resolve themselves into phrases which 
 once described, with .a force and vividness never surpassed, 
 the several phenomena of the earth and the heavens. The 
 stream is thus traced to its fountain-head, and at once we 
 are enabled to account for the beauty and majesty, the gross- 
 ness and unseemliness, of the great body of legends which 
 make up the genuine mythology of the world. The charge 
 of monotony which has by some been adduced in summary 
 condemnation of the method and results of comparative my 
 thology, may be urged with as much and as little reason 
 against the life of man. If there is monotony in the thought 
 
 ' Grote, History of Gnece, pajt i. ch. xviii § 2. 
 
208 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Materials 
 
 of the 
 
 poems 
 
 comiTionly 
 
 called 
 
 Homeric. 
 
 of the daily toil of tlie sun for beings weaker than himself— 
 of his wrath as he hides his face behind the dark cloud, of 
 his vengeance as he tramples on the vapours which crowd 
 around him at his setting, of the doom which severs him 
 from the dawn at the beginning of his journey to restore her 
 at its close — there is monotony also in the bare record of 
 birth and love and toil and death, to which all human life 
 may be pared down. But where there are eyes to see and 
 hearts to feel, there is equally life in both ; and we are 
 driven to admit that the real marvel would be, not the 
 multiplication of magnificent epics, but the absence of these 
 epics from a soil on which the seeds had been so lavishly 
 scattered ; not the production of characters differing from and 
 resembling each other — as those of Meleagros and Achilleus, 
 of Hektor and Paris, of Herakles and Theseus, of Perseus 
 and ApoUon, of Athene and Danae, of Helen and 16 and 
 Medeia — but the absence of such beings from the common 
 stories of the people. 
 
 The historical character of the Argonautic, the Trojan, 
 and the Herakleid legends has been swept away ; and Com- 
 parative Mythology steps in to account for the nature, growth, 
 and extent of the materials which the Homeric or other poets 
 found ready to their hands. That they worked on some 
 materials provided by ancient tradition, is allowed by all ; ' 
 and the admission involves momentous consequences. The 
 earliest mythical phrases tell us of a hero whose chariot is 
 drawn by undying horses, and who is armed with an unerring 
 spear ; who is doomed to toil for beings meaner than himself, 
 or to die an early death after fighting, in a quarrel which is 
 not his own ; who must be parted from the woman to whom 
 he has given his heart, to be united to her again only when 
 his days are drawing to an end ; in whom may be seen 
 strange alternations of energy and inaction, of vindictiveness 
 and generosity ; who, after a long struggle, and just when he 
 seemed to be finally conquered, scatters his enemies on every 
 side, and sinks, when the battle is ended, into a serene and 
 deep repose. The outline is but vague, but it involves all the 
 essential features in the careers of Achilleus and Odysseus, 
 
 ' Gladstone, Homer and tlte Homeric Age, ii. 9. 
 
ARYAN EPIO POEMS. 209 
 
 of Meleagros and Herakles, of Perseus, Theseus, and Belle- CHAP, 
 rophon ; and not only of these, but of the great heroes of the _ ' . 
 lays of the Volsungs and the Nibelungs, of the romance of 
 Arthur, and the epic of Firdusi. In some cases the very 
 names are the same, as well as the incidents ; in others they 
 translate each other. There is thus the closest parallelism 
 between the great epics of the Hellenic and Teutonic tribes, 
 of the Persians and the Hindus ; and thus also the narrative 
 of the Trojan war is not only divested of all local historical 
 character, but finds its place as one among the many versions 
 of the tale which relates the career of the great mythical 
 heroes of all lands. At once, then, we are brought round to 
 the conclusion (which Dr. Thirlwall had reached by another 
 path) that a source so rich in mythical elements must yield 
 an abundant harvest of great epic poems, and that our Iliad 
 and Odyssey must be but a very small part of the inheritance 
 left by the mythopceic ages, even if this conclusion were not 
 supported by the general testimony of ancient writers and 
 the phenomena of Greek literature. These great epics, at 
 whatever time they may have been brought into their present 
 shape, are but two epics which were not the most popular 
 (even if they were known) during the most flourishing period 
 of Greek literature. They are but varying forms of the wide- 
 spread tradition which has come down from a source common 
 to all the tribes of the Aryan race. A purely historical 
 inquiry stripped them of all historical character; a philo- 
 sophical analysis has resolved their materials into the earliest 
 utterances of human thought, when man first became capable 
 of putting into words the impressions made on his mind by 
 the phenomena of the outward world. 
 
 The method by which these results have been obtaiaed Attempted 
 must be either wholly rejected, or carefully followed without between"" 
 the slightest regard to consequences, unless it can be shown the science 
 in special iustances and by tangible evidence to be unsound, guage'aud 
 The expression of vague fears either is thrown away or does ™ytbo- 
 mischief, by encouraging an unscientific fashion of looking 
 at a subject which must be handled systematically or not at 
 all. Nothing can be clearer than that if the name Zeus is 
 confessedly another form of Dyaus, Ouranos of Varuna, Azi-- 
 
 TOL. I. P 
 
210 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK dahaka of Zoliak, tlie method whicli has yielded these results 
 ._ / _- must be applied to all names, nay, to all words ; and that, in 
 aU instances where the laws which govern the method are 
 not violated, the result must be admitted as established. 
 The child who can swim may dread to plunge into a stream, 
 because he thinks that the water may be beyond his depth ; 
 the dogmatist may hesitate to admit conclusions which he 
 cannot refute, because he fears that they may lead to other con- 
 clusions subversive of his traditional belief; but such evasions 
 are unworthy of men who seek only to know the truth of facts. 
 It is no longer possible for any who allow that Dyaus must 
 be Zeus and Ouranos must be Varuna, to ask with any con- 
 sistency why the Greek Charites should be the Vedic Harits, or 
 Eros the Sanskrit Arvat. In either case it is a mere question 
 of fact, and the answer is that the words are etymologically 
 identical, and that Charis and Erinys can no more be ex- 
 plained by any Greek word than can Zeus or Ouranos. No 
 room is left for captious questions which ask why, though 
 ApoUon be certainly the sun, all other mythical heroes should 
 represent the sun also. It has probably never been thought, 
 and certainly never been said, that all the actors in the great 
 epic dramas of the Hellenic and Teutonic tribes, of the 
 Persians and Hindoos, are solar heroes. Such a statement 
 would strike at the very root of Comparative Mythology, 
 Avhich teaches that the mythical treasures of the Aryan race 
 have been derived from phrases expressing the gentiine feelings 
 of mankind about all that they saw, felt, or heard in the world 
 around them. Assuredly neither Odysseus, Herakles, Gidi- 
 pous, nor any other can be the sun, unless their names, their 
 general character, and their special features, carry us to this 
 conclusion. Whether they do so or not can be determined 
 only by the analysis and comparison of the legends. To 
 those who hold that the Greek 'ysvos and the old English cyn 
 are the same, the identity of Aeshma-Da^va and Asmodeus, 
 of Ormuzd and Ahura-mazdao, of Arbhu and Orpheus, of 
 Orthros and Vritra, cannot possibly be a matter of faith. 
 The identification must stand or fall, as it fulfils or violates 
 the canons which determine that the Greek Oir/dTijp and the 
 German tochter represent the English daughter, the Sanskrit 
 
LANGUAGE AOT) MYTHOLOGY. 211 
 
 duhitar, and the Persian docht. It is absurd to make ex- CHAP. 
 
 TV" 
 
 ceptions unless some philological law has been broken. It . , ' - 
 is not less unreasonable to draw distinctions between the 
 sciences of Comparative Philology and Comparatiye Mytho- 
 logy on the ground that in the one case the phenomena of 
 language are made to explain themselves, in the other case 
 they are made to explain something quite different. The 
 meaning of this objection is that Comparative Mythology 
 brings before us a struggle between Phoibos and Python, 
 Indra and Vritra, Sigurd and Fafnir, Achilleus and Paris, 
 Oidipous and the Sphinx, Ormuzd and Ahriman, and from 
 the character of the struggle between Indra and Vritra, and 
 again between Ormuzd and Ahriman, infers that a myth, 
 purely physical in the land of the Five Streams, assumed a 
 moral and spiritual meaning in Persia, and, as indicating the 
 fight between the co-ordinate powers of good and evil, gave 
 birth to the dualism which from that time to the present 
 has exercised so mighty an influence throughout the East 
 and the West. Language has thus been made to explain a 
 very difficult problem in moral philosophy, which is some- 
 thing quite different from language ; and such an office as this 
 is never, it is urged, discharged by Comparative Philologj'. 
 The former, therefore, must be regarded with greater sus- 
 picion than the latter. Here again we are dealing with a 
 mere ma.tter of fact, and we find at once that the objection 
 brought against the one science applies with equal force to 
 the other. Words cognate to our ear are found in the Greek, 
 Teutonic, and Indian dialects, the inference being that the 
 plough was known to the ancestors of Hindus, Greeks, and 
 Teutons, while they stiU lived together as a single people. 
 Here, then, language is made to throw light on the history 
 of agriculture ; and we must therefore infer either that agri- 
 culture is the same thing as language, or that the distinction 
 is wholly baseless. In the Aryan names for father, brother, 
 sister, daughter, we have the proof that the words existed 
 for an indefinite length of time before they assumed the 
 meanings which we now assign to them, and we are forced 
 to conclude that the recognition of family relations was not 
 the first step in the history of mankind. Here, then, lan- 
 
 p2 
 
212 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Assumed 
 oarly 
 
 popularity 
 of our 
 Iliad and 
 Odyssey. 
 
 guage is made to throw light on the growth of morality ; 
 and unless we say that morality and language are the same 
 thing, it follows that in both these sciences language is made 
 to explain something different from itself, and that no dis- 
 tinction can on this ground be drawn between them.' 
 
 There is more of plausibility than of truth in the words 
 of Mr. Gladstone, that ' he who seems to impeach the Imow- 
 ledge And judgment of aU former ages, himself runs but an 
 evil chance, and is likely to be found guiltj'- of ignorance and 
 foUy.' ^ Verdicts unanimously given and obstinately upheld 
 are not always just ; and in the great battle for the ascer- 
 tainment of fact, and more especially in the struggle against 
 false methods, one man is not unfrequently called upon to 
 face the world, unsupported by any of his own aga For hun- 
 dreds if not for thousands of years, the world was convinced 
 of the reality of witchcraft ; the belief is now denoimced 
 on all sides as a gross and deadly delusion. Aristarchos of 
 Samos opposed his heliocentric theory of the universe to all 
 others f but many a century had yet to pass before that 
 theory superseded the Ptolemaic. In truth, nothing is 
 gained by appeals to majorities or to parties, or by hyper- 
 bolical laudation of poems ancient or modem. Whatever 
 may be the beauty or the magnificence of Homeric or any 
 
 ' The remark is, in fact, less applic- 
 able to the science of mythology than to 
 that of language. The former throws a 
 ■wonderful light on the first thoughts 
 awakened by all sensible objects in the 
 human mind ; but this is only one fact, 
 however astonishing may be the results 
 obtained from it. The mere analysis of 
 language yields a vast residuum of his- 
 torical facts known with as much cer- 
 tainty as if they had come down to us 
 on the clearest contemporaneous testi- 
 mony. No small portion of Professor 
 Max Miiller's great essay on Compara- 
 tive Mythology i« occupied with such il- 
 lustrations ; and the facts so discovered 
 are of the greatest moment. Thus the 
 comparison of the Lithuanian wiesz- 
 patis, a lord, with the Sanskrit vis-patis, 
 shows that before the dispersion of the 
 Aryan tribes there was 'not only a 
 nicely- organised fimily life, but the 
 family began to be absorbed by the 
 state, and here again conventional titles 
 
 had "been fixed, and were handed down 
 perhaps two thousand years before the 
 title of Csesar was heard of.' Even 
 more remarkable is the certainty with 
 which the difiFerenoe of Aryan names for 
 wild beasts and weapons of war, con- 
 trasted with the similarity of their 
 peaceful names, shows that the great 
 Aryan family ' had led a long life of 
 peace before they separated.' A similar 
 analysis proves that although they were 
 well acquainted with river navigation, 
 the undispersed Aryan tribes had not 
 yet seen the sea. How far this early 
 state stretches back it is impossible to 
 determine ; but the interval which separ- 
 ates the dispersion of these tribes from 
 the dawn of contemporary history is 
 probably far greater than we are gene- 
 rally disposed to imagine. 
 
 ' Gladstone, Homer, ^c. i. 2. 
 
 " Sir G. C. Lewis, Astronomy of the 
 Ancients, ch. iii. sect. xii. ; EHinbiirgh 
 Beview, July 1862, p. 94. 
 
FORM OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 213 
 
 other poetry, this beauty and magnificence will stiU remain, CHAP, 
 whether it be the work of one man or of a hundred men, of - 
 
 one age or of many. Exaggerated theories, springing from 
 exaggerated praises, have wrapped the whole field of Homeric 
 inquiry in mists, out of which we cannot easily find our way ; 
 and statsments are boldly made, and unhesitatingly accepted, 
 without the faintest misgiving that, after all, facts may 
 point iu quite another direction. In Colonel Mure's opinion, 
 the poems known to us as the Iliad and Odyssey were ' the 
 acknowledged standard or digest, as it were, of early 
 national history, geography, and mythology.' '' With a 
 generalisation still more sweeping. Baron Btmsen assures 
 us that ' the Iliad and Odyssey, especially the former, are 
 the canon regulating the Hellenic mental developement in 
 all things spiritual, in feith and custom, worship and re- 
 ligion, civil and domestic life, poetry, art, science. Homer 
 is not only the earliest poet, but the father of all succeeding 
 poets. The Iliad is the sacred groundwork of lyrical poetry 
 no less than of the drama.' ^ 
 
 These are either very important facts or very great delu- The evi- 
 sions ; and to accept them without rigid scrutiny must lead ^f^'^^ "^ 
 to widespread and fatal mischief. Our business is simply 
 with the evidence on which these conclusions are said to be 
 based, and all impartial and unprejudiced thinkers owe a 
 debt of gratitude to Mr. Paley for his masterly analysis of 
 this evidence, and for the single-minded honesty which has 
 led him to discuss this question in a book intended especially 
 for young scholars.' The cry raised against the unsettlement 
 
 ' JHiston/ of Greek lAterature, hodkii. Thucydides, the positive assertions of 
 
 eh. ii. § 5. Colonel Mure and Baron Bunsen fall to 
 
 ' God in History, hook iv. ch. viii. the ground ; and it follows that these 
 
 ' ' The Iliad of Homer,' Bibliotheca poems^ as we have them, were not the 
 
 Classica, introduction ; see also Mr. work of a poet earlier than Pindar — in 
 
 Paley's paper on ' The Comparatively other words, not of the Pindaric or 
 
 late date and the Composite Character jEschylean Homer. "Who the author or 
 
 of our Iliad and Odyssey,' in the Trans- rather compiler of out Iliad and Odyssey 
 
 actions of the Cambridge Philosophical may have been, we are not concerned to 
 
 Society, vol. xi. part ii. For our present inquire. The task of Bentley was done 
 
 purpose, the inquiry as to the date and when he had proved that the epistles of 
 
 composition of our Iliad and Odyssey Phalaris were not written by Phalaris. 
 
 must be confined to its negative results. To the comparative mythologist the 
 
 If it be shown that these poems were ascertainment of this point is a matter 
 
 not known or not popular among the of indifference. The materials of the 
 
 Greeks of the age of Herodotos and Iliad and the Odyssey were no more 
 
214 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of their minds is both disingenuous and irrelevant. If the 
 ... ^; _- Iliad and Odyssey really moulded the mental life of Greek 
 lyric and dramatic poets, the fact must be as clear as the 
 sun at noonday; and counter- statements can but serve to 
 establish that fact more firmly. But, in the first place, the 
 composers of our Iliad and Odyssey do not speak of them- 
 selves as the first poets. Not only do they tell us of bards 
 who had won their fame at an earlier time, but the Odyssey' 
 shows that an account of the wrath of AchiUeus, whoUy 
 different from that which we have in the Iliad, was both 
 current and popular. 'If it does not show this,' adds Mr. 
 Paley, ' it at least shows that there were other ballads on 
 Trojan affairs in existence before the Odyssey was composed 
 or compiled.'^ Colonel Mure naturally lays great stress on 
 the alleged familiarity of later poets with our Iliad and 
 Odyssey ; ' and if Baron Bunsen's statement has any measure 
 of truth, the Attic drama must be steeped in the sentiment, 
 if not in the language, of our Iliad and Odyssey. But in 
 fact, ' although two Greek plays, and two only, are taken 
 directly, — the one from our Iliad, the other from our Odyssey 
 — the allusions to these poems are singularly few, and those 
 few often uncertain, in the writers previous to the time of 
 Plato.' * Nay, although these earlier writers speak not xm- 
 frequently of Homeric poems and Homeric subjects, we find 
 in far the larger number of instances, that the epithet is 
 applied to poems which no longer exist, or to subjects which 
 are not treated in our Iliad or Odyssey.^ ' Out of at least 
 
 invented by any compiler of these tlie history of Athenian thought and 
 
 poems after tlie close of the Pelopon- feeling. 
 
 nesian war, than they were invented ' Odyss. viii. 72, &c. 
 
 by our Homer four hundred years " Paley, Iliad of Homer, introduction, 
 
 before Herodotos. The only sacrifice xxx. 
 
 to be made is that of the ingenious ' History of Greek Literature, book ii. 
 
 reasoning which pretends to account ch. ii. § i. 
 
 for the alleged degradation of Homeric * Paley, Mad of Homer, introd. xxvi. 
 
 characters as shown by the contrast ' I avail myself without scruple of the 
 
 between the Helen and Odysseus of our results of Mr. Paley's labours on a field 
 
 Iliad and Odyssey and the same person- which is wholly his own — the evidence, 
 
 ages as painted by jEsehylos and namely, that our Homer was not the 
 
 Sophokles. (Gladstone, Homer and the Homer of the great Attic tragedians. In 
 
 Homeric Age, iii. 555). But no great this portion of his task he has demolislied 
 
 regret needs to be felt at giving up the verbal fallacy which lies at the root 
 
 an anomaly which would be strange of all the arguments of Mure and 
 
 and perplexing in any literature, and Bunsen ; and the whole burden of proof 
 
 which is rendered doubly perplexing by lies on those who maintain them. ' As 
 
AGE OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 215 
 
 thirty-five such references in Pindar, only about seven have CHAP. 
 
 a distinct reference to our present Iliad or Odyssey :J ' and ^ • . 
 
 even in some of these the reference is very vague, while the 
 
 lyric poet speaks of the madness of Aias, his midnight 
 
 attack on the herds, and his suicide, as Homeric subjects. 
 
 A line, perhaps two or three lines, in the Hesiodic Theogony 
 
 and the Works and Days may point to our Homer ; but of 
 
 the Trojan legend generally ' very scant mention is made in 
 
 the poets preceding Pindar and the Tragic writers.'^ One 
 
 of the three passages in Theognis cannot be referred to our 
 
 Iliad, and a fragment of Simonides speaks of Homer ' as 
 
 describing Meleager in terms not now occurriag in the 
 
 Hiad." Of the Homeric or Trojan subjects carved on 
 
 the chest of Kypselos,'' five are not in the Iliad, and some 
 
 refer to versions wholly different from our Homeric story. 
 
 Colonel Mure will have it that Tyrtaios was familiar with 
 
 our Horner.^ In the only passage which can be cited in 
 
 proof of this assertion it is most difiicult to discover even 
 
 a distant allusion. Twice only does Herodotos name the 
 
 it is certain ' says Mr. Paley ' that by must have been open to individual 
 the epics of Homer the ancients mean a rhapsodists to take any definite portion 
 great deal more than we understand of the Trojan story, and to treat it in 
 by them. — and in fact that they attri- their own way. Yet every such part, 
 buted to that vague and misty personage however varied or combined, would still 
 all the mass of ballad literature on the have been " Homer." The above ob- 
 sieges of Troy and Thebes which, we jeetion, therefore, is based on a mis- 
 can hardly be wrong in saying, was the conception as to what " Homer " meant 
 accumulated product of the genius of in ancient times.' The discussion as to 
 rhapsodists extending over some four the materials on which our Homer, 
 centuries at least — it is incumbent on whoever he may have been, worked, is 
 those who rely on the use of the name not affected by Mr. Pale/s eonolusions. 
 Homer in such writers as Pindar and He admits unreservedly that these 
 Herodotos, to show that they meant by materials 'were certainly existing ready 
 it the same as we do. If this cannot be for any poet who chose to give them a 
 shown, stiU more, if the contrary can new treatment, or exhibit them in a 
 be shown, the case of these apologists more popular and dramatic form at a 
 entirely fails.' The same verbal fallacy comparatively late date.' — On the late 
 has led these apologists to iirge that our Date and composite Character of our 
 Homer could not have succeeded the Iliad and Odyssey, p. 8, &c. 
 old Homer 'silently, almost fraudulently, ' 'SaXey, Iliad of Homer, introduction, 
 and without protest.' To this diificulty xxvii. 
 Mr. Paley attributes very little weight, ' lb. xxx. 
 ' first, because Homer was a vague term ' lb. xxxi. 
 that included all epic literature; ' Pausanias, v. 18, 19. 
 secondly, because the remodelling and ' History of Greek Literature, book ii. 
 reducing any important part of that ch. ii. § 3. That this series of facts 
 vast mass of Homeric literature would should be assumed on such scanty 
 necessarily leave the stamp of the old evidence or in the teeth of evidence to 
 authorship upon it, and so would remain the contrary, is indeed astonishing. 
 " Homer," still : thirdly, because it 
 
216 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The 
 
 Homer of 
 the Greek 
 tragic 
 poets. 
 
 Iliad; and although, the former of these two passages 
 may be set aside as ambiguous, in the second he distinctly 
 rejects the Homeric authorship of the Kyprian verses on 
 the ground that the latter speak of Paris as reaching Troy 
 on the third day after leaving Sparta, while the Hiad 
 describes his long wanderings to Sidon, Egypt and other 
 places, for which in our Iliad we look in vain. The reason 
 given by Kleisthenes for the stopping of the rhapsodists 
 at Sikyon Mr. Blakesley regards as ' quite inapplicable to 
 the Iliad or the Odyssey.' Equally inconclusive are the few 
 references in Thucydides for any evidence in favour of 
 the identity of our Iliad and Odyssey with the Hiad and 
 Odyssey of the age of Perikles. The references of Aristo- 
 phanes are of the same kind, sometimes tending to prove 
 that passages in our Iliad have been altered since his time, 
 sometimes ascribing to Homer passages which we do not 
 find in our texts. 
 
 The case, then, may be stated thus : — A vast number of 
 incidents belonging to ra TpcoiKci, not mentioned or barely 
 noticed in our Hiad and Odyssey, were treated of in epic 
 poems current in the days of the great Attic tragedians. 
 All these epic poems. Colonel Mure emphatically asserts, 
 were ' vastly inferior, both in design and execution, to their 
 two prototypes.' " JSTevertheless from this vastly inferior 
 literature ^schylos, Sophokles, and Euripides ' drew - so 
 largely, that at least sixty of their known plays are taken 
 directly from it, while only two are taken from the Iliad and 
 Odyssey.' 2 We are left to wonder with Mr. Paley 'how it 
 came to pass that the Greeks, in the best ages of their poetic 
 genius, preferred to take their themes from the inferior and 
 secondary, to the neglect of the superior and primary,' and 
 ' that the authors of the Cypria, the Little Iliad, the ISTosti, 
 should have won all the credit, and left little or none for 
 their great master and predecessor. Homer.' Our Hiad and 
 Odyssey then (even if they were in existence), had not in 
 the days of ^schylos and Sophokles the popularity which 
 they have since attained ; and the theories of Baron Bunsen, 
 
 ' History of Greek Literature, b. ii. ch. ii. § 3. 
 ' Paley, Iliad, introd. xxxvii. 
 
WRITTEN POEMS. 217 
 
 Colonel Mure, and Mr. Gladstone fall to the ground. These CHAP, 
 poems did not ' regulate the mental developement gf the 
 
 Greeks,' nor were they ' the acknowledged standard of early 
 national history, geography, and mythology.' The historical 
 character of these poems being, therefore, definitely dis- 
 proved, the time of their composition and the method of 
 their transmission, although they remain subjects of great 
 interest, become points of secondary importance. The 
 knowledge of writing (if the fact be proved) even from an 
 age earlier than that which has been assigned to the Homeric 
 poets, will explain but very few of the difficulties which 
 surround the question. A few words scratched on stone 
 and wood furnish slender grounds indeed for assuming the 
 existence of voluminous manuscripts during centuries pre- 
 ceding the dawn of contemporary history.^ 
 
 The conclusion, put briefly and nakedly, is this — that if Results of 
 any real facts underlie the narrative of the Iliad and Odys- p„i~ " 
 sey, they are so completely buried beneath the mythical 
 overgrowth as to make the task of separation impossible ; 
 that the legend of the Trojan war is unhistorical ; that we 
 have no grounds for asserting that Agamemnon, Aehilleus, 
 or any other of the actors in the tale were real persons ; 
 that the story of the return of the Herakleids is as mythical 
 as that of the war of Troy ; that the sequence of these myths 
 throws no light on the time of the composition of our Iliad 
 and Odyssey ; that no historical knowledge can be gained 
 from the legends of Hellenic colonisation in Asia' Minor ; 
 that the mythical history of Greece exhibits a succession of 
 movements from west to east, and from the east back to 
 the west again ; that these movements are for the purpose 
 of recovering a stolen treasure or a rightful inheritance ; 
 that this heritage is the bright land where the sun sinks 
 to rest after his journey through the heaven ; that the stolen 
 treasure is the light of day carried off by the powers of 
 darkness, and brought back again,, after a hard battle, in 
 the morning ; that the materials of the Iliad and Odyssey 
 are taken from the vast stores of mythical tradition common 
 to all the Arj'an nations ; that these traditions can be traced 
 
 ■ Paley, Iliad, xli. &c. See Appendix A. 
 
218 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK back to phrases indicating physical phenomena of whatever 
 
 I. 
 
 kind ; that these phrases furnish an inexhaustible supply of 
 themes for epid poetry; that the growth of a vast epical 
 literature was as inevitable as the multiplication of myths, 
 when the original meaning of the phrases which gave birth 
 to them was either in part or wholly forgotten ; that the 
 substance of the Iliad and the Odyssey existed from an 
 indefinitely early time ; that these poems were not composed 
 at once, and a,s a coherent whole ; that they exercised little 
 influence on the mental developement of the Greek lyric and 
 tragic poets ; and that their present form cannot be traced 
 to any age much earlier than that of Plato.' But these 
 conclusions give us far more than they take away. If the 
 fabric of the so-called Homeric history has been shattered, 
 its ruin must be laid to the charge of the Euemerists not 
 less than to the assaults of Comparative Mythologists. The 
 former have left us nothing but the barest outline of possible 
 incidents, for which no evidence can be adduced, and which 
 can have for us no interest. The latter, if they have dealt 
 rudely with some arbitrary assumptions and scattered some 
 dearly cherished but unreasonable fancies, have at least 
 made ample compensation. No charm which might have 
 attached to the human characters of Helen and Hektor, 
 Paris and Achilleus (had the Euemerists spared us the old 
 story of their lives), — no pathos which lay in the tale of 
 Sarpedon's early death or of the heart-piercing grief of 
 Priam can equal that infinitely higher charm which takes 
 its place, when we see in these legends the hidden thoughts 
 of our forefathers during those distant ages when they knew 
 nothing of an order of nature, and the fading twUight of 
 every evening marked the death of the toiling and short- 
 lived sun. We can weU afford to part with the poor resi- 
 duum of historical tradition which possibly underlies the 
 story of the expedition from Mykenai to Ilion, when we 
 find that the myth reveals to us a momentous chapter in the 
 history of the human mind, and tells us what in that olden 
 time nien thought of God, of the world, and of themselves." 
 
 ' The limit may be assigned as b. c. 450 at the earliest. 
 ' See Appendix B. 
 
2L9 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CHAEACTER OP GEEEK DTITASTIO AND POPtTLAE LECtENDS 
 IN EELATION TO THEIR TEIBAL AND NATIONAL NAMES. 
 
 If the Homeric poets wrote as historians, they might well chap. 
 have prayed to be saved from their friends, had they foreseen . 
 
 the way in which their poems were to be treated by the Fertility of 
 modern Euemerists. After the hard blows dealt by these "j?'^''"'*' 
 
 •/ phrases. 
 
 professed champions of Homeric unity and credibility, it is 
 clear that nothing can restore to the stories of the Argonautic 
 voyage, of the sieges of Ilion and Thebes, and the return of 
 the Herakleids, any measure of their supposed historical 
 character, unless some contemporary evidence can be forth- 
 coming, apart from the poems which contain the mythical 
 narratives of those events. But for such evidence we must 
 look in vain ; and the inquiry which has proved that if any 
 real strife between mortal men lay at the root of the legends 
 which relate the story of AchiUeus or Sigurd, it must be a 
 strife preceding the first separation of the Aryan tribes, would 
 of itself suffice to take away all interest from the search. But 
 the process of analysing and comparing the stories common 
 to aU the Aryan nations has exhibited to us a form of 
 thought resulting in phrases which could not fail to become 
 an inexhaustible source of mythical narratives. We have 
 seen that from this fountain-head might flow a thousand 
 streams, while they who drank of their waters might be quite 
 unconscious of the spring from which they came. We have 
 seen that the simple elements of which these stories were 
 composed were, like the few notes of the musical scale,' 
 capable of endless combination ; that the polyonymy result- 
 ing from this early phase of language yielded a vast number 
 
 ' Newman, University Sermons, p. 348. 
 
220 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of names for the same object, and that each of these names 
 - might become, and in most cases actually became, the names 
 
 of anthropomorphosed gods or heroic men. Round each of 
 these beings a number of mythical legends would, as we have 
 seen, group themselves, and impart to each actor a marvel- 
 lous individuality. Yet all these beings, at first glance so 
 different, would be really the same ; and the keenest political 
 rivalry and even animosity might be fed on the merest fancy. 
 Legends of If then the several Hellenic cities, like other Aryan folk, 
 "™^ took pride in their own pecuhar legends, and were obstinately 
 
 cities. convinced that these legends had an existence wholly inde- 
 
 pendent of the traditions of other cities or states, this is only 
 what we might expect. If, again, these stories, when resolved 
 into their simplest forms, impress us with a feeling of some- 
 thing like monotonous repetition, we have here no cause for 
 perplexity or surprise. The form of thought which attri- 
 buted a conscious life to all sensible objects would find expres- 
 sion in phrases denoting all kinds of phenomena. It would 
 exhibit no narrowness and no partiality ; but regarded as a 
 whole, the phenomena of day and night and of the changing 
 seasons would assume the form of great struggles, in which a 
 bright hero strove for the mastery of the dark beings opposed 
 to him, and achieved in the end a dearly bought victory. This 
 hero would naturally be the favourite snbject of national song 
 in every country, and in this beneficent conqueror we have, 
 it needs scarcely to be said, the sun. The dynastic legends 
 of the Greek cities precisely answer to this expectation. All 
 without exception exhibit under forms the most varied that 
 daily and yearly struggle between Indra and Vritra which 
 assumed a moral aspect in the Iranian land. 
 Tlie Ar- The national story of the Argives is made up, we may 
 
 give story. ^^^ fairly say, of a solar myth, which is recounted at length 
 in the adventures of Perseus, and repeated in the career of 
 Herakles without the slightest consciousness that the two 
 stories are but versions of one and the same myth. Perseus 
 is the child of the Golden Shower, and of Danae, Daphn^, 
 Dahan^, the dawn, and he is doomed, like other solar 
 children, to be the slayer of the sire to whom he owes his hfe. 
 His weapons are those of ApoUon and Hermes. The sword 
 
MYTHS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT, 221 
 
 of Chrysaor is in his Land, the golden sandals of the Nymphs CHAP, 
 are on his feet. His journey to the land of the Graiai, the - 
 
 dim twilight, is only another form of the journey of Herakles 
 to the garden of the Hesperides. When from the home of 
 the Graiai he went to the cave of the Gorgons, the story 
 sprang from the mythical phrase, ' The Sun has gone from 
 the twilight land to fight with the powers of darkness.' But 
 night has a twofold meaning or aspect. There is the dark- 
 ness which must yield to the morning light and die, and 
 there is the ahsolute darkness which the sun can never 
 penetrate. The former is the mortal Medousa, the latter 
 her deathless sisters. The story ran that Medousa compared 
 her own heauty with that of Athene, but the starlit night in its 
 solemn grandeur could be no rival for the radiant goddess on 
 whom rested the full glory of Zeus and Phoibos. When from 
 the Gorgon laud Perseus wandered to the shores of Libya, 
 the story introduced an adventure which recurs in a hundred 
 forms. Andromeda, Ariadne, Brynhild, Aslauga, Hesione, 
 D^ianeira, Philonoe, Medeia, Aug^, lokaste, were all won 
 after the slaughter of monsters or serpents, while the trium- 
 phant return of Danae with her son to Argos, after his toil 
 is ended, is but the meeting of Herakles with lol^, the return 
 of the sun in the evening to the mother that bore him in the 
 morning. 
 
 In the Theban legend the solar character of the hero is none The The- 
 the less apparent for the ethical tone which, as in the story of ^*° ^^°'^- 
 Croesus and in the great trilogy of ^schylos, has converted 
 the myth into something like a philosophy of life. When 
 once the results of old mythical phrases were submitted to a 
 moral criticism, the new turn so given to the tale could not 
 fail to give birth to an entirely new narrative ; but the earlier 
 part of the legend exhibits the framework of many another 
 tale of Aryan mythology. Oidipous is the son of lokaste, 
 whose name suggests those of lol^, lamos, or lobates. Laios, 
 like Akrisios, Priam, and Aleos, dreads his own child, 
 exposes him on the rough hill side,' while his gloomy and 
 
 ' As the tale of Paris went, on Ida. us the mythical phrase, ' The sun at 
 But the Sanskrit Idft is the Earth, the its birth rests on the earth or on the 
 "Wife of Dyaus ; and so we haye before hill side.' 
 
222 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK negative character is in complete accord with that of Hekabe 
 
 I. 
 
 or Let6. But the prophecy of Apollon must be fulfilled., 
 Oidipous, like Telephos or Perseus, Eomulus or Cyrus, grows 
 up far away from his home, and like them, remarkable for 
 strength, beauty, and vigour. The suspicion that he is not 
 the child of his supposed mother, Merop^, sends him forth to 
 Delphoi, and the homicide of Laios is the death of the parent 
 of the sun, as the latter starts in his career. Then, like 
 Perseus, Theseus, and Bellerophon, Oidipous in his turn 
 must destroy a monster which vexes the land of Kadmos ; 
 but with the strength of HeraMes he unites the wisdom of 
 Medeia and Asklepios, and the Sphinx, baffled by the solution 
 of her riddle, leaps from the rock, and dies. This monster 
 belongs, beyond doubt, to the class of which Python, Typhon, 
 A^ritra, Zohak, Fafnir, Cacus are examples. Pew of these, 
 however, represent precisely the same impressions. Pafair 
 is the dragon of winter, who guards the treasures of the 
 earth within his pitiless folds. The Sphinx is the dark and 
 lowering cloud, striking terror into the hearts of men and 
 heightening the agonies of a time of drought, until Oidipous, 
 who knows her mysterious speech— as the sun was said, in a 
 stUl earlier age, to understand the mutterings of the grum- 
 bling thunder — unfolds her dark sayings, and drives her from 
 her throne, just as the cloud, smitten by the sun, breaks 
 into rain, and then vanishes away. His victory is won. The 
 bright being has reached his goal, and the fair lokaste 
 becomes his bride.' This point marks the close of the ori- 
 ginal myth ; but lokaste, his wife, is also his mother, and 
 the morality of Greeks could not recognise a form of speech 
 in which the same person might at once be the son and the 
 husband of another. The relations of anthropomorphous 
 gods were no longer interchangeable, as they appear in 
 Vedic Hymns. Prom the union of a mother with her son, 
 
 ' This incident alone is enough to just entering into manhood. But 
 
 determine the origin of the myth. lokaste belongs to that class of mythi- 
 
 Oidipous has reached maturity before cal beings whose beauty time cannot 
 
 he leaves Connth.for Delphoi; and, due touch. When the suitors are slain, 
 
 account being taken of the youthful Penelop^ is as radiant as when Odys- 
 
 looks of the Theban queen, a woman seus had left her twenty years before, 
 
 of lokastes years would scarcely be Each morning the Dawn renews her 
 
 brought forward as a prize for a youth everlasting youth. See Appendix 0. 
 
OIDIPOUS AND lOKASTi;. 223 
 
 the moral sense of the Greek would turn with horror ' CHAP. 
 
 and unconscious of the real nature of the incident so related, ^ — - 
 
 he would look at once for an awful recompense from the 
 sleepless Erinys of the murdered Laios. lokaste dies in 
 her marriage-chamber, and in something of the spirit of the 
 old tale, Oidipous must tear out his own eyes, as the light of 
 the setting sun is blotted out by the dark storm-cloud. 
 Henceforth the story is the expression of Greek ethics, until 
 in the last scene (in the company of Theseus, the solar hero 
 of Attica) he goes forth to die amid the blaze of the lightning 
 in the sacred grove of the Eumenides. The blinded Oidipous 
 dies unseen ; but in his last hours he has been cheered by 
 the presence of Antigone, the fair and tender light which 
 sheds its soft hue over the Eastern heavfin as the sun sinks 
 in death beneath the western waters. Throughout the tale, 
 whether in the slaughter of his father, or in his marriage 
 with lokaste, Oidipous was but fulfilling his doom. These 
 things must be so. Herakles must see lole in the evening, 
 Odysseus must journey homeward, Bellerophon must wander 
 westward to the Aleian plain, Kephalos must meet his doom 
 at the Leukadian cape, as surely as the sun, once risen, must 
 go across the sky, and then sink down into his bed beneath 
 the earth or sea. It was an iron fate from which there was 
 no escaping, and this teaching of the outer world evoked the 
 awful 'AvdyKT], the invincible necessity, which urges on the 
 wretched Oidipous, and explains the origin of that theological 
 belief which finds its mightiest expression in the dramas 
 which tell us of the sin of Agamemnon and the vengeance of 
 Klytaimnestra. 
 
 The Megarian stories, like those of Attica, form a tangled The 
 
 Megarian 
 story. 
 
 ' The morality of Assyrians was not the mother as well as the wife of Ninos. 
 
 so easily shocked. The marriage of Semiramis is simply the dawn goddess, 
 
 mothers with sons is one of the institu- the daughter of the fish-god Derketo, 
 
 tions ascribed to Semiramis ; but in the the lover of Tammuz, the counterpart 
 
 myth of Semiramis we have precisely of Aphrodite with the boy Adonis, 
 
 the same elements which we find in the We may therefore safely say that the 
 
 stories of Cyrus, Romulus, Oidipous, Assyrian tradition of the marriage in- 
 
 Telephos, and others. Like them she stitutions of Semiramis is only another 
 
 is exposed in her infancy, saved by form of the myth which made lokaste 
 
 doves, and brought up by a shepherd, the wife and the mother of Oidipous, 
 
 Like lokaste, she is the wife of two and with it we may compare the origin 
 
 husbands ; and there is no reason why of the Hindu rite of Suttee. See Dic- 
 
 the legend should not have made her tionari/ o/Idterature, Science and Art, a.y. 
 
224 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK skein iii wliicli several threads of solar legend have been 
 ; - mingled. Minos is himself a son of Zeus, and the husband 
 of Pasiphae, whose name speaks of her at once as the daughter 
 of Helios. The daughter of Nisos is smitten with the 
 glorious beau(.y of his countenance, as is Echidna with that 
 of Herakles; but the golden lock of her father, while it 
 remains unshorn, is an invincible safeguard to the city 
 against the assaults of the Cretan king. The love of Skylla 
 is- not thus to be disappointed. The lock is shorn ; and the 
 name of the maiden (as the rending monster) shows how well 
 she has served the enemy of her father and her kinsfolk. 
 The Athe- In the Athenian story the same elements of solar legend 
 ory. ^^^ conspicuous. The myth of Kephalos is reproduced in 
 that of Theseus, as the career of the Argive Herakles repeats 
 that of his ancestor Perseus. Like these, Theseus is a slayer 
 of monsters, and more especially of robbers and evil-doers, 
 while, like Herakles, he forsakes those whom he loves, and 
 has many loves in many lands.' Armed with a sword 
 (Sigurd's good sword Gram) welded of the same metal with 
 the sword of ApoUon and the spear of Achilleus, he, like 
 Skythes, in the tale of Echidna,^ wins the inheritance of his 
 fathers, and becomes a companion of Meleagros, whose life is 
 bound up with the burning brand. His descent to Hades is 
 indeed disastrous ; but the mishap is repaired by another 
 solar legend. It is Herakles who delivers the wooer of 
 Persephone. 
 The story A stUl more transparent solar tale is brought before us in 
 Pelopids. *^® myth of the hero who gave his name to the Peloponnesos ; 
 but it tells us not so much of the might and exploits of the 
 being who represents the sun-god, as of his wealth and his 
 wisdom and the fearful doom inflicted for his sin. The 
 palace of the Phrygian king is but the golden house of 
 Helios, from which Phaethon went forth on his ill-starred 
 journey. His wisdom is that keen insight into the counsels 
 of Zeus which Phoibos cannot impart even to Hermes, the 
 
 ' Bishop Thirlwall (ffistory 0/ Greece, Hercules, for not only is there a strong 
 
 vol. i. ch. V.) lays stress on the sub- resemblance between them in many 
 
 stantial identity of the legends of particular features, but it also seems 
 
 Theseus and Herakles. ' It was not clear that Theseus was to Attica what 
 
 without reason that Theseus was said to Hercules was to the east of Greece.' 
 have given rise to the proverb another ' Herodotos, iv. 9, 10. 
 
STORY OF THE PELOPIDS. 225 
 
 messenger of the gods. His frequent converse with the king CHAP. 
 
 of gods and men is an image of the daily visit of Helios to • ,- • 
 
 the dizzy heights of heaven. The theft of nectar and am- 
 brosia ' finds its parallel in the stealing of the fire by Pro- 
 metheus; and the gift thus bestowed on his people is but 
 the wealth which the sun brings from the sky, and bestows 
 lavishly on the children of men. The slaughter of Pelops, 
 and the serving up of his limbs to Zeus at the banquet, is as 
 horrible as the tale which relates the birth of Erichthonios,* 
 but its meaning is as clear and as innocent. The genial 
 warmth of the sun brings to light and life the fruits of the 
 earth, which is his bride ; his raging heat kills the very off- 
 spring in which he had delighted, and offers it up a scorched 
 and withered sacrifice in the eyes of Zeus, the sky. The 
 sentence passed upon him is in still closer accordance with 
 the old mythical language. When Hermes first kindled a 
 fire by rubbing together the dried branches of the forest, 
 and slew one of the oxen of Phoibos in solemn sacrifice, he 
 appeased not his hunger,' for the wind may kindle the fire, 
 but it cannot eat of that which the fire devours. So, too, 
 Tantalos may gaze on sparkling waters and golden fruits ; 
 but if he stoops to drink, or puts forth his hand to the laden 
 branches, the water is dried up as by the scorching wind of 
 the desert, and in the words of the poet,^ only black mud 
 and gaping clay remain in place of flowing streams, and the 
 leaves wither away beneath the fierce glare of tropical noon- 
 day. In the rock which threatens to crush him, we see 
 again only the Sphinx brooding over the devoted city, or the 
 misshapen Polyphemos hurliag down huge crags on the ships 
 of Odysseus — the unsightly offspring of the stormy sea, the 
 huge cumulus cloud whose awful blackness oppresses both 
 eye and heart as an omen of impending doom. 
 
 The Attic legend of Theseus is connected with the story The story 
 of Ixion through his son Peirithoos, but this myth brings 
 before us only the action of the sun under another phase. 
 It belongs perhaps to the least attractive class of Hellenic 
 stories ; but its origin is as simple as that of the repulsive 
 
 ' Pind. 01. i. 100. ' Hymn to Hermes, 130-133. 
 
 " Apollod. iii. 14, 6. ' Odyssey, xi. 187. 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
226 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK legend of Erichtlionios. The wheel of the sun is mentioned 
 
 - ^ • in many of the Vedic hymns, which speak of the battle waged 
 
 by Dyaus, the heaven, to snatch it from the grasp of night. 
 So Ixion loves Her^, the queen of the ether, the pure heaven, 
 because Indra loves the Dawn and Phoibos longs for DaphnS. 
 But he is also wedded to the mist, and becomes the father of 
 the Kentaiys, perhaps the Sanskrit Gandharvas, the bright 
 clouds in whose arms the sun reposes as he journeys through 
 the sky. And so the tale went that in the clouds he saw the 
 image of the lady H^r^, and paid the penalty of his unlawful 
 love. The idea of toil unwillingly borne, as by Herakles or 
 Apollon, again comes in ; for the wheel of Ixion can never 
 rest, any more than the sun can pause in his daily career. 
 The legend is almost transparent throughout. As the wealth 
 of Tantalos was the fruit which the genial sunshine calls up 
 from the earth, the treasure-house of Ixion is the blazing 
 orb of Helios, the abyss of consuming fire which devours the 
 body of Hesioneus.' The darkness and gloom which foUow 
 the treacherous deed of Ixion represent a time of plague and 
 drought, during which the hidden sun was thought to bow 
 himself before the throne of Zeus. But even yet the doom 
 pursues him. He has scarcely sought pardon for one offence 
 before he suffers himself to be hurried into another. Here, 
 the queen whose placid majesty reflects the solemn stiUness 
 of the blue heaven, fills with a new love the heart which had 
 once beaten only for Dia. Each day his love grows warmer, 
 as the summer sun gains a greater power. But the time of 
 vengeance is at hand. As he goes on his way, he sees a 
 form as of Here, reposing in the arms of the clouds; but 
 when he draws nigh to embrace her she vanishes, like 
 Daphne from the gaze of Phoibos, or Eurydike from that of 
 Orpheus ; and he shares the doom of the Phrygian Tantalos 
 and his counterpart, the crafty Sisyphos, in the traditional 
 stories of Corinth. 
 Connection In all these legends and tales of cities and states whose 
 stories^ rivalry was not always friendly, we trace precisely the same 
 witti the elements. The Argives and Athenians each resarded their 
 
 tribal or , ti- i} • i -, 
 
 national own traditions as 01 independent growth ; we have seen that 
 
 names. 
 
 tis p6dpov Tvphs iie<rr6v. — Biod. iv. 69. 
 
TRIBAL AND NATIONAL NAMES. 227 
 
 their belief was groundless. Differences of names and of CHAP. 
 
 local colouring prevented their eyes from discerning ihe sub- v_ ^ - 
 
 stantial identity of stories in which the very names, when 
 they do not translate each other, have received their ex- 
 planation from languages not known to Greeks or Romans. 
 At once then we are driven to ask whether the same process 
 which has explained the legends may not also throw light on 
 the names of the cities or states themselves. If the former 
 have been divested of all historical character, is it not possible 
 that the latter may be really destitute of either historical or 
 geographical value ? The lonians looked on the Dorians as 
 on men of an antagonistic race ; the Argives who fought 
 with Agamemnon were arrayed against the Lykians who 
 were ranged on the side of Hektor. But did their names in 
 themselves betoken or warrant the feuds which had sprung 
 up among them? The question is one in which it is im- 
 possible to do more than argue from the known to the un- 
 known ; and something is gained if facts which all would 
 allow to be fairly ascertained justify the suspicion that the 
 tribal or national names of the Aryan peoples have, in very 
 few instances, any geographical significance, or furnish any 
 grounds for drawing distinctions of blood between one tribe 
 or clan and another. The few names belonging to the former 
 class refer to the most prominent physical features of the 
 country, or to the position of one part as distinguished from 
 another. The Thrakians are plainly the inhabitants of a 
 rough and rugged country. They are the Highlanders of 
 the G-reek regions, and may be ranged with the Albanians or 
 dwellers among the Alps and hills ; and their name faUs into 
 the same class with the names of certain Attic divisions, as 
 of the Mesogaian and Diakrian tribes ascribed to the times 
 of King Kranaos, and of the Pediaioi, Paraloi, and Hyper- 
 akrioi, the men of the plains, the sea-coast, and the hills. 
 
 But if some of the local tribes had names generally de- The 
 scribing the nature of their position, the name of the whole 
 Athenian people had no such geographical meaning. Their 
 title can be explained only through the meaning of that of 
 Athene ; and the process which has stripped of all historical 
 value the traditions of the Argonautic expedition, of the tale 
 
 Q2 
 
 Athenians. 
 
228 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 * 
 
 I. 
 
 'BOOK of Troy, the Aiolic migrations, the Herakleid conquests, 
 leaves the origin of this name, and of all similar titles, if 
 there should be any such, a purely philological question. 
 Few probably will be unwilling to allow that this question 
 may be regarded as settled. The name Athene, in its Doric 
 form Athana, is the name also of the Sanskrit Ahan^ and 
 Dahan4, the morning, and of the Greek Daphne, who flies 
 from the pursuit of the sun-god Phoibos.' With scarcely an 
 exception, all the names by which the virgin goddess of the 
 Akropolis was known point to this mythology of the Dawn. 
 The morning flashes up in full splendour from the eastern 
 sky ; and the phrase not only grew up into the story that 
 Athene sprang fully armed from the head of Zeus (Dyaus, 
 the sky), but was represented by many epithets of which her 
 worshippers had forgotten the meaning. Her name Trito- 
 geneia was referred by grammarians to an Aiolic word, trite, 
 denoting a head ; but the myth is in no way affected if the 
 name is to be referred to a Vedic god of the waters and the 
 air.'* Athene thus is but Aphrodite Anadyomene, the dawn 
 springing from the sky and the sea ; and we see her at once 
 as the Argive Akria, the Messenian Koryphasia, the Eoman 
 Capta, the goddess of the heights of heaven. The same 
 idea is embodied in the name Kranaai, and in the eponymos 
 Kranaos, who was invented to explain it. But the strength 
 of the mythical tradition is shown most clearly in the feelings 
 which centred in another epithet throughout probably the 
 whole history of the Athenian people. It was hard for 
 Athenians to turn a deaf ear to any one who spoke of them 
 as the men of the bright and glistering city.' When the 
 comic poet twitted his countrymen with taking pleasure in a 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science de Baechiis. Quand le dieu Tritos cessa 
 
 of Language, second series, xi. The d'etre eonnu, le mot Tptroyheia deTint 
 
 origin and meanings of the name Danae nne inigme, et les toliens, qui dans leur 
 
 must be treated separately. dialecte appelaient rptrii la t^te, eomme 
 
 '■* ' AthAni s'appelle aussi Tpirojipeia, I'attestent le seoliaste d'Aristophane et 
 
 e'est-a-dire la fiUe de Tritos. Ce dieu H^syehius, n'h&it&rent pas a reconnaitre 
 
 <i disparu de la mythologie gi-ecque : dans Athin^ la d^esse sortie de la t^te 
 
 mais il se retrouve dans les V^das, oi\ de Zeus.' — BrAal, Bercule et Cacus, 17. 
 7'rita rigne sur les eaux et sur ' el Sc tis i/icis {ino6amii<ras Amaptls 
 I'atmosphfere. Son nom s'est conserve ica\E(r€iei;' 'ABiivas, 
 
 dans les mots grecs Triton, Amphitrite, fSpero irav &>/ Sih. -rhs Xmopis 
 
 Tritopator, (surnom des vents) et dans a<pump Ti/ij)r irepioifior. 
 
 le nom du fieuve Triton qui entoure Arist. Acham. 606. 
 
 cotte lie enchant^e oi se passe I'enfance 
 
ATHENIANS, lONIANS, AND PHENICIANS. 229 
 
 name fit enoiagh for marking the shining of fish, preserved in CHAP. 
 
 oil, he was unconsciously going back to the root which has -_ ^ - 
 
 supplied a name for the most beautiful beings of hfs own 
 mythology. According to the old Vedic phrase, the horses 
 of the Sun and the fire alike glisten with oil or are covered 
 with fat ; and the root har, modified from ghar, is seen in 
 the Sanskrit Harits, the Greek Charites, and the Latin 
 Gratise.' The common origin of these names would be 
 enough to show how Athens came to be so called, and why 
 the epithet took so strong a hold on Athenian sentiment. 
 
 But if the Athenian name thus proclaimed them simply The 
 the children of the morning or the dawn, another epithet to and'phe- 
 which they clung with a jealous tenacity carries us to the nidans. 
 title which, as they supposed, marked a generic distinction 
 between themselves and the Spartans. 
 
 Heretofore "when the States' commissioners 
 
 Came with an eye to bamboozle the town, 
 Did they ever fail to address you 
 
 As the men ' of the violet crown ' ? 
 Straight at the word you were up in your seats.'' 
 
 But to call the Athenians lostephanoi was but to call them 
 lonians; and we cannot refuse to connect this name with 
 the names of 16, lole, lol^os, lobates, lokaste, lason, lamos, 
 and others — names which without exception belong to legends 
 which are more or less transpa,rent. In 16, the mother of 
 the sacred bull, the mother also of Perseus and of Herakles ; 
 in lole, the last comforter of the greatest of all the solar 
 heroes; in lokaste, the mother and the bride of Oidipous, 
 we see the violet-tinted morning from which the sun is born, 
 and who may be said either to fly from, or to be slain by, or 
 wedded to her child. In lolaos we have only a faint image 
 of his kinsman Herakles ; in lobates we see the king of the 
 far-ofi" eastern land, at whose bidding Hipponoos goes forth 
 to do battle with the monsters of darkness. lason again is 
 the husband of Medeia, the daughter of the Sun, endowed 
 with the sun's mysterious wisdom and magic robe.^ In the 
 
 ' See p. 48, et seq. myth to suggest the notion. The powers 
 
 ' Arist. Axh. 602, translated by L. H. of healing and destruction are exercised 
 
 Eudd. not by him but by Medeia ; and the ex- 
 
 ' The Greek explanation made lason planation is worth as much or as little 
 
 the healer ; but there is nothing in the as the attempts to account for such 
 
230 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Argives 
 and Ar- 
 kadians. 
 
 story of lamos, tlie violet crown of Athens has become a bed 
 of violet flowers ; but lamos is himself the child of the sun- 
 god Phoibos, and he receives his wisdom from the keen- 
 sighted beings who draw the chariot of Medeia.' In the 
 name lonians we have, then, a word strictly denoting colour 
 and nothing more ; and the colour is the tint which over- 
 spreads the sky before the rising of the sun. The word is 
 thus identical in meaning with the name Phoinik^ (Phe- 
 nicia), and Phenicia is accordingly the purple or blood-red 
 land, where Europe is born, and whence she is borne on the 
 back of the snow-white bull westwards to Delphoi. The 
 name is purely Greek, and exhibits its full meaning when 
 taken along with that of Telephassa, the mother of the broad 
 day, who dies in the far west weary with searching for her 
 child. The same purple colour is embodied in Phoinix, the 
 early teacher of Achilleus, who recites to the wayward chief 
 the story of the short-lived hero whose life is bound up with 
 the torch of day. No distinction of race is therefore denoted 
 by the names whether of lonians or Phenicians. 
 
