John Fiske................................................................................................................................................1

Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology

IN publishing this somewhat rambling and unsystematic series of papers, in which I have endeavoured to

touch briefly upon a great many of the most important points in the study of mythology, I think it right to

observe that, in order to avoid confusing the reader with intricate discussions, I have sometimes cut the matter

short, expressing myself with dogmatic definiteness where a sceptical vagueness might perhaps have seemed

more becoming. In treating of popular legends and superstitions, the paths of inquiry are circuitous enough,

and seldom can we reach a satisfactory conclusion until we have travelled all the way around Robin Hood's

barn and back again. I am sure that the reader would not have thanked me for obstructing these crooked lanes

with the thorns and brambles of philological and antiquarian discussion, to such an extent as perhaps to make

him despair of ever reaching the high road. I have not attempted to review, otherwise than incidentally, the

works of Grimm, Muller, Kuhn, Breal, Dasent, and Tylor; nor can I pretend to have added anything of

consequence, save now and then some bit of explanatory comment, to the results obtained by the labour of

these scholars; but it has rather been my aim to present these results in such a way as to awaken general

interest in them. And accordingly, in dealing with a subject which depends upon philology almost as much as

astronomy depends upon mathematics, I have omitted philological considerations wherever it has been

possible to do so. Nevertheless, I believe that nothing has been advanced as established which is not now

generally admitted by scholars, and that nothing has been advanced as probable for which due evidence

cannot be produced. Yet among many points which are proved, and many others which are probable, there

must always remain many other facts of which we cannot feel sure that our own explanation is the true one;

and the student who endeavours to fathom the primitive thoughts of mankind, as enshrined in mythology, will

do well to bear in mind the modest words of Jacob Grimm, himself the greatest scholar and thinker who

has ever dealt with this class of subjects,"I shall indeed interpret all that I can, but I cannot interpret all that

Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 1

FEW mediaeval heroes are so widely known as William Tell. His exploits have been celebrated by one of the

greatest poets and one of the most popular musicians of modern times. They are doubtless familiar to many

who have never heard of Stauffacher or Winkelried, who are quite ignorant of the prowess of Roland, and to

Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation, it is very likely that no such person as William Tell ever existed,

and it is certain that the story of his shooting the apple from his son's head has no historical value whatever.

In spite of the wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss, especially of those of the cicerone class, this conclusion

is forced upon us as soon as we begin to study the legend in accordance with the canons of modern historical

criticism. It is useless to point to Tell's limetree, standing today in the centre of the marketplace at

Altdorf, or to quote for our confusion his crossbow preserved in the arsenal at Zurich, as unimpeachable

witnesses to the truth of the story. It is in vain that we are told, "The bricks are alive to this day to testify to it;

therefore, deny it not." These proofs are not more valid than the handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the

fragments of the true cross. For if relics are to be received as evidence, we must needs admit the truth of

The earliest work which makes any allusion to the adventures of William Tell is the chronicle of the younger

Melchior Russ, written in 1482. As the shooting of the apple was supposed to have taken place in 1296, this

leaves an interval of one hundred and eightysix years, during which neither a Tell, nor a William, nor the

apple, nor the cruelty of Gessler, received any mention. It may also be observed, parenthetically, that the

charters of Kussenach, when examined, show that no man by the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The

chroniclers of the fifteenth century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe the tyrannical acts by

which the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do not once mention Tell's name, or betray the

slightest acquaintance with his exploits or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is not

alluded to. But we have still better negative evidence. John of Winterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the

Middle Ages, was living at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at which his father was present. He

tells us how, on the evening of that dreadful day, he saw Duke Leopold himself in his flight from the fatal

field, half dead with fear. He describes, with the loving minuteness of a contemporary, all the incidents of the

Swiss revolution, but nowhere does he say a word about William Tell. This is sufficiently conclusive. These

mediaeval chroniclers, who never failed to go out of their way after a bit of the epigrammatic and marvellous,

who thought far more of a pointed story than of historical credibility, would never have kept silent about the

After this, it is not surprising to find that no two authors who describe the deeds of William Tell agree in the

details of topography and chronology. Such discrepancies never fail to confront us when we leave the solid

ground of history and begin to deal with floating legends. Yet, if the story be not historical, what could have

been its origin? To answer this question we must considerably expand the discussion.

The first author of any celebrity who doubted the story of William Tell was Guillimann, in his work on Swiss

Antiquities, published in 1598. He calls the story a pure fable, but, nevertheless, eating his words, concludes

by proclaiming his belief in it, because the tale is so popular! Undoubtedly he acted a wise part; for, in 1760,

as we are told, Uriel Freudenberger was condemned by the canton of Uri to be burnt alive, for publishing his

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 2

The bold heretic was substantially right, however, like so many other heretics, earlier and later. The Danish

"A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harold's bodyguard, had made his bravery odious to very

many of his fellowsoldiers by the zeal with which he surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This man

once, when talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that he was so skilled an archer that he could hit the

smallest apple placed a long way off on a wand at the first shot; which talk, caught up at first by the ears of

backbiters, soon came to the hearing of the king. Now, mark how the wickedness of the king turned the

confidence of the sire to the peril of the son, by commanding that this dearest pledge of his life should be

placed instead of the wand, with a threat that, unless the author of this promise could strike off the apple at

the first flight of the arrow, he should pay the penalty of his empty boasting by the loss of his head. The

king's command forced the soldier to perform more than he had promised, and what he had said, reported, by

the tongues of slanderers, bound him to accomplish what he had NOT said. Yet did not his sterling courage,

though caught in the snare of slander, suffer him to lay aside his firmness of heart; nay, he accepted the trial

the more readily because it was hard. So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently when he took his stand to await

the coming of the hurtling arrow with calm ears and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his body, he should

defeat the practised skill of the bowman; and, taking further counsel to prevent his fear, he turned away his

face, lest he should be scared at the sight of the weapon. Then, taking three arrows from the quiver, he struck

the mark given him with the first he fitted to the string. . . . . But Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he

had taken more arrows from the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only try the fortune of the

bow ONCE, made answer, 'That I might avenge on thee the swerving of the first by the points of the rest, lest

perchance my innocence might have been punished, while your violence escaped scotfree.' "[2]

This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold Bluetooth, and the occurrence is placed by Saxo in

the year 950. But the story appears not only in Denmark, but in Fingland, in Norway, in Finland and Russia,

and in Persia, and there is some reason for supposing that it was known in India. In Norway we have the

adventures of Pansa the Splayfooted, and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded England in

1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of Egil brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England

there is the ballad of William of Cloudeslee, which supplied Scott with many details of the archery scene in

"I have a sonne seven years old; Hee is to me full deere; I will tye him to a stake All shall see him that bee

here And lay an apple upon his head, And goe six paces him froe, And I myself with a broad arrowe Shall

In the Malleus Maleficarum a similar story is told Puncher, a famous magician on the Upper Rhine. The great

ethnologist Castren dug up the same legend in Finland. It is common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to the Turks

and Mongolians; "and a legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never heard of Tell or saw a book in their lives

relates it, chapter and verse, of one of their marksmen." Finally, in the Persian poem of FaridUddin Attar,

born in 1119, we read a story of a prince who shoots an apple from the head of a beloved page. In all these

stories, names and motives of course differ; but all contain the same essential incidents. It is always an

unerring archer who, at the capricious command of a tyrant, shoots from the head of some one dear to him a

small object, be it an apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archer always provides himself with a second arrow,

and, when questioned as to the use he intended to make of his extra weapon, the invariable reply is, "To kill

thee, tyrant, had I slain my son." Now, when a marvellous occurrence is said to have happened everywhere,

we may feel sure that it never happened anywhere. Popular fancies propagate themselves indefinitely, but

historical events, especially the striking and dramatic ones, are rarely repeated. The facts here collected lead

inevitably to the conclusion that the Tell myth was known, in its general features, to our Aryan ancestors,