 In historical Hellas the Argives were a people inhabiting 
 about a fifth part of the Peloponnesos. If the Iliad is to be 
 regarded as throwing any light on the conditions of an 
 earlier time, the name Argos had a far more extensive 
 application. It was a territory rather than a city or a state, 
 and with the exception of the islands over which he ruled, 
 it formed the whole of the dominion of Agamemnon. But 
 the name itself was not confined to the Peloponnesos ; and 
 whatever be the explanation to be given of it, it must be 
 applicable to every extra-Peloponnesian Argos, and to the 
 ship which carried the Achaian chieftains on the quest of the 
 Golden Fleece. The word reappears in the title of Aphro- 
 dite Argynnis, and in Argennos the supposed favourite of 
 
 names as Odysseus and Oidipous. A 
 similar confusion between ihs an arrow, 
 and ihs poison, fastened on Herakles and 
 Philoktetes the practice of using poisoned 
 aiTOws (Max Miiller, Lectures, second 
 series, 292). It is, therefore, quite 
 likely that the worship of laso, as the 
 daughter of Asklepios, may be the result 
 of the same forgetfulnesB of the meaning 
 
 of words which turned Lykaon into a 
 wolf or Kallistd into a bear. Another 
 form of the name appears in lasion, the 
 beloved of Demeter. 
 
 ' When the word Dragon, which is 
 only another form of Dorkas, the clear- 
 eyed gazelle, became the name for ser- 
 pents, these mythical beings were ne- 
 cessarily transformed into snakes. 
 
AEGIVES AND AKKADIANS. 231 
 
 Agamemnon, and this epitliet has been identified with the CHAP. 
 
 Sanskrit Arjnni, the brilliant, a name for the morning.' 
 Here again, then, we have a name denoting brilliancy, and 
 we see at once that Argos Panoptes, the guardian of lo, is 
 with his thousand eyes only another image of St. Ursula 
 and her eleven thousand maidens, or of Tara Bai in the 
 folk-lore of southern India,^ while the word itself carries us 
 to the shining metal, the Greek argyros and the Latin 
 argentum, silver. Wha4;ever then the Argo may be, it is 
 clearly the bright vessel in which the children of the sun go 
 to seek the lost light of day, and in which they return 
 possessed of the golden robe in the morning. It is in short, 
 the Sanskrit archi, light, and ark^h, the sun himself;' and 
 thus the process which has explained the name of the Argive 
 people explains also that of the Arkadians, whose mythology 
 runs riot in the equivocal uses of words all originally de- 
 noting brilliancy. The eponym Arkas, is like Argos, a son 
 of Zeus, Kallisto being the mother of the former, Mob^ of 
 the latter. But in the story of Kallisto we have precisely 
 that same confusion of thought which in India converted 
 the seven shiners, or strewers of light, into seven sages, and 
 in the West changed them into bears or waggons. The root, 
 in short, furnished a name for stars, bears, and poets alike ; 
 and when its first meaning faded from the mind, the myth 
 took the forms with which we are now familiar.'' In the 
 west, the old word arksha as a name for star became con- 
 fused with the Greek arktos, the Latin Ursa, the name for 
 the golden bear, (the names Argos and Ursula being thus 
 etymologically the same), and the story went that Kallisto, 
 the most brilliant of all the daughters of Zeus, was changed 
 into a bear by Here, as she changed 16 into a heifer. The 
 version given by Hyginus brings before us another trans- 
 formation ; in it Arkas is the son of Lykaon, and Lykaon is 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, independent bestowal of the same root 
 
 second series, viii. on these two distinct ideas, sun and 
 
 ^ See page 164. hymns, was forgotten, there was danger 
 
 ' Max Miiller, ieci. second series, 360. of mythology; and we actually find in 
 
 The same name, Professor MiiUer goes on India that a myth sprang up, and that 
 
 to say, was bestowed independently on a hymns of praise were fabled to have 
 
 hymn of praise, as gladdening the heart proceeded from or to have originally 
 
 and brightening the countenances of the been revealed by the sun.' 
 
 gods, and he adds, ' If the reason of the ■• Max Miiller, Lect. second series, 363. 
 
 X. 
 
232 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Delians 
 and Ly- 
 kians. 
 
 clianged into a wolf for his impiety in offering human flesh 
 as food to Zeus. The story is simply another version of the 
 myth of Tantalos and Pelops, and the solar character of the 
 one must be extended to the other. The confusion between 
 Leukos, brilliant, and Lukos, a wolf was as natural and 
 inevitable as between arksha and arktos, and the readiness 
 with which the one name would suggest the other is shown 
 in the passage where ^schylos makes the Theban maidens 
 pray that the Lykian or bright god might become a very 
 Lykeian or wolf to their enemies.' 
 
 We come to a class of names, the original significance of 
 which is even less disguised. Unless we are prepared to 
 maintain that Phoibos received his name Delios because he 
 was born in Delos, we are compelled to account for the 
 name of the island from the myth of the god for whom it is 
 said to have furnished a birth-place. But this myth is so 
 indisputably solar that all further discussion on the character 
 of the legend becomes superfluous. The word itself denotes 
 the kindling of the heaven which goes before the sunrise ; 
 and although it is possible that the coincidence between the 
 local name and the myth may in any one given case be 
 accidental, such a supposition becomes desperate when we 
 find the same coincidence running through many myths in 
 many countries. If the lord of light is bom in Delos, he is 
 born also in the Lykian land. Phoibos is Lykegenes, light- 
 born, not less than Delian : and through that far off-eastern 
 land flows the golden stream of Xanthos, watering the realm 
 in which Sarpedon and Glaukos bare rule. But Sarpedon is 
 a name which has been traced to the same root with the 
 names of Hermes and Helen, of Sarama, Saranyu and Eriays, 
 and it expresses the flushing of the heaven after dawn, as 
 the name of his friend Glaukos also denotes the brightening 
 light of Athene Glaukopis.^ Another chieftain of this mom- 
 stamping the myth with a distinctively 
 solar character. They move through the 
 dark hours, like the Achaian chieftain 
 in search of the Golden Fleece, or like 
 Helios himself in his golden cup : they 
 reach Lykia early in the morning, and 
 there were versions which brought Sar- 
 p^d6n to life again when he reached the 
 Lykian shore. The myth of Sarpedon 
 
 ' " JEsch. Sept. c. Thebas, 145. 
 
 ' It is scarcely necessary to trace the 
 roots through the several Greek forms 
 Adw, \evK6sj \e{KT(ru, Ati^uTrw, yK'fivr], and 
 others, and the Latin lux, luceo, lumen, 
 lucina, lucna, hma. The silent journey 
 in which Hypnos and Thanatos, Sleep 
 and Death, hear the dead body of Sarpe- 
 don to his home, is but another incident 
 
DELIANS AND LYKIANS. 233 
 
 ing-land is lobates, whose name, as we have seen, has the CHAP. 
 
 same meaning as that of Phoinix; and Pheniciajis and • ^ — • 
 
 LyMans ahke existed only in the terminology of the Greeks. 
 If we are to follow Herodotos,' the people of the country to 
 which he gave the name of Lykia, called themselves Termilai, 
 and the name of the Athenian Lykos the son of Pandion was 
 drawn in to explain the origin of the new title, as the name 
 of the Arkadian Lykdon might have been used, had the 
 Attic mythical genealogy failed to supply one. Thus Delians 
 and Lykians are also, like the Athenians and the Lucanians 
 of southern Italy, the people of the dawn land ; but the ver- 
 sions of the myth are countless, and they all carry us back to 
 mythical phrases of the like kind. According to one story, 
 Artemis, like Phoibos, is bom in Delos ; according to another, 
 in Asteria the starland ; in others Asteria and Ortygia are 
 other names for Delos itself. But the name Ortygia points 
 in Greek to the word Ortyx, a quaU, and there was no lack 
 of myths to be localised, whether in the Egean island or in 
 the islet off the eastern shore of Sicily near to Syracuse. 
 In one Zeus changes LSto into a quail, from the same motive 
 which led him to transform 16 into a heifer : in another he 
 himself becomes a quail in order to approach the goddess, as 
 for the same reason he assumes the form of a golden shower 
 in the story of Dana^. In yet another, the children are 
 bom in Asteria, and Let6 takes them thence into Lykia, 
 where she vainly tries to bathe them in the fountain of 
 Melite : but by the same confusion which produces the myth 
 of Lyk^on and possibly all the modern superstitions of 
 Lykanthropy, wolves come to the aid of the goddess, and 
 carry her to the stream of Xanthos.^ In all these legends 
 the only name which calls for any comment is that of 
 Ortygia, and Ortygia itself is only the dawa-land. ' The 
 quail in Sanskrit is called Vartika, i.e. the returning 
 bird, one of the first birds that return with the return of 
 spring. '^ The name, it is obvious, might be applied to 
 the dawn, as naturally as the setting sun might become 
 
 thus resolves itself into that of Memnon, '' JacoK, Mythologie, a. v. Leto. 
 and Memnon is the child of the dawn. ' Max Miiller, Lectures, second series, 
 
 ' I. 173. 506. 
 
234 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Ethio- 
 pians. 
 
 Danaans 
 and Achai- 
 
 in tlie Sanskrit Bheki and tlie frog-princess of the German 
 tale.' 
 
 The myth of the Lykian Sarp^don has a close affinity with 
 that of the Ethiopian Memnon; and in the Ethiopians 
 who fight at Troy we have another people for whom it 
 becomes impossible to find a local earthly habitation. The 
 story explains itself. The tears which Eos sheds on the 
 death of her child are morning dew. The men who follow 
 him are, according to the Herodotean story, exempt from 
 the ills of humanity; and their tables are always loaded 
 with banquets which no labour of theirs has provided. It 
 may amuse historians to regard this mysterious people as the 
 invaders and conquerors of the so-called Chaldsean empire; 
 but no historical inference can be drawn from any mention 
 of them in the Iliad or Odyssey. The name itself is as purely 
 Greek as are the names of the Phenicians and the Lykians, 
 and any explanation given of it must also explain the names 
 Aithon, Aithylla, Aithra, Aithrios, Aithousa. But when 
 we have done this, we shall find the Ethiopians dwelling, 
 not as Mr. Eawlinson believes, on the south coast both of 
 Asia and Africa, and as divided by the Arabian Gulf into 
 Eastern and Western, Asiatic and African,^ but in the bright 
 Aither, the ethereal home of Zeus himself, far above the 
 murky air of our lower world. 
 
 There remain yet two names, which, according to Thucy- 
 
 ' See page 165. The story of the 
 Frog Prince is singularly significant. 
 The dawn-maiden is here playing with 
 a golden ball, which, like Endymion, 
 plunges into the water. This ball can 
 be brought to her again only by the 
 Frog — the returning Sun. The Frog re- 
 appears as a Toad in Grimm's story of 
 the Iron Stove. In the Nix of the Mill- 
 pond the man and his wife are changed 
 into a toad and a frog, as the sun and 
 the twilight fade beneath the waters. 
 In the Man of Iron the golden ball with 
 which the king's son is playing rolls, not 
 into the water but into the cage in which 
 the wild man (the Winter) is confined ; 
 the king's son here being Phoibos of the 
 golden locks. In the story of the Old 
 Griffin the ball takes the form of golden 
 apples, which instantaneously restore the 
 king's daughter to health, as the nymphs 
 
 exult when tliey look on the new horn 
 ApoI16n. This ball is the red-hot egg 
 which the bird drops in the story of the 
 Ball of Crystal. The Frog reappears in 
 other stories. In the legend of Briar 
 Eose it is he who promises the queen 
 that she shall have a daughter. In that 
 of the Three Feathers, DummUng, whose 
 exploits reveal him like Theseus as an- 
 other Herakles, receives the beautiful 
 carpet (of clouds — the web of Penelope) 
 from the Frog who is now underground, 
 in other words, after sundown. In the 
 Faithful Beasts it is again the Frog who 
 brings up from the water the wonderful 
 stone (the orb of the Sun), the owner of 
 which can wish himself in whatever 
 place he desires to he. 
 
 ^ Eastern Monarchies, i. 60. In reply 
 to Mr. Eawlinson it has been urged 
 that the poet of the Odyssm/ could not 
 
DANAANS AND ACHAIANS. 235 
 
 dides,' were applied in the time of the Homeric poets to the CHAP. 
 
 tribes afterwards known collectively as Hellenic. Jn Mr. -.^ ^ — - 
 
 Gladstone's judgment, the followers of Agamemnon were 
 called Danaans in their military capacity, the name Argive 
 being nsed as a geographical designation, while that of 
 Achaians was confined to the ruling tribe. ^ How vague the 
 name Argive is as a local term, we have already seen ; and 
 even if the other two names are used in these senses, we are 
 obviously no nearer to their original meaning. The quantity 
 of the first syllable is urged as a reason for not identifying 
 the term Danaans with Ahan^ Dahana, and Daphnd, names 
 of the dawn. At the least, it must be admitted that the 
 word must be taken along with the stories of Danae the 
 mother of Perseus, and of Danaos with his fifty daughters. 
 Of these the former is throughout strictly solar.' If, how- 
 ever, Niebuhr be right, the one reason for not holding 
 Danae and Daphne to be different forms of the same name 
 loses its force, for in his judgment the word reappeaj-s in 
 Italy under a form more closely allied to Daphn^ than to 
 Danae, and the Latins who regarded themselves as if coming 
 of the pure Trojan stock, bore precisely the same name with 
 the enemies of Priam and of BLektor.^ So unsubstantial, in 
 all that relates to names, are the bases on which distinctions 
 of race and political attractions and animosities have been 
 made to depend, that we might well look with patience on 
 the arguments by which Mr. Gladstone ^ seeks to connect the 
 names of the Western Achaians and the Persian Achaimeni- 
 dai, if the names were not adduced as the evidence of ethno- 
 
 possibly have meant what he is thus Tyrrhenian Ardea, and on the other 
 
 supposed to mean. 'Whether the expla- handthefather of Tyrrhenus( = Turnus) 
 
 nations of comparative mythologists be was, according to some, called Daunus 
 
 right or wrong, it is certain that the poet and his mother Banae. Daunus and 
 
 cannot mean a people who were neither Launus again are the same, d and I in 
 
 toward the rising nor the setting sun Latin and in the so-called .3!;olic dialect 
 
 relatively to himself.' — Edinburgh Be- being always exchanged for one another, 
 
 view, Jamiary 1867, P- 117. as in Sixpuov and lacryma, Ducetius and 
 
 ' I. 3. Leucetius. Laura, Laviuia, and Lavi- 
 
 ' Homer and the Someric Age, vol. i. nium are the same as the different 
 
 p. 346, &c. names of the Latins, Lavini,LaMni,La- 
 
 ' See page 227, &c. tini, and all these names are identical 
 
 ' ' Danai and Daunii are unquestion- with Danai.' — Niebuhr, Lectures on An- 
 
 ably the same, and the Dannii are clearly (Aent History, xxii. 
 
 alUed to the Tyrrhenian race. Danae is ' Homer and the Homeric Age, i. 659, 
 
 said to have founded the Pelasgico- &c. 
 
236 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The Hel- 
 lenes and 
 Aiolians. 
 
 logical affinity. Certainly it is not much more surprising 
 that Persian and Hellenic tribes should bear the same name, 
 than that the Hindu of the Vedic age and the Persian of 
 our own day should both speak of themselves as Aryans.' 
 But the Achaian name is too manifestly linked with that of 
 Achilleus to allow any explanation to pass unchallenged 
 which does not apply alike to both. It is enough to say 
 that, so far as we may form a judgment, it must be placed 
 in the class of tribal names which had originally the same 
 meaning with those of Phenicians, Lykians, Delians, Arka- 
 dians, Athenians, and lonians.^ 
 
 We reach at last the great name which imparted some- 
 thing like a national character to the centrifugal tribes 
 known to us as Greek : and at once it may be said that the 
 name Hellenes was no more distinctive than that of lonians 
 or Dorians, Delians and Ortygians, Arkadians and Lykians. 
 Under another form it expresses only the same idea of 
 brightness, with a reservation which limits it to the bright- 
 ness of the sun. Whether there be, as Mr. Gladstone sup- 
 poses,' the same ethnical connection between the Hellenes of 
 the West and the Eelliats of Persia, which, following the 
 popular Argive tradition,* he assumes between the men of 
 Argos as descended from Perseus and the people of the Eteo- 
 Persian province of Pars, is a question with which we need 
 not concern ourselves. Although the possibility of such a 
 connection cannot be denied, the reality of it cannot be 
 inferred from names which carry us into the regions of 
 cloudland. But of the philological identity of the names 
 Hellen, Hellas, Helle, Helloi and Selloi,» Selleeis, and 
 
 ' With the Persians the name is em- 
 ployed as constituting with the correla- 
 tive An-iran, or non- Aryans, an exliaus- 
 tive division of mankind : hut in this di- 
 vision the Persians alone are Aryans. 
 Max Muller, Lectures on Language, first 
 series, lecture vi. 
 
 ^ Professor Max Miiller is inclined to 
 think that Achilleus is the mortal solar 
 hero Aharyu. According to KumArila, 
 Ahaly4 (in whose name the change from 
 r tol begins) is the goddess of night ; 
 but ' India is called ahalyaiai jarah ; it 
 is most likely that she was meant for 
 the dawn.' — Lectures, second series, 502. 
 
 ' The Persians of the Persians bear, 
 Mr. Gladstone remarks, 'the name 
 Eelliat, which at least presents a 
 striking resemblance to that of the 
 Helli. The aspirate would pass into 
 the doubled e like "H\ioj into i\iKios, or 
 fSvo intOEeSya.' — Homer and the Homeric 
 Age, i. 572 
 
 * Ibid. i. 557. Herod. Tii. 61, 150. 
 
 * The reading of the text in II. xvi. 234 
 is a matter of indiiference. As the name 
 Hellas points to the colIectiTe nameHelloi, 
 so the Selleeis, II. ii. 659, &c., points to 
 the Selloi ; and the change of the aspi- 
 rate into s is one of the commonest. 
 
COLLECTIVE NAMES OF THE GREEK TEIBES. 237 
 
 Hellotis as a name of AthSn^, or again of these names witli CHAP. 
 
 Helios, Eelios, and the Latin Sol, there can be no question. . ^ — - 
 
 Here then we have another group of names, every one of 
 which resolves itself into the idea of solar brightness, 
 for the root sur, to glitter, furnished the special Sanskrit 
 name for the Sun whether male or female.' Hence, as we 
 might expect, the mythical genealogy of the Hellenes plays 
 throughout on the ideas of light and darkness. For Hellen 
 himself is in one form of the legend the son of Deukalion 
 and Pyrrha, names which connect themselves with such words 
 as Polydeukes, Phoinix, and Ion ; in another, he is the child 
 of Zeus, the gleaming heaven, and Doripp^. Of his children 
 one is the dusky Xouthos, another the flashing Aiolos, a 
 name which must be traced seemingly to the same root with 
 the Aither of Zeus and the Aithiopians (Ethiopians) of the 
 Odyssey. The two sons of the dark Xouthos are the epo- 
 nyms of the Ionian and Achaian clans ; but Ion shares his 
 name with other violet-coloured mythical creations, and 
 Achaios with Achilleus must, it would seem, be referred to 
 the Vedic solar hero Aharyu. Thus, with the Delians, 
 Lykians, and Ortygians, the Hellenes are, like the people of 
 Khorassan, simply the children of the light and the sun, and 
 the Hellespont marks their pathway.^ 
 
 By this name aU the tribes and clans who traced their Greeks 
 descent from Hellen and Deukalion acknowledged the bonds j^^f^^^'" 
 of affinity which, as they supposed, connected them with 
 each other. A strictly local or geographical name it never 
 became. Wherever the Hellenes went, they carried Hellas 
 with them. It might be scattered among the islands of the 
 Egean ; it might be fixed on the mainland between that sea 
 and the Hadriatic ; it might be transferred to the soil of 
 Italy; but the dwelling-place of the children of the Sun 
 retained everywhere the same name.^ As Hellenes they 
 
 ' Surj'd is ' a female Surya, i. e. the /SeVfloj : ^6Sos. — Max Miiller, Compara- 
 
 Sun as a feminine, or, according to the tive Mythology, 47. The word is thus 
 
 commentator, the Dawn again under a the precise equivalent of Lykabas, the 
 
 different name. In the Eig-Veda, too, path of Light trodden by the Sun-god. 
 the Dawn is called the wife of Surya, ' 'E\Aij ffvopaSiKii, 'EXAits o-uj/ex^s. 
 
 and the Asvins are sometimes called the With the Latins it was long before 
 
 husbands of Sury^.' — Max Miiller, Leo- Southern Italy ceased to be commonly 
 
 tures, second series, xi. spoken of as Magna Graecia. 
 
 ^ irdt-TOs ; irdros = -Jrevdos ; TrdBos = 
 
238 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK tad a bond of union, which was the nearest Greek approach 
 
 ; — ■ to the modern idea of nationality, and which in greater or 
 
 less degree counteracted or softened the animosities of 
 Dorians and lonians, of Athenians and Spartans, of Argires 
 and Achaians. And yet the name which thus served to link 
 them together with some sort of friendly or even national 
 feeling was a word of precisely the same meaning with the 
 tribal or local names which were supposed to denote some 
 real distinctions of blood. But this was not the title by 
 which they were known in Western Europe. It never came 
 into common use among the Latins, who spoke of them as 
 Graii, and Grseci or Greeks. Of any such people to the east 
 of the Hadriatic the earliest notice is in the statement of 
 Aristotle, that the people dwelling round the Thesprotian 
 Dodona were called Graikoi before they were called Hel- 
 lenes.' Following the path in which the names thus far 
 examined assuredly lead us, we should expect to find in 
 AVestern Hellas some names denoting the gloaming or doubt- 
 ful light of eventide. As Perseus journeyed westward, he 
 came to the land of the Graiai, or gray beings, before he 
 reached the gloomy dwelling of the Gorgons. To the in- 
 habitants of Thessaly, Epeiros was the gray land of the 
 setting sun, and here accordingly we find the Graioi. But 
 this name, it would seem, must have been accepted as a local 
 name for the country to the west of mount Pindos, before 
 the Latin tribes had any knowledge of their Eastern neigh- 
 bours. The name Hesperia, which the Hellenes applied 
 to Italy, the Latins never acknowledged for themselves; 
 and with Virgil the use of it is due merely to the poet's 
 fancy. Graians and Hesperians are thus alike the people of 
 the dusky land, the Epeirot tribes acknowledging the name 
 because it was applied to them by their immediate kinsfolk, 
 the Italians ignoring it, or possibly not knowing it as a word 
 belonging to another language.^ 
 Italian But if the Latin name has any connection with that of 
 
 and Ten- ^}jg Dauaoi, it becomes at the least possible that other tribal 
 
 tonio ^ 
 
 tribal i (Jrote, History of Greece, part ii. erery instance, one simple, as Graii, and 
 
 names. g]j j|_ one derivative, as Graeei. History of 
 
 ' Niebuhr remarks tliat in old Latin Borne, i. 45. 
 two names of nations were in use in 
 
ITALIAIT AND TEUTONIC TEIBAL NAMES. 239 
 
 names of the countries east of the Hadriatic may be found CHAP. 
 
 on the great Italian peninsula : and thus, following the law 
 which modifies the Sanskrit wpa, water, into the Greek 
 Acheloos, Acheron, and Axios, and the Latin aqua, we should 
 expect that the name of the Achaians, if it reappeared at all, 
 would undergo a similar change. Apulians and ^quians we 
 do find ; and it remains to be proved whether the coincidence 
 be or be not accidental. That the same names should be 
 used in common by tribes whose dialects are so closely akin 
 as those of the Greeks and Latins, is assuredly not ante- 
 cedently improbable : and thus some colour is furnished for 
 the inferences of Niebuhr, who traces to these two forms a 
 very large proportion of the tribal names of the Italian 
 peninsula.' Such a name as that of the Eutulians forces 
 on us a comparison with that of Argives, Arkadians, and 
 Phenicians : and the mythology of Virgil points in the same 
 direction.^ Whether this identity be established or not, the 
 instances already adduced suffice to show that, with scarcely 
 an exception, the Greek tribal names are merely words 
 denoting colour, and all pointing in the same direction of 
 mythopceic or radical metaphor. That the same process 
 should go on among all peoples speaking kindred dialects, is 
 no more than we should expect ; and the expectation will be 
 fully justified. The English Baldringas are children of the 
 Sun not less than the Hellenes, the Athenians, and the Lyki- 
 ans, and they stUl have their home at Baldringham. An- 
 other Teutonic Sun-god, the Eddie Tyr, the English Tiw, 
 had his dwelling and his children at Tewing and Tewesley. 
 The sons of Thunder and grinding War gave their names to 
 
 ' It must be remembered that tbe the intermediate forms Opieus, Opseus, 
 
 Italian dialects exhibited differences as Oscus, Olsus. History of Borne, vol. i. 
 
 great as those which separated them ' Ancient Italy.' 
 
 from the Greek, or the Greek dialects ^ We know that the name Tyrrhenns 
 from each other ; and thus the Latin was not an Etruscan word, and hence 
 equivalents of Greek words would show there is perhaps some reason for con- 
 changes analogous to the Greek equiva- necting 'fyrrhenus, Turnus, Ti^pos, Tip- 
 lentsof Latin words. Thus, in Niebuhr's (rot, turris, and for regarding the name 
 judgment, the Latin form of the name as the equivalent of the Greek Laris- 
 of the Apulian or Opican people would eaioi. Turnus is a son of Danaus, and of 
 be Mc^m. Other forms of these names Venilia (Venus) a sister of Amata. In 
 would be Opseus, Oscus, Ausones, Au- the JEneid Juturna is his faithful sister ; 
 runci, Sabini, Savnis, Samnis, lapy- but the resemblance of the two names is 
 gians. Niebuhr seems inclined to iden- probably the result of accident, 
 tify the names .<Equi and Volsci through 
 
 X. 
 
2i0 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Ethno- 
 logical 
 inferences. 
 
 Thorington and Eormington. Nay, tlie very names of Tng 
 and Isco, tlie two sons of Man the son of Tiw, are merely 
 words denoting the ash tree, from which, according to hoth 
 German and Hellenic notions, some of the human races had 
 sprung.' 
 
 From all these names no further ethnological conclusion 
 can be drawn than that all the nations and tribes speaking 
 Aryan dialects are sprung from ancestors who once dwelt 
 somewhere as a single people. As evidence for narrower 
 distinctions they are worthless. Argives and Athenians, 
 lonians and Arkadians, may have regarded each other as 
 aliens, but their names have all the same meaning ; and aU 
 their legends of prehistoric migrations and conquests resolve 
 themselves into the great journey and the mighty battle 
 which is repeated every morning and evening through all the 
 seasons of the rolling year. We can no longer look to move- 
 ments of Aiolians, Argives, or Herakleids as throwing light 
 on the distribution of the Hellenic tribes in historical times.^ 
 The facts of that distribution must be received as they are 
 given to us by the most trustworthy contemporary histo- 
 rians : to reason back from history into the regions of myth 
 is an occupation not more profitable than the attempt to fiU 
 a sieve with water. 
 
 ' Tng is apparently the eponymos of 
 Angeln and the English. Max Miiller, 
 Lectuns, second series, x. 
 
 '' On this point Professor Max Miiller 
 speaks with sufficient emphasis : ' It 
 may be difficult to confess that with all 
 the traditions of the early migrations 
 of Cecrops and Danaus into Greece, 
 with the Homeric poems of the Trojan 
 ■war, and the genealogies of the ancient 
 dynasties of Greece, we know nothing of 
 Greek history before the Olympiads, and 
 
 very little even then. . . . Even the 
 traditions of the migrations of the Chi- 
 cbimecs, Colhuas, and Nahuas, which 
 form the staple of aU American anti- 
 quarians, are no better than the Greek 
 traditions about Pelasgians, .ffiolians, 
 and lonians, and it would be a mere 
 waste of time to construct out of such 
 elements a systematic history, only to 
 be destroyed again sooner or later by 
 some Niebuhr, Grote, or Lewis.' — CAips, 
 i. 331. 
 
241 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MYTHICAL PHEASES FTTENISHING THE MATEEIALS OP THE 
 HOMEEIC POEMS. 
 
 If the history of Greek literature to the close of the 
 Peloponnesian War shows that the poems to which we give 
 the name of Homer did not constitute the Homer of the Extent of 
 lyric, tragic, or comic poets, and that our Iliad and Odyssey S* "^^.^^ 
 were, in the precise form transmitted to us, either unknown literature. 
 to them, or (what is altogether improbable), unpopular if 
 known, these conclusions, it must not be forgotten, are only 
 negative. The most zealous Euemerists of the present day 
 admit that ' the general scheme of the Iliad existed before 
 the days of Homer ; ' the most advanced sceptics have never 
 supposed that the later poets of the Iliad and the Odyssey 
 invented the materials of which they have made use. It is 
 even likely that large portions of our Iliad and Odyssey may 
 have existed substantially in their present shape long before 
 the days of JEschylos and Sophokles ; and even if we say 
 that these two poems were thrown into their final form not 
 long before the time of Plato, we do but say that from the 
 vast mass of Homeric literature the poets chose those por- 
 tions which from their general tone of thought and feeling 
 were most congenial to the sentiment of the age in which 
 they lived, that from the stories so chosen they removed 
 unpleasant roughnesses and archaisms, and kept as much 
 in the backgroimd as they could the ruder and more savage 
 features of the traditions followed by the great tragic poets.' 
 
 ' Mr. Paley, in his paper on the literature would necessarily leave the 
 
 comparatively late date of our Homeric stamp of the old authorship upon it, and 
 
 poems, asserts distinctly that ' the so it would remain " Homer " still.' 
 
 remodelling and reducing any important Not only, therefore, are the objections 
 
 part of ' the ' vast mass of "Homeric" e;roundles8 which urge ' that no historical 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
242 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Extent of 
 Homeric 
 mytho- 
 logy. 
 
 In short, as soon as we have dismissed all speculations on 
 possible historical quarrels fought out on the shores of the 
 Propontis, as soon as we allow that if the Homeric poems 
 turn on any historical quarrel at all, that quarrel must be 
 carried back to an age indefinitely preceding the first dis- 
 .pergion of the Aryan tribes, we are at once left free to account 
 for the origin and the growth of Homeric materials ; and 
 the shutting up of all other pathways shows, that if the ques- 
 tion is ever to be answered, it can be answered only by follow- 
 ing the track of Comparative Mythology. 
 
 But the evidence which disproves the assertion of Bunsen, 
 tjaat our Hiad is ' the sacred ground-work of lyrical poetry 
 no less than of the drama," invalidates at the same time all 
 those arguments from the silence of our Homeric poems, on 
 which some recent writers have been disposed to lay much 
 stress. These arguments at best cannot reach very far. The 
 epithet which speaks of Zeus' as a son of Kronos imphes a 
 knowledge of dynasties among the gods ; and the weight of 
 proof lies therefore with those who maintain that the framer 
 of the Hiad had never heard the story of Prometheus. An- 
 other epithet implies the knowledge that Achilleus was to 
 die young, even if we put aside the passage which speaks of 
 his dea,th in the Odyssey. The poet of our Hiad knew that 
 Paris was called Alexandres ; and. it is impossible to show 
 that he was unacquainted with the myths which professed to 
 explain the origin of this name. He also knew that the 
 whole expedition of the Achaians against Troy was but an 
 incident in the epical history of Paris, for the very cause of 
 the war is that Paris came and stole Helen from the house 
 of Menelaos. He knew further, for he tells us plainly, that 
 the inaction of Achilleus had its counterpart in the inaction 
 of Paris ; and if he tells us how, after his long fit of suUen 
 anger, Achilleus came forth in all his old energy, he also 
 knew that Paris was not to be always idle, and that from him 
 Achilleus himself was to receive his death-wound.''' Nothing 
 
 evidence exists of any new Homer having 
 superseded the old Homer,' but it follows 
 that the poets would ' retain the general 
 archaic type of the heroic manners and 
 dialogue.' 
 
 ' God in History, took iv. ch. viii. 
 ' ^/iOTi T^ 8t6 Kiv ae Udpis Kffl ^oijSos 
 'AirSWuv 
 iaBXhv Uvt' hKitriuaiv ft>\ Sicaipiri 
 Ttihrjaiv. II. xxii. 359. 
 
MYTHOLOGY OF THE HOMERIC POETS. 243 
 
 less than the clearest proof that our Homer was the Homer CHAP. 
 of Pindar, ^schylos, and Sophokles, can weaken the^conclu- , ' . 
 sion that our poems are compilations, made for a purpose, 
 from the vast existing mass of Homeric literature. If this 
 purpose was to supply, 'in a convenient and symmetrical 
 form, the most celebrated and most engrossing incidents of 
 the war,'' it is unreasonable to look to the Hiad for notices 
 of myths which lay beyond the region of the poet's immedi- 
 ate subject, and it clearly did not concern him to go through 
 the genealogies of the Hesiodic theogony even if he knew 
 them. His task was to exhibit a few incidents in the special 
 career of Paris on the one side and of Achilleus on the 
 other ; and if he knew that these incidents were linked with 
 others of which he does not speak, it only remains to point 
 out resemblances which probably escaped his notice, and to 
 account for their occurrence. It is of the very essence of 
 mythology that the original signification of the names which 
 serve as the groundwork of its narratives should be only in 
 part remembered. The author of the hymn to Hermes had 
 at best only an intermittent consciousness that he was simply 
 relating the rivalry of the wind and the sun ; but he knew 
 enough of the attributes of Hermeias to write a poem, 
 almost every line of which points to the mythical speech of 
 which the tale is a petrifaction. The author of the Iliad 
 may not have felt that Achilleus was but a reflection of 
 Tantalos and Ixion, Sisyphos and Lykaon : but his language 
 throughout the poem harmonises strangely with the mythical 
 phrases which speak of the lord of day when he hides away 
 his face behind the clouds. He could not know that the 
 Northman, even then wandering in regions which for the 
 Achaian had no existence, was framing the tale which grew 
 up into the epic of the Volsungs and the Mbelungs, and that 
 in that tale Achilleus and his mother Thetis were repre- 
 sented by Sigurd and his mother Hjordis. With the cause 
 of the expedition to Troy he had no immediate concern. He 
 tells us, in passing, the cause of the war ; but his theme is 
 the wrath of the great chieftain from Phthia, and he has 
 kept to that theme with wonderful fidelity, if not to the 
 
 ' Paley, On the late Date of our Iliad and Odyssey, 8. 
 K 2 
 
244 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Greek nature, yet to the old mythical speech. For after the 
 admission of critics opposed to the hypothesis of Wolf, that 
 the fragments in which the Homeric text was handed down 
 from remote antiquity 'were cast and recast, stitched to- 
 gether, unstitched again, handled by uncritical and un- 
 scrupulous compilers in every possible way,' ' it is impossible 
 to dispute the conclusion that those portions of the poem 
 which relate exclusively to the independent exploits of the 
 other chiefs were at some later time embodied into a poem 
 which may conveniently be termed an Achilleis.^ Nor, if it 
 be necessary to accoimt for this insertion, have we far to go 
 for a reason. The theme chosen by the author of the 
 Achilleis confined him to a period of comparative inaction. 
 The valour of the Achaians could only be asserted by an 
 independent poem which showed that they were not helpless ' 
 even without the aid of the great son of Peleus. It is not 
 surprising that the two poems should, with others which 
 fitted in with the general plan, have been gradually blended 
 together.* 
 
 ' Edinburgh Eeview, October, 1858, 
 p. 503. 
 
 ^ The downfall of the Euemeristie or 
 conservative hypotheses make it really 
 unnecessary to examine the mode in 
 which the several portions of the Iliad 
 have been pieced together. It is enough 
 to say that, when the whole narrative of 
 the Iliad has been proved to be un- 
 historical, and when the narratives of 
 later alleged events have also been 
 ■shown to possess no historical value, the 
 burden of proof rests with those who 
 affirm, not with those who deny, the 
 original unity of a poem which, it is 
 admitted on all sides, was in existence 
 before the use of writing became general 
 or adequate to the production of long 
 manuscripts. It may be added, how- 
 ever, that the arguments of Colonel 
 Mure (^History of Greek Literature, 
 book ii. ch. xvi.) and Mr. Gladstone 
 {Homer and the Homeric Age, ' Aoidos '), 
 fail altogether to meet the objections 
 urged by Mr. Grote against the original 
 continuity of the poem in its present 
 form. Mr. Grote's remarks [History of 
 Greece, part i. ch. xxi.) on the embassy 
 to Achilleus dispose conclusively of 
 every attempt to maintaiu the unitarian 
 
 theory on the ground of a supposed moral 
 consistency in the character of Achilleus, 
 while it also shows that the writer of 
 the AchillSis knew nothing of the first 
 effort for reconciliation. See Muir, 
 Sanskrit Texts, part iv. ch. ii. sect. 3, 
 where the like reasons are urged for 
 regarding certain passages in the Mah4- 
 bh^rata as interpolations. 
 
 ^ Colonel Mure, strangely enough, 
 sees in II. ii.-%ii. nothing but a catalogue 
 of disasters, bringing misery and disgrace 
 on the Ajgive hosts. Crit. Hist. Gr. 
 Lit. Tol. i. p. 266. Mr. Grote, far 
 more truly, says that the great chiefs 
 are ' in full force at the beginning of the 
 eleventh book.' — History of Greece, 
 part i. ch. xxi. 
 
 * It would seem that the chief error 
 of Wolf and his followers was the 
 attempt to fix the date of this combina- 
 tion, which they attributed to Peisistra- 
 tos. The acknowledged antiquity of the 
 materials led them naturally to throw- 
 back, as far as possible, their work of 
 bringing them into their present shape. 
 The question loses much of the factitious 
 irnportauce given to it by anti-Wolfian 
 critics, when the unhistorical character 
 of the wViole narrative of the Eiad has 
 
THE ACHILLEIS. 
 
 245 
 
 Tlius was produced an epic as magnificent as it is com- CH.4P. 
 plicated; but through, all its intricacy may be tr^^ed the -— — r^ — 
 thread of the original myth : and the fact that it may be so The tale 
 traced becomes the more remarkable as we realise the extent Aehiileis. 
 to which the process of disintegration has been carried on. 
 If the poem does not exhibit the systematised theogony of 
 Hesiod, still Phoibos is in it a person distinct from Helios, 
 Artemis, or Athen6. Hekab^ is no longer identified with 
 SelenS or L6t6 : Zeus is no longer one with Ouranos. Only 
 a few signs remain of that interchangeable character which 
 is so prominent in the gods of the earlier Vedic poems. And 
 further, the Hiad, by the admission alike of those who uphold 
 and of those who reject the Wolfian theory, necessarily 
 exhibits the later elements which must spring up with the 
 growth of a definite religion, and the developement of some- 
 thing like civU government. StUl, on the Trojan shore, 
 facing the island of Tenedos, the old tale is repeated, which 
 assumes a gloomier form in the mythology of the North. The 
 mighty AchiUeus, over whose childhood had watched Phoinix 
 (the purple cloud), is there to fight, but, like Bellerophon, as 
 he insists emphatically, in no quarrel of his own.' A hard 
 toil is before him, btit, as with Herakles, the honour which 
 he wins is not to be his own.^ Like Herakles, again, and 
 Perseus and Theseus, his limbs are strong, and his heart 
 knows no fear. In place of the sword of ApoUon, the 
 Chrysdor, or the Teutonic Sigurd, he has the unerring spear 
 which no mortal can wield but himself.^ Still, like Herakles 
 and Apoll6n and Perseus and Bellerophon, he is practically 
 the servant of one on whom he looks down with a deserved 
 contempt.^ On him falls all tlie labour of war, but the spoil 
 which he wins with his bow and spear must pass into the 
 
 been clearly shown on grounds quite ' oh •yh.p iy^ Tpdiotv eVcK* ^\udov 
 
 unconnected with the time of their aixiJ-V'^duv 
 
 composition. The real facts of Greek Sivpo ;uoxi7<r(f/t6>'oi • iirel oiri fioi 
 
 literary history lead Mr. Paley to the oirioi ^Wiv. Iliad, i. 153. 
 
 conclusion ' that there is not one shadow ' rifiriv a.pvifi.ivoi Mei/eAti^, aoi re, 
 
 or tittle of proof that the Homer which Kvvinra. lb. i. 159. 
 
 we hare was the Homer that Peisistra- • t6 juey ov SiSj/ar* &h\os 'AxaiMv 
 
 tos is said, whether truly or not, to viiWeij/, aAXd fiiv otos iiriffTaro ir^Xai 
 
 have collected and introduced into 'A^i^Keis. lb. xvi. 142. 
 
 Athens.' The late Dale of our Iliad and * This contempt is fully expressed — 
 
 7. iZ.i. 225-231. 
 
246 MYTHOLOGV OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK hands of Agamemnon,' as those of Heraldes fall to the lot of 
 
 . ^ — . Eurystheus. Still he has his consolation. He is cheered by 
 
 the love of Hippodameia^ (the tamer of the horses of the 
 Sun). But even Briseis he must now give up, as Herakles 
 was compelled to part from lol^. At the very thought of 
 losing her, his passion overleaps all barriers ; but his rage is 
 subdued by the touch of Athene, the daughter of Zeus, the 
 sky.^ He must yield, but with Briseis vanishes the light of 
 his life, and he vows a solemn vow that henceforth in the 
 war the Achaians shall look in vain for his aid.* He hangs 
 up his sword and spear in his tent, takes off his glittering 
 armour, and the Argive warriors see the face of the bright 
 hero no more. Yet even the fierceness of his wrath cannot 
 avail to keep entirely in the background another feature in 
 which he resembles Herakles, Sigurd, Theseus, and Ias6n. 
 Briseis is gone, but Diomed^, the daughter of Phorbas, sup- 
 plies her place, as Oinone gives way to Helen, and the wise 
 Medeia to the daughter of the Argive Kreon. But the mind 
 of Achilleus remains unchanged. His wrath is terrible as 
 the wrath of the angry sun, and he bids Thetis, his mother, 
 go to the throne of Zeus, who dwells in the bright ether, and 
 pray him to send such a storm as may well make the 
 Achaians rate their king at his true value.* The darkness 
 thickens, but at first the Achaians care not. Zeus alone 
 knows and proclaims that the fortunes of the Argives them- 
 selves must remain under the cloud until Achilleus again 
 goes forth to battle.® His words are soon accomplished. 
 The knowledge that the great champion of the Argives no 
 longer takes part in the war inspires the Trojans with fresh 
 strength. The storm-clouds rise with greater volume when 
 
 ' -rh ii^v vXuov TToKvtkiKoi iroAffioto Diomede, wlio takes her place, belongs 
 
 XcTpej ifial Sic'iroiKr' ■ ar'ap ijy irorf to the south-western Lesbos. II. ix. 658. 
 
 Sao-fiis VKTjTai, So Oinone lives on Ida, but Helen in the 
 
 aoX th -yepas iroAfi iifi^ov. B. i. 167. far west. Iol6 is the daughter of En- 
 
 2 Briseis was to the Greek a mere pa- rytos (another name of the class Eury- 
 
 tronymic. The father of Bris&'s is the ganeia, &c.), in the eastern island of 
 
 Vedie Brisaya. 'Destroy, Saraswati, Euboia; D^ianeira lives in the western 
 
 the revilers of the gods, the offspring Kalydon. 
 of the universal deluder, Brisaya.' — ■* 11. i 240 
 
 H. H. Wilson, E. N. S. iii. 515. » //. i. 407-412. 
 
 ' It is at the least worthy of note • 21, viii. 477. 
 
 that, while Briseis comes from Lyrnessos, 
 
THE DEATH OP PATROKLOS. 247 
 
 the light of the sun is blotted out of the sky. Still the great 
 chiefs of the Argives stand forth in unabated confidence ; ' 
 but Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Diomedes are soon wounded 
 in the fight, and the Aehaians begin to realise their grievous 
 loss. Their misery excites the compassion of Patroklos, in 
 whom the character of Achilleus is reflected, as is that of 
 Helios in Phaethon, or that of Odysseus in Telemachos.' 
 Melted by the tears of his friend, Achilleus gives him his own 
 armour, and bids him go forth to aid the Argives. But with 
 this charge he joins a caution. Phaethon must not touch 
 with his whip the horses of Helios.^ Patroklos must not 
 drive the chariot of Achilleus on any other path than that 
 which has been pointed out to him.* But although Patroklos 
 can wear the armour of Achilleus, he cannot wield his spear.' 
 The sword and lance of ApoUon and Perseus, of Theseus and 
 Artemis, may be touched by no other hands than their own. 
 Patroklos is ready for the fight, and yoked to the car of 
 Achilleus stand the immortal horses Xanthos and Balios 
 (golden and speckled as a summer sky), which Podarge, the 
 glistening-footed, bare to Zephyros, the strong west wind, 
 near the shore of the Ocean stream.* The sun is breaking- 
 out for a moment through the mist. Like hungry wolves, 
 the Myrmidons (the streaming rays) stand forth to arm 
 themselves at the bidding of their chieftain.^ For a time 
 the strength of Achilleus nerves the arm of Patroklos, so that 
 
 ' II. ix. 55. which may well mourn for the hero who 
 
 ' Mr. Grote has remarked this. 'Pa- took him from king Hialprek's stall and 
 
 troklos has no substantive position; he is rode on him through the flames when he 
 
 the attached friend and second of Achil- went to recover the stolen treasures, 
 
 leus, but nothing else.' — History of This horse, Grimm remarks, appears 
 
 Greece, ii. 238. Colonel Mure, however, in the Swedish and Danish folk-lore 
 
 discerns in the contrast between the two under the name Black, a word which, it 
 
 strong evidence of Homer's ' knowledge can scarcely be necessary to say, may 
 
 of human nature.' — Crit. Hist. Gr. Lit. signity whiteness and li^ht not less than 
 
 i. 285. gloom and darkness. 'The same power 
 
 ' These heavenly steeds of Achilleus of speech belongs in the Servian legend 
 
 and Indra are not less prominent in the to Scharatz, who speaks to Marko 
 
 myths of Northern Europe ; and some shortly before his death, as Xanthos 
 
 of them are endowed with that gift of warns Achilleus of his impending doom, 
 
 speech which Xanthos possesses as the For other instances see Grimm's i?^i{scAe 
 
 golden or gleaming horse of the sun Mythologie, 365. 
 
 itself, while it is denied to Balios, the * fii) <ri y' AvevBcv f/teio \i\aUcr9ai 
 
 mottled or speckled steed which repre- iroKffil^iip. U. xvi. 89. 
 
 sents the sunlit clouds. Thus the horse ' iyx°^ '' "''X ^^"' °^°'' "■l^^l'-ovoi 
 
 ♦of Sldrnir speaks to its master in the AiaxISaa, k.t.\. lb, xvi. 140. 
 
 Edda, and Gudrun, after the death of ■ lb. xvi. 151. 
 
 Sigurd, talks with Gran, the noble steed, ' Ji. xvi. 156. 
 
248 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AETAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK he can smite Sarpedon, tlie great chief of the Lykians, in 
 - whose veins runs the blood of Bellerophon, and for whom 
 
 the bitter tears of Zeus fall in big drops of rain from the sky.' 
 But the transient splendour is soon dimmed. It was but the 
 semblance of the sun looking out from the dark cloud; and 
 Patroklos, therefore, meets his doom. But the poet recurs 
 unconsciously to the old myth, and it is Apollon who disarms 
 Patroklos,^ although it is Hektor who slays him. The im- 
 mortal horses weep for his death and the fall of their 
 charioteer Automedon, while Zeus mourns that ever he 
 bestowed them as a gift on so mean and wretched a thing 
 as man.^ In the fearful struggle which follows for the body 
 of Patroklos, the clouds are seen fighting a fierce battle over 
 the sun, whose splendour they have for a time extinguished. 
 The ragged and streaming vapours which rush across the 
 sky have their counterpart in the throng of Trojans who 
 fling themselves like hounds on the wounded boar.* But a 
 fiercer storm is raging behind the dark veil. Beneath the 
 ' black cloud of his sorrow ' the anguish of AchUleus is pre- 
 paring an awful vengeance.' The beauty of his countenance 
 is marred, but the nymphs rise from the sea to comfort him,* 
 as folk still say, ' the sun driaks,' when the loug rays stream 
 slantwise from the clouds to the waters beneath. One desire 
 alone fills his heart, the burning thirst for vengeance ; but 
 when Thetis warns him that the death of Hektor must soon 
 be followed by his own,' his answer is that the destruction 
 of his great enemy will be ample recompense for his own 
 early doom. Even Herakles, the dearest of the sons of Zeus, 
 
 ' oi/iOTiif(r<ras Si rfitdSas KaT^xevev ' II. xTiii. 36. These nymphs are 
 
 epoife. II. xvi. 459. only half anthropomorphised. Their 
 
 ' n. xvi. 790, K.T.A. This -was a names still express their own meaning, 
 
 strict mythical necessity; yet Colonel ' lb. xviii. 96. The real nature of 
 
 Mure lays great stress on it as showing this myth becomes still more apparent 
 
 the cowardice and brutality of Hektor. when looked at through the bald state- 
 
 Crit. Hist. vol. i. p. 281. The result of ments of ApoUodoros, iii. 13. 8. Troy, 
 
 his method is, that he finds himself com- he says, cannot be taken without Achil- 
 
 pelled on every occasion to vilify the lens: the sun alone can subdue the dark 
 
 Trojans for the exaltation of their cloud.s. But Thetis knows that, after 
 
 enemies. In a less degree, Mr. triad- Troy is taken, AehiDeus must die. The 
 
 stone's criticism lies open to the same sun must set after his victory over the 
 
 remark. mists. So she disguises Achilleus in 
 
 " II. xvii. 444. ' lb. xvii. 725. woman's garb, as the light clouds half, 
 
 » 6s </)iiTO • -riiv y Sx™' ve^eXn ixi- veil the early risen sun. 
 Amjie jxiKawa. lb, xviii. 22. 
 
THE VOW OP ACHILLEUS. 249 
 
 had submitted to the same hard lot.' His mind is made np. CFAP. 
 
 XI 
 He retains still the unerring spear. It remains only<that he - 
 
 should wait for the glistening armour wrought on the anvil 
 of the fire-god Hephaistos. But, although the hour of his 
 vengeance is not yet come, his countenance still has its 
 terrors, and the very sight of his form^ fills the Trojans with 
 dismay, as they hear his well-known war-cry. His work is 
 in part done. The body of Patroklos is recovered as the sun 
 goes down unwillingly into the stream of ocean.^ Then fol- 
 lows the awful vow of AchiUeus. There shall be a goodly 
 mourning for Patroklos. The life-blood of twelve Trojans 
 shall gush in twelve streams on the altar of sacrifice,^ like 
 the torn and crimsoned clouds which stream up into the 
 purple heaven when the angry sun has sunk beneath the sea. 
 But the old phrases, which spoke of Helios or Herakles 
 as subject to death, still spoke of both as coming forth con- 
 querors of the power which had seemed to subdue them ; 
 and, true to the ancient speech, the poet makes Thetis 
 assure her son that no hurtful thing shall touch the body 
 of Patroklos, and that, though it should lie untended the 
 whole year round, his face should wear at its close a more 
 glorious and touching beauty.* The end draws nigh. The 
 very helmsmen leave the ships as they hear the cry of 
 AchiUeus calling them once again to battle.^ His wrongs 
 
 ' 7Z. xviii. 117. round him even in the hours of dark- 
 
 ' lb. xviii. 205. Here the sun is not ness. It is the same with Chundun 
 
 unclouded. So AchiUeus has about his Kajah, whose tomb the people came 
 
 head a golden cloud (xpiiceov veipos), and from far and near to Tisit, ' and see the 
 
 the glory streams from him like smoke great miracle how the boiiy of him who 
 
 going up to heaven. The rays of the had been dead so many months remained 
 
 sun are bursting from the cloud. perfect and undecayed.' So, too, the 
 
 ' II. xviii. 240. body of Sodewa Bai, the Hindu Cin- 
 
 ' lb. xviii. .336. derella or Rhodopis, cannot decay, nor 
 
 ' ijmrep yap KTJTal ye Te\eff(p6pov els can the colour of her face change. * A 
 
 iviavrhv, month afterwards, when her husband 
 
 olei Taiy tffrai xp^s ^juttcSos, ^ KaX returned home, she looked as fair and 
 
 apdiav. II. xix. 33. lovely as on the night on which she 
 
 This incorruptibility of the bodies of died.' — Frere, Old Dcaan Days. Both 
 
 solar heroes is strikingly brought out these beings die, or seem to die. because 
 
 in modern Hindu legends, which are, they are deprived of that in which theip 
 
 as we might expect, even more trans- strength lies, as in the golden locks of 
 
 parent than those of the Teutonic Nisos, who becomes powerless as Samson 
 
 nations. Thus, when the destined when they are taken from his head ; but 
 
 husband of Paneh Phul Ranee dies over these bright beings death can have 
 
 on the seventh hedge of spears, her no real dominion, and they all rise to 
 
 father asks, 'How is it that he thus more than their former splendour. 
 
 dazzles our eyes?' and the glory shines " II. xix, 44. 
 
250' MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK shall be redressed. Agamemnon, the king, will yield to him 
 
 I 
 
 the maiden whom he had taken away, and with her shall 
 come other maidens not less fair, and gifts of priceless beauty.' 
 But, with a persistency which, except by a reference to the 
 sources of the myth, is at best a dark riddle, Agamemnon 
 asserts his own innocence. 'I am not guilty,' he said. 
 ' The blame rests with Zeus and Moira (who fixes the lot of 
 man), and Erinys, who wanders in the air.' So the old wrong 
 is atoned. The gifts are placed before him. The fair 
 maidens come forth from the tent, but, with a singular 
 fidelity to the old legend, Briseis comes last of all,^ beautiful 
 and pure as in the hour when he parted from her,' even as 
 Oinone in her unsullied loveliness appears by the side of the 
 dying Paris, or lole by the pyre of Herakles. Then it is that 
 Achilleus forgives the wrong done to him, but repeats the 
 riddle which lurked in the words of Agamemnon. It was 
 not anything in the son of Atreus that could really call forth 
 his wrath. ' He could never, in his utter helplessness, have 
 taken the maiden from me against my will ; but so Zeus would 
 have it, th&,t the doom of many Achaians might be accom- 
 plished.'* So he bids them go and eat, and make ready for 
 the fight ; but when Agamemnon would have Achilleus him- 
 self feast with them, the answer is that the time for the 
 banquet is not yet come. His friend lies unavenged, and of > 
 neither meat nor drink will he taste till his last fight is 
 fought and won.^ The same truthfulness to the old idea 
 runs through the magnificent passage which tells of the 
 arming of Achilleus. The helmets of the humbler warriors 
 are like the cold snow-flakes which gather in the north.^ 
 But when Achilleus dons his armour, a glorious light flashes 
 up to heaven, and the earth laughs at its dazzling radiance.^ 
 
 ' n. xix. 140. This is the first sub- ^ cttt', hrhp oySoiTi]v BpirrTjiSo /coWi- 
 
 mission made by Agamemnon in the iriopoi'. II. xix. 245. 
 
 Achilleis. It may be noted that here ' Ih. xix. 261. 
 
 he not only acquits himself of guilt (86), * 2b. xix. 274. 
 
 but, in order to fix the blame on Zeus, ' Ih. xix. 210. 
 
 recites a tale which is essentially a so- * us 5" St€ Tap<pfiat viipiSes Aiis ^loro- 
 
 parate poem, and may have existed long Tfoi/Toi 
 
 before, or apart from, the llias or the ^f/vxpai, urh ^ivris ai9piiy€ii€os Popi<u). 
 
 Arhil/eis, as may have been the case iJ. xix. 3o8. 
 
 ■with such lays as those of Phoinix, ' a1y\ri 8" ovpavhv Tke, yeKourae 5^ 
 
 //. ix. 529, and Demodokos, Od. viii. mcra irepl xei>v 
 
 266. X"^""" ^^^ iTTepoirijs. lb. xix. 363. 
 
THE VICTORY OF ACHILLEUS. 251' 
 
 His shield eleams like the blood-red moon, as it rises from CHAP. 
 
 . . XI 
 the sea.' His helmet glitters like a star, and each .hair in . ,J - 
 
 the plume glistens like barnished gold. When Jie tries the 
 armour to see whether it fits his limbs, it bears him like a 
 bird upon the wing.^ Last of all, he takes down his spear, 
 which none but himself can handle, while Alkimos and 
 Automedon (the strong and the mighty) harness his immor- 
 tal horses. As he mounts the chariot, he bids them bear 
 him safe through the battle, and not leave him to die as they 
 had left Patroklos. Then the horse Xanthos bows his head, 
 and warns him of the coming doom. Their force is not 
 abated. They can still run swifter than the swiftest wind, 
 and their will is only to save the lord whom they serve and 
 love. But the will of Zeus is stronger still, and Achilleus 
 too must die.^ It is a kindly warning, and the hero takes it 
 in good part. ' I know,' he says, ' that I shall see my father 
 and my mother again no more ; but the work of vengeance 
 must be accomplished.' Then, before the great strife begins, 
 Zeus bids all the gods (the powers of heaven) take each his 
 side. He alone will look down serenely on the struggle as 
 it rages beneath him.'' Many a Trojan warrior falls by the 
 spear of Achilleus, and the battle waxes fiercer, until all the 
 powers of heaven and earth seem mingled in one wild turmoil. 
 The river Skamandros is indignant that the dead body of 
 Lykaon, the (bright) son of Priam, should be cast into its 
 waters, and complains to Achilleus that his course to the sea 
 is clogged by the blood which is poured into it.^ But 
 vVchilleus leaps fearlessly into the stream, and Skamandros 
 calls for aid to Simoeis. The two rivers swell, and Achilleus 
 is almost overborne.^ It is a war of elements. The sun is 
 almost conquered by the raging rain. But another power 
 comes upon the scene, and the flood yields to Hephaistos, 
 the might of the fiery lightning.' Piercer yet grows the 
 
 ' B. xix. 374. cannot be conceired as taking part in 
 
 ■" lb. xix. 386. the contest, although the clouds and 
 
 ' lb. xix. 387-417. lightnings, the winds and vaponrs, ba- 
 
 * lb. XX. 22. The sky itself, regarded neath it may. 
 
 as the pure ether in which Zeus dwells, * II. xxi. 219. 
 
 far above the murky air breathed by » lb. xxi. 325. 
 
 mortal men {KeXaiv&fiis, ai$epi valav), ' 74. xxi. 345. 
 
252 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The close 
 of the 
 Achilleis. 
 
 strife. The gods themselves struggle wildly in the fray, 
 while Zeus laughs at the sight.* Artemis falls, smitten by 
 HSr^, and her arrows (the sun's rays) are gathered up by 
 Leto and carried to the throne of Zeus.^ But through all 
 the wild confusion of the strife Achilleua hastens surely to 
 his victory. Before him stands his enemy; but the spell 
 which guarded the life of Hektor is broken, for Phoibos has 
 forsaken him.^ In vain he hurls his spear at Achilleus, in 
 vain he draws his sword. Still Achilleus cannot reach him 
 through the armour of Patroklos,'' and the death wound is 
 given where an opening in the plates left his neck bare. 
 The prayer of Hektor for mercy is dismissed with contempt, 
 and, in his boundless rage, Achilleus tramples on the body,* 
 as the blazing sun seems to trample on the darkness into 
 which it is sinking. 
 
 At this point, in the belief of Mr. Grote, the original 
 Achilleis ended. 'The death of Hektor satisfies the exi- 
 gencies of a coherent scheme, and we are not entitled to 
 extend the oldest poem beyond the limit which such necessity 
 prescribes.'® The force of the objection depends on the idea 
 by which the poet, either consciously or unconsciously, was 
 guided in his design. The sudden plunge of the sun into 
 the darkness which he has for a moment dispelled would be 
 well represented by an abrupt ending with the death of 
 Hektor. The ' more merciful temper ' which Achilleus dis- 
 plays in the last book would not only be necessary ' to create 
 proper sympathy with his triumph,' but it would be strictly 
 in accordance with the idea of the sun setting in a broad 
 blaze of generous splendour after his victory over the black 
 mists, even though these are again to close in fierce strife 
 
 > ^"yiXatytre Zi ot <pl\ov ^rop 
 
 yrjdoffivri, S0' dparo Beovs epiSi ^uci- 
 6i>Tas. II. xxi. 390. 
 
 The ether looks down in grim serenity 
 on the wild battle in the air beneath. 
 
 ' //. xxi. 490-50S. 
 
 ' lb. xxii. 213: Kimv Se 4 *oTj3os 
 'ktriWav. Too much stress can scarcely 
 be laid on these words. In the first 
 place, they make the slaying of Hektor 
 quite as much an act of butchery as 
 Colonel Mure represents the death of 
 
 Patroklos to be on the part of Hektor. 
 In the second place, they remove both 
 incidents out of the rPj.oh of all ethical 
 criticism. 
 
 * a. xxii. 322. 
 
 ' Ih. xxii. 395, K.r.\. This is a trait 
 of brutality scarcely to be explained by 
 a reference to the manners of the heroic 
 age. The mystery is solved when we 
 compare it with the mythical language 
 of the earlier Vedic hymns. 
 
 ■ History of Greece, vol. ii. p. 266. 
 
INCORRUPTIBLE BODIES. 253 
 
 when he is dead.' It is this transient eleam of more serene CHAP. 
 
 XI 
 splendour which is signiiied by the games over which Achil- ^^ — - 
 
 leus presides genially after the slaughter of the *Trojan 
 captives, whose blood reddens the ground, just as the torn 
 streamers rush in crimsoned bands across the sky after a 
 storm. Yet it is not easy to suppose with Mr. Grote that 
 the Achilleis ended with the twenty-second book as it now 
 stands, for that book closes vdth the mourning of Andro- 
 mache for Hektor, which, even in the eyes of a Greek, would 
 hardly heighten the glory of the conqueror ; and the author 
 of it certainly knew of the visit of Priam which is related in 
 the last book, for he makes the old man express his intention 
 of going to Achilleus when he first learns that his son is 
 dead.^ But the feeling of the old solar myth is once more 
 brought out prominently in the case of Hektor. With the 
 aid of ApoUon he had been the great champion of his country. 
 The desertion of the sun-god left him at the mercy of his 
 enemy. But his body, like the body of Patroklos, must be 
 preserved from all corruption. The ravenous dogs and birds 
 are chased away by Aphrodit^,^ and ApoUon himself wraps 
 it in mist and covers it with a golden shield.* From the 
 Odyssey we learn that the idea underlying the story of the 
 death of Achilleus was that of an expiring blaze of splendour, 
 followed by the darkness of the storm. Over his body the 
 Achaians and Trojans struggle in mortal conflict, like the 
 clouds fighting over the dead sun; and only the might of 
 Zeus puts an end to the strife, for the winds alone can drive 
 away the clouds. Then the sea-nymphs rise, fair as the 
 skies of tranquil night, and wrap the form of the dead hero 
 in a spotless shroud. 
 
 Thus the whole Achilleis is a magnificent solar epic, telling The whole 
 us of a sun rising in radiant majesty, soon hidden by the f „Ja nin-^ 
 clouds, yet abiding his time of vengeance, when from the cent solar 
 dark veil he breaks forth at last in more than his early ^^"^' 
 strength, scattering the mists and kindling the ragged clouds 
 which form his funeral pyre, nor caring whether his brief 
 splendour shall be succeeded by a darker battle as the vapours 
 
 ' Odyssey, xxir. 41, 42. ' Eiad, xxiii. 185. 
 
 ^ Mai, ixii. 415. • lb. xxiv. 20. 
 
254 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The 
 Trojan 
 war is 
 simply one 
 scene of a 
 long 
 drama. 
 
 The Ilias 
 as con- 
 trasted 
 with the 
 Aehilleis. 
 
 close again over his dying glory. The feeling of the old tale 
 is scarcely weakened when the poet tells us of the great 
 cairn which the mariner shall see from afar on the shore of 
 the broad Hellespontos.' 
 
 If this then be the common groundwork of the Aehilleis 
 and the epics of Northern Europe, the arguments of Mr. 
 Grote against the original continuity of the Iliad in its 
 present form are indefinitely strengthened. The Trojan war 
 itself becomes simply a scene in a long drama,^ of the other 
 acts of which the poet incidentally betrays his knowledge. 
 The life of Achilleus runs in the same groove with that of 
 Odysseus and Bellerophon ; the personality of Patrotlos 
 dimly reflects that of Achilleus, while the tale of Meleagros 
 is simply an echo of the legend which, in its more expanded 
 form and with heightened colours, relates the exploits of the 
 son of Peleus. 
 
 With this groundwork, the original Aehilleis may have 
 ended with the twenty-second book of our Hiad, or have been 
 extended to the twenty-fourth. Apart from considerations 
 of style, there is nothing in the story to militate against 
 either supposition. If it ended with the earlier book, tlie 
 poet closed his narrative with the triumphant outburst of the 
 sun from the clouds which had hidden his glory. The poet 
 who added the last two books was inspired by the old phrases 
 which spoke of a time of serene though short-lived splendour 
 after the sun's great victory. But with this tale of the 
 Aehilleis, whatever may be its close, the books which relate 
 the independent exploits of Agamemnon and his attendant 
 chiefs cannot possibly be made to fit. They are the expression 
 of an almost unconscious feeling that a son of Peleus and 
 Thetis was a being not sufficiently akin to Achaians to satisfy 
 the instincts of national pride and patriotism.' It is of 
 
 • Od. xxiv. 82. 
 
 " Much blame, perhaps not altogether 
 undeserved, has been bestowed on the 
 critics who formed the so-called epie 
 cycle and sought to find the sequence of 
 the several legends on which the poems 
 included in that cycle were founded. So 
 far as they sought an historical sequence, 
 tliey were wrong. Yet their feeling 
 that there was a sequence in these tales 
 was not without foundation. But the 
 
 sequence is one of phenomena, not of 
 facts in human history. 
 
 ' Both Colonel Mure and Mr. Glad- 
 stone search vigorotisly for every vestige 
 of patriotisminthecharacter of Achilleus. 
 It is very hard to find any, and harder 
 still to see any in the passages which 
 they adduce. It does exist in Hektor, 
 and the reason why it should exist in 
 him is manifest. 
 
THE ILIAD. 255 
 
 course possible — in the opinion of Mr. Grdte, it may be even CHAP, 
 
 probable — tbat the same poet who sang the wrath of Achil- . ,J — - 
 
 leus afterwards recounted the exploits of Odysseus, Aias, and 
 Diomedes. The question is, after all, not material. If Mr. 
 Grote is right in thinking that the last two books are an 
 addition, • then the closing scene, which exhibits Achilleus in 
 his more genial aspect, existed as a distinct poem, and the 
 final complement of this lay is found far apart in the closing 
 book of the Odyssey. The perfect harmony of that picture 
 of the hero's death with the spirit and language of the 
 Achilleis may possibly be adduced as an argument for as- 
 cribing both Iliad and Odyssey to the same author ; but it 
 furnishes a much stronger warrant for asserting that more 
 than one poet derived his inspiration from the m^ythical 
 speech, which, even in the jGreek heroic age, still retained 
 more than half its life. Nay, in the Ilias itself, the legend 
 of Meleagros, recited (it must be remembered) by the same 
 Phoinix who guarded Achilleus in his earlier years, exhibits 
 still more forcibly the method in which phrases but partially 
 understood, and' incidents which had each received a local 
 colouring and name, were wrought into the tales, whether of 
 the Kalydonian chieftain, or Perseus, or Achilleus. In times 
 which even then were old, such phrases formed the common 
 speech of the people, such incidents expressed the phenomena 
 of their daily life ; and this language was strictly the language 
 of poetry, literally revelling in its boundless powers of creation 
 and developement. In almost every word lay the germ of an 
 epic poem or a romance.^ It is the less wonderful, therefore, 
 if each incident was embodied in a separate legend, or even 
 reproduced in the independent tales of separate tribes. A 
 
 ' History of Greece, ii. 266. of Polydectes, the gallant vow by which 
 « I cannot refrain from quoting the the unsuspecting stranger hopes to lessen 
 words of Mr. Price, in his Introduction his obligation to the royal house of Se- 
 to 'W&v\Qn's History of English Poetry: riphus, the consequences of that vow, 
 ' To take one example out of many, the the aid he receives from a god and god- 
 life of Perseus might be made to pass dess, the stratagem by which he gains a 
 for the outline of an old romance, or the power over the monstrous daughter of 
 story of some genuine chevalier preux. Phorcys, &c. &e. &o. — let the reader 
 Let the reader only remember the ille- only recall these circumstances to his 
 gitimate but royal descent of the hero, memory, and he will instantly recognise 
 his exposure to almost certain death in the common details of early European 
 infancy, his providential escape, the hos- romance.'— (P. 120.) 
 pitality of Dictys, the criminal artifices 
 
256 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ABTAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK hundred Homers may well have lit their torch from thi8 
 
 ^ — living fire. 
 
 Ground- TSov Can we well shut our eves to the fact that in the main 
 
 Odyssey. ^ ^^^J of the Odyssej the poet has set the same solar strain 
 in another key. When Odysseus goes to Troy, he is simply 
 a chieftain in the great host which went to recover the 
 treasure taken from the West, like the Argonauts in their 
 search for the Golden Meece. But all these eastward ex- 
 peditions are successful. The robber or seducer is despoiled 
 of his prey, and the victors must journey back to their distant 
 home. Thus, round the chieftain of each tribe would gather 
 again all the ideas suggested by the ancient myths ; and the 
 light reflected from the glory of the great Phthiotic hero 
 might well rest on the head of Odysseus as he turns to go 
 from Ilion. Thus would begin a new career, not unlike that 
 of Herakles or Perseus in all its essential features. Through- 
 out the whole poem the one absorbing desire which fills the 
 heart of Odysseus is to reach his home once more and see 
 the wife whom, like most other mythical heroes, he had been 
 obliged to leave in the spring-time of his career. There are 
 grievous toils and many hindrances on his way, but nothing 
 can turn him from his course. He has to fight, like Herakles 
 and Perseus, Theseus and Bellerophon, with more than mortal 
 beings and more than earthly powers, but he has the strength 
 which they had to overcome or to evade them. It is true 
 that he conquers chiefly by strength of will and sagacity of 
 mind ; but this again is the phase which the idea of Helios, 
 the great eye of day, as surveying and scanning everything, 
 assumes in Medeia, Prometheus, Asklepios, Oidipous, lamos, 
 and Melampous. The other phase, however, is not wanting. 
 He, too, has a bow which none but he can wield,' and he 
 wields it to terrible purpose, when, like Achilleus, after his 
 time of disguise, he bursts on the astonished suitors, as the 
 
 1 Odi/ssey, xxi. 405, (c. t. \. The and the sound of the string is like tho 
 
 phraseology of the poet here assumes, whizzing of a swallow in its flight. In 
 
 perhaps without his being fully aware an instant every heart is fllled with 
 
 of it, the same tone with the narrative dread, and every cheek turns pale (irSiri 
 
 which tells of the arming of Achilleus. xpis irpairern), and, to complete the 
 
 Othi-rs have tried with all their might imagery, they liear at the same moment 
 
 to bend the bow. Odysseus stretches it the crash of the thunder in the sky. 
 without the least effort {&Tep o-irouS^s), 
 
THE ODTSSET. 257 
 
 sun breaks from the stormcloud before he sinks to rest. So, CHAP. 
 
 XI 
 again, in his westward wanderings (for this is the gomnion . ^^ - 
 
 path of the children of Zeus or Helios), he must encounter 
 
 fearful dangers. It is no unclouded sky which looks down 
 
 on him as he journeys towards rocky Ithaka. He has to 
 
 fight with Kyklopes and Laistrygonians ; he has to shun the 
 
 snares of the Seirens and the jaws of Skylla and Charybdis, 
 
 as Perseus had to overcome the Gorgons, and Theseus to do 
 
 battle with the Minotauros. Yet there are times of rest for 
 
 him, as for Herakles and Bellerophon. He yearns for the 
 
 love of PenelopS, but his grief can be soothed for awhile by 
 
 the affection of Kirke and Kalypso, as Achilleus found solace 
 
 in that of Diomede, and Herakles awhile in that of Deianeira. 
 
 Nay, wherever he goes, mortal kings and chiefs and undying 
 
 goddesses seek to make him tarry by their side, as Menelaos 
 
 sought to retain Paris in his home by the side of the Spartan 
 
 Helen, and as Gunnar strove to win Sigurd to be the husband 
 
 of his sister. So is it with Alkinoos ; but, in spite of the 
 
 loveliness and purity of Nausikaa, Odysseus may not tarry in 
 
 the happy land of the Phaiakians, even as he might not tarry 
 
 in the palace of the wise Kirke or the sparkling cave of the 
 
 gentle Kalypso. At last he approaches his home ; but he 
 
 returns to it unknown and friendless. The sky is as dark as 
 
 when Achilleus lay nursing his great wrath behind the veil 
 
 of his sorrow. StiU he too, like Achilleus, knows how to 
 
 take vengeance on his enemies ; and in stillness and sUence 
 
 he makes ready for the mortal conflict in which he knows 
 
 that in the end he must be victorioxis. His foes are many 
 
 and strong; and, like Patroklos against Hektor, Telemachos' 
 
 can do but little against the suitors, in whom are reflected 
 
 the Trojan enemies of the Achaians. But for him also, 
 
 as for Achilleus, there is aid from the gods. Athene, the 
 
 daughter of the sky, cheers him on, and restores him to the 
 
 glorious beauty of his youth, as Thetis clothed her child in 
 
 the armour of Hephaistos, and ApoUon directed his spear 
 
 against Hektor. Still in his ragged beggar's dress, like the 
 
 sun behind the rent and tattered clouds, he appears in his 
 
 own hall on the day of doom. The old bow is taken down 
 
 • Grote, History of Greece, vol. ii. p. 238. 
 VOL. I. S 
 
258 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ABYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK from the wall, and none but he can be found to stretch 
 
 . /■ _ it. His enemies begin to fear that the chief has indeed 
 
 returned to his home, and they crouch in terror before the 
 stranger, as the Trojans quailed at the mere sight and war- 
 cry of Achilleus. But their cry for mercy falls as vain as 
 that of Lykaon or of Hektor, who must die to avenge the 
 dead Patroklos ; for the doom of the suitors is come for the 
 wrongs which they had done to Penelope. The fatal bow is 
 stretched. The arrows fly deadly and unerring as the spear 
 of Artemis, and the hall is bathed in blood. There is nothing 
 to stay his arm till all are dead. The sun-god is taking 
 vengeance on the clouds, and trampling them down in his 
 fury. The work is done ; and Penelop^ sees in Odysseus the 
 husband who had left her long ago to face his toils, like 
 Herakles and Perseus. But she will try him still. If indeed 
 he be the same, he will know his bridal chamber and the 
 cunningly carved couch which his own hands had wrought, 
 lole will try whether Herakles remembers the beautiful net- 
 work of violet clouds which he spread as her couch in the 
 morning. The sun is setting in peace. Penelope, fair as 
 Oinone and as pure (for no touch of defilement must pass on 
 her, or on lole or Daphn^ or Briseis), is' once again by his 
 side. The darkness is utterly scattered ; the corpses of the 
 suitors and of the handmaidens who miiiistered to them 
 cumber the hall no more. A few flying vapours rush at 
 random across the sky, as the men of Ithaka raise a feeble 
 clamour in behalf of the slain chieftains. Soon these, too, 
 are gone. Penelop^ and Odysseus are within their bridal 
 chamber. Oinone has gone to rest with Paris by her side ; 
 but there is no gloom in the house of Odysseus, and the hero 
 lives stUl, strong and beautiful as in the early days. The 
 battle is over. The one yearning of his heart has been ful- 
 filled. The sun has laid him down to rest 
 
 In one unclouded blaze of living light. 
 
 How much But unless the marvellous resemblance (may it not be said, 
 the identity?) of the Greek, the Trojan' and the Teutonic 
 
 ' The stories of Paris, Hektor, epics. The extent to which solar 
 SarpM6n, Memn6n are all subjects imagery is introduced into these tales 
 which might be expanded into separate is very remarkable. Paris as the seducer 
 
HOMEEIC MATERIALS. 
 
 259 
 
 epics can be explained away, it follows tliat in Achilleus and CHAP. 
 in Paris, in Meleagros and Sigurd, in Eagnar Lodbreg and ^^ — ^^ — - 
 Tbeseus, in Telephos, Perseus, Kephalos, Herakles, Bellero- or the 
 pbon and Odysseus, we have pictures drawn from the same Odyssey 
 ideal as regarded under its several aspects. It mattered not the in- 
 which of these aspects the poet might choose for his theme. J^e'loet" 
 In each case he had much more than the framework of his 
 story made ready to his hand. The departure of Achilleus 
 from his own land to fight in a quarrel which was not his 
 own — the transfer of the spoils won by him to a chief of 
 meaner spirit than his own — his unerring spear and im- 
 mortal horses — the robbery of Briseis or Hippodameia — 
 the fierce wrath of Achilleus which yet could leave room 
 for the love of another in her place — the sullen inaction 
 from which he refuses to be roused — the dismay of the 
 Achaians and the exultation of the Trojans at his absence 
 from the fight — the partial glory spread over the scene 
 by the appearance of PatroHos, only to close in the deeper 
 gloom which followed his overthrow — the fury of Achilleus 
 behind the dark cloud of his son-ow — the sudden outburst of 
 the hero, armed with his irresistible spear and clad in armour 
 more dazzling than that which he had lost — the invincible 
 might which deals death to Hektor and his comrades — the 
 blood which streams from the human victims on his altar of 
 sacrifice — his forgiveness of Agamemnon for that which 
 Agamemnon of himself would have been powerless to do — 
 
 of Helen is indubitably the dark robber 
 who steals away the treasure of light 
 from the sky; but it is diffiralt to 
 deny that Paris, as fighting for his 
 country, or in the beneficence of his 
 early career, has all the features of 
 Perseus, Oidipous and Telephos. The 
 same blending of two diflPerent ideas 
 runs through all the Aryan mythology, 
 and is a necessary result when the 
 myths of two or more different countries 
 are brought together in the same narra- 
 tive. In the great struggle between the 
 Achaians and Trojans, Agamemnon and 
 Achilleus are ranged on the side of 
 Helen, or Saram^, the dawn ; and all 
 the Trojan champions, from this point 
 of view, are in league with the dark 
 powers of night. But among these 
 champions are Sarp4d6n, the great chief 
 
 of the Lykians, and Glaukos, his friend, 
 who also comes from the golden .stream 
 of Xanthos, and Memnon the son of 
 Eos, who leads the glittering band of the 
 Aithiopians (Ethiopians). The names of 
 these heroes are as transparent as the 
 stories which have gathered round them. 
 Sarpedon more particularly is a counter- 
 part of Achilleus, destined to exhibit 
 the same magnificent qualities, and 
 doomed to the same early death, but 
 more equable and beneficent and there- 
 fore also happier. It is the same with 
 the Argives. As fighting against Paris, 
 Agamemnon is the adversary of the 
 dark powers : but to Achilleus he stands 
 precisely in the relation of Eurystheus 
 to Herakles, or of Laios to Oidipous, or 
 of Airisios to Perseus. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK the warning of his own early death which he receives from 
 
 I 
 
 the horse Xanthos — -the battle of the gods, as they take part 
 in the storm which rages in the heavens and on the earth — 
 the swelling of the waters, their brief mastery over the hero, 
 their conquest by fire — the generous splendour which follows 
 the accomplishment of his vengeance — the sudden close of his 
 brilliant but brief career — the fierce battle fought over his 
 dead body — the beauty which cannot be marred or dimmed 
 by death — are incidents which the poet might introduce or 
 omit at will, but the spirit of which he was not free to alter. 
 The character of Achilleus was no more his own creation 
 than were the shifting scenes in the great drama of his life. 
 The idea of his picture no more originated in himself than 
 the idea of Sigurd in the mind of the more rugged poet of 
 the north. The materials were not of his own making ; and 
 the words of Mr. Gladstone acquire a stronger meaning, 
 though not the meaning which he designed to convey, when, 
 insistins: that there must be a foundation for the Homeric 
 theology and for the chief incidents in the war of Troy, he 
 said that poets may embellish, but cannot invent.' Their 
 course was marked out for them, but the swiftness with 
 
 ' Of the ^».«!t^ ofVirgil it is unneces- Koronis. So, again, the war with 
 
 sary to say much. Epic poetry, com- Turnus for the possession of Lavinia 
 
 pospd in a tim« of highly artificial reflects the war at Troy for Helen and 
 
 eiyilisation, st.inds on a wholly diifprent the contest in the Odyssey with the 
 
 ground from the true epic of a .=;inipler enemies who strive to win the rightful 
 
 age. the growth of generations from the bride of Ody.sseus. In this war jEneas, 
 
 mvth-making talk of the people. The like other solar heroes, is successful, and, 
 
 tradition which brought jEueas to Italy like them, after his victory, which is 
 
 was not ot Virgil's making, and in followed by a time of tranquil happiness, 
 
 taking liim for his hero he bound him- he plunges into the Numician stream 
 
 self to give the sequel of a career which and is seen no more, as Kephalos and 
 
 belonged in its earlier stages to Greek Bellerophon sink to sleep in the western 
 
 mythology. Hence we have naturally waters of the Leukadian gulf, 
 in the story of jEneas nothing more The same type reappears in Komnlus, 
 
 than one more version of the old mythical whose story Kiebuhr supposed that 
 
 history. jEneas, like Odysseus, moves Livy obtained from a great epic now 
 
 from east to west, seeking a, home, as lost (Cornewall Lewis, Credibility of 
 
 Phoibos on a like errand journeyed to ISarly Eoman History, vol. i. eh. vi. 
 
 Pytho. His visit to the shades may sect. 5) ; and the key is found to this 
 
 have' been directly suggested by the legendary narrative as well as to that of 
 
 Greek poems which Virgil had before Cyrus, of Chandragupta, and of the 
 
 him as his model ; and these were progenitor of the Turks. All these 
 
 assuredly not confined to our Iliad, and tales repeat the exposure of the infant 
 
 Odyssey. But it must have been a Oidipous, or Telephos, or lamos, or 
 
 genuine tradition which led Virgil to Alcxandros. The same myth is seen 
 
 tell liow he left Creusa, as Theseus under another aspect in the legend of 
 
 deserted Ariadn^ and ApoUon forsook Servius TuUius. 
 
HOMERIC CHARACTERS. 
 
 261 
 
 which, each ran his race depended on his own power. 
 The genius of the Homeric poets was shown, not in the 
 creation of their materials, but in the truthful and mag- 
 nificent colouring which they threw over a legend which in 
 weaker hands might exhibit but a tinsel glitter. 
 
 But if there is this affinity between the character of the 
 Achaian and the Teutonic heroes, it follows that the cha- 
 racter is neither strictly Achaian nor strictly Teutonic. It 
 cannot be regarded as expressing the real morality either of 
 the one or of the other. Any attempt to criticise these as 
 genuine pictures of national character ' must be followed by 
 
 CHAP. 
 XI. 
 
 The por- 
 traits of 
 the greater 
 chieftains 
 and heroes 
 are not 
 true to 
 national 
 character. 
 
 ' The wish to base his criticism on this 
 foundation has led Mr. Gladstone to as- 
 sume witliout evidence, that the causp of 
 Achilleus was substantially that of right 
 and justice, and that the apology made 
 by Agamemnon in 11. xix. 67, is essen- 
 tially different from the apology made 
 in ix. 120. But, in the first place, it is 
 difficult to see that 'justice is' more 
 ' outraged in the person of Achilleus ' 
 {Homer, ^-c. vol. iii. p. 370), than it is 
 in the person of Agamemnon. If the 
 former is compelled to part with Briseis, 
 the latter has also been obliged to give 
 up the daughter of Chryses, for whom, 
 with a plainness of speech not used 
 either by Achilleus or even by Paris in 
 deserting Oinone, he avows his pre- 
 ference over his wedded wife Klytaim- 
 nestra (//. i. IIU). Moreover, the taking 
 away of Briseis is the sole act of 
 Agamemnon, in which his counsellors 
 and the people take no part. Yet Mr. 
 Gladstone holds it to be a 'deadly 
 wrong,' justifying Achilleus in visiting 
 his wrath on an army which had nothing 
 whatever to do with it. The truth is, 
 that by an analysis of this kind we may 
 prove that Achilleus was mad, but we 
 can never show that his character was 
 either common, or even known amf^ng 
 the Achaians. We have no right to 
 say that the sufferings of Agamemnon 
 were not at the least equal to those of 
 Achilleus, and we are surely treating 
 him most unfairly if we say that his 
 apology 'comes first in his faltering 
 speech' given in B. xix. 67. If there 
 he says — 
 
 ^i|/ IG^Ka api(rai ^SfievalT" airepeitri' &Troiya, 
 
 he had said precisely the same thing 
 in II. ix. 120, &c. and there also con- 
 fesses that he had been infatuated. In 
 
 fact, Mr. Gladstone is furnishing con- 
 clusive evidence in proof of the assertion 
 that the writer of the nineteenth book 
 knew nothing of the ninth. But it is 
 hard to yield a self-chosen position ; and 
 Mr. Gladstone therefore holds that the 
 apology of the nineteenth book is a valid 
 atonement, although it is, word for 
 word, the same as that which is con- 
 tained in the ninth. The very fact that 
 Achilleus is so ready, and even eager, 
 to visit on the whole army the sin of 
 the individual Agamemnon, shows how 
 utterly destitute his character is of real 
 patriotism. If anything more were 
 needed to exhibit the falsity of such 
 critical methods, it would be furnished 
 by Colonel Mure's remarks that the aim 
 of Homer is not to show, with Mr. 
 Gladstone, the justice of the cause of 
 Achilleus, but to prove that both he and 
 Agamemnon were utterly in the wrong 
 {Orit. Hist. Gr. Lit. vol. i. p. 277). 
 Both sides in his judgment are equally 
 deserving of blame : the one must 
 be punished, the other convinced 
 of his folly. This is the result 
 of taking Homer to be a moral philo- 
 sopher or teacher who, to adopt Mr. 
 Gladstone's favourite Horatian motto, 
 tells us all about human life and duty 
 much better than Chrysippos and Kran- 
 tor. Indeed, there seems to be no limit 
 to violent interpretations of the text of 
 Homer, if any such hypothesis is to be 
 entertained. It is Mr. Gladstone's be- 
 lief that the last book of the Iliad was 
 added to show that Achilleus ' must 
 surrender the darling object of his 
 desire, the wreaking of his vengeance 
 on an inanimate corpse' {Homer, cfc, 
 iii. 396). His ambition might, perhaps, 
 have been more dignified ; but such as 
 it was, it had surely been gratified 
 
262 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK lliat feeling of repulsion which Mr. Dasent openly avows for 
 
 I 
 
 the Greek mythology, and which he also feels in part for the 
 Teutonic' In either case, this moral indignation is thrown 
 away. There was daubtless quite enough evil in the cha- 
 racter of the Northman and the Greek ; but it never would 
 have assumed that aspect which is common to the heroes of 
 their epic poetry. We look in vain in the pages of ac- 
 knowledged contemporary writers for an instance of the 
 same unbounded wrath arising from a cause which the 
 Achaian would be rather disposed to treat too lightly, of an 
 inaction which cares not though all around him die, of a 
 bloody vengeance on meaner enemies when his great foe has 
 been vanquished, of the awful sacrifice of human victims, — a 
 sacrifice completely alien to the general character of the 
 Achaians, so far as they are known to us historically. But 
 every one of these characteristics is at once exhaustively 
 explained, when they are compared with those of all the 
 other great legendary heroes. The grave attempt to judge 
 them by a reference to the ordinary standard of Greek, or 
 rather of Christian and modern morality, has imparted to the 
 criticism of Colonel Mure an air almost of burlesque. In 
 his analysis of the Iliad, the motives which sway AchiUeus 
 are taken to pieces as seriously as if he were examining the 
 conduct of Themistokles or Archidamos. It might be well 
 to speak of the ' defective principles of heroic morality,'^ of 
 the sarcasms of Achilleus against Agamemnon in the first 
 book as 'unwarranted at this stage of the discussion,'^ of 
 the ' respectful deference to the sovereign will of Agamem- 
 non ' as a duty ' inculcated by the poet ' and ' scrupulously 
 fulfilled by the other chiefs,' ^ if the poet were telling us of a 
 
 already. If lie -was not contented with phaistos, wields a spear (guaranteed 
 
 tying the body to his chariot wheels and never to miss its mark) against an 
 
 dragging it about till every feature was enemy who, acknowledging his inferio- 
 
 disfigured, what more did he want ? rity, yet faces him from the high motive 
 
 The whole of this moral criticism of of patriotism and duty, and whom he is 
 
 epical characters is altogether out of unable to overcome except by the aid of 
 
 place ; and such criticism can be applied Athene and after he has been deserted 
 
 least of all as a means of determining by ApoUon. Such a condition of things 
 
 national character to the hero who hes altogether beyond the range of 
 
 (in order to beat Hektor, in every re- Ethics, 
 
 spect, as Mr. Gladstone asserts, his in- ' See page 62. 
 
 ferior) is made invulnerable like Baldur ' Crit. Hist. Gr. lAt. vol. i. p. 275. 
 
 and Eustem in nil parts but the heel, • lb. p. 277. 
 
 and, clad in armour wrought by He- * lb. p. 276. 
 
HOMEEIC CHAEACTEES. 263 
 
 struggle not witli gods and heroes, Amazons and AitMopians, CHAP. 
 
 but carried on after the sober and prosy fashion of the Trojan 
 war of Thucydides. Colonel Mure lays great stress on the 
 'ethic unity' with which the incidental references to the 
 early death of Achilleus invest the whole poem, and he finds 
 a deep ' knowledge of human nature ' ' in the adaptation to 
 each other of the characters of the hero and his friend,' 
 where Mr. Grote sees little more than a reflection.' But his 
 anxiety to exalt the character of Achilleus has led him, in 
 one instance of no slight moment, to vilify unduly that of 
 his antagonist. ' The proudest exploit of Hektor, his 
 slaughter and spoliation of Patroklos, is so described as to 
 be conspicuous only for its ferocity. The Greek hero, after 
 being disabled by ApoUon, is mortally wounded by another 
 Trojan, when Hektor steps in with the finishing blow, as his 
 butcher rather than conqueror.' ^ The remark is simply dis- 
 ingenuous. The incidents of the slaughter of Patroklos by 
 Hektor are essentially identical with incidents attending the 
 death of Hektor by the hands of Achilleus, and where there 
 is any diiference, it lies- in the additional ferocity and bru- 
 tality of the latter. If it be to the disparagement of Hektor 
 that he should have the aid of a god, the poet is not less 
 careful in saying that Achilleus could not slay Hektor until 
 Phoibos ApoUon had deserted him. But if Colonel Mure 
 anxiously seeks out apologies for the wrath,' the inaction, 
 and the furious revenge of the hero, his criticism utterly fails 
 to explain the very incidents which seem most deeply to have 
 impressed him. It does not explain why he should choose 
 inaction as the particular mode of avenging himself against 
 Agamemnon.* It does not show why during his absence 
 ' the gods had, at his own request, decreed victory to Hektor, 
 rout and slaughter to the Greeks,' ^ why in him ' no affection 
 
 ' History of Greece, vol. ii. p. 238. actual dweller in the visible sun. He 
 
 ^ Grit. Hist. Gr. Lit. vol. i. p. 282. could not well apply such a phrase even 
 
 ' lb. p. 284. to Phoibos, and with Achilleus, Odys- 
 
 ' When Helios complains to Zeus sens, Perseus, Meleagros, and other 
 
 (Od. xii. 383) of the slaughter of his heroes, the memory of the old phrases 
 
 sacred cattle by Eurylochos and his has been still further weakened ; but the 
 
 comrades, hie threat is that if justice is voluntary and sullen inaction of such 
 
 not done to him, he will leave his place heroes answers precisely to the hiding 
 
 in heaven and go and shine among the of Helios in the dark land of Hades. 
 
 dead. But Helios was to the poet the ' Crit. Hist. Gr. Lit. vol. i. p. 288. 
 
 XI. 
 
264 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 T. 
 
 The cha- 
 racter of 
 Odjbseus. 
 
 amiable or tlie reverse ' should ' exist but in overpowering 
 excess,' — why he should be ' soothed by the fulfilment of his 
 duties as mourner,' why the games should ' usher in an 
 agreeable change,' or why ' we should part with Achilleus at 
 the moment best calculated to exalt and purify our impres- 
 sion of his character.'^ Still less does it explain why, before 
 the final struggle, the gods should be let loose to take which- 
 ever side they might prefer. Colonel Mure seems to imply 
 that they were all sent to take the part of the Trojans.' Mr. 
 Grote, with a far keener discernment of the character of this 
 part of the poem, insists that 'that which chiefly distin- 
 guishes these books is the direct, incessant, and manual 
 intervention of the gods and goddesses, formally permitted 
 by Zeus, and the repetition of vast and fantastic conceptions 
 to which each superhuman agency gives occasion, not omit- 
 ting the battle of Achilles against Skamander and Simois, 
 and the burning up of these rivers by Hephsestus.' In his 
 judgment this interference mars the poem and ' somewhat 
 vulgarises ' the gods.'' But while he thinks that the poet 
 has failed in a task where success was impossible, he has not 
 explained why the poet should feel himself compelled to un- 
 dertake it. 
 
 But if Mr. Gladstone strains every nerve to save the cha- 
 racter of Achilleus, Colonel Mure is not less zealous in behalf 
 of the chieftain of Ithaka. If AehiUeus 'represents the 
 grandeur of the heroic character as reflected in the very 
 excess of its noblest attributes,' Odysseus, in his belief, re- 
 presents its virtue, possessing as he does, in greater number 
 and in higher degree than any other chief, the qualities 
 which in that age constituted the accomplished king and 
 citizen.'^ The matter is brought to a plain issue. The 
 Odyssey is ' a rich picture-gallery of human life as it existed 
 in that age and country,' ^ and we are to see in Odysseus a 
 favourable specimen of the manners and habits of his people. 
 It is quite possible, by Colonel Mure's method, so to repre- 
 sent him. But if we speak of him as one whose ' habitual 
 
 ' Ont. Hist. Gr. Lit. vol. i. p. 289. 
 ' lb. p. 291. 
 ' lb. p. 287. 
 
 * History of Greecf, vol. ii. p. 264. 
 ' Crit. Hist. Gr. Lit. vol. i. p. 391. 
 » lb. p. 389. 
 
ODYSSEUS. 265 
 
 prudence was modified, or even at times overcome, by his CHAP. 
 
 thirst for glory, and by an eager pursuit of the marvelous,' ' ^. ^ — • 
 
 — if we say that he never uttered an untruth or practised a 
 mancBuvre for a base object,^ — if we speak of him as incul- 
 cating in his adventures ' the duty incumbent on the most 
 vigorous minds not only to resist but to avoid temptation,' ' 
 are we really speaking of the Odysseus of the Homeric poet ? 
 If such a method may account for some features in his 
 character, will it in the least explain his character as bound 
 up with the whole structure of the poem ? Will it not leave 
 the groundwork of the tale and its issue a greater mystery 
 than ever? Will it explain why Odysseus, like Herakles 
 and Philoktetes, should use poisoned arrows'* — why, without 
 scruple, he should tell lies while he desires to remain un- 
 recognised, why he should never depart from the truth when 
 speaking in his own character — why he hesitates not to lurk 
 in ambush for an unarmed man^ and stab him behind his 
 back and speak of the deed without shame — why he should 
 wish to pry into everything in heaven or on earth, or 
 in the dark land beneath the earth — why nothing less than 
 the slaughter of all his enemies will satiate a wrath not 
 much more reasonable than that of Achilleus ? Still more 
 wlU it explain why Penelope weaves and unweaves her web,* 
 
 ' Crit. Hist. Gr. Lit. vol. i. p. 393. glassy case (of ice), and whose touch at 
 
 * Ih. p. 395. once calls her back to life, as the prince's 
 ' lb. p. 403. kiss awakens Dornroechen. This glass 
 
 * Odi/ssey, i. 263. Dr. Thirlwall coiEn answers to the hammer of Thor, 
 {^History of Greece^ vol, i. p. 182) refers like which, when placed on the magic 
 to this passage as showing the ' manifest stone, it rises thr ugh the floors to the 
 disapprobation ' of the poet. It is, at upper air ; and the case, when opened, 
 the ipiist, very faintly expressed. Zeus, expands into a magnificent castle. In 
 possibly as being above law, gives the the story of the Spindle, the Shuttle, and 
 poison, and Athene sees no harm in his the Needle, these instruments of the 
 so doing. craft of Penelope bring a wooer home 
 
 ' Odyssmi, xiii. 260. for the orphan maiden, who, like Cin- 
 
 * The Dawn as weaving or spinning derella, becomes the wife of the king. It 
 is the subject of many Teutonic legends, is almost unnecessary to say that in a 
 In the story of Ejimpelstiltskin, the vast number of stories in which the 
 poor miller has a daughter who can spin princesses are confessedly Dawn-mai- 
 straw into gold, and the sequel of the dens, they are known especially as the 
 tale makes her, of course, the king's weavers, and weavers, like Penelope, 
 
 bride. The idea once suggested was of sarks for their fathers or their bro- 
 
 naturally applied also to the sun, who, thers. Thus Snow White and Rosy 
 
 as weaving his robe of clouds, becomes Eed, in the story of the Twelve "Wild 
 
 the Valiant Tailor who, in the story of Ducks (Dasont), is alwuys sewing at the 
 
 the Glass Coffin, finds the beautiful shirts for her twelve brothers (the 
 
 maiden sleeping like the dead in her months), who have been thus trans- 
 
266 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 How 
 
 far was 
 the charac- 
 ter of 
 Odysseus 
 a creation 
 of the 
 Homeric 
 poet. 
 
 — why, when Odysseus returns, she is restored by Athene 
 (the daughter of the Sky, the Dawn who makes the world 
 young), to all her early loveliness,' while on him rests once 
 more all the splendour of his ancient majesty, — why the 
 nurse who recognises him should be Eurykleia,^and the maiden 
 who reviles him should be Melantho,* — why his dog Argos, 
 although forsaken and untended, still retains something of his 
 noble qualities and at once recognises his old master'' — why, 
 when Penelope wishes to speak with him on his return, she is 
 charged to wait until the evening ® — why, in his wanderings 
 he should fio-ht not so much with human enemies as with 
 mighty beings and monsters of the earth and sea- — ^why his 
 long voyage and the time of gloomy disguise should be fol- 
 lowed by a triumph so fuU. of blood, ending with a picture of 
 such serene repose ? 
 
 In truth, the character of Odysseus was not, in any greater 
 degree than that of Achilleus, an original creation of the 
 Homeric poet. In all its main features it came down ready 
 to his hand. His wisdom is the wisdom of Athene, and 
 Prometheus, and Medeia, of lamos and Asklepios and 
 Melampous : his craft is the craft of Hermes, his keen 
 sagacity is the piercing eye of Helios or of Odin, and 
 from Hermes comes the strange inquisitiveness which must 
 pry into everything that he comes across in his path.^ If 
 he uses poisoned arrows, it is not because Achaian chieftains 
 were in the habit of using them, but because the weapons 
 
 formed. The princess rescued by Short- 
 shanks also sits and sews. In the story 
 of the Best Wish, the instruments for 
 performing her work are supplied by 
 Boots, whose scissors, plied in the air, 
 bring to light all kinds of beautiful 
 shapes, as the clouds and the earth are lit 
 up by the rising sun. Nor is the Doll in 
 the Grass (Dasent) less expert, though 
 the sark which she weaves and sews is 
 ' so tiny tiny little.' Most or all of these 
 stories have their counterpart in the 
 German and Celtic folklore. The ex- 
 ploits of the Valiant Tailor of the 
 German stories are repeated in the 
 Gaelic story of Mac-a-Eusgaich (Camp- 
 bell, ii. 307) which reproduces the Norse 
 tale of Boots who ate a match with the 
 Troll. (Dasent.) 
 
 ' Od. xviii. 192. 
 
 ^ lb. xvii. 31. In the name of her 
 father Autolykos we have again the 
 same word which gave rise to the story 
 of Lyk&fin, and to the meaning which 
 .iEschylos attached to the name of 
 Phoibos Lykeios, or Lykegenfes, the 
 child of light. 
 
 * Ih. xviii. 321. We see the process 
 by which the force of the old mythical 
 language was weakened and lost, when 
 the poet speaks of Melantho as xaKM- 
 Trdprjos. 
 
 *' lb. xvii. 300. 
 
 ' lb. xvii. 682. 
 
 " This inquisitiveness is specially seen 
 in the episodes of the Kyklops and the 
 Seirens. 
 
THE CHARACTER OF ODYSSEUS. '2Q7 
 
 of Herakles were steeped in venom and the robe of Medeia CHAP. 
 
 scorclied the body of Glauk^ : if he submits to be tha» lover of >. ^ - 
 
 Kirk^ and Kalypso, it is because Achilleus solaced himself 
 with Diomede for the loss of Briseis, and Herakles awhile 
 forgot his sorrows in the house of D^ianeira. If he can be 
 a secret stabber, it is not because the heroic ideal could stoop 
 to such baseness, but because Phoibos can smite secretly as 
 well as slay openly, and because it matters not whether the 
 victim be but one man or the fifty who fall by the spear of 
 Bellerophon. If at the end he smites all his enemies, it is 
 not because they have committed an offence which, according 
 to the standard of the age, would deserve such punishment, 
 but because the wrath of Achilleus could be appeased only 
 by the blood of his enemies, as the blazing sun tramples on 
 the dark clouds beneath his feet. We may be well assured 
 that such as these were not the habits of the men who dwelt 
 at Tiryns or in Ithaka — that such as these were not the 
 characteristics of the chieftains who dwelt in Mykenai. But 
 if the character of Odysseus is not strictly Achaian, so, like 
 that of Achilleus, it is not, in strictness of speech, human. 
 Mr. Grote has truly said that the aim of the poet is not ethical 
 or didactic either in the Iliad or in the Odyssey;' and an 
 examination of the latter poem scatters to the winds all 
 fancies which see in Odysseus an image of the Christian 
 warrior fighting the good fight of &ith, yet yearning for his 
 rest in heaven.^ The ideal is indeed magnificent, and it 
 has never been more magnificently realised, but it is not 
 the ideal either of Christianity or even of humanity ; it is 
 the life of the sun. At the outset of his return from the 
 east, Odysseus has to encounter superhuman foes ; and 
 the discomfiture of the Kyklops rouses the wrath of the 
 sea-god Poseidon, as the clouds rise from the waters and 
 curl round the rising sun. StiU Zeus is on his side, and 
 
 ' History of Greece, vol. ii. p. 278. thology. The wrath of beings like 
 
 Horace draws but a feeble moral when Achilleus and Odysseus must be wido- 
 
 he says of the Iliad — spreading and indiscriminate. The 
 
 Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur clouds and winds take no heed of man. 
 
 Achivi. Ep. i. 2, 14. ^ For a minute working out of this 
 
 But that this should be the case is per- view see Isaac Williams, Christian 
 
 fectly explained by the growth of my- Scholar, p. 115. 
 
2GS MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Poseidon Mmself shall not be able to cut short bis course,' 
 
 . , though all his comrades should faU bj the way, as the 
 
 morning clouds may be scattered before the noonday. But 
 while he moves steadily towards his home, that home is 
 dark and gloomy. From it the sun is still far distant, and 
 only from time to time a faint reflected light is shed upon 
 it as Telemachos strives to maintain the honour of his 
 father's house.^ So Penelope remains quiet in her home. 
 Forbidding forms crowd around her, but her purity remains 
 unsullied. The web begun is never ended ; the fairy tracery 
 of cirri clouds is blotted out from the sty every night, and 
 must be wrought again during the coming day. There are 
 others too who have not forgotten the hero, and Eurykleia 
 strives to retain Telemachos, when he would go forth to 
 seek his father.^ But he cannot stay. The slant rays 
 vanish from the sky, and the house of Laertes is shadowed 
 with deeper gloom. Meanwhile Odysseus is hastening on. 
 For awhile he tarries with Kirke and Kalypso, and makes 
 a longer sojourn in the house of Alkinoos, even as Sigurd 
 abode long time in the house of Gunnar. The Phaiakian 
 chieftain would have him stay for ever. His land is as fair 
 
 ' The influence of Polyph^mos on the events which he recounts is not the se- 
 
 fortunes of Odysseus strangely perplexes queuce of any human life, but the career 
 
 Colonel Mure, who sees in it the chief of Phoibos and Daphne, Perseus and 
 
 defect of the Orfysssy, as interfering with Andromeda. In short, the Kyklops is 
 
 the 'retributive equity' which he fancies the son of Poseidon, originally a god of 
 
 that he finds in the Iliad. ' No reader the air — in other words, the exhalaticne 
 
 of taste or judgment,' he thinks, ' can which form themselves into the hideous 
 
 fail to experience in its penisal a certain storm-clouds, through which the sun 
 
 feehug of impatience, not only that the sometimes glares down like a huge eye 
 
 destiiiies of a blameless hero and an in- in the midst of the black forehead of the 
 
 nocent woman, but that any important giant. Mr. Kelly, therefore, mistakes 
 
 trains of events, should hinge on so of- the eye wliich really belongs to the sun 
 
 fensive a mechanism as the blind aflfec- for the Kyklops himself, when he says, 
 
 tion of a mighty deity for so odious a 'The Greek mythology shows us a whole 
 
 monster as Polyphemus.' — Crit. Hist, people of suns in the Cyclops, giants 
 
 Gr. Lit. vol. ii. p. 151. The real quea- with one eye round as a wheel in their 
 
 tion to be answered was how the mighty foreheads.' He is right in adding that 
 
 deity came to be the father of the odious 'they were akin to the heavenly giants, 
 
 monster. As, according to the myth, he and dwelt with the Phaeacians, the na- 
 
 was his father, there was nothing un- vigators of the cloud sea in the broad 
 
 natural in attributing to Poseid6n the Hyperia, the upper land, i. e. heaven, 
 
 affection of a parent for his offspring, until the legend transplanted them both 
 
 But, in truth, nothing could show more to the Western horizon.' -/»&)-£"'('?"'«» 
 
 clearly than these words Colonel Mure's Folk-lore, p. 32. 
 
 inability to enter fairly into the spirit of ^ The merely secondary character of 
 
 Gretk mythology. It was simply im- Telemachos has been already noticed, 
 
 possible that the poet could make use of p. 247. 
 aijy other mechanism. The train of ' Od. ii. 365. 
 
THE RETURN OP ODYSSEUS. 269 
 
 as summer : but tlie sun may not tarry, and Odysseus cannot CHAP. 
 
 abide tbere, even with Nausikaa. So lie hastens home, ^-^ — 
 
 sometimes showing his might, as the sun breaks for a 
 moment through a rift in the clouds ; but the darkness is 
 greatest when he lands on his own shores. He is sur- 
 rounded by enemies and spies, and he takes refuge in craft 
 and falsehood.' The darkness itself must aid him to win 
 the victory, and Athene takes all beauty from his face, and 
 all brightness from his golden hair.^ These ideas, with 
 all the others which had come down to him as a fruitful 
 heritage from, the language of his remote forefathers, the 
 Homeric poet might recombine or develope ; but if he brought 
 him to Ithaka under a cloud, he could not but say that 
 Athene took away his glory, while yet his dog Argos, the 
 same hound who couches at the feet of Artemis or drives the 
 herds of the sun to their pastures, knows his old master 
 in all his squaUd raiment, and dies for joy at seeing him.' 
 When on his return Telemachos asks whether the bridal 
 couch of Odysseus is covered with spiders' webs, he could 
 not but say in reply that Penelope still remained faithful to 
 her early love;'' and when Telemachos is once more to see 
 his father, he could not but make Athene restore him to 
 more than his ancient beauty.* So the man of many toils 
 and wanderings returns to his home,^ only to find that his 
 son is unable to rule his house,^ as Phaethon and Patroklos 
 were alike unable to guide the horses of Helios. Still 
 Penelope is fair as Artemis or Aphrodite,' although Melan- 
 tho and Melanthios," the black children of the crafty (Dolios) 
 Mght, strive to dash her life with gloom, and Odysseus 
 stands a squalid beggar in his own hall.'" Thenceforth the 
 poet's path was still more distinctly marked. He must 
 make the arm of Odysseus irresistible," he must make 
 Athene aid him in storing up weapons for the conflict,'^ as 
 
 ' Odyss. xiii. 255, k.t.X. clouds. 
 