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It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these wonderful marksmen may really have existed and have

performed the feat recorded in the legend; and that his true story, carried about by hearsay tradition from one

country to another and from age to age, may have formed the theme for all the variations above mentioned,

just as the fables of La Fontaine were patterned after those of AEsop and Phaedrus, and just as many of

Chaucer's tales were consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No doubt there has been a good deal of borrowing

and lending among the legends of different peoples, as well as among the words of different languages; and

possibly even some picturesque fragment of early history may have now and then been carried about the

world in this manner. But as the philologist can with almost unerring certainty distinguish between the native

and the imported words in any Aryan language, by examining their phonetic peculiarities, so the student of

popular traditions, though working with far less perfect instruments, can safely assert, with reference to a vast

number of legends, that they cannot have been obtained by any process of conscious borrowing. The

difficulties inseparable from any such hypothesis will become more and more apparent as we proceed to

As the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must the Welshman be deprived of his brave dog Gellert, over whose

cruel fate I confess to having shed more tears than I should regard as well bestowed upon the misfortunes of

many a human hero of romance. Every one knows how the dear old brute killed the wolf which had come to

devour Llewellyn's child, and how the prince, returning home and finding the cradle upset and the dog's

mouth dripping blood, hastily slew his benefactor, before the cry of the child from behind the cradle and the

sight of the wolf's body had rectified his error. To this day the visitor to Snowdon is told the touching story,

and shown the place, called BethGellert,[3] where the dog's grave is still to be seen. Nevertheless, the story

occurs in the fireside lore of nearly every Aryan people. Under the Gellertform it started in the

Panchatantra, a collection of Sanskrit fables; and it has even been discovered in a Chinese work which dates

from A. D. 668. Usually the hero is a dog, but sometimes a falcon, an ichneumon, an insect, or even a man. In

Egypt it takes the following comical shape: "A Wali once smashed a pot full of herbs which a cook had

prepared. The exasperated cook thrashed the wellintentioned but unfortunate Wali within an inch of his life,

and when he returned, exhausted with his efforts at belabouring the man, to examine the broken pot, he

discovered amongst the herbs a poisonous snake."[4] Now this story of the Wali is as manifestly identical

with the legend of Gellert as the English word FATHER is with the Latin pater; but as no one would maintain

that the word father is in any sense derived from pater, so it would be impossible to represent either the

Welsh or the Egyptian legend as a copy of the other. Obviously the conclusion is forced upon us that the

stories, like the words, are related collaterally, having descended from a common ancestral legend, or having

[3] According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really derived from "St. Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth

century, to whom the church of Llangeller is consecrated." (Words and Places, p. 339.)

[4] Compare Krilof's story of the Gnat and the Shepherd, in Mr. Ralston's excellent version, Krilof and his

Fables, p. 170. Many parallel examples are cited by Mr. BaringGould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. pp. 126136.

See also the story of Folliculus,Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ad. Wright, Vol. I. p. lxxxii

Closely connected with the Gellert myth are the stories of Faithful John and of Rama and Luxman. In the

German story, Faithful John accompanies the prince, his master, on a journey in quest of a beautiful maiden,

whom he wishes to make his bride. As they are carrying her home across the seas, Faithful John hears some

crows, whose language he understands, foretelling three dangers impending over the prince, from which his

friend can save him only by sacrificing his own life. As soon as they land, a horse will spring toward the

king, which, if he mounts it, will bear him away from his bride forever; but whoever shoots the horse, and

tells the king the reason, will be turned into stone from toe to knee. Then, before the wedding a bridal

garment will lie before the king, which, if he puts it on, will burn him like the Nessosshirt of Herakles; but

whoever throws the shirt into the fire and tells the king the reason, will be turned into stone from knee to

heart. Finally, during the weddingfestivities, the queen will suddenly fall in a swoon, and "unless some one

Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology

Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 4

takes three drops of blood from her right breast she will die"; but whoever does so, and tells the king the

reason, will be turned into stone from head to foot. Thus forewarned, Faithful John saves his master from all

these dangers; but the king misinterprets his motive in bleeding his wife, and orders him to be hanged. On the

scaffold he tells his story, and while the king humbles himself in an agony of remorse, his noble friend is

In the South Indian tale Luxman accompanies Rama, who is carrying home his bride. Luxman overhears two

owls talking about the perils that await his master and mistress. First he saves them from being crushed by the

falling limb of a banyantree, and then he drags them away from an arch which immediately after gives way.

By and by, as they rest under a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman kills it

with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's forehead. As

Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts up, and, thinking that his vizier is kissing his wife, upbraids him

with his ingratitude, whereupon Luxman, through grief at this unkind interpretation of his conduct, is turned

For further illustration we may refer to the Norse tale of the "Giant who had no Heart in his Body," as related

by Dr. Dasent. This burly magician having turned six brothers with their wives into stone, the seventh

brotherthe crafty Boots or manywitted Odysseus of European folkloresets out to obtain vengeance if

not reparation for the evil done to his kith and kin. On the way he shows the kindness of his nature by

rescuing from destruction a raven, a salmon, and a wolf. The grateful wolf carries him on his back to the

giant's castle, where the lovely princess whom the monster keeps in irksome bondage promises to act, in

behalf of Boots, the part of Delilah, and to find out, if possible, where her lord keeps his heart. The giant, like

the Jewish hero, finally succumbs to feminine blandishments. "Far, far away in a lake lies an island; on that

island stands a church; in that church is a well; in that well swims a duck; in that duck there is an egg; and in

that egg there lies my heart, you darling." Boots, thus instructed, rides on the wolf's back to the island; the

raven flies to the top of the steeple and gets the churchkeys; the salmon dives to the bottom of the well, and

brings up the egg from the place where the duck had dropped it; and so Boots becomes master of the

situation. As he squeezes the egg, the giant, in mortal terror, begs and prays for his life, which Boots

promises to spare on condition that his brothers and their brides should be released from their enchantment.

But when all has been duly effected, the treacherous youth squeezes the egg in two, and the giant instantly

The same story has lately been found in Southern India, and is published in Miss Frere's remarkable

collection of tales entitled "Old Deccan Days." In the Hindu version the seven daughters of a rajah, with their

husbands, are transformed into stone by the great magician Punchkin,all save the youngest daughter,

whom Punchkin keeps shut up in a tower until by threats or coaxing he may prevail upon her to marry him.

But the captive princess leaves a son at home in the cradle, who grows up to manhood unmolested, and

finally undertakes the rescue of his family. After long and weary wanderings he finds his mother shut up in

Punchkin's tower, and persuades her to play the part of the princess in the Norse legend. The trick is equally

successful. "Hundreds of thousands of miles away there lies a desolate country covered with thick jungle. In

the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palmtrees, and in the centre of the circle 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."[6] The young prince finds the place guarded

by a host of dragons, but some eaglets whom he has saved from a devouring serpent in the course of his

journey take him on their crossed wings and carry him to the place where the jars are standing. He instantly

overturns the jars, and seizing the parrot, obtains from the terrified magician full reparation. As soon as his

own friends and a stately procession of other royal or noble victims have been set at liberty, he proceeds to

pull the parrot to pieces. As the wings and legs come away, so tumble off the arms and legs of the magician;

and finally as the prince wrings the bird's neck, Punchkin twists his own head round and dies.