 2 T&jrf.xii. 431. The language adheres » Odyss. -xVii. Z2T . *Ibid.xvi.35. 
 
 even more closely to the myth. His - ' Ihid. xvi. 175. 
 locks are actually destroyed, ° Itn'd. i. 2 ; xvi. 205. 
 
 iaveh, Ik K.<^aX?s S^e^ rplxas ■ [ f «• ^".•. 256- !J%f^^^'- "• 
 
 * , Jhid. xvu. 212; xviii. 320. 
 
 Those which she gave him when she '» Ibid. xvii. 363. " Ibid, xviii. 95. 
 
 restored his heauty would he strictly " Ibid. xix. 33. 
 
 the new rays bursting from behind the 
 
270 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK Thetis brought the armour of Hephaistos to Achilleus, and 
 
 I 
 
 Hjordis that of Eegin to Sigurd. He must make Penelop^ 
 tell how often she had woven and undone her web while he 
 tarried so long away.' When Penelope asks tidings of 
 Odysseus, the poet could not but give an answer in which the 
 flash of gold and blaze of purple carries us directly to the 
 arming of Achilleus.^ As Eurykleia, the old nurse, tends 
 him at the bath, he must make her recognise the wound 
 made by the wild boar,' who wrought the death of the fair 
 Adonis, and teU how her foster-child came to be called 
 Odysseus.* Then, as the day of doom is ushered in, he 
 must relate how as the lightning flashed from the sky* 
 the rumour went abroad that the chieftain was come again 
 to his home. So Penelop^ takes down the bow which 
 Iphitos, the mighty, had given to Odysseus,^ and bids the 
 suitors stretch it ; but they cannot, and there is no need that 
 Telemachos should waste his strength now that his father has 
 come home.' Then follows the awful tragedy. Zeus must 
 thunder as the beggar seizes the bow.' The suitors begin to 
 fall beneath the unerring arrows ; but the victory is not to be 
 won without a struggle. Telemachos has left the chamber 
 door ajar and the enemy arm themselves with the weapons 
 which they flnd there.' It is but another version of the 
 battle which Achilleus fought with Skamandros and Simoeis 
 in the war of elements ; and as then the heart of Achilleus 
 almost failed him, so wavers now the courage of Odysseus.'" 
 For a moment the dark clouds seem to be gaining mastery over 
 
 ' Od. xix. 140. PenelopS is the mere images or figments of the mind, 
 
 weaver of the web (ittji/t)) of cirri clouds. They were downright realities, for they 
 
 Mr. Kelly, summing up the general were seen by men who were quick to 
 
 characteristics of Aryan mythology, see, and who had not yet learned to 
 
 says 'Light clouds were webs spun and suspect any collusion between their eyes 
 
 woven by celestial women, who also and their fancy.' — Curiosities of Indo- 
 
 drew water from the fountains on high European Tradition and Folk-lore, p. 8. 
 
 and poured it down as rain. The ^ Od. xix. 225, 
 
 yellowlight gleaming through the clouds ' Ihid. xix. 393. 
 
 was their golden hair. A fast-scudding ■• Ibid. xix. 201. The origin of this 
 
 cloud was a horse flying from its name, as of so many others, is wrongly 
 
 pursuers. . . In all this and much more accounted for. The same confusion 
 
 of the same kind, there was not yet an was at work here, which changed 
 
 atom of that symbolism which has com- Lyk^on into a wolf, and KaUisto into a 
 
 monly been assumed as the starting- bear. 
 
 point of all mythology. The mythic « Od. xx. 105. • Ihid. xxi. 5. 
 
 animals, for example, were, for those ' Ibid. xxi. 130. * Ibid. xxi. 413. 
 
 who first gave them their names, no • Ibid. xxii. 141. '» Ibid. xxii. 147. 
 
THE CONFLICT WITH THE SUITORS. 271 
 
 the sun. But Athene comes to his aid ' as before she had CHAP. 
 
 XI 
 come to help Achilleus, and the arrows of the suitors, are in _ .^ - 
 
 vain aimed at the hero,^ although Telemachos is wounded/ 
 though not to the death, like Patroklos. Tet more, Athene 
 must show her Aigis,^ dazzling as the face of the unclouded 
 sun ; and when the victory is won, the corpses of the slain 
 must be thrust away,^ like the black vapours driven from 
 the sky. Only for Melanthios he reserves the full measure 
 of indignity which AchiUeus wreaked on the body of the 
 dead Hektor.^ Then foUows the recognition in which, 
 under another form, Prokris again meets Kephalos, and lole 
 once more rejoices the heart of Herakles. For a little while 
 the brightness rests on Laertes, and the old man's limbs 
 again grow strong ; but the strength comes from Athen^.' 
 
 Whatever light the progress of Comparative Mythology The dis- 
 may hereafter throw on the growth of Aryan epic poetry, o^'sg^us 
 one conclusion, at the least, is forced upon us by this not 
 analysis, and Odysseus is found to be as much and as little 
 an Achaian chieftain as Achilleus or Meleagros. The poems 
 may remain a mine of wealth for all who seek to find in 
 them pictures and manners of the social life of a pre-historie 
 age ; but all the great chiefs are removed beyond a criticism, 
 which starts with attributing to them the motives which 
 influence mankind under any circumstances whatsoever. 
 
 ' Odi/ss. xxii. 205. ^ Ibid. xxii. 257. ' Ibid. xxii. 277. * Md. xxii. 297. 
 ' IHd. xxii. 460. « Snd. xxii. 475. ' Ibid. xxiv. 367. 
 
272 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAJST NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 MYTHICAL PHRASES AS FURNISHING MATERIALS FOR THE THU- 
 TONIO EPIC POEMS, AND THE LEGENDS OP ARTHUR AND 
 ROLAND. 
 
 BOOK 
 I, 
 
 Points of 
 likeness 
 hftween 
 the Greek 
 and Teu- 
 tonic epics. 
 
 The results obtained from an examination of Greek epic 
 poetry, so far as it has come down to ns, 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 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 chai-aeter 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 already made 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 suUenness, whether of the one hero or the 
 other, were impressed upon each by a necessity which no 
 
LIKENESS BETWEEN GREEK AND TEUTONIC EPICS. 273 
 
 poet could resist, and tliat these conclusions are proved by CHAP, 
 the evidence, overwhelming in its amount, which sho'ys that . ^^^' . 
 Achilleus and Odysseus are reflections 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 heroes 
 resolves itself into the cloudland of heaven with its never 
 ceasing changes, we are at once justified in thinking that 
 the history 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 aU 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 Hiad and Odyssey are pictures of actual Achaian chief- 
 tains. When we find further that the action in each case 
 turns on the possession of a beautiful woman and the trea- 
 sures 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 mate- 
 rials 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 The Vol- 
 or the son of Odin, his father Eerir and his grandfather ^^"^ ^*^®- 
 Sigi being the only 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 ' por- 
 tends their future greatness and their early end ; and as we 
 read further of the sword which is left for the strongest in 
 
 ' So in the Hindu popxilar story, not be born, upon which his mother 
 
 ■Vikramaditya(thechildof Aditi.Kronos. stabbed herself. But the tragic event 
 
 or the Dawn-laud of the East), is the duly happening during the ninth month, 
 
 son of Gaudharba-sena. When his Vikramaditya came into the world by 
 
 sire died, his grandfather, the deity himself.' — Burton, Tales of Indian 
 
 India, resolved that ' the babe should Devilry, preface, p. xv. 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
274 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK the rooftree 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,' 
 is Odin, the lord of the air, who in Teutonic mythology is like 
 the Kyklops, oue-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, do 
 Siggeir, the husband of Yolsung'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,^ 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 Eoland, and 
 Sigmund thus becomes, like AchiUeus, 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 Hera- 
 kleidai. 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 dark- 
 ness or as smitten by their deadly weapons ; and thus ia the 
 defeat of Sigmund we have an incident belonging as strictly 
 
 • This tree grows through the roof of heroes ai-e taught by Cheiron. He 
 
 the hall and spreads its branches far and wears the invisible helmet, and like 
 
 wide in the upper air. It is manifestly many or most mythical champions, can 
 
 the counterpart of Yggdrasil. be wounded only in one part of his 
 
 " The Sigmund of Beowulf and the body. If again Fafnir, when dying by 
 
 Volsung Tale bears a name which is an his hand, tells him of the things which 
 
 epithet of Odin, the giver of victory, shall happen hereafter, we must remem- 
 
 He is drawn by Begin from the trunk ber that the Pythian dragon ' guarded 
 
 of a poplar tree, he is loved by the the oracle of Delphi.— Grimm, Deutsche 
 
 Valkyrie Brynhild, and instructed by Mythologw, 343. 
 the wise Gripir, as AchiUeus and other 
 
THE SAGA OF THE VOLSUNGS. 275 
 
 -fco the solar myth as the victory of Achilleus over Hektor, CHAP, 
 or the slaughter of the Sphinx by Oidipous. It could* not be ' - 
 
 otherwise. Odin and Phoibos live while Baldur and Askle- 
 pios 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 PolydektSs 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 ; Sigmimd himself is saved by his 
 sister Signy, and with bis 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 Siggeir's followers are the 
 suitors who eat up the substance of Sigmund, 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, bum up Siggeir 
 and aU 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 foUows atime 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 ApoUon 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 this 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 
 
 T 2 
 
276 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK die on tlie battle-field. But lole stood hj the funeral pile 
 , ^- of Herakles, and Sigmund dies in the arms of his young 
 wife Hjordis, youthful as Daphne or Arethousa, ' refusing all 
 leechcraft and bowing his head to Odin's will,' as in the 
 Trojan myth Paris cannot be healed even though Oinon^ 
 would gladly save him. 
 The Story So ends the first act of the great drama ; but the wheel 
 igui . j^^g ^^^^^ ^^ make another turn, and bring back the same 
 series of events with slight differences of names and colour- 
 ing. 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 
 Hialprek, 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 reflections of 
 Vritra, the being who vsraps all things in the veU of dark- 
 ness. Sigurd himself is the favourite hero of northern tra- 
 dition. 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 ; Pafnir 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 connection between Begin, the mysterious smith of King 
 Hialprek, and the dra,gon Fafnir, which cannot be traced 
 between Hephaistos and the Delphian Python, but which is 
 fully explained by the differences of a northern and a medi- 
 • teiTanean climate. In the Norse story, there is enmity 
 between Fafnir and Begin, 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 Begin belongs.' Eegia, 
 
 • "The dwarfs of Teutonic mythology but the contrivance and wonderful pro- 
 are distinguished from its giants, because perties present in the mineral and 
 they do not, like the latter, represent vegetable kingdoms, and shown in form 
 the wild and lawless energies of nature, and shape, in colour and growth, in 
 
EEGm AND FAFNIE. 277 
 
 in short, is one of that class of beings who supply warmth CHAP, 
 and vigour to all living things ; Fafnir is the simple darkness >.- , "-- 
 ■or cold, which is the mere negation of life and light.* Hence 
 from Begin comes the bidding 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 darkness : 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 beautiful 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 Eegin, 
 and a son of Eeidmar, in whose house the three gods ask 
 shelter, showing at the same time their spoil. At Eeidmar's 
 bidding 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 glisten- 
 ing treasure which has been taken away when Persephone 
 was stolen from her mother D^m^ter and BrynhUd 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 to give up the golden treasures which he had 
 hoarded in the stony caves, whose ice-like walls answer to 
 the dismal den of the Vedic Panis. One ring alone Andvari 
 seeks to keep. It is the source of all his wealth, and ring 
 after ring drops from it. He wishes, in other words, to keep 
 
 various hurtful or useful qualities.' ficance in our word Zwerch, as equivalent 
 
 Bunsen ( God in History, ii. 484), to quer, wicked or cross, tlie intellectual 
 
 lightly adds, 'The word must be a application of which has survived 
 
 simple Teutonic one, and we most likely in the English queer.' 
 come on the traces of its primary signi- 
 
278 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK his hold of the summer itself as represented by the symbol of 
 ^. ^ — the reproductive power in nature. The ring is the magic neck- 
 lace of Harmonia and Eriphyle, the kestos of Aphrodite, the 
 ship of Tsis and Athen^, 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,' 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 Eeidmar. 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 Odin 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 ^sir 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 Eeidmar, who is slain by Eegin 
 and Fafnir, because he refuses to share with them the gold 
 which he had received from the JEsir. The same cause 
 makes Eegin 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, Eegin beseeches Sigurd to smite the dragon; but 
 even Sigurd cannot do this without a sword of sufEcient 
 temper. Eegin forges two, but the blades of both are 
 shivered at the first stroke. Sigurd exclaims bitterly that 
 the weapons are untrue, like Eegin and aU his race, — a phrase 
 which points with singular clearness to the difference between 
 the subterranean 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 
 
 ' This ring reappears with precisely Europe ; and it is absurd to suppose 
 the same qualities and consequences tliat sucli a series of incidents was eon- 
 in many of the sagas of Northern stantly recurring in actual histoiy. 
 
Sigurd's victories. 279 
 
 pieces remain in the keeping of Hjordis, the mother of CHAP. 
 
 Sigurd, and thns the wife of Sigmnnd plays here precisely 
 the part of Thetis. In each case the weapons witlf which 
 the hero is to win his victory come through the mother, and 
 in each case they 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 Begin 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 en- 
 counter the guardian of the earth's treasures. But no 
 sooner is the Dragon slain than Eegin 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 Paf- 
 nir's blood, Eegin Hes 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 Eegin's head, 
 take possession of all his gold. This is manifestly the legend 
 of lamos and Melampous, while the wisdom obtained by eat- 
 ing the heart of Pafnir has a further connection with the 
 Python as the guardian of the Delphic oracle.' 
 
 ' Giimm regards the words Python possessor of the ring hoard which he 
 and Fafnir as standing to each other in may enjoy at pleasure. Like the Norse 
 the relation of eiip and ^-lip. 'Die Sigurd, Sigmnnd is 'of wanderers by 
 Erlegung des Drachen FAfnir gemahnt far the greatest throughout the human 
 an TliSaiv, den Apollo besiegte, und wie race : ' he is, in short, the Odysseus who 
 Python das delfische Orakel hiitete, wanders very far over many lands, after 
 weissagtdersterbendeFafnir.' — Deutsche the fall of Ilion, which again answers 
 Mythologw, 345. In the lay of Beowulf to the slaying of the dragon. The 
 this serpent or dragon appears under the Fitela of Beowulf is clearly the Sinfiotli 
 name Grendel ; and, in fact, the whole of the Volsung tale. For some remarks 
 story of Sigurd is in that poem related on the comparative antiquity of these 
 substantially, although not with the two legends see Ludlow, Popular Epics 
 same fulness of detail, of Sigmund the of the Middle Ages, i. 41. The sub- 
 father of Beowulf, the "Waelsing, who, stantial identity of the two myths 
 having slain the worm, becomes the renders the question of date of com- 
 
 xn. 
 
280 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK "With this exploit begins the career of Sigurd as Chrysa6r. 
 - ]' . As Achilleus is taught by Cheiron, so is Sigurd instructed 
 The rescue ^1 Gripir, the wise man, and thus in the fulness of wisdom 
 of Bryn- 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 BrynhUd.' No other horse 
 but Gran can leap that wall of fire, no knight but Sigurd 
 can guide him across that awful barrier : but at his touch 
 the maiden is roused from the slumber which had lasted 
 since Odin thrust the thorn of sleep or winter into her cloak, 
 like the Eakshas' 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 
 BrynhUd also has the gift of marvellous wisdom, and as 
 the Teutonic Alrune,^ 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.^ By the latter he had been told that 
 
 paratively little importance. The real hero, Sigurd is the theme of the story 
 
 point for consideration is that these of the 'Prince who was afraid of 
 
 stories are further identical with the Nothing,' and whose fortunes are 
 
 sagas of the three Helgis, and of Baldur, much like those of the deliverer of 
 
 and thus also with the myths of Adonis, Brynhild. 
 
 Dionysos, Sarpedfin, Memnon, and other ^ The Aurinia of Tacitus, GeTm. 8. — 
 
 gods and heroes of Hellenic tradition. Bimsen, God in History, ii. 454. 
 
 In one version, Fafnir predicts that ' With the runes he also receives a 
 
 Sigurd will die drowned. The prophecy great deal of good advice, pointing pre- 
 
 is not fulfilled, but it points clearly to cisely to those features in the myths of 
 
 the myth of Endymion. — Ludlow, Fopu- Phoibos, Helios, Hermes, and Herakles, 
 
 lar Epics, i. 70. which, when translated into the condi- 
 
 ' Brynhild, as we might suppose, tions of human morahty, become faults 
 
 reappears in many Teutonic stories. In or vices ; Helios may burn his enemies 
 
 the story of Strong Hans (Grimm), she without scruple or shame, but Sigurd 
 
 is the chained maiden who is guarded must not do this, nor must he be, like 
 
 by the dwarf (Andvari). When Indra and Paris, yvvmiJiavi)s, nor a liar 
 
 Hans (Sigurd) slays the dwarf, the like Odysseus. The warnings which she 
 
 chains immediately fall off her hands, adds are much of the same sort. 
 
 In the story of the True Bride, the The winter sleep of Brynliild is tra- 
 
 prince is as faithless as Sigurd, but vestied in the later story of Dietrich and 
 
 the princess recovers him in the end Sigenot (Ludlow, Popular Epics, i. 263.) 
 
 with the happier lot of Penelop^. In Dietrich is here the Sigurd or bright hero, 
 
 the story of the Woodcutter's Child the who wears the helmet of Greia whom 
 
 Knight has to cut his way through he has slain, and who is the nephew of 
 
 the thorny hedges, as Sigurd has to ride the giant Sigenot. Sigenot now carries 
 
 through the flames. As the fearless off Dietrich and shuts him up in a hollow 
 
BEYNHILD AND GUNNAE. iiSl 
 
 Brynhild (like Helen) would work Mm much, woe : but CHAP. 
 
 Brynhild doubtless knew not, as Sigurd rode on to the ball 
 of Giuki the JSTiflung, tbat ber place was now to be taken by 
 another, and tbat ber own lot was to be tbat of Ariadne, 
 Aithra, or Oinone. It is tbe old tale, repeated under a 
 thousand different forms. Tbe bright dawn who greeted 
 the newly risen sun cannot be with him as he journeys 
 through the heaven ; and tbe 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 stiU the daughter of the Niflung, the child of tbe mist, 
 and stands to Sigurd precisely in the relation of Deianeira 
 to Herakles, as the unwitting cause of her husband's ruin. 
 But Brynhild yet lives, and Gunnar, who, like Hogni or 
 Hagene, is a son of tbe Mflung and brother of Gudrun, seeks 
 to have ber as his wife. His desire can be satisfied only 
 through Sigurd, who by the arts and philtres of Grimbild 
 has been made to forget bis first love and betroth himself to 
 Gudrun. In vain Gunnar ^ strives to ride through the 
 flames that encircle Brynhild, untU at last, by the arts of 
 Grimbild, Sigurd is made to change shapes and arms with 
 Gunnar, and, mounting on Graui, 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.^ In the morning he gives to Brynhild the ring which 
 
 stone or tower, where, like Eagnar Lod- year, is a sister of the dark Gunnar, and 
 
 •brog, he is attacked hy many a strong though now married to the bright 
 
 worm or serpent — the snakes of night. Sigurd, she belongs herself to the 
 
 One of his followers tries to raise him nebulous regions.' — Max Miiller, Chijps, 
 
 'hj a rope, which breaks, and Dietrich ii. 110. 
 
 tells him that the wounds which he has ^ This incident recurs in Grimm's 
 
 received cannot be healed. Things, story of the Two Brothers. In the 
 
 "however, turn out better than he ex- Norse legend of the Big Bird Dan, who 
 
 pects ; but the one night which he spent is no other than the Arabian Eoc, the 
 
 in the house seemed to him as thirty princess lays the bare sword between 
 
 jears. ^ her and Eitter Eed. Dr. Dasent adds 
 
 ' ' Gunnar Gjukason seems to signify many more instances, as the story of 
 
 darkness, and thus we see that the Hr61f and Ingegerd, of Tristan and 
 
 awakening and budding spring is gone, Isolt, and he rightly insists that 
 
 carried away by Gunnar, like Proserpine ' these mythical deep-rooted germs, 
 
 "by Pluto ; like Sit4 by Edvana. Gud- throwing out fresh shoots from age to 
 
 xun, the daughter of Grimhild, and age in the popular literature of the race, 
 
 sometimes herself called Grimhild, are far more convincing proofs of the 
 
 whether the latter name meant summer early existence of their traditions than 
 
 (cf. Gharma in Sanskrit), or the earth any mere external evidence.' — Worse 
 
 and nature in the latter part of the Tales, introduction, cxlii. It is certainly 
 
 xn. 
 
282 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 faucy. In the Volsung tale, Gudrun and Bryn- 
 hild are washing their hair in the same stream, when Bryn- 
 hild 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 trans- 
 ferred 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 
 Oinon^ in one version of the myth refuse to heal the wounded 
 Paris, and leads DManeira to resolve on the death of Hera- 
 kles. 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 of betrayal and the 
 determination to punish it, and the feeling which animates 
 them is reflected again in the hate of Helen for Paris after 
 he has shut her up in Eion. Thus Brynhild urges Gunnar 
 to avenge her on Sigurd, like the evening twilight allying 
 itself with the darkness of night 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 Suiya 
 Bai of modem Hindu folk-lore. But Sigurd is mighty even 
 
 worth noting that the incident is related also of Allah-nd-deen in the Arabian 
 Nights' legend. 
 
of Gudrun. 
 
 THE DEATH OP SIGUKD. 283 
 
 in death, and the blade Gram, hurled by his dying hand, CHAP. 
 
 cleaves Guttorm asunder, so that the upper part of hi,p body , ' 
 
 fell out of the chamber, while the lower limbs remained in 
 the room. The change which his death causes in the mind 
 of BrynhUd answers precisely to the pity which Oinone feels 
 when her refusal to heal Paris has brought about his death. 
 Like Helen, who hates herself, 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 Oin6ne, 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 The Story- 
 names, and with different colours. As Sigurd, like Theseus 
 and Herakles, first woos the Dawn, and thus 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 dark- 
 ness. 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 Fafnir ; 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 and his brothers had thrown the hoard into 
 the Rhine — the water which receives Endymi6n as he plunges 
 into his dreamless sleep ; and the secret of it is lost when 
 they in their turn are cast into a pit full of snakes, all of 
 whom, like Orpheus, Gunnar lulls to sleep by his harping, 
 except one which flies at his heart, and kills him — a tale told 
 
284 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK over again in the transparent myth, of Thora, Aslauga, and 
 
 ■^ ; . Eagnar 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 stoiy of 
 her vengeance is practically a repetition of the legend of 
 Medeia. Like the Kolehian woman, she slays the two sons 
 whom she had borne to Atli ; but the ferocity of the North- 
 em sentiment colours the sequel in which we see a sunset as 
 blood-red and stormy as that in which Herakles rose from 
 earth to the mansions of the undying gods. Grudrun 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 every 
 thing within it. The shades of evening or 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 beau- 
 tiful of women, and Hermanric, the Gothic king, sends his 
 son Eandver 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. Her- 
 manric orders that his son shall be hanged. Presently he 
 receives a plucked hawk which Kandver 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, Eandver 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 iU-doing not 
 less than Sigurd or Atli. Gunnar's command goes forth to 
 her three Niflung sons, Saurli, Hamdir and Erp, to avenge 
 
STOEY OF GUDKUN. 285 
 
 Svanliild ; and thus, armed -witli helmets and cased in mail CHAP. 
 
 -V"TT 
 
 whicli no weapons can pierce, they take the way to the house 
 
 of Hermanric. As they go, the Niflungs quarrel timong 
 themselves, and Saurli and Hamdir slay Erp, because he is 
 his mother's darling.^ But Hermanric, although he may be 
 mutilated, cannot be slain. The two brothers cut oif his 
 hands and feet ; but Erp is 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 Hion. 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 some- 
 where. 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 Helgi 
 seen, scarcely an incident which we do not find in the tradi- ^'^s^s- 
 tions of other Aryan nations or tribes, renders it impossible 
 to judge of the character of Northmen or Germans from the 
 legends themselves. It is possible, of course, and even likely 
 
 ' The story of this muider has worked him. A little farther on Sanrli stumbled 
 
 its way into the traditional history of and fell forward, but saved himself with 
 
 .Slthelstan and Godwine. At the least, one hand, and said, " Here hand helps 
 
 it seems impossible to shut our eyes to foot ; better were it that Erp lired." 
 
 the striking similarity of these stories ; So they came on Hermanric as he slept, 
 
 and as their non-historical character in and Saurli hewed off his hands, and 
 
 the case of iEthelstan and Godwine has Hamdir his feet, but he awoke and 
 
 been placed beyond reach of questioning, called for his men. Then said Hamdir, 
 
 we are the more justified in saying that " Were Erp alive, the head would be of^ 
 
 the old myth has served as the founda- and he couldn't call out." ' In the story 
 
 tion of the later legend. The Volsung of JEthelstan andof Godwinewehavethe 
 
 story, in Dr. Dasent's words, rung as same phrases about the hands and feet ; 
 
 follows : — ' As the three went along, the in each case a brother is slain, and in 
 
 two asked Erp what help he would give each case the loss of this brother is sub- 
 
 them when they got to Hermanric. seqnently felt as a source of weakness. 
 
 " Such as hand lends to foot," he said. For the several shapes assumed by the 
 
 " No help at all," they cried ; and pass- legend see Freeman, ISormaii Concpiest, 
 
 ing from words to blows, and because ii. 611-12. 
 their mother loved Erp best, they slew 
 
286 MYTHOLOGY OP THK AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK that the poets or narrators have in each case thrown over 
 
 .. ; . the characters and events of their tale a colouring 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 reflections, the one of the others. 
 These are the holy ones, or saviours, who make whole or restore 
 life, like the Paie6n or Asklepios of Greek mythology.' 
 The first Of these Helgis, the first is called the son of E"iorvardur, 
 
 ^^^S^- 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 Kirk^ 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 hj| 
 turn declares that though he must now die, he will come 
 back again when his death has been avenged. This is mani- 
 festly 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. 
 The At the birth of the second Helgi, known as Hundingsbana, 
 
 Second 
 
 Helgi. 1 rjjjgy jjyg t]jg j^igig mentioned by for the loss of the aspirate in the name 
 
 Tacitus, Germ. 43, as worshipped by the as given by Tacitus, Bunsen cites the 
 
 Naharvali, and as answering to the analogous forms Irmin and Hermun, 
 
 Roman Castor and Pollux. They are Isco and Hisicion. — God in History, ii. 
 
 the Teutonic Dioskouroi or Asvins; and 470. 
 
THE HELGI SAGAS. 287 
 
 the Nomas came and fixed tlie lot of tke babe, like the 
 Moirai in tlie legend of Meleagros.' When fifteen years 
 old, he slays King Hunding 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 hea- 
 ven 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 aUegiance to the Volsungs, he yet trea- 
 cherously stabs Helgi (another of the many 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-hridled 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 Lalgofnir Awakens heroes." ^ 
 
 The Third 
 
 The third Helgi, Haddingaheld, is but a reproduction of ^eigt 
 
 ' He is also identified as Hermodhur, ^ Second Lay of Helgi Himdings- 
 
 Heermuth, the son of Odin, who is sent bana, 46, 47. This is the legend of Le- 
 
 to fetch up Baldur from the under nore, of which Bunsen says that ' Biirger 
 
 world and is thus the returning or con- caught the soul of the story as it was on 
 
 quering sun who comes back after the the point of extinction, and lent it a new 
 
 winter solstice. — Bunsen, God in His- and immortal life among the G-erman 
 
 tory, ii. 471. people.' — God in History, ii. 466. 
 
288 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK the second Helgi, while Kara, the daughter of Halfdan, takes 
 
 '^ — • the place of Swaya or Sigrun. In all these tales the heroes 
 
 and the heroines stand in precisely the same relations to 
 each other ; ' 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 conclusion that the story 
 of Siegfried, in the Lay of the Mbelungs, is only another 
 form of the oft-repeated tale. Tor 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 Mbelung Saga 
 are each the son of Sigmund. The slaying of Hundiug by 
 Helgi answers to the slaughter of Fafnir and Begin by 
 Sigurd, Siegfried being also a dragon-slayer like Phoibos, or 
 Oidipous, or Herakies. So too, as Sigurd first won the love of 
 Brynhild and then marries Gudran, for whose brother he 
 finally wins BrynhUd as a wife, so Siegfried in his turn marries 
 Kriemhild, sister of the Burgundian Gunther, having wooed 
 Brynhild 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 Mbelungenlied marries 
 Etzel, who catches Gunther and his brothers in the same trap 
 in which Gunnar and Hogni had been caught by Atli.^ 
 
 ' For a tabular view of these paral- by a younger brother This ele- 
 
 lelisms see Bunsen, «4. 470, &c. ment constitutes the basis of the Sigurd 
 
 '^ On the historical residuum which Saga, and the substance of the Helgi 
 
 may possibly be contained in the later Saga, with the exception of some later 
 
 forms of these myths it is really unne- additions ; it is the oldest form of the 
 
 cessary to say anything. In Bunsen's German myth of Herakies.' — God, in 
 
 words, ' The fundamental element com- History, ii. 474. Nevertheless, Bunsen 
 
 nion to them all is purely mythological, thinks it worth while to make an attempt 
 
 namely, the combat of the Sun-God, to determine the amount of historical 
 
 who is slain by his brother and avenged matter wrapped up in it. He finds the 
 
THE NIBELUNGEN LAY. 289 
 
 That tlie later forms into whicli the Volsung story lias CHAP, 
 been thrown may contain some incidents which may be either . _ . 
 truly told or else travestied from real history, it is impossible The Nibe- 
 to deny. When at the best they who insist most on the histo- ^av ^" 
 rical character of these poems can but trace a name here and 
 there, or perhaps see in the account of some jBght 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. Wheh. the motives are alike in all, 
 when in each case there is a wealthUy 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 ilaming cham- 
 bers 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 
 
 name Atli or Etzel, and this represents known historical event is associated, and 
 the historical Attila, a conclusion which of which the stories told cannot he re- 
 is strengthened by the mention of Bludi conciled with anything which comes 
 as the father of Attila, whereas history down to us on genuine historical testi- 
 ■speaks of Bleda as his brother. He mony, furnish a miserably insecure 
 finds also Ghmnar, the brother of Gud- foundation for any historical inferences, 
 run, and Gunther the king of the Bur- If this is all that we learn from the po- 
 gundians. Beyond this, seemingly, it is pular tradition, can we be said to learn 
 impossible to advance. ' It is certainly anything ? In the one Bleda is the 
 difficult to make an expedition by Attila brother of Attila, in the other he is not : 
 'himself to the Rhine fit in with what we it seems rash, then, to speak of Bludi as 
 know of the history of these years, a 'perfectly historical person.' To us 
 'This, no more and no less, is the histo- they must remain mere names ; and 
 rical element in that great tragedy of while we turn aside from the task of 
 the woes of the Nibelungs.' — God in measuring the historical authority of 
 History, ii. 478. If any can be satisfied these Sagas as a mere waste of time, we 
 with claiming for this belief a historical cannot on the same plea refuse consi- 
 sanction on such evidence as this, it may deration to evidence which may seem to 
 perhaps be a pity to break in upon their trace such names as Atli, Bleda, and 
 self-complacence ; but on the other side Gunnar to a time long preceding the 
 it may fairly be asserted that two or days of Attila, Bludi, and Gunther. 
 three names, with which not a single 
 
 VOL. I. U 
 
290 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Sigurd, 
 Siegfried, 
 and 
 Baldur. 
 
 far. We are confined to mere names or mere customs ; and 
 the attempt to adyance 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 Mbelungen Lay.' 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 be- 
 longed 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 Eoland who fell at 
 Eoncesvalles. 
 
 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 chUd of the darkness, as strictly as he may be 
 said to be bom in Delos or Ortygia. The offspring of Chry- 
 saor, 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 
 Mflung himself.^ 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 all the attributes of Helios, 
 as in the greater compass of the northern poems. The Hiad 
 relates the incidents only of a portion of a single year in the 
 
 ' Ludlow, Popular Epics of the Middle Ages, i. 180. 
 « Ibid. i. 137. 
 
SIGUED AND SIEGFRIED. 291 
 
 Trojan war ; the Nibelung lay adds two or three complete CHAI', 
 
 histories to the already completed history of Siegfried. The . 
 antiquity of these several portions of a poem, which by the con- 
 fession of all has certainly been pieced together, is a question 
 into which we need not enter. It is possible, as Mr. Ludlow 
 thinks, that the portion which relates to Siegfried was 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.^ In their golden locks and 
 godlike countenances, in their flashing swords and unerring 
 spears, 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 na- 
 tional character of Northmen, Greeks, or Germans. In each 
 case the spirit of the tradition has been carefully 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 
 
 ' This doom is brought out with ' He was going and going and jour- 
 singular clearness in the Gaelic story, neying; there was blackening on his 
 where the Dame of the Kne Green soles, and holes in his shoes ; the 
 Kirtle lays the Pair Gruagach under black clouds of night coming, and the 
 her spell, that he shall not rest by bright quiet clouds of the day going 
 night or by day (Ixion, Sisiphos). away, and without his finding a place- 
 ' " Where thou takesl thy breakfast that of staying or rest for him.' He is, in. 
 thou take not thy dinner, and where short, the wandering Wuotan (Wegtam), 
 thou takest thy dinner that thou take Savitar, Odysseus, Bellerophon, Phoi- 
 not thy supper, in whatsoever place bos, Dionysos, Herakles, Perseus, Sigurd, 
 thou be, until thou findest out in what Indra, Oidipous, Theseus ; and it is un- 
 place I may be under the four brown necessary to say that in the end he 
 quarters of the world." becomes the husband of the Dame of 
 
 ' So it was in the morning of the the Pine Green Kirtle, who is none.- 
 
 morrow's day he went away without dog, other than Medeia with the magic rob* 
 
 withoutman,withoutcalf, without child. of Helios. (Campbell, ii. 435). 
 
 U 2 
 
 XII. 
 
292 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK former tale becomes in the latter tlie Hagen of Tronege, 
 
 I. 
 
 , against wliom 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 Mblungs, 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 Eriemhild 
 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 condition 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 wiU, and like ApoUon 
 Delphinios, he pushes a ship through the sea — a myth in 
 which we recognise also the Wish breeze.^ Here also, as in 
 the Norse story, the ring and girdle of Brynhild come through 
 Siegfried into the possession of Kriemhild ; and at this point 
 the myth assumes a form which reminds us of the relations of 
 
 ' Mr. Ludlow here remarks : ' The six pieces ; two to be given to his wife, 
 
 incidents differ greatly. Sigurd drinks two to his mare, and two to be put into 
 
 the blood and learns mysteries ; Sifrit the ground. The necessary consequence 
 
 bathes in it and becomes invulnerable.' is that the woman has two golden 
 
 The differences are simply such as must children who, mounting on the two 
 
 arise in myths developed independently golden foals of the mare, represent the 
 
 from a common source. The essential Asvins and the Dioskouroi, the pieces 
 
 part of it is the connection between the put into the ground producing two golden 
 
 dragon and the power derived from it: lilies on which the lives of the children 
 
 and this connexion is manifest in the depend. In the tale of the Fisherman 
 
 myths of lamos, Medeia, and Phoibos. and his Wife, the fish accomplishes the 
 
 2 The power of the Fish Sun is wishes of the woman, who chooses to 
 
 strikingly shown in the German stories become first a lady, then queen, then 
 
 of the Gold Children and of the Fisher- pope ; but when she wishes to become 
 
 man and his Wife. In the former a the ruler of the universe, the flounder 
 
 poor man catches the Golden Fish which sends her back to her old hovel, — an 
 
 makes him the possessor of the palace of incident reflecting the fall of Tantalos, 
 
 Helios, and bids the man divide him into Sisyphos, and Ixion. 
 
KRIEMHILD AND BKYNHILD. 293 
 
 Herakles with Eurystheus. Like Here in the Greek tale, CHAP. 
 Brynhild holds that Siegfried ought to do service to Gunther, >_ — ,J — • 
 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.' 
 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 be- 
 comes filled with all the tenderness and beauty of the Odyssey. 
 Kriemhild is awakened to her foUy in betraying Siegfried's 
 secret to Hagen. StUl, in vain she prays him not to go. He 
 is the knight who knows no fear, and without fear he accom- 
 panies Hagen, doing marvellous things, until one day he 
 
 ' These Burgundians in the later present state is put together out of two 
 
 portion of the epic are often spoken of different legends.' — Fopular Epics of the 
 
 as Niblungs, as mythically they assuredly Middle Ages, i. 133. At the most, it 
 
 are. The fact evidently shows, in Mr. would be but one of two Tersions of 
 
 Ludlow's opinion, ' that the poem in its the legend. 
 
294 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK asks Hagen why lie has brought no wine to drink, when 
 ; — - Hagen offers to show him the way to a good spring. Sieg- 
 fried 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, whether of the ocean or the sea. In 
 the spirting out of Siegfried's blood on Hagen, in the wonder- 
 ful 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 Mblung land, and thus at length 
 gaining possession of it, he sinks it aU 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 
 Demeter, 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 Teu- 
 
HAGEN. 295 
 
 tonic epic be, or be not, older tban tbe parts -whicL. follow it, CHAP 
 it is indubitably an integral narrative in itself, and by no - 
 
 means indispensable to tbe general plan of the poem, except 
 in so far as it accounts for tbe implacable hatred of Kriem- 
 hild for her brothers. 
 
 The second part of the drama begins with the death of The story 
 Helche, the wife of Etzel or Atli, who longs to marry °^ l^agen. 
 KriemhUd, and who is restrained only by the recollection 
 that he is a heathen while the widow of Siegfried is a Chris- 
 tian. This objection, however, is overruled 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, 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 
 Eriemhild that she shall be the lady of twelve rich crowns, 
 and rule the lands of thirty princes. Kriemhild 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 affec- 
 tion for her husband Menelaos and the unhallowed fascina- 
 tions of the Trojan Paris. So is brought about the second 
 marriage of the bride of Siegfried, a marriage the sole in- 
 terest 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 AttUa of history. The poet declares 
 that her deadly wrath is roused by the reflection that at 
 Hagen's instigation she has given herself to a heathen ; but 
 throughout it is clear that her heart and her thoughts are 
 far away in the grave of the golden-haired youth who had 
 
296 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK wooed and won her in tlie beautiful spring-time, and that of 
 
 I, 
 
 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 childhood 
 he has known the way to the Huns' land.' 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.* 
 Hagen necessarily discerns evil omens as they journey on. 
 The waters of the Danube are swollen, and as he searches 
 along the banks for a ferryman, he seizes the wondrous ap- 
 parel of two wise women who are bathing, one of whom pro- 
 mises that if he wiU 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 agam 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 
 
 ' Mr. Ludlow here remarks that ' this of material -which the poets of the- 
 is one of the passages -n'hich imply the JStibelung song, like those of the Iliad 
 legend contained in " Walthar of and Odyssey, found ready to then: hand. 
 Aquitaine," where Hagen is represented The close agreement of the framework 
 as a fellow hostage with Walthar at of the poem with that of the Volsung 
 Etzel's covaV—Fopular Epics, i. 130. story and the legends of the Helgis, and 
 It may be so ; yet the phrase resolves the identity of all these with the myth 
 itself into the simple statement that of Baldur, has been already shown. It 
 the Panis know their way to the land is, therefore, quite unnecessary to give- 
 whence they steal the cattle of Indra. an abstract of the poem throughout, a 
 
 - I must confine myself to those task which has been performed already 
 
 portions of the epic which call for a by many writers, and among them by 
 
 comparison with other legends, and Mr. Ludlow, Popular Epics, i. 
 ■which, taken together, show the amount 
 
THE GEIEB^ AND YENGEANCB OF KKIEMIIILD. 297 
 
 crossing the river, throws tlie priest into the stream ; but CHAP, 
 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 Eudiger they receive a genial 
 welcome; but when Eudiger'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 Eudiger loads them with gifts. To Gemot 
 he gives a sword which afterwards deals the death-blow to 
 Eudiger 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 Mblung 
 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.' ' 
 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. 
 
 At length Hagen and Kriemhild stand face to face : but The ven- 
 when the wife of Etzel asks what gifts he has brought, Kri"m-° 
 Hagen answers that one so wealthy needs no gifts. The tiid. 
 question is then put plainly, ' Where is the Mblungs' hoard ? 
 It was my own, as ye well know.' Hagen answers that at 
 his master's bidding it has been sunk in the Ehine, and 
 there it must remain till the day of judgment. But when 
 Kriemhild tells the Burgundians that they must give up 
 their arms before goiag into the hall, Hagen begs to be 
 
 ' Compare the Gaelic story of the the gold and silrer cap, as Penelop^ 
 
 Eider of Grianaig (Campbell, iii. IS), is delivered from her suitors by the 
 
 where the dawn-maidens mourn be- man who wrought the bed in her bridal 
 
 cause they have to marry the giant, chamber, 
 but are rescued by the man who made 
 
298 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARY'^AJS" NATIONS. 
 
 ^ BOOK excused. The honour is greater than he deserves, and he 
 
 I. 
 
 will himself he chamberman. Kriemhild sees that he has 
 been warned, and learns to her grief and rage that the 
 warning has come through Dietrich.' But the time for 
 the avenging of Siegfried draws nigh. Etzel's men see 
 Xriemhild 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 Sigfried, the good blade Gram, 
 which Odin left in the house of Volsung. The words 
 which burst from her bespeak the grief of a Penelope 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 be- 
 loved 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 im- 
 possible not to think of the suitors in the house of Odysseus, 
 although the bearing of Hagen and his men is altogether 
 
 ' It is at this point that the passngo in our present inquiry than as showing 
 
 is inserted which connects the Nibe- the composite character of the great 
 
 lungenlied with the story of Walthar Teutonic epic. — Liidlow, Popular Ejiics, 
 
 of Aquitaine. Itisof no further interest i. 146. 
 
THE HALL OF SLAUGHTER. 299 
 
 more dignified. The very weakening of the myth, which CHAP. 
 
 was too strong to allow the Homeric poet so to painty 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 Burgun- 
 dians are left to sleep on beds and couches covered with sUks, 
 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 KriemhUd'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 of&ce 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, 
 
300 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAK NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and therefore lie and all must die unless they wiU yield up 
 
 ^ ^; - Hagen into her hands. This they refuse, and Kriemhild 
 
 sets iire 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 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 ti-eacherously. She grasps it in her hand, she 
 draws the blade from its sheath, she whirls it in the air, and 
 the victory of AehiUeus 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 nisrht is not far off 
 when the sun appears like a conqueror near the horizon 
 
THE FACTS OF THE NIBELONG STORY. 301 
 
 after his long battle with, the clouds. The sight of the CHAP, 
 dead Hagen rouses the grief of Etzel and the fury of Hilde- " . 
 
 brand who smites Kriemhild and hews her in pieces. 
 
 If we put aside the two or three names which may belong Historical 
 to persons of whose existence we have other evidence, the tiie"]^;be° 
 idea that this story of ferocious and impossible vengeance lungen 
 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 that the Alexandres 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 extent 
 to which the myth has been modified by the influence of 
 Christianity aiid the growth of an historical sense in the 
 . treatment of national traditions. There is a certain awk- 
 wardness in the part played by Etzel, a part ludicrously 
 unlike the action of the historical Attila ; and the pitiable 
 wealcness 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 her- 
 self to deal with the rufi&ans who have dashed the cup of 
 joy from her lips and stolen away her beautiful treasures. 
 But the religious belief of the poets would not allow them to 
 make use of any other method for bringing ' about the terri- 
 ble 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 who 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 
 
302 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAJT NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK not as slain, but as fulfilling the doom which compelled him 
 
 - ^ . to fight or to wander far away from his home for tweuty 
 
 years. The closeness with which the bards of the Niblung- 
 legend followed the Saga of Sigurd rendered this alternative 
 impossible, and it remained only to leave Kriemhild to ac- 
 complish 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 
 clearness 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 Ms 
 brothers or his kinsfolk or his liege lords partakers of his 
 guilt, and thus the cowards of the first part of the story 
 become the dauntless heroes of the second.' But when Mr. 
 Ludlow goes on to remark that ' Kriemhild's preferring tO' 
 reside in the neighbourhood of her husband's murderers 
 remains perfectly unaccountable,' we can but say that the 
 difiiculty 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 darkness cannot fall until the 
 ten long hours of the night have come to an end. Hence 
 the many years during which Kriemhild makes ready for- 
 the last dread act, and the many years which go before the 
 fall of Ilion. !N"or 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.' ^ The Odyssey shows precisely 
 the same connection 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 Stoiy The story of Walthar of Aquitaine, a version of the 
 thar of' same myth given by a monk of the eighth or ninth century, 
 Aqiiitainp. , Ludlow, Fopnlar Epics, i. 172. « Ibid. i. 176. 
 
WALTHAE OF AQUITAINE. 303 
 
 is notewortty cMefly as making the liero bear away both CHAP. 
 
 the bride and her hoard, and giving him a tranquil and a ^ ^1 ■ 
 
 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 the war horse, ap- 
 pearing here under the name Lion, bears away the hero and 
 his love. The king pursues with Hagen, who is by no 
 means so doughty as in the Niblung Song, and who 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 oif 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 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 
 wiU not drink first, because Walthar is the better man. In 
 short, the story ends with an interchange of courtesies, 
 
304 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 I, 
 
 whicli have an air of burlesque not unlike that which Euri- 
 '- — - pides 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 Odj'sseus.' 
 
 ' The later lay of Gudrun, of which 
 Mr. Ludlow has given a summarj-, 
 {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 ; hiit we are fully justified in 
 referring to the old myth incidents 
 which dre 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, Hagcn 
 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 
 Hegelingen ; a tale which merely repeats 
 the story of Brynhild, Dornroschen, and 
 all the 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 Nibolung 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 put into 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 ; 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 reacli 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 Bother (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 Bother biulds 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 
 Thideridh 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 
 the old story in another dress. It is 
 unnecessary to say that although we 
 hear much of "Constantinople and 
 Babylon, not a grain of genuine history 
 is to be gleaned amidst this confused 
 tangle of popular traditions and fancies. 
 
 The form in which these myths are ' 
 exhibited in the Danish ballads, agrees 
 so closely with the general character of 
 the Volsung and Nibelung legends, that 
 
DIETRICH OF BEBN. 
 
 305 
 
 As we approacL. the later legends or romances, we find, as CHAP, 
 we might expect, a strange outgrowth of fancies often utterly ■ — _' 
 incongruous, and phrases which show that the meaning of Dietrich of 
 the old myths was fast fading from men's minds. Still we 
 cannot fail to see that the stories, whUe they cannot by any 
 process be reduced iato harmony with the real history of any 
 age, are built up with the materials which the bards of the 
 Volsungs and the Mbelungs found ready to their hand. Thus 
 iuthe story of Dietrich andEcke, the latter, who plays a part 
 something like that of Hagen or Paris, is exhibited in more 
 lustrous colours than the Trojan Alexandros in the Iliad, 
 although his nature and his doom are those of the Vedic 
 Panis. Three knights, discoursing at Koln of brave war- 
 riors, give the palm to Dietrich of Bern, and Bcke 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 talk- 
 ing, and the beautiful Seburk is immediately smitten with a 
 love as vehement and lasting as that of Kriemhild in the Ni- 
 belung 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 Bcke in search of him, 
 armed with a breastplate, which answers to the coat of mail 
 wrought for AchiUeus by Hephaistos. This breastplate 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 hoUow mountain — the tower iu which 
 Dietrich is confined, ia the story of the giant Sigenot. This 
 breastplate was recovered by Wolfdietrich of Greece, in 
 whom it is hard not to see a reflection 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 wUl 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. 
 
 it is unnecessary here to speak of them, found in Mr. Ludlow's Popular Epics, i. 
 Some remarks on the subject will be 308, &e. 
 
 VOL. I. X 
 
306 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 youthful Herakles as given 
 in the apologue of Prodikos. He is the father of the afflicted ; 
 what he wins he shares ; all that is good he loves. Where- 
 ever 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 character, as 
 the Pani who bears an irrepressible hate for his adversary, 
 while Dietrich is as passive in the matter as Achilleus when 
 he declared that the Trojans had never done him any mis- 
 chief. ' I will not strive with thee,' he says, ' thou hast done 
 me no harm ; give my service to thy lady, and tell her I wiU 
 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 intolerable 
 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 Die- 
 trich finds is gifted with the powers which Oinone cannot or 
 will not exercise for the benefit of Paris. She heals him with 
 
THE GREAT ROSE GARDEN. 307 
 
 a wonderful salve, and teUs him that she is a wise woman, CHAP. 
 
 . XII 
 like BrynhUd 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 Eose Garden is a still more clumsy The Great 
 travesty of the myth of the Phaiakian or Hyperborean ^°^^ 
 gardens. The 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 the poet, and his seat under 
 the linden tree is covered with furs and 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 Mbelung Lay : but the battle assumes here a form so 
 horrible and so wantonly disgusting that we need only mark 
 the more modem 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 wielding an unerring 
 sword, is Odysseus standing in beggar's garb among the 
 suitors J 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 The ro- 
 romance of Eoland. How thoroughly devoid this romance is J^ojand"^ 
 of any materials of which the historian may make use, has 
 perhaps already been shown ; that many incidents in the 
 legend may have been suggested by actual facts in the life- 
 time of Charles the Great, is an admission which may be 
 readily made. When Charles the Great is made to complain 
 on the death of Eoland 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 
 
 X 2 
 
508 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 The ro- 
 mance of 
 Arthur. 
 
 wMcli popular fancy has thrown over every incident makes 
 the idea of verifying any of them an absurdity. What- 
 ever 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 Eoland strikes the infidel dead. The horn is split with 
 the stroke, and all the crystal and gold faU from it. The 
 night is at hand, but Eoland 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 flamest 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 on me.' ' This is the 
 pedigree of no earthly weapon, and to the list of conquests 
 wrought by it in the hands of Eoland we may add the 
 exploits of the good brands Excalibur, and Gram, and Bal- 
 mung, 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 Eoland is slain. Kleopatra and Bryn- 
 hild cannot survive Meleagros and Sigurd.^ 
 
 As useless for aU historical purposes, and as valuable to 
 the comparative mythologist, is the magnificent romance of 
 King Arthur. Probably in no other series of legends is 
 there a more manifest recurrence of the same myth under 
 difi'erent forms. The structure of the tale is simple enough. 
 Arthur himself is simply a reproduction of Sigurd or Per- 
 seus. Eound him are other brave knights, and these, not 
 less than himself, must have their adventures; and thus 
 Arthur and Balin answer respectively to AchUleus and 
 Odysseus in the Achaian hosts. A new element is brought 
 into the story with the Eound Table, which forms part of the 
 
 ' The address of Eoland to his sword 
 is more magniloquently given in the 
 ' Chronicle of Turpin,' Ludlow, Bnd. i. 
 42a. 
 
 ' This is the story of Lqrd Nann and 
 the Korrigan, Keightley, Fairy Mytho- 
 logy, 433. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF AETHUE. 
 
 309 
 
 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 essen- 
 tial 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 The birth 
 a form common to the traditions and folk-lore of aU the ^f ^°hii^ 
 Teutonic or even all the Aryan nations. Not only is the 
 wonderful sword of Eoland seen again in the first blade 
 granted to E[ing 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.' As soon as he is bom, Arthur is wrapped in 
 a cloth of gold, the same glittering raiment which in the 
 Homeric hymn the nymphs wrap round the new-born Phoi- 
 bos, 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 
 
 ' The scenein which Sigurd personates romance. This power of transformation 
 
 G-unnar in order to win Brynhild for the is a special attribute of the gods of the 
 
 latter is but slightly different from the heaven and the light, and as such is 
 
 story of Uther as told by Jeffrey of exercised by Phoibos the fish god, and 
 
 Monmouth or in the more detailed Dionysos the lion and bear. 
 
310 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and Eomulus 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 rooftree 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 bom 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 per- 
 formed 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, Eomulus, 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 play- 
 mates of Cyrus, the knights scorn to be governed by a boy 
 whom they hold to be basebom, yet they are compelled to 
 yield to the ordeal of the stone, and Arthur, being made 
 king, forgives them aU. The sword thus gained is in Arthur's 
 first war so bright in his enemies' ey«s 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, it is 
 snapped in twain in the conflict with Pellinore ; but it is of 
 course brought back to him in the form of Excalibur, by a 
 
THE ROUND TABLE. 311 
 
 maiden who answers to Thetis or to Hjordis.^ Arthur, riding CHAP. 
 
 with Merlin along a lake, becomes ' ware of an arm clothed in ,_' , ' , 
 
 white samite that held a fair sword in the hand.' I'his is the 
 
 fatal weapon, whose scabbard answers precisely to the panoply 
 
 of Achilleus, for whUe 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 Eience demands 
 
 as a sign of homage the beard of Arthur, which gleams with 
 
 the splendour of the golden locks or rays of Phoibos Akerse- 
 
 komes. 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.^ 
 
 On the significance of the Round Table we must speak The Round 
 elsewhere. It is enousrh for the present to note that it '^'■^^]? '""^ 
 
 ^ ^ the San 
 
 comes to Arthur with the bride whose dowry is to be to him Greal. 
 as fatal as the treasures of the 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. Dangers thicken round Arthur, and he 
 is assailed by enemies as dangerous as Kirke and Kalypso to 
 Odysseus. The Pay Morga;n seeks to steal Excalibur, and 
 succeeds in getting the scabbard, which she throws into a 
 lake, and Arthur now may both bleed and die.* At the 
 
 ' ' The Manks hero, Olave of Norway, wears the helmet of Hades, and his 
 
 had a sword with a Celtic name, Maca- action is that of the Erinjs who 
 
 buin.' — Campbell, Tales of the West wanders in the air. 
 
 ' , i. Ixxii. It reappears as the » Morgan has the power of trans- 
 
 sword Tirfing in the fairy tale. Keight- formation possessed by all the fish 
 
 ley, Fairi/ Mythology, 73. and water-gods, Proteus, Onnes, Thetis, 
 
 " The invisible knight who at this &c. 
 stage of the narrative smites Sir Herleus 
 
12 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK hands of another maiden he narrowly escapes the doom 
 . ^- . which Medeia and DSianeira brought upon Glauk^ and on 
 Herakles. The Lady of the Lake 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 
 
 Knights, j^rthur, 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 Ewata by the fountain, we can scarcely fail 
 to recognise the three weird sisters, whose office, as belong- 
 ing to the past, the present, and the future, seems to be 
 betokened by their age and the garb which distinguish them 
 from each other. The eldest has a garland of gold about 
 her hair, which is white with the sorrows of threescore 
 winters ; the second, thirty years of age, with more briUiant 
 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.^ 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 Dionysos, Uke 
 Macduff and Sigurd, Tristram is the son. of sorrow; nor 
 did he fail to justify the popular conviction that all such 
 children are born to do great things.^ In the madness which 
 comes upon Lancelot when Guinevere rebukes him for the love 
 of Blaine we see the frenzy of Herakles and other heroes, a 
 frenzy which is naturally healed by the San Greal.'* 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 
 
 ' LaMorted^Arihure,eA.Coneyheaie, ' Seep. 273. 
 book iii. ch. v. ' Coneybeare, La Morte cCArthure, 
 
 ' lb. book iv. ch. iii. book x. 
 
THE HOLT GRAIL. 
 
 313 
 
 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 goodness 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 be his, but it is 
 the prize which, like the princess for whom the unsuccessful 
 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 hfts up the cover that is on the Siege Peri- 
 lous, and discloses the words, ' This is the siege of Sir Galahad 
 the good knight.' The story of this peerless hero is intro- 
 duced with an incident which is manifestly suggested by the 
 narrative of Pentecost. As the Knights of the Eound 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 aU 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 Avhite samite, and there 
 was none that might see it nor who bear it. And then was 
 all the hall full fiUed with great odours, and every knight 
 had such meat and driak 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 pre- 
 sented 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 dark- 
 ness. 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 
 
)14 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 
 Achilleus 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 Sir Bors to salute his father Sir Lancelot and 
 bid him remember this unstable world. ' And therewith he 
 kneeled down before the table 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,' 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 
 
 and Gm- Lancelot and Guinevere presents perhaps the most wonderful 
 
 neTere. jr x- jr 
 
 instance of the degree to which a myth may be modified, 
 and in this case the modifying influence is strictly and 
 purely Christian. In the Trojan legend, Paris, who plays 
 the part of Lancelot in the seduction of Helen, is invested 
 with some of the qualities of Achilleus, and with many of 
 the attributes of Phoibos ; but Lancelot is Paris purified of 
 his sensuality, his cruelty, and his cowardice. 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 
 ' See book ii., ehap. ii., sect. 12. 
 
LANCELOT AND GUINEVEEB. 
 
 315 
 
 for tlie brightest and the fattest of women. But although CHAP, 
 the romance throughout speaks of it as his great sin, the ■ — _,-^ 
 love is one which asks only for her heart as its redbmpence, 
 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 ad- 
 mitted to an equally trustful friendship, 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. Tet in spite of aU 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 presents us from time to time with touches which 
 vividly recall the old Greek and Teutonic myths. Thus Sir 
 TJrre of Hungary has wounds which only Lancelot can heal, 
 as Oinone 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 Eurydike. So again, Excalibur is, by the hands of the 
 reluctant Sir 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; and the barge, 
 which had borne away the fair maid of Astolat and the 
 sister of Sir Percival, brings the three queens (seemingly 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 The death 
 old myth. Neither Arthur himself nor any others think °'" ^'''i"'"- 
 that he is really dying. His own words are, 'I will unto 
 
316 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Guinevere 
 and Diar- 
 maid. 
 
 Later 
 mediajval 
 epics and 
 romances. 
 
 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 ia store for Memnon 
 or Sarped6n or Adonis showed itself in the epitaph 
 
 ' Hie jacet Arthvirus, rex quondam rexque futurus.' 
 
 Of the story of Arthur and Guinevere, Mr. Campbell says 
 that, ' when stripped to the bones,' it ' is almost identical 
 with the love 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 Hiad and Odyssey bear the 
 name of Homer, and the Finnish epic Kalewala that of 
 Wainamoinen. 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 foUows 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.' 
 
 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 ^ pronounces ' historical.' Tie sort of history con- 
 
 ' Into the question of the authenti- 
 city of Macpherson's Ossian it is alto- 
 gether unnecessary to enter. The 
 matter has been admirably and con- 
 clusively treated by Mr. Campbell in 
 the fourth volume of his Tales of the 
 West Highlands, and no one probably 
 would for an instant suppose that Mac- 
 pherson invented the tradition — in other 
 words, the framework of the myth : and 
 with this only we are here concerned. 
 The story of Sir Bevis of Hampton, Mr. 
 Campbell remarks, reflects the same 
 mythology, iv. 267. I must content 
 myself with calling attention to Mr. 
 Campbell's very valuable section on the 
 
 Welsh stories, iv. 270-299. Taken as 
 a whole, they run precisely parallel to 
 the streams of German, Scandinavian, 
 and Hindu folk-lore, and bring Mr. 
 Campbell to the conclusion that thej 
 are ' all founded upon incidents which 
 have been woven into popidar 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.' 
 
 ' Popular Epics of the Middle Ages, 
 vol. ii. p. 13. 
 
GAKIN AND BERTHA. 317 
 
 tained in them we may take at his own estimate of it. ' The CHAP. 
 
 . XII 
 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 hy any possi- 
 bility learn anything. Possessing the genuine contemporary 
 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 mea- 
 sure 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, or, as Professor 
 Max Miiller has expressed it, they are not organic ; and to 
 the stories spim 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 mo- 
 mentous 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 Plor), 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, Penelop^, Punchkin, and perhaps one or two 
 more.' In short, it is mere patchwork. As in the case of 
 Cinderella and Ehod6pis, the true queen is made known by 
 her feet f the only difference being that with Bertha it is the 
 
 ' Bertha is in name the Teutonic to marry his Daughter.' Mr. Campbell 
 
 goddess, who in another form appears (^Tales of the West Highlands, i. 227), 
 
 as Frau Holle or Holda, the benignant mentions other instances, and remarks 
 
 earth, and who, like Penelope, has mar- that 'those who hold that popular tales 
 
 vellous skill in spinning. are preserved in all countries and in all 
 
 ' This myth occurs again in the languages alike, wiU hold that the 
 
 Gaelic story of ' The King who_wished Italian, German, French, Norse, English, 
 
318 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OP THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 I. 
 
 Saga Lite- 
 rature of 
 Europe. 
 
 great size of her feet whicli determines the issue, not their 
 smallness. To coin a word, she is Eurypous, instead of 
 Europ^ ; and there was a version which spoke of her as 
 Queen Goosefoot, a personage over whom Mr. Ludlow thinks 
 it 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. Mr. Ludlow seldom 
 or never speaks as if he knew that the substance of these 
 later poems has been given again and again in earlier myths. 
 Thus he does not pause to notice that in the ' sub-cycle of 
 William of Orange,' Eenouart, the king's son, who 'must 
 keep the kitchen, make the fire, skim the meat,' while he 
 should be heading a host of a hundred thousand men, is 
 only the Teutonic Boots, grown bulky and clumsy, like the 
 Herakles of the ' Alkestis.' And yet these parallelisms must 
 be noted, if the mythical or historical value of these romances 
 is to be accurately measured. With the character of the 
 men and women portrayed in the mediaeval epics, Mr. 
 Ludlow is seemingly much perplexed. The type especially 
 which is seen in Brynhild, Gudrun, or Kriemhild, he regards 
 as ' foreign to the truth of woman's nature.' ' It is so, and 
 it must be so ; and it is better to avow it than to twist such 
 stories as the legends of Helen and Achilleus in the despe- 
 rate attempt to judge by human standards the inhabitants 
 of the Cloudland. 
 
 The same materials will probably be found to have fur- 
 nished the framework of at least the greater part of the 
 Saga literature of 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 colour- 
 ing 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 constantlj- or even rarely occurring, if 
 
 and Gaelic are all versions of the same 
 story, and that it is as old as the 
 common stock from which all these 
 races sprang.' See also the story of 
 
 the 'Sharp Grey Sheep,' Campbell, ii. 
 289. 
 ' Popular Epics, ii. 386. 
 
ga. 
 
 THE GEETTIE SAGA. 319 
 
 they involve either a direct contradiction or a physical im- CHAP. 
 
 possibility. To say that all incidents involving such diffi- r^ — - 
 
 culties 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 The 
 which a high historical character has been claimed by the '^™*''''^' 
 translators.' 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 impossible result of his exploit, Grettir, having 
 lost a mealbag, finds Skeggi in the same predicament, and 
 joins him in a common search. Skeggi comes across Grettir's 
 bag and tries to hide it. When Grettir complains, 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.^ 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 
 
 ' Eirikr Magnusson and Williain Morris. 
 * Preface, pp. i. and 94. 
 
320 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARTAK NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK boastingly relates it of himself. Thorgeir Bottle-jack is 
 
 I, 
 
 slain soon afterwards in a bloody figlit over tlie 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 honour- 
 able 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 wiU 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.' ' 
 
 When at a later time Grettir had slain Thorir Eedbeard, 
 Thorir of Garth assails the solitary outlaw with eighty men. 
 Grettir slays eighteen and wounds many more, and the rest 
 take to flight.* 
 The cha- This last incident brings us to the main question. It is, 
 
 G "^ m; °^ ^^ course, a sheer impossibility : 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 narra- 
 tive in which such incidents form the staple of the story. 
 The translators tell us that throughput the tale 'the Saga- 
 man never relaxes his grasp of Grettir's character, that he is 
 the same man from 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 capable of enjoyment and determined to make 
 the most of it ; not 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 in- 
 evitable 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-suflSeing temper.'* It is one thing 
 if this is to be regarded as the portrait of a man who reaUy 
 lived and died on this earth, or as the picture of some m-> 
 ' P. 141. ' P. 169. » p. xiv. 
 
MATEEIALS OF THE GRETTIR SAGA. 321 
 
 habitant of tlie Phaiakian cloudland. The translators raise CHAP. 
 a vital issue when they say that ' to us moderns the real - 
 
 interest in these records of a past state of life lies pfincipally 
 in seeing events true in the main treated vividly and dra- 
 matically hy people who completely understood the manners, 
 life, and above all the turn of mind of the actors in them." 
 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 Landnama-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 belong- 
 ing 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 Pairhair, 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 Materials 
 which are manifestly impossible or absurd, we are scarcely "^ "^^ 
 justified in accepting, on the mere authority of the Saga, 
 other portions which involve no such difiiculties. 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 narra- 
 tives. If this should be the case, the character of the narra- 
 tives in which these common elements are seen will go far 
 towards determining the credibility of the story. Clearly 
 the latter course is the more philosophical and the more 
 honest. That the translators had 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 Saga- 
 
 ' P. xiii. 
 VOL. I. T 
 
MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATION'S. 
 
 BOOK 
 I, 
 
 Grettir 
 and Boots. 
 
 Parallel- 
 isms be- 
 tween the 
 Grettir 
 Saga and 
 other 
 myths. 
 
 man here lias taken an incident, witli little or no change, 
 from the romance of Tristram, and Iseult.'^ 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 substan- 
 tially 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,' ^ 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 child- 
 hood, 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,'' 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,'* how he goes dis- 
 guised 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 
 
 ■ P. xii. 
 
 2 p. XI 
 
 » P. 41. 
 
 * P. 58. 
 
THE MIGHT AND EXPLOITS OF GRETTIK. 323 
 
 from her cloak the fair sword which has gained many a day, we CHAP, 
 see before us Thetis and Hjordis bestowing on their,chudren . . , " - 
 the magic weapons which reappear in the hands of Arthur 
 and of Eoland. In the horrible smiting of the bearsarks, 
 who are shut up in a barn, we have the awful hall of 
 slaughter in the Odyssey and the Mbelung 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.' 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 SusekoU 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,^ 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.'^ In his enormous 
 strength, in his fitful 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 cotmterpart of 
 Herakles 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 
 
 ' P. 115. ' P. 123. « p. 153. 
 
 T 2 
 
324 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK and manslayings fall upon thee, and the most part of thy 
 
 , i—^ 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 Yedic 
 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 of the 
 eighty assassins led on by Thorir of Garth is the defeat of 
 the Lykian ambuscade by Bellerophontes. After this the 
 wounded hero goes to a cave under Balljokul, where the 
 daughter of Hallmund heals his wound, and treats him well. 
 ' Grettir dwelt long there that summer,' like Odysseus ia 
 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." 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.'^ It 
 is the curse which is laid on Ixion and Sisyphos, and 
 singularly enough his father Asmund says of his son, ' Me- 
 thinks over much on a whirling wheel his life turns.'^ Hence 
 also he dreads the darkness like a child, for Herakles, Helios, 
 and Achilleus can do nothing when the sun has gone down. 
 Herce 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 aga,in 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 
 
 > P. 171. '^ P. 121. = P. 126. 
 
GRETTIR AND ODYSSEUS. 325 
 
 Herakles and Ipliitos, of the Dioskouroi, and a liost of CHAP. 
 
 others. Nineteen years he is an outlaw. ' Then said the r- — - 
 
 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 
 Philokt^tes and of Eustem. The cutting off of Grettir's 
 hand is an incident in the myth of Indra Savitar 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,' ' we cannot 
 avoid a comparison with the story of Shortshanks in 
 Grimm's collection, or of Odysseus who, when sitting, is 
 far more majestic than Menelaos who, when standing, 
 towers above him by head and shoulders. 
 
 In short, the Saga, as a whole, ceases practically to have The . 
 any distinctive features, and even in the sequel which relates of efeTtfr. 
 the story of Thorstein, Dromund, and Spes, the incident 
 which the translators compare with the romance of Tris- 
 tram is not the only point of likeness with other legends. 
 The closing scenes in the lives of the two lovers precisely 
 reproduce the last incidents in the myth of Lancelot 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. 
 
 ' P. 232. 
 
526 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE ETHEREAL HEAVENS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Ideas of 
 the heaven. 
 
 Section I.— DTAUS. 
 
 The ancient Yedic mythology exhibits in a state of fusion 
 the elements which the Hellenic legends present to ns 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 Achilleus 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.' All their 
 utterances were thus the utterances 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 characteristics. 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, 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 
 
 I p. 41, et seq. 
 
DYAUS AND ZEUS. 327 
 
 powers of these gods would show a constant tendency to run CIIAP. 
 
 into each, other. • ^ — - 
 
 But the attribation to all sensible objects of a life as per- The 
 sonal and conscious as their own would lead to the thoughl^ Ether"'"^ 
 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 and across which the sun madeJ 
 his daily journey to cheer the children of men. Thus Dyaus j 
 the glistening ether,' became to the Hindu, as Zeus was to 
 the Greek, a name for the supreme God ; 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 Ouranos and Kronos, 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.^ 
 
 ' Thus Dyaus, Zeus, Divus, Theos, in tear, but dog, while in Latin it is 
 
 Deus, Juno, Diana, Dianus or Janus, seen in ' tigris,' tiger, which approaches 
 
 with many others, are outgrowths from nearly to the English ' tyke ' as a name 
 
 the same root, dyu to shine. But in liis for the dog. In the same way ir in the 
 
 Introduction to Greek and Latin Eiy- Greek Traros ought to be represented by 
 
 y, Mr. Peile, while fully allowing / in English ; but it appears as ' path.' 
 
 tliat the Sanskrit name Dyaus is repre- The connection of the two words can 
 
 sented by the Greek Zeus and by the scarcely be doubted, for if Professor 
 
 Latin divus and deus, yet denies that Curtius may give the equation ttcitos: 
 
 there is any relation between the Latin ■ ir6vTo^ = iTi6os : Trev9os = $ciBos : /SeVflos, 
 
 deus and the Greek Seds. By the laws we may also add Traros : trdyTos = path : 
 
 of phonetic change, he insists, the Latin pond. Hence the fact that the Greek 
 
 d must answer to a Greek S, as in S6fi.os, form of Dyaus is 6e6s, not Serfs, scarcely 
 
 domus ; hence some other root must be warrants our severing the two words, 
 
 sought for et6s, perhaps 0E2, a second- If the Vedie adeva is the Greek SSeoj, 
 
 ary form of 0E, the root of rWrifu, the relationship of Behs with the Latin 
 
 though this is rejected by Professor ' deus ' is established. In this conclu- 
 
 Curtius, Gr. Et. pp. 230, 404, in favour sion I am following Professor Max 
 
 of a distinct root thes or fes (meaning Miiller, Lectures on Language, second 
 
 to pray), which he traces in festus and series, 426-456. 
 
 in ehaatrBai. (Pind. JV. v. IS.) I ^ Heaven and earth, it would seem, 
 venture to think that too great a stress are in the earliest hymns alike self- 
 is here laid on laws which undoubtedly existent ; but Dr. Muir (' Principal 
 apply generally to the Aryan languages, ^ Deities of the Eig Veda,' Transactions 
 but to which there are yet some instances of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
 of apparent and some even of real ex- vol. xxiii. part iii.) remarks that we are 
 eeption. The Greek Si,Kpv is rightly not told, as in the Hesiodic Theogony, 
 represented by the English tear, while which of the two is the older. ' On the 
 Ukos, the biting beast, reappears in its contrary, one of the ancient poets seems 
 legitimate dress in the German Toggen- to have been perplexed by the difficulty 
 burg; bat in English we have not t as of this question, as at the beginning of 
 
328 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 pit^r, Dyaua 
 Dj-aus and the Father, answering to the Zeus Pater of the Greeks and 
 nt ivi. ^YiQ Jupiter and Janus Pater of the Latins. As such, he was 
 Visvakarman, the great architect of the universe, who knows 
 all spheres and worlds,' janita {ysvsrijp), the parent of all 
 things, Prithivi, the broad earth, being the mother of his 
 children.^ 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 reap- 
 pears 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 in the 
 
 th^name^ Hesiodic theogouy, the Greek myth differing from the 
 Dyu- former only 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 pro- 
 blems of the sensible universe. The Greek was at once con- 
 tented 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, 
 
 one of the hymns, (i. 185), he exclaims, obvious that the abstract conception of 
 " Which of you twain was the first, and Dyu as the father of Indra could not 
 ■which the last ? How were they pro- stand against the overwhelming weight 
 duced ? Sages, who knows ? " His of the myths which were continually 
 power and wisdom are shown most of springing up from phrases not originally 
 all in the creation or evocation of his antagonistic with the monotheistic he- 
 son Indra. Thus of Indra it is said, lief or conviction. 
 
 " Thy father was the parent of a most ' Muir, Principal Deities of B. T. 553. 
 heroic son ; the maker of Indra, he who ^ -pj^ij, 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 ■ii\aTua, 
 
 man."' — B. V. iv. 17, 4. But it was the feminine of xAaTiis, broad. 
 
HINDU AND GREEK THOUGHT. 
 
 329 
 
 strove to gain some insiglit into the nature of tilings, and to chap. 
 
 unlock secrets for which the material world could never fur- . i- — 
 
 nish 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 with undecaying 
 supports, and which trembled and bowed down in the pre- 
 sence of the deities. Sometimes he was the all-pervading 
 spirit, sometimes a material and tangible jfirmament ; 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.' ' So 
 far as this question was answered at all, it was answered, as 
 Dr. Muir has well remarked, 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 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 {ops^is), which 
 in the Aristotelian 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.^ The Wish of Teu- 
 tonic 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 ; ' but he was not, like the 
 Hindu, always conscious of the need, always striving to know 
 
 ' if. V. X. 129 ; Muir, ib. 553. ' irdnTes fleSy x""'^"^"' ^vSpuiroL- 
 
 '' Muir, ib. Max Miiller, Sanskrit Od. iii. 48. 
 
 Literature, 559, et seq. 
 
330 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK more of that mystsrious power, always yearning for the time 
 ^ — - when he should no more see through the glass darkly. 
 
 Section II.— YARUNA and MITRA. 
 
 The solid As Dyaus is the god of heaven in its dazzling purity and 
 eaven. brightness, so is Varuna also the heaven as serving, like the 
 Hellenic Ouranos, to veil or cover the earth. It is true that 
 in the Hesiodic theogony Ouranos is united with Gaia, 
 whereas it is not Yaruna but Dyaus who in the Yedic 
 hymns is mentioned as having Prithivi 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 
 D^m^ter be but Gaia viewed as the mother of all Hving 
 things. Yaruna, 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 bid- 
 ding. But his mythical characteristics are in the Eig Yeda 
 perpetually suggesting the idea of an unseen and almighty 
 Being who has made all things and upholds them by his 
 will. In many of the Yedic 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 
 Yaruna, in the words of Dr. Muir, ' dwells in all worlds as 
 sovereign ; indeed, the three worlds are embraced withia 
 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 hol- 
 lowed out the channels of the rivers. It is by his wise con- 
 trivance 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 daylight. 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 
 
VAEUNA THE ALL-SEEING. 331 
 
 eyes. He knows the flight of birds in the sky, the path of CHAP. 
 
 ships on the sea, the course of the far-sweeping vjind, and . ^ — - 
 
 perceives all the hidden things that have been or shall be 
 done." 
 
 All these are phrases which may be suggested directly by Moral 
 the phenomena of the heaven 5 but the churiot in which Vanma° 
 Varuna is borne over the earth,^ 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 some 
 hymns, however, the two lines of thought seem to be blended 
 strangely together; in other words, we see in them the 
 process by which men rose from the lower conception to the 
 higher. That sense of sin, which, as distinguished from the 
 transgression of a positive law, can scarcely be said to have 
 been present to the Greek mind, weighs heavy on the spirit 
 of the Hindu, even while his conception of the Deity whom 
 he addresses may be almost coarse in its familiarity. Va- 
 runa 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.^ 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, 
 
 ' Prineipal Deities of B. V. 558. In de rAntiguiU : — ' La Religion des 
 
 a passage from the Atharva Veda, quoted Aryas.' 
 
 by Dr. Muir, ibid, and Professor Max '' This chariot ' shines with a golden 
 
 Miiller, Chips, i. 42, the same thought radiance at the break of day, and at 
 
 is worked out in language which is sunset assumes the colour of iron.' — 
 
 precisely reproduced in the 139th Muir, ib. 557. 
 
 Psalm, and which also carries us to " Max Miiller, History of Sanscrit 
 
 expressions and sentences in the Sermon Literature, 537. It is scarcely necessary 
 
 on the Mount, and in other parts of the to compare this language with the 
 
 New Testament. The parallelism be- similar tone of familiar expostulation 
 
 tween the expressions of Aryan and which runs through many of the Hebrew 
 
 Semitic monotheism is further traced Psalms, 
 out by M. Maury, Croyances et Legended 
 
332 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Aryan mo- 
 notheism. 
 
 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.' ^ 
 
 If the singular purity and unselfishness of the Hesiodic 
 morality, as compared with that of the poems to which we 
 give the name of Homer, suf&ce of themselves to prove the 
 essential distinction between 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 consciousness 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 parables, would 
 have conveyed a familiar meaning to the Aryans of northern 
 India. ^ It matters little then whether Yaruna be in these 
 hymns mentioned almost invariably in conjunction with 
 Mitra and sometimes with other gods. Like these, he is 
 Aditya, Kronlon, if Aditi be time ; but the mythical notion 
 
 ' 'M.Bji'MM[ev,Hist.ofSans/c.Lit.5iO. 
 
 ' 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 
 ingrained in the former. The very 
 interchangeableness 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,' 
 —lb. 365. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL VABUNA. 333 
 
 thius introduced sate so loosely on those wlio held it, that 
 their language ceased to show any sign of its influence in 
 times of real anguish and sorrow.' 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.^ 
 
 The process which converted the physical Yaruna into a Aditi and 
 spiritual God is carried to its extreme results in the concep- j^g_ 
 tion of Aditi, 'the unbound, the unbounded,' or even, as 
 being expressed by the negation of diti, a bond, ' the Abso- 
 lute.' 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 of all the 
 gods. The fact is startling ; but, in Professor MuUer's 
 words, ' the thoughts of primitive humanity were not only 
 diiferent 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 contradictions. They knew of Indra as 
 the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god of gods, 
 they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all ; but they were by 
 no means startled at the idea, that their Indra had a mother, 
 or that their Agni 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 
 
 ' 'Every god is conceived as supreme, legends thinly disguises that monothe- 
 or at least as inferior to no other god, istic conviction, which accounts for 
 at the time that he is praised or invoked much that would otherwise be perplex- 
 by the Vedic poets ; and the feeling that ing in the writings of Eoman Catholic 
 the various deities are but different and other theologians, 
 names, different conceptions of that in- ' The distinction between the old 
 comprehensible Being which no thought Vedie theory of sin and the forms of 
 can reach and no language express, is belief still prevalent on the subject can- 
 not yet quite extinct in the minds of not always be very broadly drawn, 
 some of the more thoughtful Eishis.' — ' I ask, Varuna, wishing to know 
 Max Muller, Lectures on Language, this my sin. I go to ask the wise. The 
 second series, 412. It might be added Sages all tell me the same. Varuna it 
 that the interpretations of later theolo- is who is angry with me. 
 gians cannot he accounted for except by ' Was it an old sin, Varuna, that 
 the fact that this conviction never be- thou wishest to destroy thy friend, who 
 came totally extinct. Even when the always praises thee ? Tell me, thou un- 
 whole Hindu Pantheon has attained its conquerable lord, and I will quickly 
 final dimensions, the myths are so turn to thee with praise freed from sin. 
 treated as to leave little doubt of the ' Absolve us from the sins of our 
 real meaning in the writer's mind. The fathers and from those which we com- 
 outward respect paid to the popular raitted with our own bodies.' 
 
334 
 
 Mi'THOLOQY OF THE AEYAJiT NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The phy- 
 sical and 
 spiritual 
 Varuna/ 
 
 with. Diti, tlie unbounded 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.' But the process could not be 
 stopped at this point. The gods had been called daksha- 
 pitar, 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.' On the one side, 
 then, Diti was growing into ' a definite 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 religion),' 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 guiltless of Aditi, loosen the sins on all sides.' 
 
 All this, however, simply reproduces the Hesiodic theo- 
 gony, 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 Va- 
 
 of the lunar month as a possible proto- 
 type of the Adityas,' adding that ' this 
 might even^ explain the destruction of 
 the eighth Aditya, considering that the 
 eighth day of each parvan, owing to its 
 uncertainty, might he represented as 
 exposed to decay and destruction.' — Eig 
 Veda Sanhita, i. 241. 
 ^ Theog. 176. 
 
 ' "Why the Adityas should be seven 
 or eight in number, is a question of 
 which Professor Max MuUer, whom here 
 I have simply to follow, admits the dif- 
 ficulty. The number seven, though a 
 sacred number, is not more sacred than 
 other numbers in the Rig Veda, and he 
 contents himself with suggesting ' the 
 seven days or tithis of the fourparvanas 
 
LATER NOTIONS OF VAEUNA. 335 
 
 runa, like Ouranos, is specially the veiling heaven whose CHAP, 
 presence is most felt at nightfall, when the sky seems to - — ^ — - 
 descend nearest to the earth, while Mitra, like Dju 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.! 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,^ and not as the gloomy and inflexible 
 Hades of the nether world. He is the omniscient Asura or 
 spirit who props up the sky,^ 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.* From the simple germ thus afforded by 
 mythical phrases which described the various 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 be- 
 longs 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 ocean.' 
 
 ' Atharva Veda, iv. 16, 6. Muir, cally identical with Aliura, is a common 
 
 Principal Deities of B. F., 558. epithet of Varuna ;_^(2) the class of 
 
 '' ' King Varuna perceives all that is Indian gods called Adityas, of whom 
 
 within and all that is beyond heaven Varuna is the highest, bears a certain 
 
 and earth. The winldngs of men's analogy to the Zendic Amshaspands, of 
 
 eyes arc numbered by him.' Of. 'the whom Ahura-Mazdio is the highest ; (3) 
 
 very hairs of your head are all num- a close connection exists between Varuna 
 
 bered : ' and Mitra, just as Ahura and Mithra are 
 
 Trdi/Ta ifiiiv Aihs otpdaKfihs Koi Trdi/Ta frequently associated in the Zendavesta, 
 
 voijcras- Hes. Op. et Dies, 265. though the position of the two has other- 
 
 ' The eyes of the Lord are in every wise become altered, and Mithra, who is 
 
 place, beholding the evil and the good.' not even reckoned among the Amshas- 
 
 ' B. V. viii. 42, 1. Muir, Sanskrit pands, is placed between the two powers 
 
 Texts, part iv. chap. ii. sect. 2. The of good and evil. 'Zwischen Ormuzd 
 
 name Asura belongs to the same root (Licht) und Ariman (Finsterniss) stelit 
 
 with that of the Teutonic Asen, or Msiv. Mithras mitten inne, heisst darum 
 
 ' The reasons urged in support of Mittler, fieo-iTijt, Plut. de Is.' — Nork, 
 
 this conclusion are given by Dr. Muir, Eeal WSrterJmch, s. v. Mithrascult. 
 Principal Deities of R. V. 556, as fol- ' Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. ch. 
 
 lows, (1) the name Asura, etymologi- ii. section 6. 
 
336 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The pri- 
 mary con- 
 ception of 
 Indra 
 purely 
 physical. 
 
 Section III.— INDRA. 
 
 If Dyaus and Varuna were alike doomed to lose their an- 
 cient majesty, a brighter lot was in store for Indra ; and the 
 picture which the oldest Vedic hymns present to us of this 
 god has a special value as enabling us to determine the 
 measure in which religion and mythology 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 Hiad 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 indi- 
 cating the later growth of the notion, we have an acknow- 
 ledged 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 charac- 
 teristics as lord of the bright heaven. Although Phoibos 
 still bears his unerring weapons, yet his ari-ows 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 conflicts 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.^ 
 
 ' ' L'Olympe, dans Hom^re, ressemhle oii chaque personnage a, par droit de 
 a une monarohie ^tablie de longue date, naissanee, son emploi, ses titres invari- 
 
THE WARS OP THE GODS. 337 
 
 The true mythical action of the Achaian deities is thus CHAP. 
 
 intermittent. In the hymns of the Eig Veda it is continuous, ._ /. .... 
 
 and their action is but remotely concerned with human Action of 
 
 interests. Like the Hesiodic Zeus, they love the savour of j^^^ 
 
 burnt-offerings, and hasten to receive their share of the Achaian 
 
 " . deities. 
 
 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 acknow- 
 ledged king, each is lord in his own domain ; each is ad- 
 dressed as the maker of aU visible things, while their 
 features and characteristics are in almost all cases inter- 
 changeable.' 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 agaiast 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 revolt 
 against Dyaus and Indra. In the rumblings of the thunder, 
 while the drought stiU sucks out the life of the earth, are 
 heard the mutterings of their hateful enemy. In the light- 
 ning flashes which precede the outburst of the pent-up 
 waters are seen the irresistible spears of the god, who is, 
 attacking the throttling serpent in his den; and in the 
 serene heaven which shone out when the deluging clouds 
 had passed away, men beheld the face of the mighty deity 
 
 ables, et son rang dont il ne songe pas a signs for one and the same conception, 
 
 se d^partir. Dans cette sorte do cour He who knows Brahma knows Prajipati; 
 
 que les dieux tiennent autour de Jupiter, they who know Brahma know Skambha, 
 
 ils se sont d^pouilUs de leur caraotfere the supporter of the world, who, like 
 
 propre et de leur originalite native . . . Atlas, upholds the earth and sky, and 
 
 Comme ces dignitaires des anciennes who is ' all which has soul, which 
 
 monarchies qui continuent a porter des breathes and winks.' Again, this office 
 
 titres depuis longtemps vides de sens, of supporting the universe is fulfilled by 
 
 ils ont des surnoms dont ils semblent Varuna, Indja, Savitri, and Vishnu. So, 
 
 ignorer la valeur.' — Br^al, Hercule et too, Praj&pati is Mahadeva, the great 
 
 Caeus, 81. The very fact that the god, andBhava (probably Phoibos) the 
 
 mythical attributes of these gods be- supreme lord. He is also Daksha, and 
 
 come less and less defined, while their the year, the ender of all things, as the 
 
 subordination to Zeus becomes more and days bring the life of man to a close. — 
 
 more marked, is the strongest evidence Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. pp. 17, 
 
 of the mythological origin of the whole. 18, 24, 49, 156, &c. 
 ' Their names are, in short, mere 
 
 VOL. I. Z 
 
338 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The Greek 
 mythology 
 not bor- 
 rowed 
 from the 
 Vedic. 
 
 Indra, a 
 god of the 
 bright 
 heaven. 
 
 who was their friend. So completely does the older mytho- 
 logy of the Veda carry us away from the one idea which 
 must be first awakened by the genuine religious instinct of 
 mankind. 
 
 No stronger evidence than that which is furnished by this 
 contrast could be adduced to show that in no single feature 
 is the mythology of our Homeric poems borrowed from the 
 people who betook themselfes to the banks of the Indus and 
 the Ganges. The Vedic Dyaus may in all essential features 
 be reproduced in the Hellenic Zeus. Like Phoibos Chry- 
 saor, 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 differences 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 Sarama, 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 com- 
 plicated mythology of the later Vedic literature,' as from 
 the uncouth outgrowths of the Orphic theogony we turn to 
 the earlier phases in 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 ApoUon, 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 
 
 ' See the remarks quoted by Professor 
 Max Miiller from Professor Both {Sans- 
 krit LiUratwe- 60). 
 
 ' A summary of the story of Indra 
 and Indragit is given by Dr. Muir, 
 Sanskrit Texts, iv. p. 422. 
 
IITOEA THE EAIN-GIVER. 339 
 
 used, more and more atmospheric, — if they become the CHAP. 
 
 powers -wkicli produce the sights of the changing ^sky, — if ■ r — - 
 
 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. Meaning 
 although his name ceased, like that of Dyaus, to be chiefly "^^g 
 a name for the sky, and although the struggle in which he 
 is constantly engaged has indefinitely 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 hiss adversary is described, 
 that we find the germs of the dualistic creed which bears 
 the name of Zoroaster. Nowhere then, in the oldest monu- 
 ments of Hindu thought, is the real character of Indra lost 
 sight of. His home is in the bright heaven ; but, as his 
 name denotes,' 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. 
 
 In vain is Indra assailed in his career by the same enemies The might 
 which seek to destroy the infant Herakles. The Eakshasa ?°gj " f" 
 fares no better than the snakes. Indra. 
 
 'Vyansa, exulting and striking hard blows, smote thee, 
 Maghavan, upon the jaw; whereupon, being so smitten, 
 thou provedst the stronger and didst crush the head of the 
 slave with the thimderbolt.' ' 
 
 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, 
 
 ' ' Indra, a name peeuhar to India, yielded indu, drop, sap.' — Max MuUer, 
 
 admits of but one etymology, i.e. it Lectureson Language, seiiondiSmis,i^Q. 
 
 must be derived from the same root, '' Sig Veda Sanhita, H. H. "Wilson, 
 
 whatever that maybe, which in Sanskrit vol. iii. p. 1S6. 
 
 7. 2 
 
340 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAIf NATIONS. 
 
 Indra the 
 
 rain- 
 
 bi'inger. 
 
 Maghavan, the desires of tliy 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 wiU : verily thou 
 alone possessest all power.' ' 
 
 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.'^ 
 
 ' At the birth of thee who art resplendent, trembled the 
 heaven and trembled the earth through fear of thy wrath : 
 the mighty clouds were confined : they destroyed (the dis- 
 tress of drought), spreading the waters over the dry places.'* 
 Lastly, as the solar god, he is the Wanderer, like the Teutonic 
 Wegtam, like Odysseus, Sigurd, Dionysos, Phoibos, Theseus, 
 Bellerophon, Oidipous, Herakles and Savitar. 
 
 ' Wonderful Indra, wanderer at times, thou art verily the 
 granter of our desires.'^ 
 
 Indra then is the lord of the heaven, omnipotent and all- 
 seeing: but so had been, or rather was, his father Dyu; 
 and thus some epithets which in the west are reserved for 
 Zeus are in the east transferred to Indra, and the Jupiter 
 Stator of the Latins reappears as the Indra sthatar of the 
 Hindu.^ 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 
 
 ' B. V. SanUta, H. H. Wilson, i. 154. 
 
 2 lb. ii. 373. ' lb. iii. 37. 
 
 ' Cf. Judges, V. 4. 
 
 5 E. V. Sankita, H. H. Wilson, 
 vol. iii. p. 187. 
 
 " The Latins, it would seem, mis- 
 understood the name, Livy, i. 12. 'Le 
 motsth4tarestordinairementcomplet(5en 
 Sanscrit par un ginitif, tel que rathast/a, 
 
 harin&m, ce qui determine le veritable 
 sens de cette ipith^te, qui signifie, eelui 
 qui se tient debout sui son char, sur 
 ses coursiers. Quel est ce char ? ■ On 
 ne pent douter qu'il ne soit question 
 du soleil, qui est souvent repr^sent^ 
 dans les Vedas comme une roue d'or 
 roulant dans le firmament.' — Br&I, 
 Hercule et Cacus, 103. 
 
INDEA AKD THE HARITS. 341 
 
 sometimes to course througL. 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 sometime 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 ApollSn, 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 glistening 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 light- 
 ning, as he speeds on his journey through the heaven. As 
 looking down on the wide earth spread beneath, he is 
 possessed, like Apolldn, of an inscrutable wisdom. Like 
 him also, he chases the Dawn, Dahana or Daphne, 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 
 Dahana.^ 
 
 The prayers addressed to this god show that the chief Physical 
 idea associated with him was that of an irresistible material ,''°"^"=' 
 
 between 
 
 power. The Hindu, as he comes before the deity to whom light and 
 he looks for his yearly harvest, assumes unconsciously the '^'^'^'''^^^^' 
 
 ' M-aiT, Principal Deities of E.V. 560. however, on the banks of the Vipar 
 2 In this myth Dahani is regarded as (river or water), an incident which re- 
 hostile to Indra and as meditating calls the disappearance of Arethousa or 
 mischief, a thought which might easily Daphne in the waters from which 
 be suggested by the legends of Arethousa Aphrodite rises. H. H. Wilson, S. V. 
 andDaphn^. Her shattered ear reposes, Santea, vol. ii. p. 178. 
 
342 MYTHOLoey of the aeyan nations. 
 
 BOOK attitude of tlie Baal-worshipper of Syria.' But the real 
 
 II. 
 
 prayer of the heart is addressed to Yaruna, 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 Hera- 
 kles, 'he engages in many conflicts for the good of man 
 with overwhelming power. '^ 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 dun- 
 geons. 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.'* 
 
 He appears again as Atri, a name which may perhaps be 
 the same as the Atli of the Volsung tale and the Etzel of 
 the Mbelung song. 
 
 ' Thou, Indra, hast opened the cloud for the Angirasas : 
 thoa hast shown the way to Atri who vexes his adversaries 
 by a hundred doors.'* 
 
 He is also Namuki (the Greek Amykos), and Sambara. 
 
 ' Thou, Indra, with thy bolt didst slay afar off the deceiver 
 Namuki.' ' 
 
 ' Thou hast slain Sambara by thy resolute self.' ^ 
 
 ' The poKfer of Indra is the one The stanza known as the Hansavati 
 
 theme of the praise accorded to him in Eich is noteworthy as exhibiting the 
 
 R. V. vii. 32. The worshipper calls on germs of more than one myth. Indra 
 
 him who holds the "thunderbolt with ' is Hansa (tlie sun) dwelling in light : 
 
 his arm, whom no one can check if he Vasu (the wind) dwelling in the firma- 
 
 wishes to giye, who makes mortal men ment : the invoker of the gods (Agni) 
 
 obtain spoil in fighting, who is the dwelling on the altar : the guest (of the 
 
 benefactor of everyone, whate-rer battles worshipper) dwelling in the house (as 
 
 there be, who is the rich of old and to the culinary fire) : the dweller amongst 
 
 he called in every battle. Max MuUer, men (as consciousness) : the dweUer in 
 
 Sanskrit Literature, 543. the most excellent (orb, the sun) : the 
 
 ' This contest with the clouds,' says dweller in truth, the dweller in the sky 
 
 Professor H. H. Wilson (Introduction (the air), born in the waters, in the 
 
 to R. V. SanUta, xxx.) 'seems to have rays of light, in the verity (of manifes- 
 
 suggested to the authors of the Siktas tation), in the (Eastern) mountain, the 
 
 the martial character of Indra on other truth (itself).' — H. H. Wilson, E. V. 
 
 occasions, and he is especially described Sanhita, iii. 199. 
 
 as the god of battles, the giver of victory « H. H. Wilson, B. V. Sanhita, \. 
 
 to his worshippers, the destroyer of the 151. 
 
 enemies of religious rites, the subyerter " lb. i, 87. * lb. i. 136. 
 
 of the cities of the Asuras.' » iJ, i. 147. e /j. j. 148. 
 
INDKA AND HIS ENEMIES. 343 
 
 ' Verily thou hast made me, Indra, thy associate, when CHAP, 
 grinding 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 the 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 suggesting 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 The wife 
 who bear the names of the gods is associated with her °'^°'^''*- 
 husband. Like 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 vanquish; but Indra shatters her chariot, while 
 Saranyu, the Harits, and the Eohits are rather beings who 
 do his wUl 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 Mahadeva 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.' In an inquiry designed 
 chiefly to bring out the points of resemblance and difference 
 between cognate mythological systems, we are not called 
 upon to enter the unwholesome labyrinth in which a morbid 
 
 ' H. H. Wilson, 7?. V. Sanhita, i. 279. 
 
 « a. ii. 418, 419. » Muir, Principal Ddtks of S. V. 577. 
 
344 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN TfATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 philosophy has bewildered and oppressed a race once more 
 simple and perhaps more truthfal in their faith than the fore- 
 fathers 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 sym- 
 bolical interpretations which make anything mean anything 
 may be as noteworthy in the pages of Brahmanic commen- 
 tators 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 
 earlier thought which may be here and there discerned in 
 the rant 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 denotino- 
 Prithivi the wife of Dyaus. 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 identi- 
 fied with Vach,' 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.* Much 
 in the same way, Mrriti,^ 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 Sraddhi 
 we have nothing more than a name for religious faith.* 
 
 Place of 
 Brahma 
 in the 
 Hindu 
 thuogony. 
 
 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 
 
 ' Gr. eiros, cftreiv, anoieiv, Latin tox, 
 Tocare. 
 
 ^ Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. 
 p. 360, note. 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, 
 second series, S15. Is tJie name Nirriti 
 
 connected -vrith that of the Ithakan 
 Neritos and the Leukadian Nerikos ? 
 
 * ' The Latin word credo, " I believe," 
 is the same as the Sanskrit SraddhA.' — 
 Max Miiller, Chips, i. 42. 
 
FLEXIBLE CHAEACTEK OF BRAHMA. 345 
 
 in the piecing together of its several parts, but it cannot be CHAP. 
 
 regarded as the resiilt of a logical system. The properties of 
 Vishnu are those of Agni, Vayu, and Surya ; and as Agni is 
 an the deities, so also is Vishnu. The character of Brahma 
 is not less flexible. At first the word is but a name for the 
 self-existent principle, and the various mythical acts recorded 
 of him are not only susceptible of a spiritual or metaphysical 
 interpretation, 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 pro- 
 duce 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 Brahma, the progenitor of all 
 worlds.'' He is the first god of a later Indian Trimiirtti; 
 but the threefold deity of Taska is Agni, Vayu, and Surya, 
 and thus Dr. Muir concludes that the conjunction of Brahma, 
 Vishnu, and Eudra (? Siva) was unknown to that ancient 
 commentator.^ Even in the Mahabharata, Brahma is both 
 created and uncreated. In that poem MahMeva {fisjas 6s6s, 
 the great god), is the creator of Brahma, Vishnu, and Indra. 
 ' From his right side he produced Brahma, the originator of 
 the worlds, and from his left side Vishnu, for the preserva- 
 tion of the universe, and when the end of the age had 
 
 * 
 
 ' Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 27. Texts, part iv. pp. 134-6. To the ob- 
 
 2 The three names given by Yaska jection that the Puranic mythology, 
 
 are with him mere names for one object, of which the Trimiirtti of Brahma, 
 
 ' These deities,' he says, ' receive many Vishnu and Siva is a part, might have 
 
 designations in consequence of their grown up along with the Vedie, Dr. 
 
 greatness, or from the diversity of their Muir answers that ' if Yaska had been 
 
 functions, as (the appellations of) hotri, cognisant of any other than the Vedio 
 
 adhvaryu, brahman, and udgatri are mythology (at least, if he had attached 
 
 applied to one and the same person.' any authority to any other), he would 
 
 The functions connected with these not have failed to make some reference 
 
 names carry us back to the old mythical to the latter, and would have endea- 
 
 phrases. ' Indra' s function is to bestow voured to blend and reconcile it with 
 
 moisture, to slay Vritra ; and all exer- the former. As we find no attempt of 
 
 tions of force are_,the work of Indra.' the kind in his work, we must conclude 
 
 ' The function of Aditya (the sun) is to either that the Puranic mythology had 
 
 draw up moisture and to retain it by no existence in his day, or that he 
 
 his rays : and whatever is mysterious is regarded it as undeserving of any atten- 
 
 the work of Aditya.' — Mair, Sanskrit tion.' — lb. 137. 
 
 I. 
 
346 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 PrajApati. 
 
 Visva- 
 Icarman. 
 
 arrived, tlie migMy god created Eudra." But MaMdeva is 
 is identified by the poets of the Mah^bharata with Eudra, 
 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.^ 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.' 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 Dahan^ and Ath^n^ from the head of Dyaus or Zeus.* 
 
 As Prajapati, 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.' He is 
 also a worshipper of the Linga, and acts as the charioteer of 
 Mahadeva or of Eudra, who springs from his forehead (as he 
 does also from that of Krishna), glorious as the noon-day 
 sun." 
 
 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 aU things, and men desire the at- 
 tainment of good in the world where ' he, the One Being, 
 dwells beyond the seven Eishis.'^ 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." He 
 is also the son of Bhuvana, the first of all beings who sprang 
 into existence from the earth." 
 
 ' Mnir, Sanskrit Texts, pp. 156, 162, 
 
 = lb. 160. ' lb. 146, 147. 
 
 ' lb. 193. » lb. 39, 
 
 " lb. 190. Athtofe in like manner 
 springs fully armed from the head 
 of Zens; hut in the story of the 
 Vishnu Purana (Muir, ib. 331), Rudra 
 is both sun and moon, as dividing his 
 body into two parts, male and female, 
 like the Greek Hermaphrodites. 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. 
 
 ' Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 7. 
 
 8 Ib. 129. 
 
 " The name Bhuvana itself is from 
 th« same root with the Greek ifuffis 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 
 
THE DWELLING OF ZEUS. 
 
 347 
 
 Section V.— ZEUS. 
 
 In the conception of tlie poets known to us by the name of CHAP. 
 
 Homer, the earth on which we tread is covered with a gross • , 
 
 and thick air, through which course the clouds, and in which J^^-q^^ ^^ 
 the winds work their will. Above this air rises the serene Zeus in 
 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 visit the earth and take 
 part in the quarrels of mortal men, Zeus 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 Sarp^don is Smitten by 
 the spear of Patroklos, the tears of Zeus fall in large raia- 
 drops from the sky. But that which he wiUs must be done 
 by others, and in their toils he can have no share. So when 
 the hour for tlie battle between AchiUeus 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 wiU none the less gladden 
 his eyes as he looks down from Olympos. When, after the 
 conflict of AchiUeus with the burnitig river, the gods turn 
 their weapons on each other, the mind of Zeus remains un- 
 ruffled, and he listens in silence to the charge brought against 
 Her^ by Let6, as she lays before his feet the arrows of her 
 child Artemis.' 
 
 Thus for the poets of the Hiad and the Odyssey, Zeus, The up- 
 though he might be called the gatherer of the dark clouds,^ lightf "^ 
 
 be referred to the verb Consulere. It woiflen for his new city, it is to Census 
 
 is by no means likely that even the title that he makes his vows and prayers, 
 
 of the Dii Consentes can be taken as The Consualia would thus precisely 
 
 indicating a divine council : and the correspond with the Eleusinian festival 
 
 coincidence is noteworthy between the ofDfemSt^r. 
 
 Latin Census and the Hindu Ganesa, ' II. xxi. 388. 
 
 the lord of life and of the reproductive ' Zeus Alyioxos. ' Le verbe grec 
 
 powers of nature, the name reappearing ataffu, qui signifie s'flancer, a fait d'une 
 
 in the Greek yii/os and our Iciti. Hence part le substantif aif|, chfevre (a cause de 
 
 it is that when Eomulus is in need of la nature bondissante de I'animal), et de 
 
348 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ABYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The idea 
 of Zeus 
 suggested 
 by phy- 
 sical phe- 
 nomena. 
 
 was pre-eminently the lord of the bright heaven, and the 
 thought most closely associated with the name was that of a 
 serene and unchangeable splendour. 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 tem- 
 pest, 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 na- 
 tions, we are brought at once by the language even of our 
 Homeric poets to that earliest form of thought in which 
 words now used to denote spiritual conceptions conveyed 
 only the impression left on the human mind by the pheno- 
 mena of the outward world. As man awoke gradually to a 
 conscious perception of the things around him, the 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 aU 
 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 corres- 
 ponding 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 
 
 I'autre les mots KaToi'l, Karaiyis, tem- 
 p6te. De la une nouvelle s&ie d'images 
 et de fables oA la chfevre joue le role 
 principal. L'^gide, avant d'etre un 
 boiiclier fait en peau de chivre, itait 
 le ciel au moment de I'orage ; Jupiter 
 017(0x01 Atait le dieu qui envoie la tem- 
 pete (il favit entendre ix" ^'^^^ son sens 
 
 primitif veho) : plus tard, on traduisit le 
 dieu qui parte Vegide. Horn fere semble 
 se souvenir de la premifere eignification, 
 quand il nous montre, au seul mouTe- 
 ment du bouclier, le tonnerre qui delate, 
 rida qui se couvre de nuages, et les 
 hommes frapp^s de terreur.' — Brial, 
 Hercule et Cacus, 116. 
 
ZEUS A NAME FOR THE SUPREME GOD. 349 
 
 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 (flouds. 
 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 Aer, his Aither, 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 sup- 
 planted by the less significant Indra. 
 
 But in the West, as in the Bast, the original character of The Latin 
 the god is in close accordance with the etymology of the •^^P^'^'"- 
 word. The Athenians 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 ' mains Jupiter ' remained common expres- 
 sions in every day speech.^ 
 
 The idea of brightness was, however, not the only one Zeus Ou- 
 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 corresponded 
 with the Vedic Varuna. In this case the name remained 
 more transparent in the West than in the East. The Yedie 
 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,^ and we look in vain for the spiritual 
 attributes which belong to Varuna in the hymns of the Eig 
 Veda. 
 
 ' vaoy, S> <pl\e Zev, (cari rrjs apoipas The word evSios has the same trans- 
 
 rciv 'ABTivalav. parent meaning. — Max Miiller, Lectures 
 
 Aspice hoc suhlime candens quod on Language, second series, 434. 
 invocant omnes Jovem. ' Hesiod, Theog. 122. 
 
350 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The my- 
 thical and 
 spiritual 
 Zeus. 
 
 Influence 
 of mytho- 
 logy on 
 religion. 
 
 But the developement of a personal Zeus was followed 
 necessarily by two results, wMch long continued astonish- 
 ingly 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 varying phases of the 
 sky became each the germ of a myth, and 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 aU, 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 phenomena must 
 denote when used to signify the actions of a personal and 
 conscious being. As in every land the dews of heaven fer- 
 tilise 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 disinte- 
 rested 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 repul- 
 sive features of the anthropomorphised 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 neces- 
 sary result in the fearful horrors of the tale of Oidipous and 
 lokast^. 
 
 That the two streams of religion and mythology ran on 
 side by side, or rather that the same words are used to ex- 
 press two wholly different lines of thought, is abundantly 
 
HESIODIO MORALITY AND THEOLOGT. 351 
 
 proved by Greek not less than by Hindu literature. The CHAP, 
 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 fami- 
 liar, 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.' 
 However imperfect his conceptions may have been, it is 
 certain that the swineherd Eumaios did not derive his 
 religious convictions from, mythical phrases, when he told 
 Odysseus that God gives and withholds according to his 
 pleasiu'e 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. No- 
 where is this conclusion so clearly forced upon us as in the 
 Hesiodic Works and Days. In this poem the teacher 
 who bids his friend to deal with all men after the rule of 
 righteousness which comes from Zeus,^ who tells that justice 
 and truth shall in the end prevail,' and that they who do 
 evil to others inflict evil on themselves,* 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 man- 
 kind when all the evils should be let loose from her box, 
 while, to crush them utterly, hope should remain a prisoner 
 
 ' 'What,' asks Professor Max Miiller, higher powers that rule it, Eumaios 
 
 'did the swineherd Eumaios know of knows only of just gods, "who hate 
 
 the intricate Olympian theogony? Had cruel deeds, but honour justice and the 
 
 he ever heard the name of the Charites righteous works of men.'" — Lectures on 
 
 or the Harpyias? Could he have told Language, second series, 453. 
 
 who was the father of Aphrodite, who ^ 35_ 
 
 were her husbands and her children? ' 213. 
 
 I doubt it ; and when Homer introduces ' 263. 
 him to us, speaking of this life and the 
 
352 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK within it. So conscious apparently is the poet that the 
 
 II, 
 
 Zeus who thus cheats mankind is not the Zeus who com- 
 mands 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 impos- 
 sible 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 con- 
 fusion 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 mankiad. 
 Still less can it be said that the mythology of India choked 
 the growth of a right faith. The Hindu might in his prayer 
 employ the names of Varuna or Dyaus, but he knew well 
 that these were only names for One whose nature, infinite 
 and incomprehensible, yet corresponded with his own, and of 
 whose aid he felt himself to stand in the deepest and most 
 constant need. 
 The Zeus But if it be true generally that the Greek, especially in 
 Tragic the prehistoric ages, ' was not aware that there were dif- 
 poets. ferent tributaries which entered from different points into 
 
 the central idea of Zeus,'^ 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. The fact 
 that national and political institutions were intertwined 
 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 involved in the tra- 
 ditional 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 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, second series, 442. 
 