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 5

[6] The same incident occurs in the Arabian story of SeyfelMulook and BedeeaelJemal, where the

Jinni's soul is enclosed in the crop of a sparrow, and the sparrow imprisoned in a small box, and this enclosed

in another small box, and this again in seven other boxes, which are put into seven chests, contained in a

coffer of marble, which is sunk in the ocean that surrounds the world. SeyfelMulook raises the coffer by

the aid of Suleyman's sealring, and having extricated the sparrow, strangles it, whereupon the Jinni's body is

converted into a heap of black ashes, and SeyfelMulook escapes with the maiden DoletKhatoon. See

The story is also told in the highlands of Scotland, and some portions of it will be recognized by the reader as

incidents in the Arabian tale of the Princess Parizade. The union of close correspondence in conception with

manifest independence in the management of the details of these stories is striking enough, but it is a

phenomenon with which we become quite familiar as we proceed in the study of Aryan popular literature.

The legend of the Master Thief is no less remarkable than that of Punchkin. In the Scandinavian tale the

Thief, wishing to get possession of a farmer's ox, carefully hangs himself to a tree by the roadside. The

farmer, passing by with his ox, is indeed struck by the sight of the dangling body, but thinks it none of his

business, and does not stop to interfere. No sooner has he passed than the Thief lets himself down, and

running swiftly along a bypath, hangs himself with equal precaution to a second tree. This time the farmer is

astonished and puzzled; but when for the third time he meets the same unwonted spectacle, thinking that

three suicides in one morning are too much for easy credence, he leaves his ox and runs back to see whether

the other two bodies are really where he thought he saw them. While he is framing hypotheses of witchcraft

by which to explain the phenomenon, the Thief gets away with the ox. In the Hitopadesa the story receives a

finer point. "A Brahman, who had vowed a sacrifice, went to the market to buy a goat. Three thieves saw

him, and wanted to get hold of the goat. They stationed themselves at intervals on the high road. When the

Brahman, who carried the goat on his back, approached the first thief, the thief said, 'Brahman, why do you

carry a dog on your back?' The Brahman replied, 'It is not a dog, it is a goat.' A little while after he was

accosted by the second thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?' The Brahman felt

perplexed, put the goat down, examined it, took it up again, and walked on. Soon after he was stopped by the

third thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?' Then the Brahman was frightened,

threw down the goat, and walked home to perform his ablutions for having touched an unclean animal. The

thieves took the goat and ate it." The adroitness of the Norse King in "The Three Princesses of Whiteland"

shows but poorly in comparison with the keen psychological insight and cynical sarcasm of these Hindu

sharpers. In the course of his travels this prince met three brothers fighting on a lonely moor. They had been

fighting for a hundred years about the possession of a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots, which would make the

wearer invisible, and convey him instantly whithersoever he might wish to go. The King consents to act as

umpire, provided he may once try the virtue of the magic garments; but once clothed in them, of course he

disappears, leaving the combatants to sit down and suck their thumbs. Now in the "Sea of Streams of Story,"

written in the twelfth century by Somadeva of Cashmere, the Indian King Putraka, wandering in the Vindhya

Mountains, similarly discomfits two brothers who are quarrelling over a pair of shoes, which are like the

sandals of Hermes, and a bowl which has the same virtue as Aladdin's lamp. "Why don't you run a race for

them?" suggests Putraka; and, as the two blockheads start furiously off, he quietly picks up the bowl, ties on

[7] The same incident is repeated in the story of Hassan of ElBasrah. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III p.

It is unnecessary to cite further illustrations. The tales here quoted are fair samples of the remarkable

correspondence which holds good through all the various sections of Aryan folklore. The hypothesis of

lateral diffusion, as we may call it, manifestly fails to explain coincidences which are maintained on such an

immense scale. It is quite credible that one nation may have borrowed from another a solitary legend of an

archer who performs the feats of Tell and Palnatoki; but it is utterly incredible that ten thousand stories,

constituting the entire mass of household mythology throughout a dozen separate nations, should have been

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 6

handed from one to another in this way. No one would venture to suggest that the old grannies of Iceland and

Norway, to whom we owe such stories as the Master Thief and the Princesses of Whiteland, had ever read

Somadeva or heard of the treasures of Rhampsinitos. A large proportion of the tales with which we are

dealing were utterly unknown to literature until they were taken down by Grimm and Frere and Castren and

Campbell, from the lips of ignorant peasants, nurses, or houseservants, in Germany and Hindustan, in

Siberia and Scotland. Yet, as Mr. Cox observes, these old men and women, sitting by the chimneycorner

and somewhat timidly recounting to the literary explorer the stories which they had learned in childhood from

their own nurses and grandmas, "reproduce the most subtle turns of thought and expression, and an endless

series of complicated narratives, in which the order of incidents and the words of the speakers are preserved

with a fidelity nowhere paralleled in the oral tradition of historical events. It may safely be said that no series

of stories introduced in the form of translations from other languages could ever thus have filtered down into

the lowest strata of society, and thence have sprung up again, like Antaios, with greater energy and

heightened beauty." There is indeed no alternative for us but to admit that these fireside tales have been

handed down from parent to child for more than a hundred generations; that the primitive Aryan cottager, as

he took his evening meal of yava and sipped his fermented mead, listened with his children to the stories of

Boots and Cinderella and the Master Thief, in the days when the squat Laplander was master of Europe and

the darkskinned Sudra was as yet unmolested in the Punjab. Only such community of origin can explain the

community in character between the stories told by the Aryan's descendants, from the jungles of Ceylon to

This conclusion essentially modifies our view of the origin and growth of a legend like that of William Tell.

The case of the Tell legend is radically different from the case of the blindness of Belisarius or the burning of

the Alexandrian library by order of Omar. The latter are isolated stories or beliefs; the former is one of a

family of stories or beliefs. The latter are untrustworthy traditions of doubtful events; but in dealing with the

What, then, is a myth? The theory of Euhemeros, which was so fashionable a century ago, in the days of the

Abbe Banier, has long since been so utterly abandoned that to refute it now is but to slay the slain. The

peculiarity of this theory was that it cut away all the extraordinary features of a given myth, wherein dwelt its

inmost significance, and to the dull and useless residuum accorded the dignity of primeval history. In this

way the myth was lost without compensation, and the student, in seeking good digestible bread, found but the

hardest of pebbles. Considered merely as a pretty story, the legend of the golden fruit watched by the dragon

in the garden of the Hesperides is not without its value. But what merit can there be in the gratuitous

statement which, degrading the grand Doric hero to a level with any vulgar fruitstealer, makes Herakles

break a close with force and arms, and carry off a crop of oranges which had been guarded by mastiffs? It is

still worse when we come to the more homely folklore with which the student of mythology now has to

deal. The theories of Banier, which limped and stumbled awkwardly enough when it was only a question of

Hermes and Minos and Odin, have fallen never to rise again since the problems of Punchkin and Cinderella

and the Blue Belt have begun to demand solution. The conclusion has been gradually forced upon the student,

that the marvellous portion of these old stories is no illegitimate extrescence, but was rather the pith and

centre of the whole,[8] in days when there was no supernatural, because it had not yet been discovered that

there was such a thing as nature. The religious myths of antiquity and the fireside legends of ancient and

modern times have their common root in the mental habits of primeval humanity. They are the earliest

recorded utterances of men concerning the visible phenomena of the world into which they were born.