IDEAS OF THE POETS. 353 
 
 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 wiU 
 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 otherwise 
 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 ^schylos that 
 Zeus was a mere name, one of many names, for the One true 
 God, which might serve to convey some faint notion and in- 
 adequate idea of his goodness and his greatness. 
 
 Hindu and Greek, then, alike worshipped the same God, Th, 
 of whom they also spoke sometimes under other names. But '^"^^ 
 these names 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 varia- 
 tions 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 ger- 
 minate while as yet there was no failure of memory ; and if 
 when the meaning of words was in part or wholly forgotten 
 expressions not less graceful once than true became coarse 
 and mischievous, we may learn to curb our indignation when 
 ' On this subject see further, Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 41, 
 
 VOL. I. A A 
 
 e name 
 
354 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 we find that both the process and the result were alike in- 
 evitable. 
 
 But the name Zeus is not confined to Greeks and Hindus. 
 The Zeus Pater of the 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 
 MaxMiiller;^ but we must here note that the Greek Zen, 
 Zenos answers to the Latin Janus, Januspatsr ; that Janus 
 again, resolved into Dianus and Diana, carries us to the 
 Greek digammated forms Ai 6s, Ai^a, and appears again in 
 the word divine. With these may be taken the forms con- 
 nected with Zeus by the transition of dy (Byaus) into j 
 (Jupiter, Janus, Juno); or dj, as in the Djovis of Oscan in- 
 scriptions 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 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 Lidra. The evil powers of night or 
 darkness are Adcva, 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 Asmo- 
 deus,^ 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,' 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 
 
 ' Lectures on Language, second series, « Eshem-dev, aeshma-daeva, ' le dimon 
 
 453. For Mr. Peile's remarks on the de la concupiscence.' — Br^al, Hercule et 
 
 connection of Theos and Deus see note Cacus, 135. 
 
 p. 327. * Grimm, Deutsche Mythologw, 939. 
 
LOCAL TRADITIONS. 355 
 
 source from wMcli the Jews derived their later complicated chap. 
 demonology. That the term Diabolos, as applied to Satan, . 
 should he regarded as identical with the Greek word denoting 
 a slanderer, is a confusion precisely similar to that which 
 turned Lyka6n and his sons into wolves and the seven 
 arkshas or shiners into bears. 
 
 If from the Greek conceptions of Zeus we separate all The Zens 
 those which, springing from the idea of his relations to men j^'^lf'^'^ 
 as a Father, grew up into a moral and religious faith, the 
 rest may all be traced to mythical phrases which describe 
 the varying appearances of the 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, Olym- 
 pos and Crete, distinctions arising wholly from a forgetful- 
 ness 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.' 
 The sun as Endymion plunges iuto 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 Phaia- 
 kian or cloudland geography. It had its Arkadia and Delos, 
 the birthplace of the light, its Phoinikia and Ortygia, the 
 purple land cf 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 inherit- 
 ance, the Aryan tribes could not fail to give to the hills and 
 streams of their new homes the names which had once de- 
 scribed 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. 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 
 ' See Book i. ch. x. 
 A A 2 
 
356 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAX NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK the Delos of Apollon and the Athens of his virgin sister, 
 
 . II: , expresses the one idea of splendour ; and thus he was made 
 
 to dwell on the summit of tlie 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 he horn 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 birth The story of his birth and exploits is to be gathered not 
 of Zeus. gQ TOuch from the Iliad and Odyssey as from the Hesiodic 
 and Orphic theogonies ; but unless we find manifest contra- 
 dictions between the 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 a-nd 
 Gaia, but those of Tethys and Okeanos.' The struggle be- 
 tween Zeus and the Titans may be inferred from the fact 
 that H^r^ and Hephaistos speak of them as thrust away 
 under Tartaros ; ^ 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.' 
 
 ' n. xiv. 201. 'There was seen nearingus 
 
 2 Ibid. 279. A big man upon one foot, 
 
 ' In the Gaelic story of Osgar, the ^1^^ ^^? '^^''<=''' dusky black-skin mantle, 
 
 son of Oisein, the monster appears with ^j*'^ '^'^ hammering tools and his steel 
 
 two eyes ; but he is blinded, as in all lathe. 
 
 other forms of the myth, and for the ' One shaggy eye in his forehead ; . . . . 
 
 same reason. — Campbell, Tales of the He set off like the wind of the spring- 
 
 West Highlands, iii. 297. StiU, it is time 
 
 signific:tnt that ' not a bit of him was to Out to the dark mountains of the high 
 
 be seen but his eyes with blue-green grounds. 
 
 scales of hardening upon him,' the lirid He would take but a single leap 
 
 garment of Btorm-cloud. But in another O'er each single cold glen of the desert.' 
 
 legend we have the genuine Kyklopa. Campbell, ib. 392. 
 
THE VOEACI'IT OF KEONOS. 357 
 
 The lateness of many at least among the Hesiodic ideas CHAP. 
 
 seems to be manifested not so much in the allegorical . J — . 
 
 elements introduced,' as in the transparent meaning of the The ini- 
 names. Zeus and Hades, Phoibos and LSto already denoted Kronos. 
 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 Aith^r (ether) and 
 Hemera as children of Nyx and Erebos. In some important 
 points the story of 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 lapetos, the Kyklopes and other monstrous beings, 
 together with Ehea the mother of Zeus. All these Ouranos 
 hid away in the secret places of, Gaia who called on Kronos 
 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. ^ 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 con- 
 flict with its reUgion. Kronos and Ehea, then, became the 
 parents of Hestia, Demeter, Here and Hades ; but these are 
 aU 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 
 
 All this explains itself. The hammer- the poets of the Iliad and Odyssey. But 
 
 ing tools and steel lathe are the thunder the whole mythology of Aphrodite ren- 
 
 and lightning ; and the thundercloud ders it far more likely that we have 
 
 strides across whole valleys at each step, here a confusion similar to that which 
 
 and clings to the high grounds and the turned Lykion into a wolf, and that the 
 
 mountain sides. epithet was originally (piXoiLjj.'rfiiis, not 
 
 ' It is, in Professor Max Miiller's perhaps, as in the line (200) marked as 
 
 belief, manifest allegory when the ■ long spurious in the Hesiodic Theogony, Htl 
 
 hills,' 'the pleasant dwellings of the lajiUuv (t,fipa6,veri, but from the attri- 
 
 gods,' are reckoned among the children butes which made her the vehement 
 
 of Gaia. — Chips, ii. 66. ■ lover of Adonis. With this epithet we 
 
 ^ This is probably the only meaning may compare that of Pallas (the Phallic) 
 
 which the word <pi\oiJ.tieiS^s conveyed to Athene. 
 
358 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAX NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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.' 
 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 Metis 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 gene- 
 rations spring up on the earth and pass away. The 
 children swallowed are thus produced again ; and so the 
 Heaven or the Dawn, regarded as Time, might be spoken 
 of as relentless and cruel, and as rightly punished by their 
 injured children.^ 
 The war of A hard fight now awaited Zeus, who, by delivering the 
 children of Ouranos, had been armed for the struggle with 
 thunder and lightning.^ 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 
 
 ' With this mjth Grimm's story of When this fact -was forgotten, the word 
 the Wolf and the Seven Little Goats was regarded as meaning 'son of 
 presents a striking parallel. The wolf Kronos : ' and then it became necessary 
 is here the night or the darkness which to assign Kronos a place in the Theo- 
 tries to swallow np the seven days of gony and provide him with a wife 
 the week, and actually swallows six. and children. See further, Max Miiller, 
 The seventh, the youngest, escapes hy Chips, ii. 152. The name Metis is 
 hiding herself in the clockcase; in other closely connected with Medeia, and de- 
 words, the week is not quite run out, and notes the wisdom which stands out with 
 ■before it comes to an end the mother of special clearness in the Latin Minerva, 
 the goats unrips the wolfs stomach and Thus the phrase would run that the 
 places stones in it in place of the little Dawn was the daughter of Wisdom : 
 goats who come trooping out, as the days hut as the older myth spoke of the dawn 
 of the week begin again to run their as springing from the forehead of the 
 <Mmse. sky, there was no help for the later my- 
 
 ■•' Kronos himself is indeed simply thopceists but to make Zeus swallow 
 
 produced from the epithet Kronides as Metis, 
 applied to Zeus in a sense corresponding s Hesiod, Theog. 504. 
 to the Hebrew phrase ' Ancient of Days.' 
 
THE TITANS AND THEIR KINSFOLK. 359 
 
 Zeus, by wliose tlmnderbolts land and ocean are wrapped in CHAP. 
 
 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 (Akm6n) let down 
 from the earth could fathom the depths of Tartaros.^ 
 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 befriended 
 Zeus in his hour of need. 
 
 Yet this struggle which, like that between Zeus and other 
 Typhoeus the latest-born child of Gaia and Tartaros, is [™™^ "^ 
 related with so much pomp of high sounding but empty struggle. 
 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 
 the Sphinx, and in the earlier phase of tha legend, of 
 Achilleus and Agamemnon with Paris. 
 
 Having related the story of Typhoeus, the Hesiodic The loves 
 Theogony recounts the loves of Zeus with Metis, Themis, 
 Eurynome, Demet^r, 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 Hiad 
 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 
 
 ' This is indubitably the hammer of and the Sk. a9man, each of which means 
 
 Thor, ■which is sunk eight rasks beneath "a stone," and the latter also " a thun- 
 
 the surface of the earth and which takes derbolt ; " and with the Greek Sk^hkj' 
 
 nine months to rise again to Asgard. which commonly means an anvil, but 
 
 In fact the Greek word translated by which in Hesiod, Theog. 722, where he 
 
 ' anvil ' is etymologically identical with speaks of the x^^teos Skjuwi/ oupavSSei/ 
 
 the Teutonic ' hammer.' ' Professor KarluD, can mean nothing but the thun- 
 
 Curtius,' says Mr. Peile, 'seems to be derbolt.' — Introduction to Greek and 
 
 right in combining the 0. H. G, hamar, Latin Etymology, 37. 
 our hammer, with the Lithuanian akman 
 
36Q MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK parent was found in the "Wisdom which is wedded to Zeus. 
 / ■ To this class of invented names belong those of the H6rai, 
 or Hours, and their mother Themis ; but the name cf 
 Eurynome, 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 Athen^ 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,' or, as 
 the Hesiodic theogony relates, of Hephaistos also. 
 The twelve Thus the number of the kinsfolk and the children of Zeus 
 deft^s.'^" is already large ; but of the class of deities specially known 
 at Athens 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 Poseiddn 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 Hebe and Eileithyia, or again between 
 Demeter and Eurynome. From the number of the so-called 
 twelve. Hades is excluded ; but in the Iliad 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 in- The myth as related by ApoUodoros has received some 
 
 Ze"u'Z°^ amplifications. 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 
 
 ' ' Typhfieus, 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. Gould, 
 
 which run before the hurricane-cloud. The Were Wolf, p. 174. 
 
THE AEKADIAN LYK.OSOUEA, 361 
 
 father Kronos. In the war with the Titans the Kyklopes CHAP, 
 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 mytho- 
 grapher is at variance with that of the Hesiodic poet. 
 According to the latter Aphrodite is the offspring of Oura- 
 nos ; the former represents her as the child of Zeus and 
 DionS, and makes the scheme of things begin with Ouranos 
 himself instead of Chaos. 
 
 That Zeus should be nursed by Ida is an incident for The 
 which we are at once prepared when in the Eastern myth ^^^ q^.^. 
 we find that Ida is a name of the earth, and that she is tan Zeus 
 assigned as a wife to Dyaus. That he should have a 
 sanctuary specially sacred on the Lykaian heights in Arka- 
 dia was, as we have seen, as indispensable as the birth of 
 Phoibos in Delos. But the Arkadian legend is noteworthy 
 as showing 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 be- 
 held, 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,' 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 
 
 ' viii. 38. 1. 
 
II. 
 
 362 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 would have 
 known that Zeus had his Olympian and Lykaian hills, his 
 Crete, his Dikt4, his Arkadia, his Phoinikian home wher- 
 ever the sun sent forth his long train of light' 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 tenacity with which they 
 clung to this idea is singularly exhibited in the strange 
 superstition which made the Lykeian 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 aven-ed 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 hunstman, 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 ao 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.^ 
 
 ' AuK(ii7oupa. of the golden race, he was simply saying 
 
 '' When Pausanias, v. 7, 4, says that that it was built, as it must necessarily 
 the Olympian temple was built by men be, by Lykians or men of light. 
 
LYKAON AND TANTALOS. 
 
 363 
 
 But the word whicli supplied the name of the shadowless CHAP. 
 
 Lykaian sanctuary was confused in their mind with the ^.^ — ,: 
 
 name of the wolf, so called for the same reason which led the Lykosoura 
 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 Lyka&n. This son of Pelasgos was the 
 builder of Lykosoura, and he called Zeus Lykaios,^ 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 up to the Zeus whom he 
 reverenced as the most high. The zeal of 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 Lyka6n 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 miserable 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 hiiman flesh, but that, if they tasted it, then 
 they remained wolves for ever. 
 
 We have here more than the germ of mediseval Lykan- Lykan- 
 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 Lyka6n 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 
 
 ' Paus. viii. 2, 1. 
 
364 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAX NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The Dodo- 
 
 naiau and 
 
 Olympian 
 
 Ze 
 
 Limits (o 
 the power 
 of Zeus. 
 
 Phrygian king, tlie sin and its punisliment inevitably fol- 
 lowed the translation of mythical phrases into the conditions 
 of human life. 
 
 Like the god of Arkadia, the Zeus of Dodona is nourished 
 by nymphs, who in this instance are called Hyades, the 
 bringers of 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 Eleutherai, to which unintentional 
 trespassers into the Temenos of Zeus were conveyed, re- 
 appears in the mythical geography of the Egean island.' 
 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.^ If the name given to these mysterious 
 beings be akin to the Dikte and Lyktos of the Cretan tale, 
 to Artemis Diktynna and Diktys of Seriphos, we have in it 
 only a general designation which applies to each of the 
 Daktyloi, Herakles, Paionios, lasios 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 Yedic 
 hymns, the bride of Zeus. The name of Herakles, like that 
 of Here, indicates simply the splendour of the risen sun, and 
 in lasios, as in lasion, lamos, lolS and others, we have the 
 violet tint with which the heaven is flushed in early morning. 
 The olive branch, which Herakles made the prize of victory, 
 itself came from the Hyperboreans, whence Achaia, the 
 mother of the Zeus-born Achaians, journeyed to Delos. 
 
 Thab the relations of Zeus to other mythical beings were 
 
 very variously described, a comparison of our Hesiodic and 
 
 Homeric narratives has already shown us. In the latter, he 
 
 is the father not only of Aphrodite, who in the former is his 
 
 ' Hesiod, Theog. 54. 2 Paus. i . 7, 4. 
 
THE POWER OP ZEUS. 365 
 
 sister, but of Ares and Hephaistos, who, accordiDg to anotlier 
 legend, were like Typhoeus the children of Here only. In 
 one story he is the father also of Phoibos, who in andlher is 
 the son of AthSn^. 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 capricious, 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 Athen6, the 
 maiden who stands by his side to do his will, is sometimes 
 an accomplice with H§r^ and Poseid6n in plots to circum- 
 scribe 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 
 ended. Hence he can but bring up to Olympos from the 
 dead the beautiful Memn6n 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.' Herakles may toil for Eurystheus and have no 
 profit 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 
 
 ■ In some other respects the Homnric his ministers, become possessed, like the 
 
 Zeus is greater than the Zeus of histo- Noma, of an irresponsible authority, 
 
 rical HeUas. The awful AtS whom the while finally the force of destiny attains 
 
 latter cannot turn aside, and who its most overpowering proportions in the 
 
 broods over a house until the penalty Ananke whom, according to the theology 
 
 for the shedding of innocent blood has of Euripides, not even the father of 
 
 been fully paid is in the Iliad only the pods and men is able to withstand or 
 
 spirit of mischievous folly. So too, the control. 
 Moirai, who, like Ate, had been only 
 
366 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK tlie brightness of day bursts upon it, becomes the rapture of 
 
 , , '. - Zeus when H^r^ comes to bim arm.ed with, the kestos 
 
 (cestus) of Aphrodite, and the lulling spells of Hypnos.' 
 Thus also the serene height in which Zeus dwells, and from 
 which he cannot descend, explains his indifference and 
 seeming immorality in the great conflict at Hion. 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 Her^ herself there can be no such uncertainty or 
 vacillation. Her name is but one of many names for 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 Sarama to betray the triist 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. 
 The mes- But if Zeus cannot himself descend to the regions of the 
 ZeiS"^ ° 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 ; ^ 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.' 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 
 golien-winged messenger, not only because the rainbow can 
 come and vanish with the speed of lightning, but because its 
 arch seems to join the heaven and the earth, as a ladder by 
 which the angels may descend and rise up again into their 
 
 ' II. xiT. 210, &c. ' lb. xi. 27. » /5. xviii. 549. 
 
THE TRIBUNAL OF ZEUS. 367 
 
 home above. Hence the phrase was that the rainbow spread CHAP. 
 
 its glorious path across the sky, whenever the gods wished ,' - 
 
 to send their messenger to do their bidding. In thi« office 
 
 Iris carries out the behests sometimes of Zeus, sometimes of 
 
 HSre 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.' 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 Zeus the 
 done on earth, Zeus must be the punisher of all iniquity. •''™g^- 
 But the judgments of a god, whose characteristics depend on 
 half-forgotten mythical phrases, or on words wholly mis- 
 understood, will not be always equitable. The sentences 
 passed will have reference often to his m.ythical 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 
 
 ' ' Der weibliche Hermes.' — Preller, Griechiscke Mythologie, i. 390, 
 
368 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 slip from his grasp and dasli 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 altars. In 
 this Promethean legend alone we seem to have a glimpse of 
 that future twilight of the gods which is so prominent a 
 characteristic of Northern mythology. But it is only in the 
 tragedy of j93schylos that the liberation of Prometheus in- 
 volves the humiliation of Zeus. In the summary of ApoUo- 
 doros, it is mentioned only as one among the countless 
 exploits of Herakles ; and we may owe to the mind of 
 ^schylos alone a notion which we are perhaps not justified 
 in connecting with the idea developed by the Northmen into 
 a common doom awaiting Odin and all the ^sir. 
 
 Character- 
 isfics of 
 Teutonic 
 mytho- 
 logy- 
 
 Section VI.— ODnf, WODEN, WUOTAN. 
 
 The Teutonic belief in the twilight or final extinction of 
 the gods is of itself evidence that the mythology of the 
 German and Scandinavian nations belongs to an earlier form 
 of thought than that of the Hindu or the Greek.' The gods 
 of the latter are essentially free from decay and death. 
 They live for ever in Olympos, eating ambrosial food and 
 drinking the nectar of immortality, while in their veins flows 
 not mortal blood, but the imperishable ichor. Nor can it be 
 said that even the myth of Prometheus points to any com- 
 plete suppression of the present order of things. It 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 
 
 ' Bunsen asserts this fact when he 
 says 'that the old Teutonic mythology 
 of Germany and Scandinavia does not 
 possess the grace of the Hellenic fictions. 
 The Muses and Graces have not smiled 
 on her birth as on that of her Greek 
 sister. Nor has she been reared under 
 the sunny skies of Ionia, but amid 
 constant strife with an austere clime 
 and rugged nature. Consequently this 
 
 mythology has not, like the former, 
 received such an organic elaboration as 
 to impart to it an undying influence 
 upon the course of human history. 
 Christianity did not blight it in its bloom, 
 but put an end to the progressive 
 decay that had begun before its buds 
 had come to their fuU flowers.' — God in 
 History, ii. 405. 
 
LIFE OF THE TEUTOITIC GODS. 369 
 
 beautiful Baldur is consumed in the flames. In otlier words, CHAP, 
 these deities answer not to the Olympian gods, but, to the ■— ^^ — ' 
 mortal Herakles or Perseus or AsMepios. 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, lire for ever. The Soma inspires them with 
 fresh vigour, as the soul of Zeus is refreshed and strength- 
 ened by heavenly banquets ; but the draughts, which only 
 add to their inherent force, give to the Teutonic deities a 
 new lease of life.' 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. His wisdom, however, could not 
 save him from the dwarfs Pialar 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.^ 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 
 Bun 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 Eind, who, when only a night old, comes with 
 his hair untouched by a comb, like Phoibos Abersekomes, to 
 take vengeance on Hodr for the death of Baldur, and again 
 in the story of Magni, the son of larnsaxa, who, when three 
 days old, rescued his father Thor as he lay crushed beneath 
 the foot of the gigantic Hrungnir.^ There is the same 
 agreement in the size of their bodies and in the power of 
 theii" 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 Her^ lays one hand on the earth and the other on the sea, 
 so Thor drinks up no small part of the ocean with his horn 
 which reaches from heaven to its surface — a ponderous 
 
 ' Grrimin, Deutsche MythohgU, 296. • Ibid,. 855. ' Bid. 2S8. 
 
 VOL. I. B B 
 
370 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 mjrthology, 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 ApoUon.* 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 we see Indra Savitar ; and iu 
 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 ia 
 speaking of them are transparent. The flowing locks of the 
 Wish-god and of Baldur are those of Zeus and Phoibos ; the 
 fair-haired DemSter of the Greek becomes the fair-haired Lif 
 of the Teuton.' 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 ap- 
 pears on the head of Thor as a circlet of stars.'' 
 Teutonic But when we turn to the theogony set forth in the 
 
 Voluspa Saga, we can as little doubt that it marks a com- 
 paratively 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 of the 
 Hesiodic ages. Such a classification we find in the relations 
 of the Jotun or giants, who are conquered by Odin as the 
 
 i Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 298. Grimm, D. M. 289. She is the hungry 
 
 2 Hel, the daughter of Loki, and and insatiable goddess, the greedy 
 
 sister of the -wolf Fenris and the horrible PolydektSs and Polydegmon of Greek 
 
 ■worm or serpent, is half black and half myths (Grimm, ib. 291), the black 
 
 hviraan in appearance. Her dwelling is Kali of modem Hindu theology, 
 
 in Niflheim, far down in the depths of the " Grimm, ib. 534. 
 
 earth, beneath the roots of Yggdrasil: * lb. 300. 
 
 tlieogo 
 
ODIN'S RUNE SONG. 871 
 
 Titans are overthrown by Zeus ; and this sequence forms CHAP. 
 part of a theogony which, like that of Hesiod, begins with ._ ^_' . 
 chaos, rrom this chaos the earth emerged, made by the 
 gods out of the blood and bones of the giant Tmir, 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 called into existence is called the ' Bearer of God ' — a 
 phrase which finds its explanation in the world-tree Tgg- 
 drasil, on which Odin himself hangs, like the Helen^ 
 Dendntis of the Cretan legend : — • 
 
 I kaow 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,' 
 
 This mighty tree, which in Odin's Eune 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 Midgard, the middle garden 
 or earth, embraced by its branches. 
 
 The giant Tmir was nourished by the four streams which . Genealogy 
 flowed from the treasure of moisture, the cow Audhumla,^ °^ ^'^'"• 
 which belongs to Zoroastrian not less than to Teutonic 
 mythology, and is there found with the meaning both of 
 cow and earth.' 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,* had as his 
 wife Besla, or Bettla,' the daughter of the giant Bolthorn, 
 
 ' ' Odin's Eune Song,' Thorpe's ZVaws- the active and passive meanings of the 
 
 latum of ScBmund's Edda, p. 840. We Greek fopoj in compound words, 
 
 may compare with the ' Bearer of God,' * Bunsen thinks that the original 
 
 the names Atlas and Christophoros. form of this name was Beidsla, a word 
 
 ' This is the cow teneath whose perhaps denoting desire or longing, and 
 
 udder the Dawn maiden hides herself thus answering to the Kama of Vedic 
 
 in the Norse story of the Two Step- and the Eros of the Hesiodic theogony. 
 
 Sisters. — Dasent. while it is reflected also in the Teutonic 
 
 " Bunsen, God in History, ii. 483. Wunsch or Wish. 
 
 ' The two names would answer to 
 
 BB 2 
 
372 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK the root or kernel of the earth. From Buri proceeded ap- 
 ,' - parently Odin himself, and also the race of the gods or 
 Asas, the self-existent beings,' who dwell in Asgard or 
 Aither, while the middle air, between the upper and under 
 worlds, the drjp of the Greeks on which Zeus looks down, is 
 Vanaheim, the home of the Van en, or spirits of the breath- 
 ing wind.* 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 (^'oatun), and whose spouse, 
 Skadi (Elster ?) is the daughter of the giant Thiassi, for he 
 is indeed himself the shore.' ^ 
 Odin as The idea of the composite nature of man must have pre- 
 
 of Man!^ ""^ ceded the 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 ; ' ■• and thus possibly the framers 
 of this theogony may have intended to set forth their beHef 
 that a Trinity, consisting of Ether, Air, and Fire, was con- 
 cerned 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 beautiiul Freya,'"' sheds gold-gleaming tears — ' an image 
 of the bright gleams shooting across the rugged mornuig 
 sky.' ^ From these parents springs Hnossa, the jewel, the 
 world under the aspect of beauty, whUe 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 
 D^m^ter. 
 The end of But all this visible Kosmos is doomed to undergo a cata- 
 strophe, the results of which will be not its destruction but 
 its renovation. The whole world will be consumed by fii-e, 
 kindled by Lodur, {der Lodemde, the glowing god), the Loki 
 
 ' From ttie root as, to ha; the -word ' Bunsen, God in History, ii. 487. 
 
 is thus simply another form of Wesen. * Ibid. 
 
 ^ The original form of the word » For the seyeral changes throngh 
 
 Asen connects it immediately with -which the names Freyr and Freya have 
 
 Atman as a name of Brahman, and the passed, see Grimm, D. M. 276, &c. 
 
 Latin animus, &c.— Bunsen, God in ' Bunsen, God in History, ii. 491. 
 History, ii, 486. 
 
 the Asas 
 or jEsir. 
 
IDEAS OF THE DIVINE WILL. 373 
 
 who brought about the death of Baldur. The life or the CHAP, 
 reign of the Asas themselves will come 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 not the slightest 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 in- 
 surmountable 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 reflections on what they 
 indicate." 
 
 The idea which the Aryans of India sought to express The name 
 under the names Brahman and Atman, the Aryans of Europe Wuotan. 
 strove to signify 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 
 sustaining of life. Obviously there was no one thing in the 
 physical world which more vividly answered to such a con- 
 ception 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 jnore strictly set 
 forth under the name Atman, the breath or spirit which 
 becomes the atmosphere of the Greeks and the athem of 
 the Germans. Atman is thus the breathing, in other words, 
 the self-existent being, — the actual self of the universe ; and 
 the meaning thus assigned 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 
 
 ' Goi in History, ii. 409. 
 
374 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK idea of the Atman or self, like a pure crystal, was too trans- 
 
 II. 
 
 parent for poetry, and therefore was handed down to phi- 
 losophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched 
 it as the medium through which all is seen and in which aU 
 is reflected and known.'* 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, to stir or grow. Thus 
 Grimm remarks that of Wuotan it may be said as Lucan says 
 
 of Jupiter — 
 
 Est quodeunque vides, quoeunque moveriB, 
 
 the pure spiritual deity. The word itself is therefore a par- 
 ticiple 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 W^da, 
 the If orse O'Sinn ; and its meaning is in perfect analogy with 
 that of the Latin Minerva as connected with mens and the 
 Greek fisvof, spirit or strength.'' But the ideas thus ex- 
 pressed 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 wuth, in which the notion of energy has been ex- 
 aggerated into that of impulse uncontrolled by will. Such 
 a limitation of meaning was quite in harmony with the ten- 
 dency of all the German tribes to identify energy with ve- 
 hement strife, and thus Wuotan became essentially the armed 
 deity, the god of war and of battles, the father of victory.' 
 As such, he looks down on the earth from his heavenly home 
 through a window, sitting on his throne with Preya 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 
 
 , ^c. i. 71. death. With the conversion to Christi- 
 
 ' Grimm, Deutsche Mi/thologie, 120. anity these expressions which spoke 
 
 » Sigfadr, Siegfater, Grimm, ih. 122. of men as going heme to Odin became 
 
 Hence the phrases, Zu O^iun fahren, maledictions, consigning them to per- 
 
 OlSinnsheim suchen, denoted simply dition. 
 
WTSII. 
 
 iiO 
 
 connected with the rising of the sun, the great eye of day. 
 As the giver of victory, the greatest of all blessings in Teu- 
 tonic eyes, he vras necessarily the giver of all othef good 
 things, like the Hermes of the Greeks with whose name his 
 own is identical in meaning.' 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* 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,^ which 
 the Irish localise in Blarney and which Grimm connects mth 
 the wishing-rod or staff of Hermes,^ in the Oskmeyjar or 
 Wishmaidens or Valkyries who guide to Valhalla all heroes 
 slain ia 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 
 iKjisvoi ovpos of our Iliad.* It is this power doubtless which 
 is denoted by the Sanskrit Kama, as the force which first 
 brought the visible Kosmos into being,^ and by the Eros 
 of the Hesiodic theogony. 
 
 ' This attribute of Wuotan, which 
 Grimm disooTers in the titles Gibicho, 
 Kipicho, makes him S^rajp 4iiay, i.e. 
 Hermes, whose name denotes simply the 
 motion of the air. 
 
 ' For a long series of passages in 
 ■which Wunsch is cleariy both a power 
 and a person, see Grimm, D.M. 126-8. 
 
 ' The instruments of Wish generally 
 run in triplets, as in the story of King 
 Putraka (pp. 144, 159). In that of Cin- 
 derella, they are three nuts, containing 
 each a splendid robe. In the story of 
 The Pink, Wish assumes the Protean 
 power of transformation; in that of 
 Brother Lustig, it is a bag in which the 
 possessor may see anything that he 
 wishes to shut up in it, and by means 
 of which he contrives, like the Master 
 Smith, to find his way into heaven. In 
 the tale of the Poor Man and the Eich 
 Man, the three wishes which bring 
 happiness here and hereafter to the 
 former, bring only ' vexation, troubling, 
 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 tlie 
 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 Kifag 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. 
 
 * Grimm, S. M. 131. 
 
 ' There is really nothing to support 
 the explanation which refers Ixfievos to 
 iKvio/iai. The word stands to Oski, or 
 wish, precisely in the relation of ex" to 
 ^(Txt^, or ix^P^s to icxvp^s. 
 
 ' 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. 
 
376 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK The single eye of Odin points beyond all doubt to the 
 ■ ' . sun, the one eye which all day long looks down from heaven 
 The one- upon the earth. But when he was figured as an old 
 t^an'or^^"' ™^^ y^'\^ a broad hood and a wide-flowing robe, the myth 
 Odin. 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 
 Kyklopes.' But as the sun is his eye, so his mantle is the 
 vapour which like the cloud-gatheriag Zeus Odin wraps 
 around himself, 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. By his side are the two wolves Gari 
 and Freki, with whom he hunts down his victims, wolves like 
 the Myrmidons whom AchiUeus 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 whisper- 
 ings impart more than human wisdom to the infant lamos.' 
 They are the ravens who bring to ApoUon the tidings of the 
 faithlessness of Koronis, as ia the shape of a raven Aristeas 
 tells the Metapontines that he followed Phoibos when he 
 came to their country.' 
 
 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 
 
 Odin the 
 raingiver. 
 
 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 
 
 indicates love in the sense in which it 
 may here be understood, although not 
 absolutely indefensible : but Kama means 
 desire, wish, and it expresses here the 
 wish, synonymous with the will, of the 
 sole-existing Being to create.' — EcLin- 
 hurgh Review, Oct. 1860, p. 384. 
 
 ' Thus in Saxo he is ' grandsevus al- 
 tero orbus oculo,' and again ' Armipotens 
 uno semper contentus ocello.' The rea- 
 son 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. 
 
 ' Grimm, D. M. 134, traces the names 
 to hugr, thought, and muw, mind, as in 
 Minerva, &c. 
 
 ' Heiod. iv. 16. 
 
ODm AND TYR. 377 
 
 cloud-deity. As such, lie is Hnilsar, the Anglo-Saxon Nicor CHAP. 
 
 or water-god, whose offspring are the ISTixies or water-sprites, .^.J^ . 
 
 as the Hellenic Naiads are the children of Zeus.' In this 
 character he is the Biblindi, or drinker (the Latin bib-ere) 
 of the Eddas. Like Phoibos again, or Askl^pios, he is the 
 healer, who alone can restore strength and vigour to the 
 maimed horses of Baldur ; and as the Muses are the daugh- 
 ters 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 
 earless ships which carry the Phaiakians across the blue 
 seas of heaven. 
 
 Wuotan, the AUfather^ and the Psychompompos, who odinthe 
 takes all souls to himself when their earthly journey is done, -^^^^tlier. 
 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,^ in the island Odinse, in Odinfors, Oden- 
 skalla and Wednesbury, 
 
 The close connection of the name Tyr with the several Tyr and 
 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. Accordingly we meet with Sigtyr, 
 the victorious god, as a name for Wuotan, and Eeidartyr or 
 Eeidityr, 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 connected 
 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 Aphrodite and the necklace of 
 Harmonia and Eriphyle) is in itself a subject of some in- 
 terest. Hence we should further be led to expect that the 
 
 ' All these names come from the same cliued to trace Christian influence in 
 
 root with the Sanskrit sna, the Greek the description of Odin AUfadir as 
 
 vilX", the Latin nare, to float or swim, given, for instance, in the dialogue 
 
 With them we must link the common called Gylfl's Mocking, 
 
 term ' Old Nick,' as a name for the " Othanslef, Othini reliquise. Grimm, 
 
 devil. D. M. 144, adds manj other instances. 
 
 ^ Professor Max Miiller seems in- 
 
378 
 
 MTTHOLOGY OF THE AKTAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 special emblem under wWcli 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. 
 
 The name 
 Donar. 
 
 Thor the 
 AUfatlier. 
 
 Section VII.— THUNDER, DONAR, THOR. 
 
 Englishmen may not unnaturally be tempted to think 
 that our word Thunder is the older and more genuine form 
 of the name given to the god who wields the lightnings, and 
 that this name was chosen to express the loud crash which 
 echoes across the heaven. Tet 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 ob- 
 jects, and from it we have the Greek and Latin words Tsivw 
 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 miscon- 
 ception of the word is found to be no essential part of it ; 
 and the same process which presents the English tender and 
 the French tendve 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 as closely allied, and, indeed, as easily identified 
 with Wuotan, as Vishnu with Indra, or Indra with Agni. 
 But although most of their characteristics are as inter- 
 changeable 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 essen- 
 tially, like Vishnu, the walking or striding god, who moves 
 amidst the lightnings like Hephaistos in his workshop of 
 
 ' Professor Miiller, having traced the 
 copnection between these words, adds 
 ' The relations betwixt tender, thin, and 
 thunder would be hard to be established, 
 
 if the original conception of thunder had 
 been its rumbling noise.' — Lectures on 
 Language, first series, 350. 
 
THE THUNDEK-GOD. 379 
 
 subterraneous fires. But in his power of penetrating and CHAP. 
 piercing tlie heavens or the earth, and in his ceaseless and ^- 
 irresistible energy, he is simply Wuotan in another foftn, 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, neverthe- 
 less, the maker and the father of mankind. Hence, like 
 Odin, he is the AUfather, a title which Procopius tells us 
 that the Slavonic nations gave only to the creator of the 
 lightnings.' 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 in- 
 clined to connect- with the Greek Kspawos,^ and more con- 
 fidently with the Sanskrit Parjanya, a name of Indra as the 
 bringer of the fertilising rain.' If, again, Sophokles speaks 
 of Ge or Gaia as the mother of Zeus.'' so is the earth the 
 parent of Donar; and as Zeus and Wuotan are severally 
 enthroned on Olympos and Wuotansberg, so has Thor or 
 Donar his Donersperch, Thunresberg or Donnersberg, and 
 Donnerskaute, while the oak, the special tree of the Thun- 
 dering 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.' 
 
 But his appearance varied with his functions, which were His triple 
 concerned with three things — the lightning flash, the thun- 
 derclap, and the thunderbolt. As using the first, he always 
 
 functions. 
 
 ' Grimm, D. M. 156. ■with Perkunas, has assumed a strange 
 
 ' By a change analogous to that form in English folt-lore. In the Platt- 
 
 Tfhich makes the Latin sequor and Deutsch of Prussia it appears as P^kkels 
 
 equus answer to the Greek tuojiai and =Puckle and Pickle : and thus he ap- 
 
 "bnos. pears as a demon in the phrase ' pretty 
 
 ' The connection of the name Perku- Pickle.' 
 nas with the Greek (t>6pKvv, <j)6pKvms, * Philokt. 389. 
 
 seems scarcely less obrious, and the ' ' Eothbartig, was auf die feurige 
 
 Hellenic deity has as much to do with Lufterscheinung des Blitzes bezogen 
 
 water as the Vedic Parjanya. The name werden muss.' — Grimm, i>. il/. IGl. 
 of the god Pikollos, who is associated 
 
380 MYTHOLOGY OP THE AKYAJf NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK walks or strides ; as producing the thunderpeal, he is borne 
 
 II. 
 
 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 mighty club 
 which, when hurled from his hand, comes back to him agaia 
 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.' When 
 this hammer is stolen, Loki, in the Lay of Thrym, asks 
 Treyja if she will lend him her feather-garment, that he may 
 go and find it. With this dress Loki, as the god of hght,. 
 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. 
 
 Then said Heimdall Of JEsir brightest, 
 
 He well foresaw, Like other Vanir, 
 
 ' Let us clothe Thor With bridal raiment, 
 
 Let him have the famed Brisinga necklace. 
 
 ' Let by his side Keys jingle, 
 
 And woman's weeds Fall down his knees ; 
 
 But on his heart Place precious stones, 
 
 And a neat coif Set on his head.' 
 
 He is now Dionysos, Achilleus, or Theseus in their woman- 
 ly forms ; and like Theseus, he speedily avenges himself on 
 those who take liberties with him. Having come to Jotun- 
 heim, he astonishes Thrym by devouring an ox and eight 
 salmons, but the serving-maid lulls his fears. 
 
 Then said Thrym, The Thursar's lord, 
 
 ' Bring the hammer in. The Bride to consecrate : 
 
 ' See note 6, p. 265. This hammer is that the thunder god has given his name 
 
 said to have been stolen by a giant who to a vast number of places, the forms 
 
 Jiid it eight miles beneath the surface of Donnersberg, Thorrsberg, and Torslunde 
 
 the earth. In as many years it ascended representing the three varieties under 
 
 into heaven again, accomplishing one which they may be classed. Our Thiirs- 
 
 mile in each year ; and thus it was re- day is an abbreviation of Thunresdag ; 
 
 stored to Thor by Thrym, which however but we have to remember the identity of 
 
 is only another name for thunder, and Thunor, Donar, and Thor. A long list 
 
 answers to Thrumketill, the proper of such names is given by' Grimm, R M. 
 
 name, as Thorketyll, Thurketil, answers 169. 
 to Thor. It is scarcely necessary to say 
 
FRO ABTD FREYA. 381 
 
 Lay Miolnir On the maiden's knee, CHAP. 
 
 Unite us ■with each other By the hand of Vor.' j 
 
 Laughed Hlorridi's Soul in her breast, , ' ' ' 
 
 When the fiercehearted His hammer recognised. 
 
 He first slew Thrym The Thursar's lord. 
 
 And the Jotuns ran All crushed, 
 
 And so got Odin's son His hammer hack. ' 
 
 Section VIII.— FRO. 
 
 In tte oldest Teutonic mytliology we find a god TVo or Relations 
 Trinja, wMch. is worsliipped as the lord of all created things. Preya! 
 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 Pro is no harsh taskmaster, but the 
 merciful and eternal god. He is, in short, the beneficence 
 and long-suffering of nature. Pro 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 Preya stands to 
 Pro in precisely the relation, of Liber and Libera in the 
 cuitus of Ceres, the connection between these deities being 
 precisely that of Pro and Preya with the goddess whom Tacitus 
 call Nerthus, the Teutonic Niordr. In this aspect Preya is 
 the bringer of rain and sunshine for the fruits of the earth, 
 while the worship of Pro 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 Asas, yet these beings do not belong to 
 their exalted race. They are Yanir, whose abode is in 
 Vanaheim, as the Alfar or Elves live in Alfheim or Elfland 
 and the Jotnar in Jotunheim. 
 
 Section IX.— HEIMDALL, BEAGI, and OEGIR. 
 
 The Hellenic Iris is represented by HeimdaU in the my- The Lord 
 thology of northern Europe. This deity, who like Baldur ^[o^™'"' 
 ' Imij of Tkrtjm, 16, 17, 31, 32. Thcn^a's Tianslation of Bcsmimd's Edia. 
 
382 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK is a white or light-giving god, is the guardian of the bridge 
 ^ — - which joins heaven and earth (bif-rost, the waving resting- 
 place),' and his abode is in Himinbiorg, the hill of heaven, 
 the Latin Mons Ccelius, 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 grow- 
 ing on the earth and the wool lengthening on the sheep's 
 back.' 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 
 eun -light is the common divine child of all these worlds.'' 
 Uragi, the Another god of the gleaming heaven is Bragi, the brilliant, 
 dav while, like Donar or Baldur, he is a son of Odin. As the 
 god of poetry 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 hragr Karla was simply an 
 eloquent man, and a further step degraded the name of dsa 
 iragr, the chief among the gods, and left it as an epithet of 
 vain boasters. 
 Ocgir, the The name of the god Oegir, with whom Bragi is some- 
 Bea-god. times associated in the Edda, has shared a similar fate. 
 Used first as a name 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 
 
 ' Bebende Bistdtte, Btmsen, God in hear everything, even to the growing of 
 
 History, ii. 412. _ ^ the grass. These ministers of the solar 
 
 2 These qualities reappear in the story hero are again seen in Grimm's story, 
 
 of the Six Servants, Grimm. Of these, How Six travelled through the "World, 
 
 one has to keep a bandage over his eyes, and in the Gaelic tale of The King of 
 
 for his sight is so keen that whatever Loehlin's Three Daughters, Campbell, 
 
 he looks at splits in two ; another can Tales of the West Highlands, i. 238, 260. 
 
 see all round the world ; and a third can ' God iti History, ii. il2 490, 
 
OKGIE. 383 
 
 Gothic agas and 6g, the Anglo-Saxon ege, egesa, Old High CHAP. 
 
 German aM, 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 which surrounds the earth. The 
 phrase Sol gengr i oeginn simply 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 Oegishialmr, 
 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, — weapons which, although there may be no 
 affinity between the names, must remind us of the Aigis of 
 Athene and the helmet of Hades. Oegir's wife Kan is the 
 mother of nine children, who become the eponymoi of foun- 
 tains and streams. 
 
384 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE LIGHT. 
 
 Section I.— SURTA and SAVITRI. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Neither Dyaus nor Varuna, Indra nor Agni, occupies that 
 precise place whicli is filled by Helios in. Greek mythology 
 Stlrya, the as the dweller in the globe of the sun, or by Nereus as the 
 Frrelistibfe actual inhabitant of the sea. This place in the Veda is 
 luminarj'. reserved for Surya or Savitri, the former name being ety- 
 mologically identical with that of Helios or Her^. 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 ser- 
 vant 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 lokaste 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 
 irresistible luminary.'' His chariot is drawn by seven 
 mares, and he ' comes with them self-harnessed.' Like 
 Ixi6n, Tantalos, and Sisyphos, he is the ' lord of aU trea- 
 sures.' ^ He is the eye of Mitra, Varuna and Agni.' Some- 
 times again he is ' without steeds, without stay, borne 
 
 ' Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 96. 
 B. V. viii. 90, 12. 
 
 ' R. H. Wilson, E. F. i. 189. 
 ' li. i. 304. 
 
ONE-HANDED GODS. 385 
 
 swift-moving and loud-sounding, he travels ascending higher CHAP. 
 and higher," 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 dwell- 
 ing-place, concealed by water where (the hymns of the pious) 
 liberate his steeds.'^ 
 
 Savitar, the inspirer, from the root su, to drixe or stimu- The one- 
 late, is especially the glistening or golden god : he is golden- ^'^^f\, 
 eyed, golden- tongued, and golden-handed ; and in the later 
 Bi^hmanic mythology such epithets might furnish a ground- 
 work 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 hear- 
 ing 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 in- 
 terpreted the epithet as denoting not the splendour of the 
 sun but the gold which he carried in his hand to lavish on 
 his worshippers,^ The Teutonic god Tyr is also said to. have 
 lost one hand ; but the German story ran that Tlyx placed 
 his hand as a pledge in the mouth of the wolf and that the 
 wolf bit it off."* In the latter tale we have an instance of 
 that confusion of homonyms which converted Lykaon into a 
 wolf, Kallisto into a bear, and the Seven Arkshas into seven 
 sages. 
 
 The power and strength of Savitar are naturally repre- The power 
 sented as irresistible. Not even Indra, or Varuna, or any °^ '-afi'*''- 
 other being can resist his will ; and the verse which is re- 
 garded as the holiest in the Veda is addressed to Savitar.^ 
 He is a Tith6nos who waxes not old. 
 
 ' H. H. Wilson, E. V. ii. 91. hands. H. H. Wileon, E. V. i. 51. 
 
 ' Cf. Eurip. Alk. 591, h.jx.<^\ aihim ' Compare the story of Nuad of the 
 
 KVifakav 'nrw6(rTa<nv. Silver Hand (Fergusson, Irish before the 
 
 ' Professor Max Miiller, speaking of Conquest) and Grimm's tale of the 
 
 this myth, compares it with the German Handless Maiden, for whom the king, 
 
 ' proverb, ' Morgenstunde hat Gold im when he takes her as his wife, orders 
 
 Munde,' as enforcing the same moral silver hands to be made. But she is 
 
 with the prosaic English adage which taken from him, like Urvasi from PurA- 
 
 promises health, wealth, and wisdom to ravas, and when, after grievous suifer- 
 
 those who go to sleep early and rise ings, she is restored to him, her hands 
 
 early. Lectures, second series, 378. have grown again as beautiful as ever. 
 There was another version of the myth " Muir, Principal Deities of E. V. p. 
 
 of Savitar, which made him lose both his 567. 
 
 VOL. I. CO 
 
386 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ABYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 
 II. 
 
 ' 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.' ' 
 
 ' May the golden-eyed Savitri come hither. 
 
 'May the golden-handed, life-bestowing, well- guarding, 
 exhilarating, 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.^ 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;' he has milked the 
 atmosphere, restless (or noisy) as a horse ; Savitri, the son 
 of the waters, knows the place where the ocean, supported, 
 issued forth.' ^ 
 
 The phy- 
 sical and 
 spiritual 
 Konia. 
 
 Section II.— SOMA. 
 
 The ninth book of the Eig Veda consists wholly of hymns 
 written in praise of Soma, who is lauded as the source of hfe 
 and vigour, of mental power and bodUy strength both to 
 gods and men, the generator or parent of Agni, Surya, 
 Indra, and Vishnu. Of the phrases employed in describing 
 
 > if. V. vii. 63. 
 
 2 H. H. Wilson, E. V. Sanhita, i. 99. 
 
 ' Dr. Muir points out the inconsis- 
 tency of this phrase with the later my- 
 thology, which spoke of the earth as 
 resting on the head of the serpent 
 S'esha, or on other supports, and re- 
 marks that the Siddhautas, or scientific 
 astronomical works of India, maintain 
 that the earth is unsupported. In these 
 it is said plainly that, ' if the earth were 
 supported by any material substance or 
 living creature, then that would require 
 a second supporter, and for that second 
 a third would be required. Here we 
 have the absurdity of an interminable 
 series. If the last of the series be sup- 
 
 posed to remain from its own inherent 
 power, then why may not the same 
 power be supposed to exist in the first 
 — that is, in the earth?' Dr. Muir 
 adds that Aryya Bhatta, one of the most 
 ancient of Indian scientific astronomers, 
 even maintained that the alternation of 
 day and night is produced by the rota- 
 tion of the earth on its own axis. Sans- 
 krit Texts, part iv. p. 97. It is remark- 
 able that the Copernican system should 
 thus have been anticipated in the East, 
 as by Aristarchos of Samos in the West, 
 without making any impression on the 
 thought of the age. 
 
 ' R. V. X. 149, 1. Muir, Sanskrit 
 Texts, part iv. p. 97. 
 
THE VITIFTIN-Q SOMA. 387 
 
 tlie 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 brilliance. In the latter sense. Soma imparts 
 to Indra the power which enables him to overcome Vritra, 
 and, like Indra, is the conqueror of demons and the de- 
 stroyer 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 
 Tishnu, which are not, if it be possible, exceeded by those 
 which are inherent in Soma. Yet Soma is also the drink of 
 the gods, the Olympian nectar, the beverage which gives im- 
 mortality. Soma is Indu, the sap which flows for Indra— 
 the stream which is purity itself, and the cleanser of all de- 
 filement. 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.' ' 
 
 Soma is the Beatific Vision to which the pilgrims of this 
 earth aspire. 
 
 ' Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun 
 
 ' The explanation of this verse given function it is to move ; of Surya, i. e. of 
 
 in the Nirukta-parisishta shows that the those solar rays whose function it is to 
 
 commentator was perfectly aware of the appropriate ; of Indra, i. e. of those 
 
 real nature of the myth. 'Soma,' he solar rays whose function is sovereignty ; 
 
 says, 'is the generator of hymns (or of Vishnu, i.e. of those solar rays whosi' 
 
 thought), i.e. of those solar rays whose function is diffusion.' — Muir, Sanskrit 
 
 function it is to reveal ; of the sky, i.e. Texts, part iv. p. 81. In these comments 
 
 of those solar rays whose function it is all the deities disappear together, leaving 
 
 to shine; of the earth, i.e. of those solar Soma as the representative of the one 
 
 rays whose function it is to spread ; of great Cause of all things. 
 Agni, i.e. of those solar rays whose 
 
 cc 2 
 
388 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK is placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, 
 . 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.' ' 
 
 In some hymns of the E,ig 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 omni- 
 scient 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 generated, Pani by force : thou. Soma, didst baffle 
 the devices and weapons of the malignant secreter of the 
 (stolen) wealth (the cattle).' ^ 
 
 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.' ^ 
 
 ' The Soma flowed into the vessel for Indra, for Vishnu ; 
 may it be honied for Vayu.' * 
 
 ' Pouring forth streams, the Soma hastens to Indra, Vayu, 
 Varuna, the Maruts, and to Vishnu.' ° 
 
 ' Indu, do thou flow sweet to Indra, to Vishnu. Preserve 
 from sin the men who praise thee.' ° 
 
 ' Soma, Indu, purified, thou exhilaratest Varuna, thou 
 exhilaratest 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.' ^ 
 
 When in the later mythology, Mahadeva had thrown the 
 
 B. V. ix. 113, 7; Max Muller, = E. V. ix. 65, 20; Muir, Sanskrit 
 
 ps, i. 47. Texts, part iv. p. 80. 
 
 H. H. Wilson, i?. F. S. iii. 461. « if. V. ix. 56, 4; Muir, Sanskrit 
 
 » E. V. ix. 86 ; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iy. p. 80. 
 
 Texts, part iv. p. 99. ' B. V. ix. 90, 5 ; Muir, Sanskrit 
 
 * B. V. ix. 63, 3 ; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 80. 
 Texts, part iv. p. 80. 
 
IDEAS OF DUALISM. 389 
 
 older deities into tte shade ; Vishnu, Soma, and Agni became CHAP. 
 
 different parts of his bow and arrow ; ' for all the world,' we - ,' _.- 
 
 are told, 'is formed of Agni and Soma, and is sai(J 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 correla- 
 tive deities.^ 
 
 With the change which came over later Hindu thought Powsr? 
 the popularity of Soma passed away ; but the hymns of the °'"*' 
 Eig Veda 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 unstinting lavishness to 
 the gods. The exultation of Indra is the exultation of 
 Polyphemos when he has drunk the wine given to him by 
 Odysseus. 
 
 Section III.— CORRELATIVE DEITIES. 
 
 A very slight acquaintance with the language of the Vedic Comple- 
 hymns will suffice to show that the idea of any one deity deities/ 
 rarely failed to suggest to the mind of the worshipper the 
 idea of another god, whose attributes answered to, or were 
 contrasted vfith, his own. The thought of Dyaus, the sky, 
 was bound up with that of Prithivi, the earth, who was his 
 bride ; and their very names, blended into one word Dyava- 
 prithivi, denoted their inseparable union. The idea of Va- 
 runa, the veiling heaven, brought up that of Mitra, the light- 
 illumiaed sky. 
 
 The connection was forced upon them by the phenomena The flml- 
 of the outward world. We cannot sever in our minds the ^^jy"^^ 
 thought of day from that of night, of morning from evening, 
 
 ' Muir, Sanscrit Texts, part iv. divine knowledge; thou who existest 
 
 p. 189. Uma is also the wife of Mah4- with her, Soma, supreme spirit, &c.' 
 
 deva, ii. 227. For further details Hence her attributes are plastie enough, 
 
 respecting Uma, see Muir, ib. p. 357, and thus she becomes identified with 
 
 et seq. Of genuine mythology the story Ambilca, the sister of Rudra, a being 
 
 of Uma, if it can be called a story, not much more clearly defined than 
 
 exhibits very little. It has been drawn Uma herself. 
 
 out to suit an idea, but the idea has not '■' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, 
 
 been suggested by the myth. ' Uma is second series, 486. 
 
390 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK of light from darkness ; and ' this palpable dualism of nature ' ' 
 
 .-, ,J — ' 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, described 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 nshasau, the two dawns,^ and the two 
 Varunas. Like Indragni again, the twin Asvins, or horse- 
 men, are called Vritrahana, destroyers of Vritra. 
 Functions These Asvins have been made the subject of a somewhat 
 of the lengthened controversy. Their features are not very definite, 
 but in the oldest hymns they are worshipped with a peculiar 
 reverence, 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 phraseology. Speaking of these beings, 
 the commentator Taska 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 antici- 
 pated the method of Euemeros affirmed that they were two 
 deified kings. But when he adds that their time is after 
 midnight, whilst the break of day is yet delayed, all room for 
 doubt seems taken away. 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,' and lastly 
 by Savitar. They are ihehajdte, 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 Saram^ 
 or Ushas. 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, second series, 486. 
 ' lb. 487, 49S. ^ lb. 492. 
 
THE TWIN DEITIES. 391 
 
 The Asvins are tlius the conquerors of darkness, the lords : CHAP. 
 
 of light : ever youthful, swift as thought, and possessed, like . ^ — - 
 
 Indra, Agni, and PhoHws, of a profound wisdom. 'If the Parentage 
 poet needs to give them a father, he must assign them a Asvins. 
 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.' 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 reappears in Medeia, the daughter of the 
 Sun. They are adored at morning and evening tide as 
 Eudrau, the terrible lords of wealth, and are thus identified 
 or connected with another deity who became of supreme 
 importance in the later Hindu mythology.^ Like the Kou- 
 retes 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,' ^ — 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 ^sehylos.^ Like Phoibos the healer, 
 and like Asklepios and his sons Podaleirios and Machaon, 
 the Asvins are ' physicians conversant with all medicaments.'* 
 In the Norse tale of Dapplegrim we have the Asvins in their 
 original form as horses ; for when the lad, who, having won 
 on his wonderful steed the victories of Indra, Herakles, aiid 
 BeUerophon, is 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. 
 
 In Indra and in Agni, Mitra and Varuna, and in the TheTwiiis, 
 Asvins we have three sets of twins, Yaman, Gemini, each 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, ' H. H. Wilson, B. V. 8. iii. 97. 
 
 second series, 498. ' Jb. 103. 
 
 ' Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. ch. 3, > iJ. 101. 
 sect. 1, p. 265. 
 
392 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK being spoken of as Tama or Tami, tlie twin brother or the 
 
 ^ — - twin sister. These Taman 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 hnsband. 
 In this Tama 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 Vi- 
 vasvat, Professor Max Miiller thinks it unnecessary to assume 
 that two Yivasvats were each the father of Tama. 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, iiie region of Sutala ; and thither the sun hastens as 
 he dnks down from the, heights of heaven. Thus ' Tama 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 ; ' and the gulf is not wide which separates the 
 functions of the Psychopompos from those of Hadea. Like 
 Varuna, Tama 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, Tama remains in the Veda 
 chiefly the god of the blessed in the paradise where he dwells 
 with Varuna. This Tama reappears in the Tima of the 
 Avesta, his father Vivasvat being reproduced as Vivanghvat;^ 
 and in Tima 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 Tamen, 
 the death of men in youth as well as in old age is accounted 
 for by a mistake made by the herald of Tamen after the 
 latter had been restored to life by Siva who had put him to 
 death. While Tamen lay dead, mankind multiplied so that 
 the earth could scarcely contain them. Tamen on returning 
 to life sent his herald to summon at once aU the old men, for 
 none others had ever been called away before. The herald, 
 getting drunk, proclaimed instead that henceforth all leaves, 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectwres, second series, 515 ; Muir, PrincipalVeities ofE. V. 576. 
 " Max Miiller, Lectures, second series, 522. 
 
EROS AND ANTEEOS. 393 
 
 fruits, and flowers, should fall to tlie ground, and tlius men of 
 all ages began to yield to tie power of death. 
 
 The connection of Soma with Ulna has been afready Soma and 
 noticed. Another couplet of deities is found in Soma and ^^^y^- 
 Surya, the daughter of Surya the Sun ; and here the twin 
 Asvins stand by the side of Soma as the friends of the bride- 
 groom. 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,' repeats the story of 
 Pelops and Hippodameia, which represents the maiden as 
 becoming 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 de- 
 claring him to be his own half, in that dual relation which 
 Hnks Phaeth6n with Helios, Patroklos with Achilleus, Theseus 
 with Peirithoos, Telemaehos with Odysseus, and which is 
 seen again in the stories of Pelias and Neleus, Eomulus and 
 Eemus, Prometheus and Bpimetheus, Hengest and Horsa, 
 and in the Teutonic tales of the Two Brothers and of the 
 Paithfiil John who guards his prince as carefully as the Lux- 
 man 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 Hermaphroditos.^ 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,' 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.* 
 
 ' 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 conn- Adonis, 
 terpart of the legends of Echo and * Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iv. 196, 225. 
 Sel6n6, whose part is here played by the < Ih. 384. The modern version of 
 
 nymph of the well, Salmakis. Like the story has been already given, book i. 
 
 Endymi5n and Narkissos, the youth ch. viiJ. 
 
394 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 Section IV.— THE DAWN. 
 
 BOOK '^^ ^^® poets of all ages and countries the phenomena of 
 11. morning and evening are full of pathos and sadness. The 
 The lonely course of the day itself is but brief, and the career of the 
 wanderer, 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 on clear 
 streams and luscious fruits without daring to quench his 
 thirst or appease his hunger. He may be armed with in- 
 vincible 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. StiU for him, as for the 
 sons of men, 
 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
 Than never to have loved at all. 
 
 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 mean- 
 while 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 incorruptible", 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, 
 
DISGUISED HEROES. 395 
 
 and beautiful beings may beseech Mm to tarry awbile with CHAP, 
 them in their luxurious chambers. ^ ' . 
 
 Under this thin disguise we see at once the story of Devdope- 
 Odysseus and Penelope ; but this is, after all, one only of ?^'^°^,'',L 
 almost a thousand forms which the legends of Phoibos and 
 Dionysos, of Perseus and Bellerophontes, may assume. The 
 doom of the Dawn is as woeful 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 
 Pboibos, or Orpheus had fixed their eyes on Dahana, or 
 Daphne, or Eurydike, and their love had passed away from 
 them like the fleeting colours of a dream. But the myth 
 itself might be developed in many ways. The disappearance 
 or death 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 
 
396 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN JS'ATIO^'■S. 
 
 BOOK their words, site discovered the beauty and majesty of her 
 
 - j:. - 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 utter- 
 most bounds of the earth, and far beyond the clouds which 
 veil the distant mountains, 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 overcome. She is surrounded 
 by awful shapes, who blot out all brightness 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 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 influence 
 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 Penelop^. But the tasks imposed 
 upon her by her unpitying rival are at last accomplished ; 
 and as the clouds break away from the heaven, the Da^vn, 
 or the Eos, who closes the day in our Homeric poems, sees 
 before her the form of him whom she has sought with un- 
 daunted and untiring devotion. 
 Thp storjf 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 
 
 of Urvasi. 
 
URVASl AND PUKUEAVAS. 397 
 
 simplest versions of tlie mytli is found in the story of TJrvast,' CHAP 
 although even here the artificial influence of a growing cere- . 
 menial system is manifest. The personification of Urvasi 
 herself is as thin as that of Eos or Selene. 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 overspreading 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 Uruld, the far-going (Telephassa, 
 T^lephos), so is she also Uruasi, the wide-existing or wide- 
 spreading ; as are Europ^, Euryanassa, Euryphassa, and 
 many more of the sisters of AthSn^ and Aphrodite. As such 
 she is the mother of Vasishtha, the bright being, as Oidipous 
 is the son of lokaste ; and although Yasishtha, 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 ; ^ 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 said, " How can that be a land 
 without heroes or men where I am ? " 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. 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Chips, #c. ii. 99, et seq. a name of the sun ; and if he is called 
 
 ' 'Though rava is generally used of Aida,, the sou of IdS,, the same name is 
 
 sound, yet the root ru, which means elsewhere {E. V. iii. 29, 3) given to 
 
 originally to cry, is also applied to Agni, the Fire.'— Max Miiller, i6. 101. 
 
 colour in the sense of a loud or crying This son of Ha reappears perhaps as 
 
 colour. Besides, Pururavas calls him- Idas, the father of Kleopatra. 
 self Vasishtha, which , as we know, is 
 
398 . MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAK NATIOXS. 
 
 BOOK. " I come back," slie said, and went. Then lie bewailed Ms 
 
 .^ ,: , 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 TJrvasi. ' 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 TJrvasi 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.' 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. 
 Germs of In the story thus related in the Brahmana of the Tagur- 
 of Pene- Veda we have a maiden wedded to a being on whose form 
 lope. jj^gj, gyes may not rest, although she dwells in his house ; 
 
 and the terms of the compact are broken practically by 
 herself, for although it is Pururavas who springs up, still it is 
 TJrvasi 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 imme- 
 diate 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 
 
 ' This child may be the first sun of ' Go and be happy with the prince, my 
 the new year ; but whether the myth be friend : 
 
 taken of that or any other sunrise, it is But when he views the son that thou 
 equally true that the mother must shalt bear him, 
 
 vanish soon after her child has been Then hitherward direct thy prompt 
 born. Hence in the play of Kalidasa, return. 
 
 after Urvasi has been reunited to her The fated term expires, and to console 
 
 lover, she tells him, His father for my loss, he is restored. 
 
 "When for your love I gladly left the ^ ^^y °° lo'^g*''' ^^y' 
 
 courts See the analysis of this play by Professor 
 
 Of heaven, the monarch thus declared Max Miiller, ' Comparative Mythology,' 
 
 his will, Chips, ii. 126. 
 
ODYSSEUS AND PENELOPE. 399 
 
 early parting and a long absence, and this notion is tlie germ 
 of the Odyssey. In the very spring-time of their joy the 
 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 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, can know neither age nor change, cannot 
 avert the doom which falls alike on Phaethon, Memnon, and 
 Sarp^don, on Achilleus, Baldur, and Sigurd. But all have 
 the same work to do; and if the dawn cannot save thetti 
 from death, she can restore them to life, and thus through 
 her they become immortal. Thus Pururavas, 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 Pururavas, when 
 first he rescues TJrvasi 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 TJrvasi, 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. 
 
 In most of these legends the meeting and the severance The Dnwn 
 of these lovers take place by the side of the stream or ^^^^^^ 
 
400 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 the water from wliic]i Aphrodite rises, and in which, the 
 nymphs bathe the newly-born ApoUon. It is on the 
 river's bank that EurydikS is bitten by the fatal snake, 
 and Orpheus is doomed to the same weary search as Puru- 
 ravas, for the love which has been lost. On the heights 
 which overhang Peneios, Phoibos sees and chases the beauti- 
 ful Daphne, 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 love only when they 
 meet again upon the shore of Ortygia, the dawn-land. The 
 Greek river is but the Teutonic Elbe, the running 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 Prog-prince of the German 
 lege ad.' In the Sanskrit story Bheki, the frog, is a maiden 
 who consents to marry a king on condition 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 BheM disappeared.'^ As in the story of Urvasi 
 
 ' In the mythology of Assyria, Bheki, Onnes. But she is wooed also hy 
 
 or the frog-sun is represented by the Ninos, and thereupon Onnes slays him- 
 
 fish-sun, who, as Berosus says, rose up self. After a life fuU of marvels she 
 
 from the sea each morning, and plunged wings her way to heaven in the form of 
 
 into it every evening, Mr. Gould a dove, as Romulus vanishes in the 
 
 remarks {Curious Myths, second series, storm cloud, and Aineias disappears in 
 
 231) that 'his semipiscine form was an the waters of the Numician stream, 
 expression of the idea, that half his time The fish-sun is seen in that portion of 
 
 was spent above gi-ound, and half below the so-called Homeric hymn which 
 
 thewaves.' Thisfish-godis.liketheAryan speaks of ApolWn as plunging into the 
 
 Proteus, or Helios, the possessor of a mys- sea, and in the form of a dolphin 
 
 terious wisdom of which, tmder certain guiding the ship of the Kretan mariners 
 
 conditions, he will make human beings to Krisa. On coming out of the water, 
 
 partakers. As Oannes, or Dag-on, the he reassumes, like Proteus, a human 
 
 fish On, he is the great teacher of the form. Mr. Gould states that, among 
 
 Babylonians, and his name is seen in North American Indians, a story is told 
 
 the Hebrew Bethaon (Betliaven), which that they were guided to their Western 
 
 is translated by Bethshemesh, the house homo by a man or fish who kept close 
 
 of the Sun. He is horned as Mr. to the boat, until it reached the American 
 
 Gould remarks, like all other sun and coast. 
 
 moon deities, the moon goddess of the '' Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 248. This 
 
 Syrians being Derketo,^ Atergatis, the is the germ of the beautiful story of 
 
 mother of Semiramis, in whose story Undine, as told by Fouqui. She, like 
 
 again we have the elements of many Daphufe, is the daughter of the stream; 
 
 Aryan myths. See note 1, p. 223. and the condition imposed upon her 
 
 Like Cyrus and Romulus, Semiramis husband is, that he is never to speak 
 
 is brought up by a shepherd, and angrily to her when on or near any 
 
 her beauty attracts the attention of a water. 'If you should, my kinsfolk 
 
 general, whose name is, of course, would regain their right ever me. They 
 
UNDINE AND MELUSINA. 401 
 
 the husband is the actual delinquent, but he is hurried into chap. 
 the fatal act by the words of his wife. If instead of the ^^' 
 promise not to show her water we substitute a ple(fge that 
 the lover shall not look upon 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. If Mr. 
 Gould is right in connecting this name with that of the 
 Babylonian moon-goddess Mylitta, we have an instance 
 of an imported title parallel to those of the Semitic Mel- 
 karth and Adonai, the Hellenised Melikertes and Adonis. 
 Melusina is found by Count Eaymund, as Daphne is found 
 by ApoUon, near running water, and like Bheki or Urvasi, 
 she readily consents to marry her human lover on the con- 
 dition that he shall never attempt to see her on one day of 
 each week. When at length the promise is broken, Eay- 
 mund 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. ^ 
 
 would tear me from you in their fury, held and loved her. He took her to 
 hecause they would conceive that one of wife, and she obtained that which she 
 their race was injured; and I should be had desired, a human soul.' — Curious 
 compelled, as long as I lived, to dwell Myths, second series, 238. It is possible 
 below in the crystal palaces and never that this story may be an importation 
 dare ascend to you again ; or should from Europe : but we may ask for some 
 they send me up to you, that would be conclusive evidence of the fact, when we 
 far worse still.' If he is false to her, find the legend of Pandora's box among 
 she can reappear only to kiss him to the Indians of Labrador. Jesuit mis- 
 death. Selene can look upon Endymion sionaries may have imparted much to 
 only when he is just plunging into his their converts, but it is not likely that 
 dreamless sleep. The tale so exquisitely they instructed their hearers in the 
 told by Fouqu^ was derived by him from mythical fancies of pagan Greeks. — 
 the Treatise of Elemental Spirits by Hinds, Explorations in Labrador, i. 61. 
 Theophrastus Paracelsus. The leading ' For other versions and variations of 
 feature of his story is the acquisition of this story see Gould, Curious Myths, 
 a human soul by Undine on her marriage 'Melusina.' The same myth is intro- 
 with the knight Huldbrand. Mr. Gould duced by Sir Walter Scott in his ro- 
 cites a Canadian story of an Ottawa mance of Anne of Geierstein (ch. xi.), 
 chief, who, whilst sitting by the water- whose mother's life depends on a bril- 
 side, sees arising from the flood a beauti- liant opal which must not be touched 
 ful woman, who prays him to suffer her with water. This gem, like many 
 to live on earth, as she sought to win a others, is sympathetic. It is, in short, 
 human soul, and could do this only by the fatal brand of Meleagros. See also 
 marriage with a mortal. ' He consented Scott, Border Minstrelsy, introduction 
 and took her to his own house, where to Ballad of Tamlane. 
 she was to him as a daughter. Seven The idea of ugliness or unseemliness 
 years after, an Andirondak youth be- would naturally come to be connected 
 
 VOL. I. D D 
 
402 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK The idea, common to all these tales, of beings who though 
 
 ■ _ •^^' - united in the closest love may not look upon each other, is 
 Eros and but little modified in the story of Eros and Psyche. The 
 Psyche. yersion 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 v^hom the 
 love of the mortal husband or wife is given. The old phrase 
 that the sun must die at the sight of water,' has retained its 
 hold on the storytellers of all the Aryan nations; but the 
 version of Appuleius assigns reasons where the earlier 
 Sanskrit myth is content to relate incidents. If like TJrvasi 
 Psyche brings about her own punishment, she does so 
 because she is under a doom laid on her by Venus. But 
 Yenus is Aphrodite Anadyomen^, the mother, the wife, or 
 the child of the sun ; and the notion that the love of the sun 
 for another must excite her jealousy and anger was one 
 which must sooner or later be imported into the myth. 
 With its introduction the framework of the story was com- 
 pleted ; 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 Psych^, 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 
 TJrvasi. Stirred up by Venus, her sisters tell Psyche that 
 she is wedded to a hideous monster, and at length her 
 
 •with Bhekl or the Frog. Hence the he thinks her, is more merciful; hut 
 
 king's daughter in the German story of the Loathly Lady (for it is the same 
 
 the Frog Prince shows no special fancy myth) becomes as exacting as the little 
 
 for the little creature which brings up Frog in Grimm's story. She has not 
 
 for her the golden ball (the sun's orb) been long at the fire when she insists on 
 
 from the bottom of the well. The ugli- coming under Diarmid's plaid. He 
 
 ness of Bheki serves to give point to the turns a fold of it between them ; and 
 
 beautiful Gaelic legend of Nighean Eigh presently he finds by his side ' the most 
 
 Fo Thuinn, Campbell, Tales of the West beautiful woman that man ever saw.' 
 
 Highlands, iii. 404. The maiden (Aph- She is the Dawn-maiden, and she raises 
 
 roditfe) is not, indeed, here described as for his dwelling that palace of the sun 
 
 a frog; but she is a 'strange looking which the Arabian storyteller delights 
 
 ugly creature ' with her hair down to to describe in the tale of Allah-ud-deen. 
 
 her heels, who in vain intreats Fionn The same being appears as the 'foul 
 
 and Oisean (Finn and Ossian) to let wight' in Chaucer's tale of the Wife of 
 
 her come to their fire. Liarmaid, Bath, Keightley. Fair}/ Mythology, 323. 
 who scruples not to say how hideous ' Max Miiller, Chips, ii. 248. 
 
EKOS AND PSYCHE. 403 
 
 curiosity is so roused that, taking a lamp, she gazes upon CHAP, 
 her lover and beholds before her the perfection 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 PnriiraTas, 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 Eirke 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 becoming 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.' 
 
 The idea which underlies these tales runs through a large The search 
 class of legends, which carry us into almost every Aryan ^Lwnfor 
 land and make the hypothesis of conscious borrowing or the Sua. 
 importation as perilous as we have seen it to be in the story 
 
 ' 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 PsychS is also told in 
 
 sena Captain Burton regards as the ori- the Gaelic Tale of the Daughter of the 
 
 ginal of the Golden Asa of Appuleius. Skies. 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN K^ATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 re- 
 pulsive. 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 : ' 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, however, 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 dis- 
 aster, 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 curiosity has 
 brought her. In some versions, as in that of Appuleius, this 
 mistress is the mother of the lost lover .^ 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 com- 
 pletion of the ordeal is followed by the happy union of the 
 maiden with her lover. 
 The Search H is Scarcely necessary to say that there is perhaps no 
 
 of the Suu ,,...- 
 
 for the ^'^^ converse of this incident is are seen again in the story of Hansel 
 Dawn. 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 
 ■^ 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. & 13. 
 Brother and Sister (Phrixos and HeUleJ 
 
THE MINISTERS OF ER6s AND PSYCHfi. 405 
 
 one feature in these stories wliicli does not reappear in the 
 tales told of Boots, or the youngest son, in his search^for the 
 enchanted princess who has been torn away from him, or 
 whom after a long toil he is to win as his bride. It could 
 not be otherwise, when the stories turn 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.' 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 
 compUcated 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 moun- 
 tains of glass (glaciers) to be scaled, huge castles of ice to be 
 thrown down, or myriads of icebergs or boulders to be re- 
 moved. 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 
 
 ' This search is 'well described in the to the maiden whom he rescues in the 
 
 Gaelic story of Nighean Eigh Fo Realm Underwaves (where Herakles 
 
 Thuinn, where the hero Diarmaid leses regains Alkestis), and thus he leaves 
 
 his wife, as Eaymund 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, 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 
 
 end by making Diarmaid take a dislike other. Campbell, iii. 419. 
 
406 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AKTAX NATIOIfS. 
 
 BOOK wings througli the heaven, and the swans, or white cirri 
 
 . ^ - clouds, are seen in all the stories which teU of Swan maidens 
 
 and the knights who woo and win them.' These creatures, 
 who are as deroted to the youth or the maiden as the 
 Myrmidons are to AchUleus, speedily remoye 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 lames 
 and the heart of Hogni in the Yolsung tale, imparts to him 
 who eats it a knowledge of the language of birds, the labour 
 falls on the lover, while the maiden plays the part of Aphro- 
 dite in the legend of Psyche. The animals here befriended 
 by the trusty servant, who is Bros, 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,'' the 
 picking-up of some bags of millet seed, and the finding of 
 the apple of life (the sun's orb). The first is accomphshed 
 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. 
 OrigiH of That these tales, of which the most familiar type for 
 myths. English children 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 exhibiting 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 
 
 ' See Appendix D. Mae Iain Direaeh, Campbell, Tales of 
 
 " Compare also tho Gaelic story of the West Highlands, ii. 369. 
 
THE DAWN AND HER LOVER. 407 
 
 that tlie Frog Prince and Boots were one and the same per- CHAP, 
 son, as the grandams of the Punjab were that BheM 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.' 
 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, how- 
 ever, 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 and a feather, to guide her in 
 her quest of him.^ At last this guidance fails her, and she 
 asks the sun and moon to tell her whither the dove had 
 gone. As in the tale of Demeter and Persephone, 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 disen- 
 chanted, 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 
 
 ' Grimm. With these legends may the Pentameron of Badl, 15, 19, 44; 
 
 be compared the story of Tulisa (a tale and Hahn's Greek and Albanian Tales. 
 
 which in Professor Benfey's opinion is A complete analysis of the fable of 
 
 very ancient), obtained from a washer- Appuleius is giren in Friedlaiiter's Sit- 
 
 woman at Benares, and published in the tengeschichte Boms. 
 Asiatic Journal. See also the tales in " Frere, Deccan Tales, 221. 
 
408 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 ' East of 
 the Sun 
 and West 
 of the 
 Moon.' 
 
 lierself of the gift bestowed by the moon, is reunited to him 
 at last.' 
 
 The Norse tale ' East of the Sun and West of the Moon,' 
 approaches more nearly to the form of Beauty and the Beast. 
 A white bear (we are at once reminded of the process which 
 converted the seven shiners into seven bears) taps at a poor 
 man's window on a 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 happiness, 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 that of the Soaring Lark, except that the oil dropped 
 from the maiden's lamp is made to bring about the cata- 
 strophe. 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.^ 
 
 ' In the German story of the Iron 
 Stove (Grimm), the part of Erfis is 
 played by a king's son, who is compelled 
 ■ liy a witch to sit in a, great iron stove 
 which stood in a wood. This is mani- 
 festly a reversing of the myth of Bryn- 
 hild, in which the flame surrounding 
 the maiden on the Glistening Heath 
 answers to the fiery stove in which the 
 prince is imprisoned. In the tale of 
 Strong Hans (Grimm), it is Psyche who 
 is rescued from a tower or well in which 
 
 she is confined like the Argive Pana^. 
 In the legends of the True Bride and of 
 the Drummer the maiden recovers her 
 lover as in the story of the Soaring 
 Lark. See also ch. viii. sect. 2 of this 
 book. 
 
 ■■^ In the German story of Bearskin, 
 the soldier is not turned into a beast, 
 but is under compact with the evil one 
 not to comb his hair or wash his face 
 for seven years, but to wear a bear sark 
 or cloak. In this disguise he compels 
 
THE DARK FOREST. 409 
 
 The mytli passed into otlier forms. In every case the 
 bonds of true love were severed ; but the persons thus sepa- 
 rated were sometimes brothers and sisters, sometimes parents The Wan- 
 and children. In the German story of the Twelve Brothers, fj^^ Forest. 
 the sister goes forth to search for the lost children in that 
 great forest which reappears in almost aU 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 malig- 
 nant, 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 fores.t 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 arrangement, never palled upon it. If 
 Psyche has hard tasks to perform before recovering Eros, 
 the Greek was as well content to listen to the story of the 
 same tasks as they are performed by Er6s before he can 
 recover Psyche. Thus the part of the latter in the legend of 
 Appuleius is played by the former ia the German stories of 
 
 the king to give him one of his daughters the story of Hans the Hedgehog, whose 
 
 in marriage, and the youngest consents enchantment is brought to an end by 
 
 to be the victim, saying that a promise burning his skin, as in the Deccau story 
 
 which has been made must be kept, of the enchanted rajah. 
 The transformation is more complete in 
 
410 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The spell 
 of moon- 
 light. 
 
 the White Snake and the Golden Bird, the Queen Bee, 
 Strong Hans, the Drummer, and many others.' 
 
 The common element of all these stories is the separation 
 of two lovers by the intervention of a third person, who is 
 represented sometimes 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 Kirk^ and Kalypso. 
 Penelope, like Psych^, 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 slum- 
 ber 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,'' and but dimly re- 
 membering the beautiful hues of morning under the magic 
 charm of night. Thus in Kirke 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, stiU her desire is not for the brutal 
 pleasures which turn men into swine ;^ biit to see before her 
 
 ' This myth reappears in a very thin 
 disguise.in the ballad of Erlinton, Hcott's 
 Border Minstrelsy. Here we have the 
 forest, the maiden and her lover, while 
 the robbers are a troop of knights 
 headed by an old and grey-haired 
 warrior. Winter himself. The knight, 
 of course, fights with and slays all, ex- 
 cept the grey-haired chief, who is suf- 
 fered to go home to tell the tale ; in 
 other words, the mortal Medousa is slain, 
 but the power of cold itself (her im- 
 mortal sisters) cannot be destroyed. 
 With this we may compare the death of 
 Helle while Phrixos lives on. So, too, 
 the youngest child of Kronos is not 
 
 devoured, and the youngest goat in 
 Grimm's story of the Wolf and the 
 Seven Little Goats escapes the fate of 
 the six others. 
 
 ' "Tiry hiivas ctSaTjs 07ri/e S' hx-yiuv. 
 Soph. Pha. 827. 
 
 ' The turning of the companions of 
 Odysseus into swine is only another 
 form of the more common transforma- 
 tion into birds which the witches of 
 Teutonic and Arabian folk-lore keep 
 hung up in cages round their walls. 
 Compare the story of Jorinde and 
 Joringel (Grimm) with that of Punchkin 
 in the Deccan Tales, and of the Two 
 Sisters in the Arabian Nights. 
 
THE FAIKT QUEEN. 411 
 
 the wise chief whose glory is in all lands is a happiness for CHAP. 
 
 which she is ready to sacrifice all her 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 Selen^ has cast her deep sleep upon Endy- 
 
 jni6n, 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. Th6se beings 
 
 are in each story headed by a beautiful queen, whose will it 
 
 is impossible to resist. This power is prominent in the myth 
 
 which teUs us that Thomas the Rhymer 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.' The story of 
 
 Thomas is substantially identical with Chaucer's Rhyme 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.^ This fairy queen sometimes assumes 
 
 the form of the Echidna who for a time made Herakles 
 
 ' Scott, Border Minstrelsy, iv. 114. Cavargum in Catalonia, is cited by Sir 
 Mr. Gould, in his chapter on the Moun- Walter Scott in his introduction to the 
 tain of Venus, notices among other Ballad of Tamlane, Border Minstrelsy. 
 stories that of the Norse Helgi, Thorir's ^ Mr. Price (introduction to War- 
 son, who is invited by Ingebjorg the ton's History of English Poetry, 49) 
 Troll queen to come and live with her. compares the journey of Thomas to Elf- 
 His absence, however, is confined to land, in the Scottish ballad, with .ffilian's 
 three days, at the end of which he re- story {Var. Hist. iii. 18) respecting 
 turns home laden with treasure. His Anostos 'the bourne from which no 
 second visit was extended over many traveller returns,' and remarks that the 
 years, and from this he returned blind, prophetic power acquired by the Ehymer 
 The story told by Gervase of Tilbury, during his sojourn with the Fairy Queen 
 the scene of which is the mountain of is no novel feature in the history of 
 
412 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK sojourn in her dwelling : but tlie Tailor's son of Basle in the 
 
 n 
 
 mediaeval story had the courage neither of BLerakles nor oi 
 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.' Such a myth as this, it is obvious, would, if subjected 
 to Christian influence, exhibit the fairy queen as a malignant 
 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.^ 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 
 
 such fictions. 'In one of Plutarch's of futurity.' This is practically the 
 
 tracts, Be Defect. Orac. 21, a certain story of the Thrakian Zalmoxis, which 
 
 Cleombrotus entertains the company Herodotos refuses to believe, iv. 94. 
 
 with an account of an Eastern trayeller ' Gould, Curious Myths, ^c, second 
 
 whose character and fortunes are still series, 223. 
 
 more remarkable than those of the ^ The same story is presented in the 
 
 Scottish Sf-er. Of this man we are told romance of Sir Launfal' and the Fay 
 
 that he only appeared among his fellow Tryamour, who bestows on him the 
 
 mortals once a year. The rest of his never-failing purse, and in the tale of 
 
 time was spent in the society of nymphs Oberon and Huon of Bordeaux. This 
 
 and demons who had granted him an Oberon is the dwarf king Elberich of 
 
 unusual share of personal beauty, had the Heldenbuch, who performs to Otnit 
 
 rendered him proof against disease, and the service discharged by Oberon to 
 
 supplied him with a fruit which was to Huon. The story of Tanhaiiser, again, 
 
 satisfy his hunger, and of which he par- is only another form of the legend of 
 
 took only once a month. He was, Ogier the Dane, who is Tithonos re- 
 
 moreover, endowed with a miraculous stored to a youth, which, like that of 
 
 gift of tongues ; his conversation resem- Meleagros, is to last as long as a brand 
 
 bled a continuous flow of verse; his which the fairy gives him remains un- 
 
 knowledge was universal, and an un- consumed. — KeighXlej, Fairy Mythology, 
 
 usual visitation of prophetic fervour 34, et seq. 
 enabled him to unfold the hidden secrets 
 
THE SPELL-BOUND SLEEPERS. 413 
 
 type of otlier slumberers to wliom a century was but as a CHAP, 
 day. Among such, is Epimenides, who while tending ,' - 
 
 sheep fell asleep one day in a cave, and did not wakS until 
 more than fifty years had passed away. But Epimenides 
 was one of the Seven Sages, who reappear in the Seven 
 Manes of Leicester,' and in the Seven Champions of Chris- 
 tendom; 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 is further traced by Mr. G-ould through other mediseval 
 stories. ' Barbarossa changes his position every seven years. 
 Charlemagne starts in his chair at similar intervals. Olger 
 Dansk stamps his iron mace on the floor every seven years.' 
 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 Eiitli ; the priest of the Church of Hagia 
 Sophia, who bides the day when the Tiu-k 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,^ 
 who himself slumbers at Ephesus. 
 
 The same mystic number is found in the seven Eishis of The Seven 
 ancient Hindu traditions. These Eishis 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 sometimes 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 
 immortals, and are rivals of the gods. But although the idea 
 most promptly 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 
 
 ' Fergusson, T%e. Irish before the ^ttamJm, ' Legend of the Two Discreet 
 Conquest. Statues.' 
 
 ^ Washington Irving, Tales of the 
 
414 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARyAIf NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The Ark- 
 shas or 
 Shiners. 
 
 The Eishia 
 and Manu. 
 
 sun to shine for the afflicted Vayu and Manu.' 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 dig- 
 nity. 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.^ 
 
 The main story connected with the Eishis has already 
 been noticed as the result of an equivocal word.^ 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 Rishis or 
 sages took a stronger hold on the imagination of the 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, o/rMos became a name for the bear, and 
 stood to the Sanskrit riksha in the relation of the Greek 
 TSKTojv, a carpenter, to takshan, and the Latin pectus, a 
 breast, to vakshas ; ■* and then the seven stars were ne- 
 cessarily 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 and strictly man, as the measurer or the thinker. 
 The same root has also yielded names for the moon and the 
 month,* while in Europe, as in Asia, there arose the idea of 
 
 > E. V. Tiii. 76, 4, and 91, 1 ; Muir, 
 Sanskrit Texts, part iii. p. 119. During 
 this time of oppression and sorrow, it is 
 said that Vishnu thrice measured the 
 mundane regions for Manu. S. V. vi. 
 49, 13 ; Muir, ib. part iv. p. 71. 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Sanskrit Literature, 
 526. 
 
 ' Book i. ch. iii. 
 
 * Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, 
 second series, 361. 
 
 * Greek, i).i]v, ni\vt) : Latin, mensis. 
 
THE EVER-YOUTHFUL DAWN. 415 
 
 a man of wliom they spoke as the son of heaven and earth. CHAP. 
 
 11. 
 
 la India he was known as Mann Svayambhuva, the child of 
 Svayambhu, the self-existent, or, like the Hellenic Minos, 
 the son of Europe, the dawn, as Vaivasti, the worshipper 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.' Bat Manu is also not unfrequently called the son 
 of Dyaus or of Brahma, just as the German tribes spoke of 
 their ancestor Manu as the son of Tiw or Tuisco. 
 
 Section V.— DAWN GODDESSES. 
 
 The name Ushas reappears in the Greek Eos, and Ushas, Uahas and 
 like Eos, is the goddess of the dawn or morning.^ The ^^^' 
 language addressed to her betokens a more distinct person- 
 ality than that even of Yaruna and Indra, because the wor- 
 shipper 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 
 tmfading beauty, although they who look upon her grow 
 daily older and at last die.^ 
 
 ' Professor Max Miiller, Lectures on vowel ty regular process to au, and 
 
 Language, second series, 482, 609, formed ausos, which received no further 
 
 thinks that Manu may haye been called increase in Greek, but in Latin a 
 
 Savarni, as meaning the Manu af all secondary noun was formed from the 
 
 rolours, i. e. of all tribes or castes, while primary one, that is ausosa. Now both 
 
 Savarna, the second wife of the sun, is Greeks and Italians, as is well known, 
 
 simply the twilight in which he dies, disliked the sound s between two vowels : 
 
 ast as the myth that Saranyu had left the Greeks generally dropped it, and so 
 
 ler twins behind, meant only that the got av{(T)iis : the Latins changed it to r, 
 
 Dawn had disappeared. The root ?nan and made aurora : the verb appears as 
 
 8 taken also to denote ' backward uro.' — Peile, Introduction to Greek and 
 
 honght, remembering and admonishing ; Latin Etymology, -^M. The Lithuanian 
 
 rhence the proper name Mentor, the form of the word is Ausera. 
 idviser.' With this may be compared ' Hence the decrepitude of some of 
 
 he name Juno Moneta : and thus the mythical beings beloved by the 
 
 LthenS, when she appears among the Dawn. This is the idea of the myth of 
 
 uitors before the great vengeance of Eos and Tithonos, and it seems to be 
 
 )dysseu8, is naturally said to assume united with that of Odin, Savitri, or 
 
 be likeness of Mentor. Odysseus the wanderers, in the story of 
 
 '^ The root US, to bum, appears as the Wandering Jew. The myth is here, 
 
 rSH in Sanskrit. From this tjshas is as we might expect, strangely distorted : 
 
 )rmed without any vowel modification, but the Jew must wander on until the 
 
 The Grseco-Italian people raised the evening of the world is come. 
 
416 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 'Ushas, nourishing all, comes daily like a matron, con- 
 
 v___,J • ducting all transient (creatures) to decay.' ' 
 
 ' The divine and ancient Ushas, born again and again and 
 bright with nnchanging hues, wastes away the life of a 
 mortal, like the wife of a hunter cutting np the birds.' ^ 
 
 ' 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 ap- 
 proach who will behold her in after times.' * 
 
 Like the Greek Athene, she is pure 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.' ^ 
 
 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 birth-place 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,' ^ or 
 that 'of all the sisters who have gone before a successor 
 daily follows the one that has preceded.' ' It is this very 
 transparency of meaning which imparts value to almost 
 every expression of praise in the hymns addressed 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. 
 
 • H. H. Wilson, E. V. SanUia. i. 129. spring from her is closely allied to the 
 ^ lb. i. 274. " Ih- i. 2B8. myth of Kroiios, and seems to lie at the 
 
 * Ih. ii. 8, 10. ' lb. ii. 12. re ot of the many popular German and 
 " Ih. i. 169. Norse stories, in which the bride of the 
 ' Hk ii. 12. The idea of Ushas as king is accused of being a murderess 
 
 bringing to an end the days which who destroys her own children. 
 
THE DAWN LIGHT. 417 
 
 ' She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving towards chap. 
 every one she grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant , ^^' , 
 garment. The mother of the cows, the leader of thfe dcgs, 
 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. 
 Eemove the haters, bring treasures. Eaise 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.' ' 
 
 The hymns speak especially of the broad-spreading light of xjsiias the 
 Ushas ; and this flush of dawn suddenly passing across the ^^°''^^- 
 
 ' . . spreading. 
 
 heaven takes us 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 Eury- 
 ganeia, Eurynom^, 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 teUs 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,^ 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 vayund has the double meaning of light and 
 knowledge, just as the notions of knowledge and of creative 
 power are both expressed by the root jan and the English 
 
 1 ^. y_ yii. 77. ' tpas aviKare iii.dxai>. — Soph. Ant. 781. 
 
 VOL. I. E E 
 
418 MYTHOLOGY OP THE ARYAN NATION'S. 
 
 BOOK can and hen. Hence Uslias 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.' Of the 
 birth of Athen^ 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 
 inference 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.^ 
 Ahana. But Ushas is only one of many names for the light of early 
 
 morning. As Ahana, she plays the part as well as bears the 
 name of Athene and of Daphn^. The word expresses the 
 idea of burning light ; and although it occurs only once in 
 the Rig Veda,^ the flexibility of the old mythology justifies 
 us in attributing to Ahana all that is told us of Ushas or of 
 Sarama.* 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 off- 
 shoot from the parent stem which in the West yielded the 
 myths of Daphne and of Prokris. Daphn^ 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, 
 Indra, that thou struckest the daughter of Dyaus, a woman 
 difficult to vanquish. 
 
 I The benignant aspect of night mast second series, 503. 
 
 he carefully borne in mind, as the germ » ' Ahan4 comes near to every house, 
 
 of the myths of Asteria, Asterodia, she who makes every day to be known. 
 
 Kalyps&, and other Fairy Queens. 'Dyotana (the dawn), the active 
 
 Under all these, forms we have the i/if maiden, comes back for evermore ; she 
 
 <j>i\la fieyiKay kiJit/kbc Kredreipa of enjoys always the first of all goods.' — 
 
 jEschylos, Jgam. 356. As such, Night S. V. i. 123, 4. 
 
 is invoked in the Veda to ' drive away * ' Athen^, as far as letters go, would 
 
 the wolf and the thief, and carry her correspond to a Sanskrit AhanA, which 
 
 woreliippers safely across' (to the light), is but a slightly differing variety of 
 
 —R. V. K. 127 ; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, Ahanft.'— Max Miiller, Lectures, second 
 
 part iv. p. 123. series, 603. 
 
 - Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, 
 
THE CHARIOT OF THE DAWN. 419 
 
 'Yes, even the daughter of Dyaus, the magnified, the CHAP. 
 Dawn, thou, Indra, a great hero, hast ground to pieces. . ^^' , 
 
 ' The Dawn rushed off from her crushed car, fearmg that 
 Indra, the bull, might strike her. 
 
 * This her car lay there, well ground to pieces. She went 
 far away.' ' 
 
 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 sarama. 
 the name 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 
 Sarama 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 
 Sarama or Saranjru be taken to denote the storm-cloud or 
 the morning, there is no doubt that the root of the word is 
 mr, to creep or go, which we find in ser'pent as well as in the 
 Greek Erinys and Sarpedon. In the Eig 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 Caeus, had 
 hid 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 Easa ? " 
 
 ' R. V. IT. 30. 
 
 E E 2 
 
420 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NA'HONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 The cows 
 of Indra. 
 
 ' The Panis : " What kind of man is Indra, O Sarama, 
 what is his look, he as whose messenger thou conlest from 
 afar? Let him come hither, and we will make friends with 
 him, and then he may^he the cowherd of our cows." 
 
 ' Sarama i " 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." 
 
 ' The Panis : " Those cows, Sarama, which thou desirest, 
 fly about the ends of the sky, darling. Who would give 
 them up to thee without fighting? for our weapons too are 
 sharp." 
 
 ' Sarama : " Though your words, Panis, be unconquer- 
 able, 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, 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 Eishis 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, Sarama, thou art come hither, 
 driven by the violence of the gods ; let us make thee our 
 sister, do not go away again ; we wUl give thee part of the 
 cows, 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, 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 Eishis." ' ' 
 
 This hymn, seemingly so transparent in its meaning, be- 
 comes unintelligible if interpreted of any other being than 
 
 Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, second series, 465. 
 
USHAS AND SARAMA. 42.1 
 
 the Dawn in her struggle with the powers of darkness : and CHAP, 
 hence it seems a superfluous task to show that all the essential 
 
 features of Ushas reappear in Sarama ; that like TJshas'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 strong- 
 holds 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 Phae- 
 thousa and Lampetie feed in the rich pastures of Helios. Du- 
 ring 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 
 reclaim her children. With a faint flush she starts slowly 
 from the doors of the east. Her light, creeping along the 
 dark face 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 over- 
 throw, 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 ofi'ered The . 
 to her by the Panis. Another turn was given to the tale Saramd."^ 
 when the faithfulness of Saram^ was represented as not in- 
 vincible. 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 
 
422 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 EOOK 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 speaks of herself as the dog-eyed or dog-faced, 
 although by none else is the name ever applied to her. Thus 
 the Greek carried away with him the root of the great Tro- 
 jan 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, some- 
 times 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 ^ may have led to the notion which 
 made him in later times the hound which served as the mes- 
 senger of the gods, and which in the story of Prokris reap- 
 pears at the feet of Artemis.' 
 Saranyu. Another name from the same root which has furnished 
 
 > See Appendix E. Why dost thou distress us ? Sleep 
 
 ' Professor Miiller notices that in a sleep.' — Lectures on Language, 
 
 hymn of the seventh book of the Big second series, 473. 
 Veda, Vastoshpati, the lord of the house, 
 
 a kind of Lar, is called Sarameya, and ' '^}"^ "^og of the morning is promi- 
 
 is certainly addressed as the watchdog '^^'^\ i° th^ Norse tale of Bushy Bride, 
 
 of the house ; and he adds that this "While the hero lies in a pit full of 
 
 deity would thus denote the ' peep of snakes (Helios in the land of the 
 
 day conceived as a person, watching throttling serpent), a lovely lady (Ushas 
 
 unseen at the doors of heaven during "^ Sarami) comes into the palace 
 
 the night and giving his first bark in kitchen — the connection, as with Boots 
 
 the morning.' The features of the deity f"" Cinderella among the ashes, lying in 
 
 thus conceived are brought out with tlie fire of the hearth or oven— and asks 
 
 sufficient clearness in the following *'"" kitchen-maid for a brush. 'Then 
 
 verses : ^^^ brushed her hair, and as she brushed 
 
 down dropped gold. A little dog was at 
 
 ' When thou, bright Sarameya, openest her heel, and to him she said '• Run out 
 
 thy teeth, red one, spears seem little Flo, and see if it will soon be day." 
 
 to glisten on thy jaws as thou This she said three times, and the third 
 
 swallowest. Sleep, sleep. time that she sent the dog it was just 
 
 'Bark at the thief, Sarameya, or at the about the time the dawn begins to peep.' 
 
 robber, restless one. Now thou The old myth could not be retained with 
 
 barkest at the worshippers of Indra. greater fidelity. 
 
SARANYfi- AND EEINTS. 423 
 
 those of Sarama, Helen, Hermes, and Sarp^don, is found in CHAP. 
 
 Saranyn (a feminine of Saranyu), in whom some discern the , i^: , 
 
 dart and impetuous stormcloud.' 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 twins. The male Saranyu is in like manner 
 called a horse, and the goddess herself is the mother of the 
 twins Tama and Tami, and again of Nasatya and Dasra, the 
 twin Asvins or steeds, 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 Indr4, the two 
 Indras, of Dyav4, the double Dyaus, of TJshasau, the two 
 mornings, of Agni, the two Agnis, of Varuna, the two 
 Varunas. 
 
 But as Sarama is Helen, so Saranyu is Erinys ; and here Erinys. 
 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.^ Hence 
 in spite of all the failure of memory, and of the fearful cha- 
 racter which Erinys had assumed, the poet who tells the 
 terrible tale of 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 cha.nge 
 which converted the beautiful Saranyii into the avenging 
 furies of iEschylos has excited the wonder of some who. 
 hesitate on this account to believe that Erinys and Saranj-u 
 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 tiip 
 
 Harpips. 
 ' Roth, quoted by Professor Max ' Professor Max Miiller seems to 
 Miiller ib. 404. The name itself, as in see in DSm^tfe, not the earth, but the 
 Hermes, SararoA, and ipi^^i, may express dawn-mother, Bykvk M4tar, correspond- 
 any motion, slow or rapid. ing to Dyauspitar.— /i. 517. 
 
424 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK brought about. The Harpies, who in our Homeric poems 
 
 . ^ . are the beautiful daughters of Thaumas and Elektra, appear 
 
 in the ^neid of Virgil as foul monsters, who do the work of 
 vultures. The Ara, or prayer of the longing heart,' 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 aU the evils that come of 
 Strife ; ^ 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 j3Eschylos 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 to 
 be modified by time and place, by power of imagination and 
 failure of memory. The Ate of the Hiad 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 ^schylos is the sleepless doom 
 which broods over a house until the vengeance for the 
 shedding of innocent blood has been exacted to the utter- 
 most farthing. There is nothing wonderful therefore in the 
 process which changed the lovely Saranyu of the Veda into 
 the awful goddesses ' of Athens ; and if the Erinys of the 
 Iliad is called hateful, yet she wanders in the air and hears 
 the summons addressed to her from the land of darkness.'' 
 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 
 
 ■ apiiv ^TToi^ffoi'To vaiSa yiv4ff9ai.— ^ Hes. Theoq. 226. 
 Herod, vi. 63. » iniJLvttX edl. * 77. i. 671. 
 
THE HORSES OP THE SUN. 425 
 
 and Dyaus were to tlie Hindta, there were other names which CHAP, 
 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 Kephlsos. 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 analysis of all these myths proves convincingly that The cows 
 for human thought in its earliest stages the danger lay not q" thes^un* 
 in the poverty of language, but in its superabundant wealth, gods. 
 The heaven, the sun, the dawn, the clouds, might be de- 
 scribed 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.' The impulse once given issued in 
 an almost incredible wealth of metaphor. The horse as the 
 bearer of burdens was called vahni ; ^ but the flames also 
 bore their burdens into the air, and the rays of the sun 
 
 ' The process is completely analysed yehere, the Greek ^x^'". ^°<i i° ™™- 
 
 by Professor Max Miiller, ' Comparative pound words as cervix, the neck, as 
 
 Mythology,' Chips, Ac. ii. 132, &e. ^ carrying the head. 
 
 '' The root is found in the Latin 
 
426 MTTHOLOGY OP THE AKYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK brought his light to man. Thus the flame of fire and the 
 
 ___,: . solar rays, being both alike 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 ap- 
 proach 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 meaning 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.' But while 
 even in India, the idea of loveliness was beginning to predo- 
 minate over that of mere animal strength, among the West- 
 ern Aryans the glistening Harits became the lovely Charites 
 whom the Latins called the Gra.tise 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. 
 Ariishi. Arushi, however, is only the feminine form of arvan, a horse; 
 
 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 
 ' Max Muller, Chips, 4-0. ii. 131. 
 
AEUSHA AND EEOS. 427 
 
 dawn, and the dark one opens the path for the bright god.' CHAP. 
 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 bom, so 
 did the gods bring up his son when he was born.' ' He has 
 the eyes of a man, and he is also Sapamas, 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 Eros. But further, as Professor Max MiiUer 
 has noted in his exhaustive analysis of this myth, Arusha is 
 caUed 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 Eose-Eed of German folk-lore), the one is clad in 
 stars, the other is the wife of Svar, the sun. He moves 
 Rwift as thought, longing for victory : he is the love or 
 desire, Kama, of all men ; and as irresistible in his strength, 
 he is TJshapati, lord of the dawn. With all these phrases 
 the mythology of the Greeks is in thorough harmony. Al- 
 though, according to later poets, Eros is a son of Zeus and 
 of Gaia, or Aphrodite, or Artemis, we may fairly assert that 
 ia the Hesiodic theogony, as in the Yeda, 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 iu 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 thotight of Eros, ever bright and fair as (like Tavishtha 
 or Hephaistos) the youngest of the gods, as the companion 
 of the Charites, as the child of the Charis Aphrodite : 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.^ 
 
 ' This is precisely the picture of the in them the word is an epithet of Agni, 
 
 Muses nursing the infant Phoibos in the Indra, or Surya, remarks that this objee- 
 
 Homeric hymn. Max Miiller, ih. 136. tion would apply 'to many other names 
 
 ^ In his notes on the Ewj Vi da Sanhita, originally intended for these conceptions, 
 
 vol. i. p. 11, Professor ifiix Miiller, not- but which, nevertheless, in the course of 
 
 ing the objections made to some of his time, become independent names of in- 
 
 interpretations of passages in which the dependent deities.' 
 word Arusha occurs, on the ground that 
 
428 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Snakes 
 
 and 
 
 dragons. 
 
 Sorcery j 
 and witch- 
 craft. 
 
 The brilliant steeds reappear in tlie 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,' and belongs to a class of ideas altqgether 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 onlj" draw the chariot of Medeia, but 
 reveal to lamos the knowledge of 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 Helios, Medeia is emphatically the wise woman ; and 
 in this myth we have probably the groundwork of those no- 
 tions which were iinally developed into the system of sorcery 
 and witchcraft. The knowledge 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 transi- 
 tion from the idea of a wisdom which, although not naturally 
 attainable, might be conferred on some by the bright being 
 whose eye pierces all space, to the notion of compacts made 
 ' See Section XII. of this chapter. . 
 
MEDEIA AND QLAUKfi. 429 
 
 between witches and the devil we have a developement or CHAP, 
 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, Medeia is the child of the ocean The story 
 nymph Idyia, or, in another version, of Hekate (the female "^ Medeia. 
 correlative of Hekatos or Phoibos), who is herself the daughter 
 of Asteria, the starlit night. Her father is Aietes, the Kol- 
 chian 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.' 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 oi the Corinthian 
 Ereon, but of Herakles himself, when his toils come to an 
 end on mount Oita. Of her share in the victory of lason 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. Wliether faithful or treacherous, 
 the sun can never remain with his first love, and even Odys- 
 seus, 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 avenges the wrongs done to lason long ago at 
 lolkos. 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.' 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 lason 
 in her dragon chariot to Corinth, where his love is trans- 
 
 ' See Appendix F. the body of Pelias occurs also in the 
 ' Eurip. Med. 957. German story of Brother Lustig. Me- 
 ' With this maybe compared the Norse deia herself appears in benignant guise 
 story of the Master Smith, in whom we in the legend of the Goose-girl at the 
 see another form of Hephaistos or Way- Well (the Dawn-maiden with her snow- 
 land. The incident of the cutting up of white clouds). 
 
of Prokris. 
 
 430 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK ferred to Glauk^, after whose death Medeia, like Gudrun in 
 / ■ the Volsung story, slays her own children — a crime closely re- 
 sembling 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 Ias6n to Kolchis, while others took her to Italy, and 
 described her as acquiring the name Anguitia from her power 
 of fascinating serpents. Tinally, she is said to have been 
 wedded to Achilleus in Blysion. 
 The myth 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.' 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 there- 
 fore deserts Prokris, to whom after a time he returns in 
 disguise. 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.^ With these 
 
 ' Professor Max Miiller, refers Pro- thology,' Chips, Sfc. ii. 87. 
 
 kris to the Sanskrit prush and prish, = In the myth of Ikaros, or Ikarios, 
 
 to sprinkle, need chiefly of raindrops, this dog appears under the name Maira 
 
 ' The same root in the Teutonic (the glistening), who helps Erigonfe the 
 
 languages has taken the sense of daughter of Ikarios in her search fcir 
 
 " frost," and Bopp identifies prush with the body of her father, who has been 
 
 the 0. H. G-. frus, frigere. In Greek slain by the peasants and thrown into 
 
 we must refer to the same root trpti^, the well Anygros (the parched). Her 
 
 irpwKiis, a dewdrop, and also Prokris, grief leads her to hang herself on a tree 
 
 the dew. Thus the wife of Kephalos is under which he was buried, a myth 
 
 only a repetition of Hers^, her mother — which suggests a comparison with that 
 
 Herse, dew, being derived from Sanskrit of Helene Dendritis. Ikaros, the son of 
 
 prish, to sprinkle.'— ' Comparative My- Daidalos, is only a reflection of Phaeth6n. 
 
PROKRIS AND EOS. 431 
 
 gifts she returns to Keplialos, who after seeing her success CHAP. 
 
 in the chase longs to possess them. But they can be yielded ^ ^ - 
 
 only in return for his love, and thus Prokris brings holne 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 de- 
 scribed 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 E6s and 
 transparent that the legend can scarcely be said to be a ^'*^°'^°"*- 
 myth at all. Her name is, as we have seen, that of the 
 Vedic dawn-goddess TJshas, and she is a daughter of Hy- 
 perion (the soaring sun) and of Euryphassa (the broad 
 shining), and a sister of the sun and moon (Helios and 
 SelenS). If Ovid calls her a child of Pallas, this is only 
 saying again that she is the off'spring of the dawn. Like 
 Phoibos and Herakles, she has many loves ; but from all she 
 is daily parted. Every morning she leaves the couch of 
 Tithonos,' 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 
 ' Ihe lot of Tithonos is simply the reverse of that of Endjmion, 
 
432 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Hebe and 
 Gany- 
 mede. 
 
 The story 
 of Dido 
 and Anna. 
 
 Tith&nos and Kephalos is granted also to Orion (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 beautiful 
 EQeitos. 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, whom mythographers made the father of the luck- 
 less son of Helios, but who is really the same being with his 
 son. 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 shaU 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 youthful- 
 ness of the maimed Hephaistos. She is the daughter neces- 
 sarily 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 HebS, 
 though the bride of the deified Herakles, or the mother of 
 his children Alexiares and Aniketos, the invincible deliverers, 
 remains little more than a name. She is Ganymede, the 
 brilliant ; and thus what Iris is to Hermes, that is Heb6 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. 
 