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

That prosaic and coldly rational temper with which modern men are wont to regard natural phenomena was in

early times unknown. We have come to regard all events as taking place regularly, in strict conformity to law:

whatever our official theories may be, we instinctively take this view of things. But our primitive ancestors

knew nothing about laws of nature, nothing about physical forces, nothing about the relations of cause and

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 7

effect, nothing about the necessary regularity of things. There was a time in the history of mankind when

these things had never been inquired into, and when no generalizations about them had been framed, tested,

or established. There was no conception of an order of nature, and therefore no distinct conception of a

supernatural order of things. There was no belief in miracles as infractions of natural laws, but there was a

belief in the occurrence of wonderful events too mighty to have been brought about by ordinary means. There

was an unlimited capacity for believing and fancying, because fancy and belief had not yet been checked and

headed off in various directions by established rules of experience. Physical science is a very late acquisition

of the human mind, but we are already sufficiently imbued with it to be almost completely disabled from

comprehending the thoughts of our ancestors. "How Finn cosmogonists could have believed the earth and

heaven to be made out of a severed egg, the upper concave shell representing heaven, the yolk being earth,

and the crystal surrounding fluid the circumambient ocean, is to us incomprehensible; and yet it remains a

fact that they did so regard them. How the Scandinavians could have supposed the mountains to be the

mouldering bones of a mighty Jotun, and the earth to be his festering flesh, we cannot conceive; yet such a

theory was solemnly taught and accepted. How the ancient Indians could regard the rainclouds as cows with

full udders milked by the winds of heaven is beyond our comprehension, and yet their Veda contains

indisputable testimony to the fact that they were so regarded." We have only to read Mr. BaringGould's

book of "Curious Myths," from which I have just quoted, or to dip into Mr. Thorpe's treatise on "Northern

Mythology," to realize how vast is the difference between our standpoint and that from which, in the later

Middle Ages, our immediate forefathers regarded things. The frightful superstition of werewolves is a good

instance. In those days it was firmly believed that men could be, and were in the habit of being, transformed

into wolves. It was believed that women might bring forth snakes or poodledogs. It was believed that if a

man had his side pierced in battle, you could cure him by nursing the sword which inflicted the wound. "As

late as 1600 a German writer would illustrate a thunderstorm destroying a crop of corn by a picture of a

dragon devouring the produce of the field with his flaming tongue and iron teeth."

Now if such was the condition of the human intellect only three or four centuries ago, what must it have been

in that dark antiquity when not even the crudest generalizations of Greek or of Oriental science had been

reached? The same mighty power of imagination which now, restrained and guided by scientific principles,

leads us to discoveries and inventions, must then have wildly run riot in mythologic fictions whereby to

explain the phenomena of nature. Knowing nothing whatever of physical forces, of the blind steadiness with

which a given effect invariably follows its cause, the men of primeval antiquity could interpret the actions of

nature only after the analogy of their own actions. The only force they knew was the force of which they were

directly conscious,the force of will. Accordingly, they imagined all the outward world to be endowed with

volition, and to be directed by it. They personified everything,sky, clouds, thunder, sun, moon, ocean,

earthquake, whirlwind.[9] The comparatively enlightened Athenians of the age of Perikles addressed the sky

as a person, and prayed to it to rain upon their gardens.[10] And for calling the moon a mass of dead matter,

Anaxagoras came near losing his life. To the ancients the moon was not a lifeless ball of stones and clods: it

was the horned huntress, Artemis, coursing through the upper ether, or bathing herself in the clear lake; or it

was Aphrodite, protectress of lovers, born of the seafoam in the East near Cyprus. The clouds were no

bodies of vaporized water: they were cows with swelling udders, driven to the milking by Hermes, the

summer wind; or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain by the unerring arrows of Bellerophon, the sun; or

swanmaidens, flitting across the firmament, Valkyries hovering over the battlefield to receive the souls of

falling heroes; or, again, they were mighty mountains piled one above another, in whose cavernous recesses

the diviningwand of the stormgod Thor revealed hidden treasures. The yellowhaired sun, Phoibos, drove

westerly all day in his flaming chariot; or perhaps, as Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from the sight

of men; wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone, Iole), which he had forsaken in the morning; sank, as

Herakles, upon a blazing funeralpyre, or, like Agamemnon, perished in a bloodstained bath; or, as the

fishgod, Dagon, swam nightly through the subterranean waters, to appear eastward again at daybreak.

Sometimes Phaethon, his rash, inexperienced son, would take the reins and drive the solar chariot too near the

earth, causing the fruits to perish, and the grass to wither, and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too, the great

allseeing divinity, in his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot down his scorching arrows, causing

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 8

pestilence to spread over the land. Still other conceptions clustered around the sun. Now it was the wonderful

treasurehouse, into which no one could look and live; and again it was Ixion himself, bound on the fiery

[9] "No distinction between the animate and inanimate is made in the languages of the Eskimos, the

Choctaws, the Muskoghee, and the Caddo. Only the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the AlgonquinLenape have it,

so far as is known, and with them it is partial." According to the Fijians, "vegetables and stones, nay, even

tools and weapons, pots and canoes, have souls that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on at

last to Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits."M'Lennan, The Worship of Animals and Plants, Fortnightly

This theory of ancient mythology is not only beautiful and plausible, it is, in its essential points,

demonstrated. It stands on as firm a foundation as Grimm's law in philology, or the undulatory theory in

molecular physics. It is philology which has here enabled us to read the primitive thoughts of mankind. A

large number of the names of Greek gods and heroes have no meaning in the Greek language; but these

names occur also in Sanskrit, with plain physical meanings. In the Veda we find Zeus or Jupiter

(Dyauspitar) meaning the sky, and Sarameias or Hermes, meaning the breeze of a summer morning. We

find Athene (Ahana), meaning the light of daybreak; and we are thus enabled to understand why the Greek

described her as sprung from the forehead of Zeus. There too we find Helena (Sarama), the fickle twilight,

whom the Panis, or nightdemons, who serve as the prototypes of the Hellenic Paris, strive to seduce from

her allegiance to the solar monarch. Even Achilleus (Aharyu) again confronts us, with his captive Briseis

(Brisaya's offspring); and the fierce Kerberos (Carvara) barks on Vedic ground in strict conformity to the

laws of phonetics.[11] Now, when the Hindu talked about Father Dyaus, or the sleek kine of Siva, he thought

of the personified sky and clouds; he had not outgrown the primitive mental habits of the race. But the Greek,

in whose language these physical meanings were lost, had long before the Homeric epoch come to regard

Zeus and Hermes, Athene, Helena, Paris, and Achilleus, as mere persons, and in most cases the originals of

his myths were completely forgotten. In the Vedas the Trojan War is carried on in the sky, between the bright

deities and the demons of night; but the Greek poet, influenced perhaps by some dim historical tradition, has

located the contest on the shore of the Hellespont, and in his mind the actors, though superhuman, are still

completely anthropomorphic. Of the true origin of his epic story he knew as little as Euhemeros, or Lord

[11] Some of these etymologies are attacked by Mr. Mahaffy in his Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 49.

After long consideration I am still disposed to follow Max Muller in adopting them, with the possible

exception of Achilleus. With Mr. Mahaffy s suggestion (p. 52) that many of the Homeric legends may have

clustered around some historical basis, I fully agree; as will appear, further on, from my paper on "Juventus

After these illustrations, we shall run no risk of being misunderstood when we define a myth as, in its origin,

an explanation, by the uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory, not an esoteric

symbol,for the ingenuity is wasted which strives to detect in myths the remnants of a refined primeval

science,but an explanation. Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of allegory, nor

were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve their purpose. Their

minds, we may be sure, worked like our own, and when they spoke of the fardarting sungod, they meant

just what they said, save that where we propound a scientific theorem, they constructed a myth.[12] A thing is

said to be explained when it is classified with other things with which we are already acquainted. That is the

only kind of explanation of which the highest science is capable. We explain the origin, progress, and ending

of a thunderstorm, when we classify the phenomena presented by it along with other more familiar

phenomena of vaporization and condensation. But the primitive man explained the same thing to his own

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satisfaction when he had classified it along with the wellknown phenomena of human volition, by

constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by the unerring arrows of a heavenly archer. We

consider the nature of the stars to a certain extent explained when they are classified as suns; but the

Mohammedan compiler of the "MishkatulMa'sabih" was content to explain them as missiles useful for

stoning the Devil! Now, as soon as the old Greek, forgetting the source of his conception, began to talk of a

human Oidipous slaying a leonine Sphinx, and as soon as the Mussulman began, if he ever did, to tell his

children how the Devil once got a good pelting with golden bullets, then both the one and the other were

[12] Les facultes qui engendrent la mythologie sont les memes que celles qui engendront la philosophie, et ce

n'est pas sans raison que l'Inde et la Grece nous presentent le phenomene de la plus riche mythologie a cote

de la plus profonde metaphysique. "La conception de la multiplicite dans l'univers, c'est le polytheisme chez

les peuples enfants; c'est la science chez les peuples arrives a l'age mur.Renan, Hist. des Langues

We are justified, accordingly, in distinguishing between a myth and a legend. Though the words are

etymologically parallel, and though in ordinary discourse we may use them interchangeably, yet when strict

accuracy is required, it is well to keep them separate. And it is perhaps needless, save for the sake of

completeness, to say that both are to be distinguished from stories which have been designedly fabricated.

The distinction may occasionally be subtle, but is usually broad enough. Thus, the story that Philip II.

murdered his wife Elizabeth, is a misrepresentation; but the story that the same Elizabeth was culpably

enamoured of her stepson Don Carlos, is a legend. The story that Queen Eleanor saved the life of her

husband, Edward I., by sucking a wound made in his arm by a poisoned arrow, is a legend; but the story that

Hercules killed a great robber, Cacus, who had stolen his cattle, conceals a physical meaning, and is a myth.

While a legend is usually confined to one or two localities, and is told of not more than one or two persons, it

is characteristic of a myth that it is spread, in one form or another, over a large part of the earth, the leading

incidents remaining constant, while the names and often the motives vary with each locality. This is partly

due to the immense antiquity of myths, dating as they do from a period when many nations, now widely

separated, had not yet ceased to form one people. Thus many elements of the myth of the Trojan War are to

be found in the RigVeda; and the myth of St. George and the Dragon is found in all the Aryan nations. But

we must not always infer that myths have a common descent, merely because they resemble each other. We

must remember that the proceedings of the uncultivated mind are more or less alike in all latitudes, and that

the same phenomenon might in various places independently give rise to similar stories.[13] The myth of

Jack and the BeanStalk is found not only among people of Aryan descent, but also among the Zulus of South

Africa, and again among the American Indians. Whenever we can trace a story in this way from one end of

the world to the other, or through a whole family of kindred nations, we are pretty safe in assuming that we

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

Applying these considerations to the Tell myth, we at once obtain a valid explanation of its origin. The

conception of infallible skill in archery, which underlies such a great variety of myths and popular

fairytales, is originally derived from the inevitable victory of the sun over his enemies, the demons of night,

winter, and tempest. Arrows and spears which never miss their mark, swords from whose blow no armour

can protect, are invariably the weapons of solar divinities or heroes. The shafts of Bellerophon never fail to

slay the black demon of the raincloud, and the bolt of Phoibos Chrysaor deals sure destruction to the serpent

of winter. Odysseus, warring against the impious nightheroes, who have endeavoured throughout ten long

years or hours of darkness to seduce from her allegiance his twilightbride, the weaver of the neverfinished

web of violet clouds,Odysseus, stripped of his beggar's raiment and endowed with fresh youth and beauty

by the dawngoddess, Athene, engages in no doubtful conflict as he raises the bow which none but himself

can bend. Nor is there less virtue in the spear of Achilleus, in the swords of Perseus and Sigurd, in Roland's

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stout blade Durandal, or in the brand Excalibur, with which Sir Bedivere was so loath to part. All these are

solar weapons, and so, too, are the arrows of Tell and Palnatoki, Egil and Hemingr, and William of

Cloudeslee, whose surname proclaims him an inhabitant of the Phaiakian land. William Tell, whether of

Cloudland or of Altdorf, is the last reflection of the beneficent divinity of daytime and summer, constrained

for a while to obey the caprice of the powers of cold and darkness, as Apollo served Laomedon, and Herakles

did the bidding of Eurystheus. His solar character is well preserved, even in the sequel of the Swiss legend, in

which he appears no less skilful as a steersman than as an archer, and in which, after traversing, like Dagon,

the tempestuous sea of night, he leaps at daybreak in regained freedom upon the land, and strikes down the

But the sun, though ever victorious in open contest with his enemies, is nevertheless not invulnerable. At

times he succumbs to treachery, is bound by the frostgiants, or slain by the demons of darkness. The

poisoned shirt of the cloudfiend Nessos is fatal even to the mighty Herakles, and the prowess of Siegfried at

last fails to save him from the craft of Hagen. In Achilleus and Meleagros we see the unhappy solar hero

doomed to toil for the profit of others, and to be cut off by an untimely death. The more fortunate Odysseus,

who lives to a ripe old age, and triumphs again and again over all the powers of darkness, must nevertheless

yield to the craving desire to visit new cities and look upon new works of strange men, until at last he is

swallowed up in the western sea. That the unrivalled navigator of the celestial ocean should disappear

beneath the western waves is as intelligible as it is that the horned Venus or Astarte should rise from the sea

in the far east. It is perhaps less obvious that winter should be so frequently symbolized as a thorn or sharp

instrument. Achilleus dies by an arrowwound in the heel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk,

while Odysseus escapes with an ugly scar, which afterwards secures his recognition by his old servant, the

dawnnymph Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth

of the Sleeping Beauty, the earthgoddess sinks into her long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the

spindle. In her cosmic palace, all is locked in icy repose, naught thriving save the ivy which defies the cold,

The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in innumerable stories of spellbound maidens and fairfeatured

youths, saints, martyrs, and heroes. Sometimes it is the sun, sometimes the earth, that is supposed to slumber.