 The same story of unrequited love which has been em- 
 bodied 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 ^neas (Aineias), he has intro- 
 duced into it little or nothing which is not found in the 
 myth as related by Justin. In fact, the story of Aphrodite 
 
DIDO AND ANNA. 433 
 
 or Daplin^ is twice told in the life of Dido, for tlie Sichaeus CHAP 
 or Acerbas whose death she bewails is the Adonis who, like . ^^' - 
 Sichseus, is slain by the dark being or power of nigfit. As 
 the Panis look greedily on the cattle of Indra, Pygmalion 
 covets the vast treasures which Sichseus possesses with 
 Tantalos, Sisyphos, Helen and Brynhild, or Ixlon ; 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 to her as Paris became to the 
 Helen whom he had stolen with her treasures. As faithful 
 to the memory of her lost love as is Sarami 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 Itha- 
 kan 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, ^neas 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 Herakles, 
 amid the flames of a fiery sunset. The same story is re- 
 peated yet again in the myth of Anna, the sister of Dido, 
 whom Latin tradition identified with the goddess Anna 
 Perenna.^ After her sister's death Anna follows ^neas to 
 
 ' This name was naturally referred to puma, who is described by Paterson as 
 the words a»7ZMsandp«-en»/s by a people 'of ruddy complexion, her robe of 
 who had retained the mere name with- various colours, a crescent on her fore- 
 out its meaning. Hence the goddess head: She gives subsistence; she is 
 became to the Latins the bestower of bent by the weight of her full breasts, 
 fruitful seasons; but the false etymology all good is united m her.' In short, 
 of the prayer, ' ut annare perennareque she is a deity wlio, in Colebrooke's 
 commode liceat,' happened to correspond words ' fills with food, and is very 
 with the original force of the name, if similar to Lakshmi, or the goddess of 
 Anna Perenna be the Sanskrit Apna- abundance, although not the same deity. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 F F 
 
434 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOe: Italy where, thougli she is kindly received by him, she finds 
 
 II, 
 
 in Lavinia a Prbkris, 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 ^neas easts herself into the same 
 Numician stream in which ^neas afterwards disappears from 
 the sight of men. The same repetitions mark the story of 
 ^neas, who, although fighting (reluctantly, as some versions 
 have it,) on the side of the thief who steals Helen, is yet a 
 being like the Lykian Sarp^don or the Aithiopian Memn6n. 
 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 he is at feud with the kiug, for Priam fails to do 
 him honour, as Agamemnon heaps disgrace on Achilleus. 
 From the fiames 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 Aphrodite. 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 dis- 
 appears, like Helle, — the converse of the myth of Her6 and 
 Leiandros (Leander). But ^neas 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 ^neas wins her, there 
 remain yet other dangers and other enemies, and in the 
 final strife with the Eutulians the dawn- child vanishes in 
 the stream of Numicius, as Arethousa and Daphn^ plunge 
 into the waters from which Anadyomene comes up in the 
 morning. The true feeling of the people who recounted 
 
 The title Apna, in which we Bee the apparently from the same stem with 
 root ap (aqua), points to nourishment by the Latin pario, to produce. Nork, 
 water, while the name Puma comes Rcal-Worterbuch, i. 89. 
 
lOKASTB AlfD AITHEA. 435 
 
 this myth is shown in the title which they accorded to him. CHAP. 
 Henceforth he is Jupiter Indiges, the father from whom . •^^' . 
 they spring, and who bestows upon them all that mates life 
 worth living for. 
 
 The same story of disastrous love is presented under other Hfofi and 
 names in the legend of Leiandros (Leander), a myth which Leiandros. 
 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 HSr^) 
 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 
 Delphinios, the fish or frog-sun, who dies in the furious 
 storm ; and through grief for her lost love H^ro casts herself 
 into the waters, like Kephalos from the Leukadian cliff after 
 the death of Prokris. 
 
 Not less sad than that of Prokris or of Dido is the lot of The Brides 
 I0I4 lokastg, Aithra, Auge, Danag, or Ariadn^. Li the first °^'^* ^"°- 
 two of these forsaken wives or desolate mothers we see the 
 violet tints of morning, which reappear in lamos, lolaos, 
 and lason. From Herakles, lol^ 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 the blaze of the fire which consumes the body of 
 Herakles rises to the heavens, she is left alone in her sorrow 
 to vanish before the cheerless gloaming. The fate of lokast^ 
 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.^ According to the version of Hyginus, 
 tlie life of Aithra (the pure air), the mother of Theseus, had 
 
 ' lokastS is the wife of the gloomy which the sun is born maybe regarded as 
 Laics : in other words, the dawn from the wife of the dark and cheerless night. 
 
 r F 2 
 
436 MYTHOLOGY OF THK ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 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 
 inviucible weapons under a large stone, that his son might 
 become possessed of them only when he had reached his fuU 
 strength. Later stiU, 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 T^lephos (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 Pasiphae, who is the mother of the 
 Minotauros, as the bright Here is the mother of Typhoon. 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 lokast^ 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 DanaS, who 
 is shut up by her father Akrisios in a brazen dungeon,' 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 Oidi- 
 pous, the oracle had foretold that if she had a son, he would 
 become the slayer of her father Akrisios, and Akrisios, 
 anxious like Laios to preserve his own life, placed Danae 
 and her child in a chest, as according to one version Oidi- 
 pous also was placed and borne away to Brasiai. The story 
 of her sojourn in the house of Polydektes 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 restor- 
 ' The Iron Stove of the German story. (Grimm.) 
 
augS! and eueOpE. 437 
 
 ation to her native land, belongs rather to tlie mythical history chap. 
 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 fuU share of sorrow. Her 
 mother Kassiopeia had, like Mobe, 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 Niob^. Poseidon 
 accordingly brought the waters of the sea over the land, and 
 with them a sea-monster who, like the Sphinx or the Mino- 
 tauros, can be satisfied only with human blood. The former 
 fiUs the streets of Thebes with corpses ; the latter exacts the 
 yearly tribute of the dawn-children. But the solitary An- 
 dromeda, abandoned to the huge sea-dragon, takes a firmer 
 hold on the popular 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 en- 
 dowed 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 Gala- 
 had. 
 
 The same idea is the groundwork of the myth of the TheArka- 
 Arkadian Auge, the clear atmosphere of the land of light. ^"^° "^"S*- 
 Hence the local myth necessarily related that Herakles 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 lokaste, and in the . end to be brought back to 
 Tegea by her son Telephos, as Perseus brings his mother 
 back to Argos. 
 
 The story of Eur6p^ brings before us the dawn, not as Eur6p4 
 fleeing from the pursuit of the sun, 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 
 
438 
 
 MYTHOLOGY 01" THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Altbaia 
 and the 
 burning 
 brand. 
 
 as she plays with her brother in her Phenician home.' 
 Almost every name in the myth tells its own tale, although 
 we may perhaps have to put aside the names of Agen6r and 
 Kadmos as merely HeUenised forms of the Semitic Kedem 
 and Chnas. Eurdp^ herself is simply the broad-spreading 
 flush of dawn, which is seen first in the Phoinikia, or purple 
 region of the morning, and whose name belongs to the same 
 class with Eurykleia, Eurydik^, Euryganeia, and Euryphassa. 
 She is the child of T^lephassa, the being whose light streams 
 from afar ; ^ 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 Kadmos and Tele- 
 phassa, 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 Europ^ 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 mother of a child whose life is bound up with a burning 
 brand. As soon as the brand is burnt out her son will die, 
 according to the 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 con- 
 
 • This bull reappears in the Norse 
 tale of Katie Wooden- cloak (Dasent), 
 endowed with the powers of Wish. In 
 its left ear is a cloth which, when spread 
 out, furnishes abundant banquets for 
 the dawn-maiden, who has been thrust 
 out of her father's house ; but when the 
 stepmother aays that she cannot rest 
 until she has eaten the Dun Bull's flesh, 
 the beast, hearing her, tells the dawn- 
 maiden that, if she wills, he will carry 
 her away. The pursuit of Katie on her 
 bull is the chase of lason by the angry 
 
 Aietes, not the loving search of Kadmos 
 and Telephassa ; and the bull has to go 
 through fearful conflicts with the Trolls, 
 before the happy end is brought about 
 by means of a golden slipper as in the 
 stories of Cinderella and Sodewa Bai. 
 
 ^ Pindar {Pyth. iv.) speaks of Europe 
 as a daughter of Tityos, a gigantic being, 
 who is slain by the swift arrow of 
 Artemis, and condemned to a like 
 penalty with Ixion, Sisyphos, Tantalos, 
 and Prometheus. 
 
THE BURNING BRAND. 439 
 
 ception of the sun's course sprung the idea that his mother CHAP. 
 
 kept him alive by snatching the log from the iire. But -__,: ■ 
 
 although Meleagros is, like Phoibos and Achilleus, inTincible 
 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 kinsfolk 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 into this myth are found for the most part 
 in a host of other stories. She is the daughter of Eury- 
 themis, a reflection of Europe or Euryganeia, 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.' Of Kleopatra, the beautiful wife of 
 Meleagros, there is little more to say than that she is, 
 like Daphne and Arethousa, a child of the waters, the 
 Euenos being her father, and that, like Oinone and Bryn- 
 hild, she dies of grief when the chequered life of the being 
 whom she loves has been brought to an end. 
 
 Section VI.— ATHENE. 
 
 The name Athene is practically a transliteration of the The ori- 
 Vedic Ahan4, the morning, which in a cognate form appears of^Xti'^nl 
 as Dahana, the Greek Daphne.^ The myths which have purely 
 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 skj, and remains fresh, 
 pure, and undefiled for ever. In her origin the virgin deity 
 
 ' Deianeira is the last of the many or bride of the enemy of the day : and 
 
 brides of Herakles, and belongs in truth, thus her name is DAsyanari, the wife of 
 
 rather to the darkness than the light, the fiend. Chips, #c. ii. 89, 234. 
 
 and as sending to him the fatal garment, = See note 4, p. 418. 
 may be regarded as rather the colleague 
 
440 
 
 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 II. 
 
 Athene 
 Tritoge- 
 
 of the Athenian Akropolis was strictly physical; but the 
 notion of the being who wakes up the world after the dark- 
 ness of night might soon pass into that of wisdom, the con- 
 nection between light and knowledge (the ^wy and 71'wcrts 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 hea- 
 ven ; 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 Ahan^ 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 fore- 
 head of the sky.' ' 
 
 But if Athen^ is Zeus-born, the poet, when he tells us this, 
 speaks of her as Tritogeneia, the child of Tritos.^ It is 
 strange that this 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.' In short, every stream so named became a birth- 
 place 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 
 
 ' Max Miiller, ib. ' 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.' 
 
 2 Hes. Theog. 924. 
 
 ' This connection 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-cloak the dawn-maiden, while 
 working humbly' like Cinderella in the 
 
 kitchen, asks permission to talce up 
 water for the prince, who will receive 
 no service from one so mfan-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. 
 
ATHENS. 441 
 
 Athene, not only witli that deity, but with Triton, Amphi- 
 trite, and the Tritopatores or lords of the winds.' The 
 theory which, from the supposed Libyan birthplace of iJthene, 
 infers a relation between Egyptian and Hellenic mythology 
 calls for no notice. 
 
 The Hesiodic Theogony assigns Metis (a name akin to that Birth of 
 of 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. In the saying of Pindar, that Hephaistos at her 
 birth split the forehead of Zeus with a brazen axe, we see 
 the sudden stream of light shooting up in the morning sky, 
 which it seems to cleave ; and in the golden shower which 
 falls at her birth, we have only a repetition of the mode 
 in which Danae became the mother of Perseus.^ When 
 ApoUodoros 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 Parentage 
 as Koryphasia in Messene, as Akria in Argos, whUe Minerva °^ Athene. 
 
 ' M. Br^al, who traces this identity, cites as setting it aside. This story is 
 
 Hercule et Cacus, 17, cites the words of that ' the slaves of Dirghotamas, when he 
 
 Suid s, ' TpnoirdTopes • Aiiiiav eV T-fj was old and blind, became insubordinate, 
 
 'ArdiSi tjnjffiy avefiovs elvou rohs Tpiroird- and attempted to destroy him, first by 
 
 Topcij. ' It is said of Indra that ' animated throwing him into the fire, whence he 
 
 by the sacrificial food, he broke through was saved by the Asvins, then into 
 
 the defences of Vala, as did Trita water, whence he was extricated by the 
 
 through the coverings of the well.' — ■ same divinities ; upon which Traitana, 
 
 H. H. Wilson, R. V. 8. vol. i. p. 141. one of the slaves, wounded him on the 
 
 Professor Wilson here remarks that head, breast, and arms, and then 
 
 ' Ekata, Dwita, and Trita [the first, infiicted like injuries on himself, of 
 
 Second, and third] were three men pro- which he perished.' This story becomes 
 
 duced in water, by Agni, for the purpose clear throughout when compared with 
 
 of removing or rubbing oflf the reliques the myth of Eos, who, like the slaves of 
 
 of an oblation of clarified butter. The Dirghotama, shut up the decrepit 
 
 Scholiast . . . says that Agni threw the Tithonos. The other incidents of the 
 
 cinders of the burnt-offering into the tale carry us to the fiery death of 
 
 water, whence successively arose Ekata, Herakles, and to Endymion plunging 
 
 Dwita, and Trita, who, as elsewhere into the waters which are soon lost to 
 
 appears, were therefore called Aptyas or sight in the darkness which comes on 
 
 sons of water.' Noticing Dr. Eoth's after sunset, 
 
 opinion that Trita is the same name as " Pind. Olymp. vii. 65. 
 
 Thraetana (Eeridun), he says that the » Apollod. i. 3, 5. The myth which 
 
 identity of Trita and Traitana remains makes Hephaistos himself her father 
 
 to be established. It is, at the least, speaks only of the burst of flaming light 
 
 not disproved by the story which he from which the day seems to be born. 
 
442 
 
 MTTHOLOGT OF THE ARYAN NATIONS. 
 
 BOOK 
 11. 
 
 mother of 
 Phoibos 
 and Lych- 
 
 1103. 
 
 was called Capta (capita) at Rome.' But there were alsc 
 traditions which, spoke of her as a child not of Zeus, but o: 
 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 theii 
 children, who are in their turn doomed to slay their sires, 
 as Athen^ 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 (Sarameya, 
 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, Athene 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.^ 
 
 But pure and undefiled though the dawn may be, she is 
 yet followed by the sun, who may therefore be regarded as 
 her offspring ; and thus Phoibos Apollon was sometimes 
 called a son of Hephaistos and Athene, while another version 
 expressed the same idea by making them the parents of 
 Lychnos (the brilliant), another Phaethon.'' As the dawn- 
 goddess, she can keep men young, or make them old. She 
 rouses them to fresh vigour from healthftd sleep, or as the 
 days come round she brings them at last to old age and 
 death. Prom 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 toil- 
 worn beggar, it is Athene who dims the brightness of his 
 eye, and wraps him in squalid raiment,^ and again she 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, 
 second series, 503. 
 
 ' This name is manifestly only 
 another form of Phallos. 
 
 3 Find. Pi/th. xii. 35. 
 
 * Athen^ also brings up and nourishes 
 Erechtheus, and lodges him in her own 
 temple. On this Mr. Grote, Hisiort/ of 
 
 Greece, i. 75, remarks, ' It was altogether 
 impossible to make Erechtheus the son 
 of Athene : the type of the goddess for- 
 bade it.' Eather, it was forbidden only 
 by the form which the idea of Athene 
 assumed in the minds of the Athenians ; 
 and the reason is obvious. 
 
 » Od. xiii. 430. See vol. i. p. 160. 
 
ATHENE GLAUKOPIS. 443 
 
 restores Ms former majesty when once more he is to meet CHAP, 
 his son Telemachos.' 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.^ 
 
 Of the vast number of names by which she was known Epithets of 
 and worshipped, the earliest probably, and certainly the ■'^t*"*'"^- 
 most common, denote simply the light. She is especially 
 the goddess of the grey or gleaming face, Glaut6pis. 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 fostering all science and all art. Thus the 
 epithets Akria and A.kraia, 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 Poseid6n, 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 emblem of peace, was better than the horse, whose 
 chief use was for war. But the city so named after her was 
 emphatically the glistening city {Xnrapal 'Afffjvai), although 
 the epithet it seems was so little applicable to it in its out- 
 ward 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. 
 
 1 Od. xvi. 172. 2 lb. xxiv. 368. 
 
444 MYTHOLOGY OF THE AEYAN NATION'S. 
 
 BOOK She is, however, tlie guardian not of Athenians only bui 
 
 ^ — . of all the solar heroes; in her Bellerophontes, Achilleus 
 
 Ahhen^the Herakles and Perseus, Odysseus and Diom^des, find theii 
 of heroes. Unfailing friend and comforter. From her come all wealtl 
 and prosperity, and accordingly we find the special emblems 
 of wealth and fertility intimately associated with her wor- 
 ship. Her sacred serpent was fed on the Akropolis, anc 
 yearly in her great procession the sacred ship, covered witl 
 the peplos woven by Athenian- maidens, was carried to he: 
 shrine.' In one of the so-called Orphic hymns, she is saic 
 to be both male and female, and thus to remain unwedded 
 Doubtless the dawn may be regarded as of spotless puritj 
 and unfading loveliness, and this idea might give rise tc 
 images of transcendent holiness and majesty ; but she may b( 
 thought of also not only as giving birth to children, but ai 
 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 mytl 
 closely akin to that of the dazzling treasures of Ixi6n, whicl 
 no man might look upon and live), and shrinks with loathing 
 from Hephaistos when he seeks to lay hands upon her. Oi 
 the other, the myth of Prometheus exhibits her as aiding 
 him in his theft of fire against the will of Zeus, whUe on( 
 version represents her as so acting from feelings not o: 
 friendship but of love. In general, however, the harmoni 
 between the dawn and the sky from which it springs, ii 
 other words, between Zeus and Athene, is undisturbed ; anc 
 thus when Zeus is determined to take vengeance for th 
 deceit put upon him by Prometheus, Athen^ lends herself a 
 a willing accomplice in his scheme. She is to teach Pandon 
 the skilful use of the loom, while Aphrodite is to adorn he 
 with all the enticements of physical beauty, and Hermes i 
 to give her a crafty and thievish mind and temper.' Bu 
 even in the Iliad where she is generally represented as beini 
 
 ' See section xii. of this chapter. the girdle on Pandora and made h( 
 
 '^ xxxii. beautiful may he regarded as anoth( 
 
 ^ Hes. Op.et Dies. 60, ci! seq. The version of the myth. It is certainly ni 
 
 statement in line 72 that Athtol placed in accordance mth line 65. 
 
MIKEHVA. 445 
 
 in perfect accord witli the will of Zeus, she engages, as we CHAP, 
 tave seen, in an abortive conspiracy to bind Zeus, in wbich - ^}' . 
 sbe is the accomplice of Her^ and Poseidon.* 
 
 In all her essential attributes, the Hellenic Athen^ is re- The Latin 
 presented by the Latin Minerva, a name which Professor ^'°®"'^- 
 Max Miiller connects with mens, the Greek hevos, and the 
 Sanskrit manas, mind, and compares 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.^ What- 
 ever may be the connection 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 equiva- 
 lent 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 intellec- 
 tual 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 incommunicable sanctity and in unfathomable 
 wisdom. 
 
 ' n. i. 400. to Juno as the guardian of the mint on 
 
 ' Lectures on Language, second series, the Capitoline hill. See also note i., p. 
 
 505. To the same root, probably, must 115. 
 
 be referred the epithet moneta, applied 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX A.— Page 217. 
 
 The Antiquity of written Poems. 
 
 It is impossible not to see that ages must have intervened between 
 the invention of writing, or rather as we should term it of scratch- 
 ing, and the preservation of long poems in manuscript. It is much 
 more reasonable to suppose that greater facilities for writing would 
 lead rather to the rise of contemporary chroniclers than to the 
 practice of writing down poems, which would lose half or all their 
 value in the eyes of rhapsodists if put upon paper. 
 
 It seems scarcely necessary to treat seriously the arguments or 
 rather the dicta by which M. Barthelemy St.-Hilaire (Vlliade 
 d'Moinere traduite en vers Frangais), holds himself to have proved 
 not only that our Iliad is one poem, and that therefore there was 
 only one Homer, but that it was from the first a written poem. The 
 authority of M. de St.-Hilaire is deservedly great; but it must, 
 nevertheless, be repeated that the question is one wholly of evidence, 
 and that the answer must be given in accordance with that evidence 
 and without regard to sentiment, prejudice, or any supposed powers 
 of Uterary divination acquired by long study. From a rapid survey 
 of the Iliad, which omits aU that is to be set on the other side, 
 M. St.-Hilaire infers that the unity of the poem is demonstrated, 
 and asserts that this unity must be regarded as an incontestable 
 fact, and that any one who does not admit this postulate can only 
 make false steps if he ventures to speak about Homer (iutroduction, 
 xxx). His opponents appeal to the evidence of facts : M. St.-Hilaire, 
 in that strain of exaggerated eulogy which is the bane of conservative 
 criticism, addresses himself to our feelings : 'A mon sens, il suflB.t 
 d'un coup d'oeil meme rapide sur I'lhade, pour sentir immediate- 
 ment que c'est la une impossibihte. Quoi ! Cette ceuvre, prodigieuse 
 plus encore dans son ensemble que dans ses details, a ete faite au 
 hagard, dans la duree de plusieurs siecles, par quinze ou vingt poetes 
 differents, qui ne se sont pas connus, qui ne se sont pas concertes, 
 
448 APPENDIX. 
 
 et qui, sous le feu d'uue egale inspiration, onfc pu produire des frag- 
 ments, reunis plus tard en un merveilleux edifice, d'une harmonie, 
 d'une proportion, d'une symetrie, d'une solidite sans pareilles ! 
 Quoi! C'est la expliquer la composition de I'lliade ! C'est se 
 rendre compte en critique, c'est-a^dire en juge eclaire et competent 
 de ce chef-d'oeuvre, dont la beaute ne pent epuiser ni Tadmiration 
 de la foule ni celle des philosophes ! ' (introduction, xxxiv). On 
 arguments of much, the same weight as these M. St.-Hilaire rests 
 his conclusion that the Iliad and Odyssey were poems not merely- 
 composed, but written down on a soft material, by a single poet. 
 Every story about Lykourgos, Solon, or other legislators is taken 
 as indubitable fact ; and the priority of Laios to Proitos furnishes 
 evidence precisely the same in kind with the priority of William the 
 Conqueror to Henry I. The times of Bellerophon are certainly 
 historical, and Belleroph&n lived two generations before the Trojan 
 war. But letters were written in his days : and therefore letters 
 were in use in the time of the poet who wrote about him and the 
 Trojan war. The question turning on the phrase afifiara \vypa, 
 ' the woful signs,' is barely noticed. It must have been an alpha- 
 betical writing, for the other supposition would ascribe to painting 
 a perfection which it had not attained (intr. xlvi) . The difficnlty 
 has probably been rarely felt in savage life. But again, writing was 
 familiar to the heroes of the Trojan war, for they mark the lots 
 which they throw into a helmet (Iliad, v. 171, et seq.) M. St- 
 Hilaire's conclusion may well take away our breath : ' Chacun des 
 guerriers trace sa marque : on agite toutes ces marques dans le 
 casque d' Agamemnon, et Nestor, qui les secoua, tire celle d'Ajax, 
 fils de Telamon, que toute I'armee desirait. On montre la marque 
 favorisee du sort a chacun des concurrents. Aucun ne la reconnait : 
 mais quand elle arrive a celui qui I'avait ecrite ou tracde, aussitot 
 Ajax, plein de joie, declare qu'elle est la sienne. . . Qn'est-ce au 
 juste que cette marque ? II n'est pas aise de le dire avec precision. 
 Mais comme Homere se sert du meme mot qui, pour la missive du 
 Proetus, a paru. signifier I'ecriture, tout porte a croire qu'ici encore 
 c'est bien de I'ecriture qu'il s'agit, et non d'une marque quelconque 
 oil aucun signe graphique n'eut ete trace ' (introd. xlviii). As 
 bearing on the main question of an Iliad written from the first, an 
 argument resting on a word scratched by ten or a dozen men would 
 be worthless. There can, however, be no sort of doubt that in a 
 writing age each man would have inscribed his ovra name, and that 
 the drawer would at once have named the man who had been 
 chosen. In this case the herald has to carry the lot about the 
 camp, as each hero failed, not to read (fcr it has never been pre- 
 tended that yiyvui criceiv can be used in this sense) but to recognise 
 
AUTHOEITY OF ' HOMEE.' 449 
 
 Ms particular mark. It would be impossible for tbe poet to sbow 
 more clearly that tlie marks were not letters or words, but mere 
 arbitrary signs. This is literally the whole of the evidence adduced 
 from our Homeric poems, on which M. St.-Hilaire rests his con- 
 clusions that those poems were from the first written compositions. 
 It becomes a superfluous task to follow M. St.-Hilaire through his 
 remarks on the alleged abundance of writing materials in the 
 Homeric age, or on the libraries of Osymandyas and Peisistratos. 
 The real question is not whether poems were written centuries 
 before the time of Herodotus, but whether the Greeks had any 
 written literature before the Persian wars. Mr. Paley has expressed 
 his conviction that no such literature existed in the times of Pindar, 
 and the subject has been further examined by Mr. Fennell, in a 
 paper on the ' First Ages of a written Greek Literature,' Transr 
 actions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1868. 
 
 APPENDIX B.— Page 218. 
 
 The Historical Value of ' Homer.' 
 
 Since this chapter was written, Mr. Gladstone has published his 
 ' Juventus Mundi,' in which he states his present convictions with 
 regard to the authorship and historical credibility of our Iliad and 
 Odyssey, which alone he regards as the poems of Homer. 'These 
 convictions are substantially what they were ten years ago, but the 
 discussion has really advanced beyond the point at which Mr. 
 Gladstone leaves it ; and the only reason for repeating objections 
 to arguments which might well be left to themselves, is the weight 
 which in the opinion of some they may receive from his name and 
 authority. Instead of noting the result of recent Homeric criticism, 
 whether conservative or destructive, Mr. Gladstone has chosen the 
 simpler and easier task of asserting that to himself his old conclu- 
 sions on the subject of Homer are thoroughly satisfactory. Homer 
 is still with him undoubtedly an historical person, and the Iliad and 
 Odyssey are emphatically historical poems. The poet was born, he 
 thinks, before or during the Trojan war, and was probably familiar 
 with those who had fought in it. These conjectures or convictions 
 are supported by a series of propositions which certainly prove his 
 point if they are -suffered to pass unchallenged, but of most of which 
 it must be said that they are mere assertion or hypothesis for which 
 no evidence whatever is adduced. 
 
 The ambiguity of much of Mr. Gladstone's language introduces a 
 farther element of difiiculty into the discussion. When, for instance 
 
 TOL. I. G & 
 
450 APPENDIX. 
 
 lie says that, ' A cardinal argument for placing the date of the poet 
 near that of his subject is, that he describes manners from first to last 
 with the easy, natural, and intimate knowledge of a contemporary 
 observer,' there is a sense in which the most sceptical critics will 
 agree with him. No one doubts that the Homeric poet (or poets) 
 threw over his (or their) narrative a colour borrowed from the 
 society in which he (or they) lived. Here there was every motive 
 for the poet to be truthful, none to depart from the truth ; and 
 the exactness with which all customs of peace and war, of arts 
 and games, of public and private life were reproduced in the poem, 
 would inevitably impart an air of reality to the events related, 
 whatever these might be. This is probably true of the genuine epic 
 poetry of all nations ; but for the historical character of the incidents 
 which they relate, it obviously proves nothing. The society of the 
 age in which the poet lives may be described with indefinite 
 accuracy, though the house which he builds may be raised on sand. 
 In this sense certainly ' it cannot be too strongly affirmed that the 
 song of Homer is historic song,' or even that he has ' told us more 
 about the world and its inhabitants at his own epoch than any 
 historian that ever Hved.' — (P. 7.) But unless, with Mr. Gladstone, 
 we are prepared to infer facts from the ' tone and feeling ' of a poet, 
 or from his knowledge of human nature generally and of his own 
 countrymen in particular, we are bound to say plainly that we 
 speak only of his pictures of life and manners. This limitation will 
 not satisfy Mr. Gladstone. With him the ' subject ' of Homer is 
 not so much the picture of society existing in his own time as the 
 war of which he relates some of the most important incidents. 
 Here then we are brought face to face with the question of facts ; 
 and it is, to say the least, most unfortunate that Mr. Gladstone 
 has not told us plainly and candidly what the ' chief persons 
 and events ' are with regard to which we are to look upon 
 ' Homer ' as ' historical.' Mr. Blackie has done this ; and we have 
 seen how the confidence with which he first enunciates the result 
 of his analysis is modified until the supposed substance vanishes 
 into thin air, and how, after asserting in one place that there 
 was one real war, and a real quarrel between Achilleus and Aga- 
 memnon, he admits in another not only that there may have been 
 no Paris and no Helen, but that it makes no difierence to the 
 history if Agamemnon and Achilleus never met at all and were 
 'distinct captains of two separate armaments ' (see p. 185). What 
 would Mr. Gladstone think of an Enghsh history which should tell 
 us that it made no difference to the essential character of the narra- 
 tive whether we suppose that Laud and Straiford were joint con- 
 spirators against the liberties of England, or the leaders in two 
 
AUTHOHITT OF ' HOMER.' 451 
 
 several attempts made in successive centuries ? We must be par- 
 doned if we refuse altogether to admit the historical character of 
 narratives to which the champions of their veracity obviotisly give 
 no real credit. Mr. Gladstone leads ns through a region of mists, 
 in which he wonid have us follow paths not pointed out to us by 
 our best historical guides. Thus his first reason for accepting as 
 historical the chief events of our Iliad and Odyssey is that ' It is the 
 chief business of the poet or bard, as such, in early times, to record 
 facts, while he records them in the forms of beauty supplied by his 
 art.' 
 
 If we write with the sole aim and hope of discovering the truth, 
 if truth and truth alone is our single object, we are bound to refuse 
 any leap which must be taken in the dark. Mr. Gladstone's reason 
 is a mere assumption. Why are we to believe that the recording of 
 facts was the business of the poet in early times, until we know 
 what their ideas of a fact were, and, indeed, until we have proved 
 what is here merely asserted ? Against Mr. Gladstone's dogmatic 
 assertion we may set the conclusion of Mr. Grote, that the early 
 poets and bards dealt with ' the entire intellectual stock of the age 
 to which they belonged,' and that the value of this was measured 
 by its power of satisfying that ' craving for adventure and appetite 
 for the marvellous which has in modern times become the province 
 of fiction proper ' (History of Greece, part i. ch. xvi.), as well as 
 the deliberate judgment of Bishop Thirlwall that ' the kiad of 
 history for which Homer invoked the aid of the Muses was not 
 chiefly valued as a recital of real events,' and that ' if in detached 
 passages the poet sometimes appears to be relating with the naked 
 simplicity of truth, we cannot ascribe any higher authority to these 
 episodes than to the rest of the poem.' How completely Bishop 
 Thirlwall sweeps away the whole ' Homeric ' narrative of the Trojan 
 war, we have seen already, p. 197. 
 
 On Mr. Gladstone's second reason that the truthful recording of 
 events is especially the business ' of the bard who lives near the 
 events which he professes to sing,' it is unnecessary to say more 
 than that Thucydides denies as positively as Mr. Gladstone afi&rms, 
 that Homer lived near to the Trojan war (p. 198). Mr. Gladstone's 
 fourth reason (the third is a mere inference from the first and 
 second) is that the poems were always viewed as historical by the 
 Greeks. This assertion is practically identical with the opinions of 
 Colonel Mure and Baron Bunsen, which we have been already 
 compelled to reject as not only resting on no evidence, but as being 
 altogether opposed to such evidence as we possess (p. 21,3). This 
 summary of evidence I had published in the Fortnightly Review for 
 Mav 1 1867 ; and I must maintain with all earnestness that it was 
 ^ ' gq2 
 
452 APPENDIX. 
 
 the duty of every Homeric critic wlio deals with, this portion of the 
 subject to examine and accept or refute the evidence of the facts 
 thus alleged. The mere statement of an opinion ought to carry no 
 more weight on one side than on another ; but Mr. Paley took his 
 stand wholly on facts, which proved, or seemed to prove, that the 
 Greek lyric, tragic, and comic poets either knew nothing or next to 
 nothing of our Iliad and Odyssey, or, if they did, deliberately pre- 
 ferred to them certain other poems to which they resorted for their 
 materials. (He further stated, that Greek art, down to a time later 
 than that of Perikles, exhibits precisely the same phenomena.) In 
 either case the assertions of Mr. Gladstone, Colonel Mure, and 
 Baron Bunsen fall to the ground ; and for such assertions a hearing 
 cannot reasonably be expected, until this evidence has been met and 
 refilted. Mr. Gladstone not only takes no notice of it, but ap- 
 parently even contradicts himself, for, having stated that from the 
 earliest times we find these poems holding continuously (the word 
 is necessary, if the opinion is to have any force) a position of honour 
 and authority among the Greeks paralleled in no other literature, 
 he asserts that 'the antiquity of the present text is not over- 
 thrown by the fact that the later poets in many instances have 
 followed other forms of legend in regard to the Troica, for they 
 would necessarily consult the state of popular feeling from time to 
 time ; and tradition, which as to religion altered so greatly after the 
 time of Homer, would, as to facts and persons, as it is evident, vary 
 materially according to the sympathies of blood and otherwise at 
 different periods of Greek history' (p. 19). Even if we concede 
 (and it is not necessary that we should concede) that this may 
 possibly account for the choice of the later poets in a very few 
 instances, perhaps five or six, Mr. Gladstone's admission is in com- 
 plete conflict with the position of unparalleled honour and authority 
 which he attributes to our Iliad and Odyssey throughout the his- 
 torical ages. But no political sympathies or antipathies could render 
 necessary that systematic degradation of characters like' Odysseus, 
 Aias, Hektor, to say nothing of Helen, to account for which Mr. 
 Gladstone felt himself driven to devise a theory in his Homeric 
 Studies (vol. iii. p. 555). Nor can they explain the phenomena of 
 Greek literature already adduced (p. 214). Mr. Gladstone is com- 
 pelled to admit that Thucydides speaks of the Hymn to Apollon as 
 Homeric, and that ' doubtless he represents a tradition of his day.' 
 But these hymns are, in Mr. Gladstone's opinion, very inferior to 
 'Homer,' and, therefore, Thucydides and his contemporaries were 
 mistaken ; and thus the unparalleled honour and authority of our 
 Iliad and Odyssey are modified into the statement that no other 
 poems were regarded as Homeric ' by the general and unhesitating 
 
AUTHORITY OF ' HOMER. 
 
 458 
 
 Opinion of the Greeks.' "We do not know enougli of this general 
 opinion to warrant any very positive statements with regard to it ; 
 but until it can be proved that the lyric and tragic poets were 
 acquainted with our Iliad and Odyssey, it can scarcely be affirmed 
 that the general opinion of the Greeks regarded those poems as 
 Homeric at all. But, further, what is the actual evidence that the 
 poems to which alone Mr. Gladstone will give the name of Homer, 
 were ' always viewed as historical by the Greeks ' ? All that 
 Herodotos and Thucydides leave of the story is the solitary fact 
 of a war which lasted ten years ; but if they reject its motive and 
 incidents, the hiages on which the whole action turns together with 
 all the action itself, in what sense can it be said that they regarded 
 the Homeric tale of Troy as historical ? The fact is, that neither 
 of these great historians could receive that tangled skein of mar- 
 vels, miracles, and prodigies, which are inextricably intertwined in 
 the supernatural machinery of these mythical tales. Hence they 
 summarily rejected the whole, having thus 'judged on its own 
 grounds ' Homer's ' intermixture of supernatural agency with 
 human events,' although Mr. Gladstone insists that this intermix- 
 ture ' cannot by the laws of historical criticism be held of itself to 
 overthrow his general credit ' (p. 9). Mr. Gladstone does not tell 
 us what are the laws of historical criticism ; but his conception of 
 them appears to differ widely from that of Bishop Thirlwall, whose 
 judgment I have more than once been obliged to cite. 
 
 It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that all the reasons adduced 
 by Mr. Gladstone for regarding the Iliad and Odyssey as narratives 
 of real events are of the same shadowy and intangible kind. We 
 are told that the singular correspondence of the genealogies in these 
 poems strongly attests the historical trustworthiness of Homer. But 
 although the lowest links may possibly, in any given case, represent 
 real persons, these Usts all run up to some god or deified hei*o ; and 
 Mr. Grrote has long since asked by what method we are to deter- 
 mine the point at which history ends and fable begins in the links 
 between the real Hekataios and his divine progenitor (History of 
 Oreece, part i. ch. iv.). In the same spisit the prophecy of Poseidon 
 (p. 4) is taken as proving, not that a family calling themselves 
 Aineiadai were reigning in Troas at the time when this portion of 
 the Ihad (p. 92) was composed or recited, but that the then ruling 
 chief was the actual grandson of the child of Anchises and of Aphro- 
 dite, who visibly interferes to rescue her son on the field of battle. 
 Mr. Gladstone assures us that 'Homer often introduces curious 
 legends of genealogy, and in a manner which is palpably inoppor- 
 tune for the purposes of poetry, and which is, on the other hand, 
 fully accounted for by the historic aim.' It is enough to say 
 
454 APPENDIX. 
 
 that ttese episodes and digressions may be as legitimately used to 
 prove the composite character of the poems as to uphold their 
 historical authority. 
 
 Of the personality of Homer, and the purity or preservation of our 
 Homeric text, I need here say but little. On the former Mr. Glad- 
 stone admits that ' nothing is known of his person ' (p. 2), nothing 
 of the time of his birth, or his place of abode, or of any event in his 
 life (p. 6). The most determined of the separatists could scarcely 
 desire a thicker darkness ; but to the historical critic, these, as we 
 have already seen (p.' 174 et seq.), are points of supreme indifference. 
 Of the text Mr. Gladstone still thinks that ' we may, as a general 
 rule, proceed to handle it with a reasonable confidence that the 
 ground is firm under our feet,' in spite of the evidence adduced by 
 Mr. Paley for questioning that it was known to the great lyric and 
 tragic poets of Hellas. Its integrity was guaranteed by ' the intense 
 love of the song of Homer felt by every Greek' (p. 23), although 
 the evidence is unfortunately scanty on which to rest the conclusion 
 that their Homer was our Homer, neither less nor more. 
 
 In short, after an interval of more than ten years, during which 
 the phase of the controversy has been wholly changed, Mr. Glad- 
 stone has sunply repeated the confession of his old Homeric faith. 
 Doubtless, his appeal is not to the credulity, but to the judgment of 
 his countrymen, and if I say that his criticism as little upholds the 
 historical character of our Homeric poems as that of Mr. Blackie, 
 I do so because the evidence of facts seems to me to preclude any 
 other conclusion. 
 
 APPENDIX C— Page 222. 
 The Myth of Oidipous. 
 
 A vigorous attempt to overthrow M. Breal's explanation of the 
 myth of Oidipous, Le mythe d'CEdipe, 1863, and so to bring dis- 
 credit on the method and results of Comparative Mythology, has 
 been made by M. Comparetti, JEdipo e la mitologia comparata, Pisa, 
 1867. His chief argument seems to be the composite nature of this 
 myth (as of others), which compels him to regard the episode of 
 the Sphinx as a mere formula and in no way an essential part of 
 the legend, and to conclude that at the first this incident had nothing 
 to do with the story of Oidipous. In proof of this assertion, he 
 lays stress on the silence of the Homeric poet {Odyssey, xi. 270) 
 on this subject, while speaking of the woeful fortunes of Bpikaste 
 (lokaste), and again of the Hesiodic poet {Works and Bays, 163) 
 
THE MYTH OF OIDIPOUS. 455 
 
 ■when referring to the feuds of the sons of Oidipous about their 
 father's treasures (whether these be sheep or apples). To this argu- 
 ment M. Breal in his answer to M. Comparetti, Revue cntique d'Sis- 
 toire et de Litteratv/re, Jan. 22, 1870, replies that in the Hesiodic 
 Theogony the Phiz (Sphinx) is expressly mentioned as inflicting 
 deadly woes on the Kadmeians, and thus the connexion of the 
 Sphinx with the mythical history of Thebes is established beyond 
 question. He adds that if so capital an Lucident be left out of the 
 story of Oidipous, any other myth may be pared down to the 
 Euemeristic level of plausible fiction. At the same time there is a 
 sense in which M. Comparetti's remark that this episode might be 
 replaced by any other tale of prowess is perfectly true. There is no 
 reason why Oidipous should not be the slayer of Geryon or Echidna 
 or Chimaira, or why the Sphinx should not fall by the sword of 
 Hipponoos, the slayer of Belleros. The assortment of exploits from 
 which we may make choice is large, but they are all equally mythical 
 and equally transparent in their meaning. 
 
 Having disposed of the Sphinx, M. Comparetti, with the usual 
 assurance of Euemerists, asserts that Oidipous is a purely human 
 person, in the story of whose life we shall look in vain for the 
 marvellous adventures which usually grace the traditions of the gods 
 or demigods. Here the answer is obvious, and M. Breal joins issue 
 on the plain fact that the whole story is full of marvels from the 
 moment of his birth. His infancy is that of Perseus, Cyrus, Romu- 
 lus, or Semiramis, his grave in the gardens of the Merciful Beings 
 represents the treasures of the Nibelungs ; and even if we get rid of 
 the Sphinx, his victory over the fox of Teumessos, an exploit of the 
 same kind, still remains. 
 
 M. Comparetti's reason for thus banishing the Sphinx from the 
 story is, that he may thus exhibit the myth as designedly setting 
 forth the horrors of incest, and so as being purely didactic in its first 
 intention. But he adheres to this conclusion not much more con- 
 sistently than Mr. Blackie to his historical residuum in the ULad. 
 lokaste is not the only wife assigned to Oidipous, and M. Comparetti 
 hastens to say that the other wives were a later invention, and were 
 introduced to take away the feeling of disgust excited by the idea of 
 the incest. This plea M. Breal rightly dismisses in very few words : 
 ' Si tout le recit, comme le suppose M. Comparetti, est destine a 
 produire une impression morale, un changement de cette nature (et 
 les autres feinmes d'CEdipe sont deja mentionees dans I'CBdipodie) 
 va contre I'intention du narrateur.' 
 
 Having demolished the Sphinx, M. Comparetti goes on to say 
 that, far from blinding himself and departing into exile, Oidipous, 
 according to the oldest form of the legend, continued to reign at 
 
456 APPENDIX. 
 
 Thebes. But on this supposition, the idea of a moral intention is 
 still more completely shut out. What sort of Nemesis is it that 
 would allow the doer of such things to go unpunished ? 
 
 With the failure of the attempt to reduce the myth to a (». i 
 mortuum of historical facts the question is carried back into the pro 
 rince of Comparative Mythology, and M. Breal rightly urges that 
 the problem to be solved is the recurrence of the iacidents, or as M. 
 Comparetti styles them, the formulse which characterise the myth of 
 Oidipous, in the stories of other Aryan nations during times which 
 altogether preclude the idea of any borrowing or artificial adapta- 
 tion of popular stories. 
 
 APPENDIX D.— Page 406. 
 Swan-Maidens. 
 
 Many of these myths have been gathered together in the Chap- 
 ters on Swan Maidens and the Knight of the Swan, by Mr. Baring 
 Gould (Gurious Myths, second series), who follows them also into the 
 mythology of the Turanian tribes. The coincidences thus pointed 
 out call for the same consideration which should be given to the 
 traditions of American native tribes when they exhibit any striking 
 features in common with those of Aryan races. Some of these 
 traditions, which resemble the myths of Pandora, Pyrrha and the 
 dolphin or fish god, have been already referred to. But it would be 
 as dangerous to assume that myths circulating among Turanian 
 tribes have been imported by them through intercourse with Aryan 
 nations, as to assume that these American traditions are the result of 
 Jesuit teaching. Of the substantial identity of the Turanian myths 
 cited by Mr. Gould with the stories belonging to Germany and 
 India there can be no question. In a Samojed story, a man, find- 
 ing seven maidens swimming on a lake, takes up from the bank the 
 Swan's dress belonging to one of them, and refuses to yield it up 
 except on the condition that she becomes his wife and gets for him. 
 the hearts of seven brothers which are hung up by them every night 
 on their tent pegs. When she brings them, he dashes aU but one on 
 the ground, and as each falls, the brother to whom it belongs dies. 
 When the eldest whose heart has not been broken awakes and 
 begs to have it restored, the Samojed says that he must first bring 
 back to life his mother who had been killed by him. The man then 
 bids him go to the place where the dead He, and there he should find 
 a purse in which is his mother's soul. ' Shake the purse over the 
 dead woman's bones, and she will come to life.' The Samojed, 
 
SWAN-MAIDENS. 457 
 
 having thus recovered his mother, dashes the remaining heart on 
 the ground, and the last of the seven dies. This is the groundwork 
 of the story of Punchkin, and of the Giant who had no Heart in his 
 ;Jody (book i. chap. viii.). The difficulty in finding the magician's 
 uearb is here transferred to the discovery of the purse contaiuing 
 the murdered woman's soul. 
 
 Mr. Gould adds that among the Minussinian Tartars the swan- 
 maidens assume loathsome as well as beautiful forms, and appear in 
 fact, like the Hellenic Harpyiai, the black storm-clouds which sweep 
 furiously across the sky, the swan-shaped daughters of Phorkys 
 (.iEsch. Prom. V. 795). In the hymn addressed to Delos by Kalh- 
 machos the Muses are still nymphs or watermaidens, the Apsaras 
 (apa, water, and sar, to go), which have acquired a faiut personality 
 in the Veda (Max Miiller, GMps, ii. 202), and can scarcely be dis- 
 tinguished from the swans which attend upon them. 
 
 KVKVOL Se Qeov ^iKirovr^s doi^ol 
 yitiSviov TlaKTwKov iKuKK^travTO \nr6yTes 
 
 fiovtrduf tipvtdes, deiSijTaTOi Trer€T]vwv, 249-252. 
 
 The same phrases which spoke of clouds as swans have given 
 birth to the myths of Kyknos transformed into a swan by Phoibos, 
 and of Leda wooed by Zeus in the guise of a white swan (a white 
 mist answering to the golden shower in the legend of Danae). Mr. 
 Gould, having cited among other northern tales that in which 
 Volund, or Wayland the Smith, wins as his wife the maiden Angel- 
 burga, whose dress of dove's feathers he had stolen as she was bath- 
 ing, thinks that to such beings we must trace back the angels with 
 flowing white robes and large pinions, which Christendom has 
 derived immediately from the later Greek and Roman representa- 
 tions of Victory. In his chapter on the Knight of the Swan, Mr. 
 Gould has brought together some mediaeval versions of the myth 
 which Southey has versified in his ballad of Rudiger. These ver- 
 sions turn on the main incident in the stories of Urvasi and Psyche. 
 The bride must never ask her husband's name ; and the old sug- 
 gestion that the lover is in reality a monster is travestied into the 
 remark of the Duchess of Cleves : ' This Lohengrin (the Pururavas 
 of the tale) may be a strong man and a Christian ; but who knows 
 whence he has sprung ? ' These words awaken the curiosity of the 
 Duchess of Brabant, who pays the penalty of Psyche. Lohengrin 
 accordingly leaves to his children his horn and his sword, and to his 
 wife the ring which had been given to him by his. mother, and de- 
 parts never to return. The story of Matabrune in the romance of 
 Helias, the Knight of the Swan, is that of many jealous stepmothers 
 who seek the death of the light- children (Gould, ibid. 315 ; Frere, 
 
458 APPENDIX. 
 
 Beccan Days, 59). This Helias becomes Duke of Bouillon, and his 
 daughter is the mother of the heroic Godfrey. So pertinaciously 
 do the old fables of nymphs and harpies and Erinyes keep their hold 
 on the annals of an historical age. 
 
 From the image of the Swan to that of the Phaiakian ship, which 
 needs neither rudder nor sail, the transition is obvious and easy. 
 On such a ship Odysseus is borne to his home, and in such a vessel 
 Scild, the son of Sceaf (the skiff) is carried to the coast of Scandia 
 where he becomes king. ' In Beowulf it is added that ScUd 
 reigned long, and when he saw that he was about to die, he bade 
 his men lay him fully armed in a boat, and thrust him out to sea. 
 . . . And the same is told of Baldnr.' — Gould, ibid. 336. The inci- 
 dent is repeated in the case of Elaine and Arthur. 
 
 APPENDIX E.— Page 422. 
 The Name Selene. 
 
 I am indebted to Professor Max Miiller for the following note. 
 
 ' The only objection which might be made by those who are not 
 acquainted with the latest researches on the so-called digamma is 
 that kXii'a is among those words, which, according to the testimony 
 of Greek and Latin grammarians, had an initial digamma (of. Tryph. 
 irad. \cl. § 11 ; Priscianus, i. p. 21, xiii. p. 574 ; Ahrens, De Gr. Ling. 
 Bialeotis, lib. i. pp. 30, 31). Now because the so-called digamma 
 (the F , the old van, the Latin E) corresponds in most cases to a 
 Sanskrit and Latin V, it has become the fashion to use digamma 
 as almost synonymous with the labial semi-vowel v in Greek. 
 Benfey, however, in his article on Icartpoj (in Kuhn's ' Zeitschriffc 
 fiir vergleichende Sprachforschung,' viii. 331,) pointed out that 
 what is generally, though not correctly, called digamma in Greek, 
 represents at least three different letters in the cognate languages, 
 V, s, y. These three letters became evanescent in later Greek ; and 
 when either on the evidence of the Homeric metre, or on the 
 evidence of grammarians, or even on the evidence of inscriptions, 
 certain Greek words are said to have had an initial digamma, we 
 must be prepared to find, corresponding to this so-called digamma, 
 not only the v, but also the s, and y, in Sanskrit and Latin. Greek 
 scholars are apt to put F, whereas the metre proves the former 
 presence of some one initial consonant. When however we find 
 Fe£, the F here represents a lost s, as proved by the Latin sex, 
 Sanskrit sliat. When we find in Homer fleos wc, the ocis lengthened 
 because &q had an initial y, as proved by the Sanskrit yat. In 
 
LYKANTHEOPY. 459 
 
 the same manner, the fact that grammarians quote FtXeVa, nay, even 
 the occurrence of FeXeVa in ancient inscriptions, would by no means 
 prove that Helene was originally Velena, and was derived from the 
 root svar, but only that Helene might in the cognate languages 
 begin with v, s, or y. The statement of Priscianus, ' Sciendum tamen 
 quod hoc ipsum (digamma) jSloles quidem ubique loco aspirationis 
 ponebant, ejQPiigientes spiritus asperitatem,' is more correct than was 
 at one time supposed even by comparative grammarians ; and as the 
 asper in Greek commonly represents an original s or y, the ^olic 
 digamma became the exponent of s and y, as well as of the v for 
 which it stood originally.' 
 
 APPENDIX F.— Page 429. 
 Lyhanthropy. 
 
 I am speaking, of course, of the special form of the superstition, 
 not of enormities of which depraved appetites and unbridled passions 
 may have made men guilty. The question to be answered is, whence 
 came the notions that men were changed into wolves, bears, and 
 birds, and not into lions, fishes, or reptiles ; and to this question 
 Comparative Mythology seems to me to furnish a complete answer ; 
 nor can I disavow my belief that this loathsome vampire supersti- 
 tion was in the first instance purely the result of the verbal equivo- 
 cation which, as we have seen, has furnished so fruitful a source of 
 myths. I cannot, in the face of this evidence, believe that the 
 choice of the wolf or the bear as the form to be assumed by the 
 patient is ' a mere matter of taste,' as Mr. Gould says in a work 
 which will be most regretted by those who most value his volumes 
 on the myths of the middle ages. Whether there be, as Mr. Gould 
 maintains, 'an innate craving for blood in certain natures,' is a point 
 which little concerns us here, although we might suppose that if 
 such an impulse be according to the hypothesis innate (i. e. placed 
 there by God himself), the impulse could not be wrong, and that 
 hence such persons were not fit subjects for punishment. But the 
 evidence for the case breaks down, and much of the evidence adduced 
 by Mr. Gould is really no evidence at all. Thus he tells us that, 'as ' 
 every one knows, Jupiter changed himself into a bull, Hecuba became 
 a bitch, Acteeon a stag, the comrades of Ulysses were transformed 
 into swine, and the daughters of Proetus fled through the fields, 
 believing themselves to be cows, and would not allow any one to 
 come near them lest they should be caught and yoked.' — 'Werewolf,' 
 p. 12. These ni^Ehs belong to a difierent class. The persons so 
 
460 APPENDIX. 
 
 transformed neither did nor attempted to do any harm ; but the 
 peculiar mischievous form of lykanthropy is found developed with 
 sufficient clearness in the pages of Pausanias. Hence we may dismiss 
 the story told by Augustine of the old woman who turned men into 
 asses, or of the golden ass of Appuleius ; and the tale related by 
 Mr. Gould of the Bjorn (bear) who ' loves the Carle's daughter,' and 
 taking her into a cave tells her that 'by day he is a beast, by night a 
 man,' ib. 24, is only a clumsy version of Beauty and the Beast, of 
 Eros and Psyche. Mr. Gould's faith is large. He gives credit to 
 ' the unanimous testimony of the old Norse historians that the 
 berserk rage was extinguished by baptism, and as Christianity 
 advanced, the number of the berserkers decreased,' ib. 40. The 
 stories of bearsarks have probably as much and as little truth as 
 the story of the frenzy of Herakles, the madness of the one and the 
 rage of the other being the same thing ; and the unanimous testi- 
 mony of the Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the 
 convictions of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft. Such 
 a canon of evidence would compel us to receive the whole Catholic 
 hagiology as veritable history. That Mr. Gould should have thought 
 it necessary to give the loathsome details of the story of the 
 Marechal de Retz, which is simply the myth of Phalaris, is the 
 more to be deplored, as this man according to the tale never sup- 
 posed himself to be either a wolf or a brute of any other sort. The 
 account of the woman who single-handed and unaided kills six: 
 hundred and fifty girls to bathe in their blood brings before us a 
 series of exploits worthy of a Herakles ; and the story of Mr. J. 
 HoUoway of the Bank of England is simply an impudent repetition 
 of the myth of Hermotimos of Klazomenai. 
 
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