Among the American Indians the sungod Michabo is said to sleep through the winter months; and at the

time of the falling leaves, by way of composing himself for his nap, he fills his great pipe and divinely

smokes; the blue clouds, gently floating over the landscape, fill the air with the haze of Indian summer. In the

Greek myth the shepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in a perennial slumber. The German Siegfried,

pierced by the thorn of winter, is sleeping until he shall be again called forth to fight. In Switzerland, by the

Vierwaldstattersee, three Tells are awaiting the hour when their country shall again need to be delivered

from the oppressor. Charlemagne is reposing in the Untersberg, sword in hand, waiting for the coming of

Antichrist; Olger Danske similarly dreams away his time in Avallon; and in a lofty mountain in Thuringia,

the great Emperor Yrederic Barbarossa slumbers with his knights around him, until the time comes for him to

sally forth and raise Germany to the first rank among the kingdoms of the world. The same story is told of

Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastian of Portugal, and of the Moorish King Boabdil. The Seven Sleepers of

Ephesus, having taken refuge in a cave from the persecutions of the heathen Decius, slept one hundred and

sixtyfour years, and awoke to find a Christian emperor on the throne. The monk of Hildesheim, in the

legend so beautifully rendered by Longfellow, doubting how with God a thousand years ago could be as

yesterday, listened three minutes entranced by the singing of a bird in the forest, and found, on waking from

his revery, that a thousand years had flown. To the same family of legends belong the notion that St. John is

sleeping at Ephesus until the last days of the world; the myth of the enchanter Merlin, spellbound by Vivien;

the story of the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed away fiftyseven years in a cave; and Rip Van

[14] A collection of these interesting legends may be found in BaringGould's "Curious Myths of the Middle

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We might go on almost indefinitely citing household tales of wonderful sleepers; but, on the principle of the

association of opposites, we are here reminded of sundry cases of marvellous life and wakefulness, illustrated

in the Wandering Jew; the dancers of Kolbeck; Joseph of Arimathaea with the Holy Grail; the Wild

Huntsman who to all eternity chases the red deer; the Captain of the Phantom Ship; the classic Tithonos; and

The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject for the play of human fancy. Plutarch wrote a treatise on them,

but the mythmakers had been before him. "Every one," says Mr. BaringGould, "knows that the moon is

inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has been exiled thither for many centuries, and

who is so far off that he is beyond the reach of death. He has once visited this earth, if the nursery rhyme is to

but whether he ever reached that city the same authority does not state." Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer has

him put up there as a punishment for theft, and gives him a thornbush to carry; Shakespeare also loads him

with the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a dog for a companion. Ordinarily, however, his

offence is stated to have been, not stealing, but Sabbathbreaking,an idea derived from the Old Testament.

Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers, he is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an

example to mankind, he is condemned to stand forever in the moon, with his bundle on his back. Instead of a

dog, one German version places with him a woman, whose crime was churning butter on Sunday. She carries

"Jack and Jill went up the hill To get a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came

This may read like mere nonsense; but there is a point of view from which it may be safely said that there is

very little absolute nonsense in the world. The story of Jack and Jill is a venerable one. In Icelandic

mythology we read that Jack and Jill were two children whom the moon once kidnapped and carried up to

heaven. They had been drawing water in a bucket, which they were carrying by means of a pole placed across

their shoulders; and in this attitude they have stood to the present day in the moon. Even now this explanation

of the moonspots is to be heard from the mouths of Swedish peasants. They fall away one after the other, as

the moon wanes, and their waterpail symbolizes the supposed connection of the moon with rainstorms.

The moongoddess, or Aphrodite, of the ancient Germans, was called Horsel, or Ursula, who figures in

Christian mediaeval mythology as a persecuted saint, attended by a troop of eleven thousand virgins, who all

suffer martyrdom as they journey from England to Cologne. The meaning of the myth is obvious. In German

mythology, England is the Phaiakian land of clouds and phantoms; the succubus, leaving her lover before

daybreak, excuses herself on the plea that "her mother is calling her in England."[15] The companions of

Ursula are the pure stars, who leave the cloudland and suffer martyrdom as they approach the regions of day.

In the Christian tradition, Ursula is the pure Artemis; but, in accordance with her ancient character, she is

likewise the sensual Aphrodite, who haunts the Venusberg; and this brings us to the story of Tannhauser.

[15] See Procopius, De Bello Gothico, IV. 20; Villemarque, Barzas Breiz, I. 136. As a child I was instructed

by an old nurse that Vas Diemen's Land is the home of ghosts and departed spirits.

The Horselberg, or mountain of Venus, lies in Thuringia, between Eisenach and Gotha. High up on its slope

yawns a cavern, the Horselloch, or cave of Venus within which is heard a muffled roar, as of subterranean

water. From this cave, in old times, the frightened inhabitants of the neighbouring valley would hear at night

wild moans and cries issuing, mingled with peals of demonlike laughter. Here it was believed that Venus

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 12

held her court; "and there were not a few who declared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty

beckoning them from the mouth of the chasm."[16] Tannhauser was a Frankish knight and famous

minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Horselberg, "saw a white glimmering figure of matchless

beauty standing before him and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her, whom he

knew to be none other than Venus. He descended to her palace in the heart of the mountain, and there passed

seven years in careless revelry. Then, stricken with remorse and yearning for another glimpse of the pure

light of day, he called in agony upon the Virgin Mother, who took compassion on him and released him. He

sought a village church, and to priest after priest confessed his sin, without obtaining absolution, until finally

he had recourse to the Pope. But the holy father, horrified at the enormity of his misdoing, declared that guilt

such as his could never be remitted sooner should the staff in his hand grow green and blossom. "Then

Tannhauser, full of despair and with his soul darkened, went away, and returned to the only asylum open to

him, the Venusberg. But lo! three days after he had gone, Pope Urban discovered that his pastoral staff had

put forth buds and had burst into flower. Then he sent messengers after Tannhauser, and they reached the

Horsel vale to hear that a wayworn man, with haggard brow and bowed head, had just entered the Horselloch.

As Mr. BaringGould rightly observes, this sad legend, in its Christianized form, is doubtless descriptive of

the struggle between the new and the old faiths. The knightly Tannhauser, satiated with pagan sensuality,

turns to Christianity for relief, but, repelled by the hypocrisy, pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers,

But this is not the primitive form of the myth, which recurs in the folklore of every people of Aryan descent.

Who, indeed, can read it without being at once reminded of Thomas of Erceldoune (or Horselhill),

entranced by the sorceress of the Eilden; of the nightly visits of Numa to the grove of the nymph Egeria; of

Odysseus held captive by the Lady Kalypso; and, last but not least, of the delightful Arabian tale of Prince

Ahmed and the Peri Banou? On his westward journey, Odysseus is ensnared and kept in temporary bondage

by the amorous nymph of darkness, Kalypso (kalnptw, to veil or cover). So the zone of the moongoddess

Aphrodite inveigles allseeing Zeus to treacherous slumber on Mount Ida; and by a similar sorcery Tasso's

great hero is lulled in unseemly idleness in Armida's golden paradise, at the western verge of the world. The

disappearance of Tannhauser behind the moonlit cliff, lured by Venus Ursula, the pale goddess of night, is a

But solar and lunar phenomena are by no means the only sources of popular mythology. Opposite my

writingtable hangs a quaint German picture, illustrating Goethe's ballad of the Erlking, in which the whole

wild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme moment; we see the fearful, halfgliding rush of the

Erlking, his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the alarmed

father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, the sirenlike elves hovering overhead, to

lure the little soul with their weird harps. There can be no better illustration than is furnished by this terrible

scene of the magic power of mythology to invest the simplest physical phenomena with the most intense

human interest; for the true significance of the whole picture is contained in the father's address to his child,

The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version of Robert Browning, leads to the same

conclusion. In 1284 the good people of Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the direful

host of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange man in a buntingsuit, and offered for five

hundred guilders to rid the town of the vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe and

piped, and instantly all the rats in town, in an army which blackened the face of the earth, came forth from

their haunts, and followed the piper until he piped them to the river Weser, where they alls jumped in and

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were drowned. But as soon as the torment was gone, the townsfolk refused to pay the piper on the ground that

he was evidently a wizard. He went away, vowing vengeance, and on St. John's day reappeared, and putting

his pipe to his mouth blew a different air. Whereat all the little, plump, rosycheeked, goldenhaired children

came merrily running after him, their parents standing aghast, not knowing what to do, while he led them up

a hill in the neighbourhood. A door opened in the mountainside, through which he led them in, and they

never were seen again; save one lame boy, who hobbled not fast enough to get in before the door shut, and

who lamented for the rest of his life that he had not been able to share the rare luck of his comrades. In the

street through which this procession passed no music was ever afterwards allowed to be played. For a long

time the town dated its public documents from this fearful calamity, and many authorities have treated it as an

historical event.[17] Similar stories are told of other towns in Germany, and, strange to say, in remote

Abyssinia also. Wesleyan peasants in England believe that angels pipe to children who are about to die; and

in Scandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away by the songs of elfmaidens. In Greece, the sirens

by their magic lay allured voyagers to destruction; and Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to follow

him. Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the wind sighing through untold acres of pine forest.

"The piper is no other than the wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the dead." To

this day the English peasantry believe that they hear the wail of the spirits of unbaptized children, as the gale

sweeps past their cottage doors. The Greek Hermes resulted from the fusion of two deities. He is the sun and

also the wind; and in the latter capacity he bears away the souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like

Hermes fillfils a double function, is supposed to rush at night over the treetops, "accompanied by the

scudding train of brave men's spirits." And readers of recent French literature cannot fail to remember

ErokmannChatrian's terrible story of the wild huntsman Vittikab, and how he sped through the forest,

Thus, as Tannhauser is the Northern Ulysses, so is Goethe's Erlking none other than the Piper of Hamelin.

And the piper, in turn, is the classic Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of the Finnish Wainamoinen and the

Sanskrit Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon, the lyre of Apollo (who, like the piper, was a

ratkiller), the harp stolen by Jack when he climbed the beanstalk to the ogre's castle.[18] And the father, in

Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he assures his child that the siren voice which tempts him is but

the rustle of the wind among the dried leaves; for from such a simple class of phenomena arose this entire

"Could harp a fish out o' the water, Or bluid out of a stane, Or milk out of a maiden's breast, That bairns had

But why does the piper, who is a leader of souls (Psychopompos), also draw rats after him? In answering this

we shall have occasion to note that the ancients by no means shared that curious prejudice against the brute

creation which is indulged in by modern antiDarwinians. In many countries, rats and mice have been

regarded as sacred animals; but in Germany they were thought to represent the human soul. One story out of

a hundred must suffice to illustrate this. "In Thuringia, at Saalfeld, a servantgirl fell asleep whilst her

companions were shelling nuts. They observed a little red mouse creep from her mouth and run out of the

window. One of the fellows present shook the sleeper, but could not wake her, so he moved her to another

place. Presently the mouse ran back to the former place and dashed about, seeking the girl; not finding her, it

vanished; at the same moment the girl died."[19] This completes the explanation of the piper, and it also

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 14

This wicked prelate lived on the bank of the Rhine, in the middle of which stream he possessed a tower, now

pointed out to travellers as the Mouse Tower. In the year 970 there was a dreadful famine, and people came

from far and near craving sustenance out of the Bishop's ample and wellfilled granaries. Well, he told them

all to go into the barn, and when they had got in there, as many as could stand, he set fire to the barn and

burnt them all up, and went home to eat a merry supper. But when he arose next morning, he heard that an

army of rats had eaten all the corn in his granaries, and was now advancing to storm the palace. Looking from

his window, he saw the roads and fields dark with them, as they came with fell purpose straight toward his

mansion. In frenzied terror he took his boat and rowed out to the tower in the river. But it was of no use:

down into the water marched the rats, and swam across, and scaled the walls, and gnawed through the stones,

and came swarming in about the shrieking Bishop, and ate him up, flesh, bones, and all. Now, bearing in

mind what was said above, there can be no doubt that these rats were the souls of those whom the Bishop had

murdered. There are many versions of the story in different Teutonic countries, and in some of them the

avenging rats or mice issue directly, by a strange metamorphosis, from the corpses of the victims. St.

Gertrude, moreover, the heathen Holda, was symbolized as a mouse, and was said Go lead an army of mice;

she was the receiver of children's souls. Odin, also, in his character of a Psychopompos, was followed by a

[20] Perhaps we may trace back to this source the frantic terror which Irish servantgirls often manifest at

As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so is the psychopomp himself often figured as a dog.

Sarameias, the Vedic counterpart of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears invested with canine attributes;

and countless other examples go to show that by the early Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a

great dog or wolf. As the fearful beast was heard speeding by the windows or over the housetop, the inmates

trembled, for none knew but his own soul might forthwith be required of him. Hence, to this day, among

ignorant people, the howling of a dog under the window is supposed to portend a death in the family. It is the

[21] In Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the person who is dying, in order that the soul may be sure of

a prompt escort. The same custom exists in India. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 123.

But the windgod is not always so terrible. Nothing can be more transparent than the phraseology of the

Homeric Hymn, in which Hermes is described as acquiring the strength of a giant while yet a babe in the

cradle, as sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of Apollo, and driving them helterskelter in various

directions, then as crawling through the keyhole, and with a mocking laugh shrinking into his cradle. He is

the Master Thief, who can steal the burgomaster's horse from under him and his wife's mantle from off her

back, the prototype not only of the crafty architect of Rhampsinitos, but even of the ungrateful slave who robs

Sancho of his mule in the Sierra Morena. He furnishes in part the conceptions of Boots and Reynard; he is the

prototype of Paul Pry and peeping Tom of Coventry; and in virtue of his ability to contract or expand himself

at pleasure, he is both the Devil in the Norse Tale,[22] whom the lad persuades to enter a walnut, and the

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

The very interesting series of myths and popular superstitions suggested by the stormcloud and the lightning

must be reserved for a future occasion. When carefully examined, they will richly illustrate the conclusion

which is the result of the present inquiry, that the marvellous tales and quaint superstitions current in every

Aryan household have a common origin with the classic legends of gods and heroes, which formerly were

alone thought worthy of the student's serious attention. These storiessome of them familiar to us in

infancy, others the delight of our maturer yearsconstitute the debris, or alluvium, brought down by the

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 15

IN the course of my last summer's vacation, which was spent at a small inland village, I came upon an

unexpected illustration of the tenacity with which conceptions descended from prehistoric antiquity have now

and then kept their hold upon life. While sitting one evening under the trees by the roadside, my attention was

called to the unusual conduct of half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man was

moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y

inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the

shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would gradually

bend downwards until it had assumed the likeness of a Y in its natural position, where it would remain

pointing to something in the ground beneath. One by one the bystanders proceeded to try the experiment, but

with no variation in the result. Something in the ground seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could not

My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques Aymar and Dousterswivel, as I perceived that these men were

engaged in sorcery. During the long drought more than half the wells in the village had become dry, and here

was an attempt to make good the loss by the aid of the god Thor. These men were seeking water with a

diviningrod. Here, alive before my eyes, was a superstitious observance, which I had supposed long since

As I crossed the road to take part in the ceremony a farmer's boy came up, stoutly affirming his incredulity,

and offering to show the company how he could carry the rod motionless across the charmed spot. But when

he came to take the weird twig he trembled with an illdefined feeling of insecurity as to the soundness of his

conclusions, and when he stood over the supposed rivulet the rod bent in spite of him,as was not so very

strange. For, with all his vague scepticism, the honest lad had not, and could not be supposed to have, the foi

[23] "Il faut que la coeur devienne ancien parmi les aneiennes choses, et la plenitude de l'histoire ne se

devoile qu'a celui qui descend, ainsi dispose, dans le passe. Mais il faut que l'esprit demeure moderne, et

n'oublie jamais qu'il n'y a pour lui d'autre foi que la foi scientifique.'LITTRS.

Hereupon I requested leave to try the rod; but something in my manner seemed at once to excite the suspicion

and scorn of the sorcerer. "Yes, take it," said he, with uncalledfor vehemence, "but you can't stop it; there's

water below here, and you can't help its bending, if you break your back trying to hold it." So he gave me the

twig, and awaited, with a smile which was meant to express withering sarcasm, the discomfiture of the

supposed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or five times across the mysterious place, the rod

pointing steadfastly toward the zenith all the while, our friend became grave and began to philosophize.

"Well," said he, "you see, your temperament is peculiar; the conditions ain't favourable in your case; there are

some people who never can work these things. But there's water below here, for all that, as you'll find, if you

Very true: there are some persons who never can make such things work; who somehow always encounter

"unfavourable conditions" when they wish to test the marvellous powers of a clairvoyant; who never can

make "Planchette" move in conformity to the requirements of any known alphabet; who never see ghosts, and

never have "presentiments," save such as are obviously due to association of ideas. The illsuccess of these

persons is commonly ascribed to their lack of faith; but, in the majority of cases, it might be more truly

referred to the strength of their faith,faith in the constancy of nature, and in the adequacy of ordinary

human experience as interpreted by science.[24] La foi scientifique is an excellent preventive against that

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 16

obscure, though not uncommon, kind of selfdeception which enables wooden tripods to write and tables to

tip and hazeltwigs to twist upsidedown, without the conscious intervention of the performer. It was this

kind of faith, no doubt, which caused the discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on his visit to Paris,[25] and which

has in late years prevented persons from obtaining the handsome prize offered by the French Academy for the

[24] For an admirable example of scientific selfanalysis tracing one of these illusions to its psychological

sources, see the account of Dr. Lazarus, in Taine, De l'Intelligence, Vol. I. pp. 121125.

[25] See the story of Aymar in BaringGould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. pp. 5777. The learned author

attributes the discomfiture to the uncongenial Parisian environment; which is a style of reasoning much like

But our village friend, though perhaps constructively right in his philosophizing, was certainly very defective

in his acquaintance with the timehonoured art of rhabdomancy. Had he extended his inquiries so as to cover

the field of IndoEuropean tradition, he would have learned that the mountainash, the mistletoe, the white

and black thorn, the Hindu asvattha, and several other woods, are quite as efficient as the hazel for the

purpose of detecting water in times of drought; and in due course of time he would have perceived that the

diviningrod itself is but one among a large class of things to which popular belief has ascribed, along with

other talismanic properties, the power of opening the ground or cleaving rocks, in order to reveal hidden

treasures. Leaving him in peace, then, with his bit of forked hazel, to seek for cooling springs in some future

thirsty season, let us endeavour to elucidate the origin of this curious superstition.

The detection of subterranean water is by no means the only use to which the diviningrod has been put.

Among the ancient Frisians it was regularly used for the detection of criminals; and the reputation of Jacques

Aymar was won by his discovery of the perpetrator of a horrible murder at Lyons. Throughout Europe it has

been used from time immemorial by miners for ascertaining the position of veins of metal; and in the days

when talents were wrapped in napkins and buried in the field, instead of being exposed to the risks of

financial speculation, the diviningrod was employed by persons covetous of their neighbours' wealth. If

Boulatruelle had lived in the sixteenth century, he would have taken a forked stick of hazel when he went to

search for the buried treasures of Jean Valjean. It has also been applied to the cure of disease, and has been

kept in households, like a wizard's charm, to insure general goodfortune and immunity from disaster.

As we follow the conception further into the elfland of popular tradition, we come upon a rod which not

only points out the situation of hidden treasure, but even splits open the ground and reveals the mineral

wealth contained therein. In German legend, "a shepherd, who was driving his flock over the Ilsenstein,

having stopped to rest, leaning on his staff, the mountain suddenly opened, for there was a springwort in his

staff without his knowing it, and the princess [Ilse] stood before him. She bade him follow her, and when he

was inside the mountain she told him to take as much gold as he pleased. The shepherd filled all his pockets,

and was going away, when the princess called after him, 'Forget not the best.' So, thinking she meant that he

had not taken enough, he filled his hat also; but what she meant was his staff with the springwort, which he

had laid against the wall as soon as he stepped in. But now, just as he was going out at the opening, the rock

Here the rod derives its marvellous properties from the enclosed springwort, but in many cases a leaf or

flower is itself competent to open the hillside. The little blue flower, forgetmenot, about which so many

sentimental associations have clustered, owes its name to the legends told of its talismanic virtues.[27] A

man, travelling on a lonely mountain, picks up a little blue flower and sticks it in his hat. Forthwith an iron

door opens, showing up a lighted passageway, through which the man advances into a magnificent hall,

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 17

where rubies and diamonds and all other kinds of gems are lying piled in great heaps on the floor. As he

eagerly fills his pockets his hat drops from his head, and when he turns to go out the little flower calls after

him, "Forget me not!" He turns back and looks around, but is too bewildered with his good fortune to think of

his bare head or of the luckflower which he has let fall. He selects several more of the finest jewels he can

find, and again starts to go out; but as he passes through the door the mountain closes amid the crashing of

thunder, and cuts off one of his heels. Alone, in the gloom of the forest, he searches in vain for the mysterious

door: it has disappeared forever, and the traveller goes on his way, thankful, let us hope, that he has fared no

[27] The story of the luckflower is well told in verse by Mr. Baring Gould, in his Silver Store, p. 115, seq.

Sometimes it is a white lady, like the Princess Ilse, who invites the finder of the luckflower to help himself

to her treasures, and who utters the enigmatical warning. The mountain where the event occurred may be

found almost anywhere in Germany, and one just like it stood in Persia, in the golden prime of Haroun

Alraschid. In the story of the Forty Thieves, the mere name of the plant sesame serves as a talisman to open

and shut the secret door which leads into the robbers' cavern; and when the avaricious Cassim Baba, absorbed

in the contemplation of the bags of gold and bales of rich merchandise, forgets the magic formula, he meets

no better fate than the shepherd of the Ilsenstein. In the story of Prince Ahmed, it is an enchanted arrow

which guides the young adventurer through the hillside to the grotto of the Peri Banou. In the tale of Baba

Abdallah, it is an ointment rubbed on the eyelid which reveals at a single glance all the treasures hidden in the

The ancient Romans also had their rockbreaking plant, called Saxifraga, or "sassafras." And the further we

penetrate into this charmed circle of traditions the more evident does it appear that the power of cleaving

rocks or shattering hard substances enters, as a primitive element, into the conception of these

treasureshowing talismans. Mr. BaringGould has given an excellent account of the rabbinical legends

concerning the wonderful schamir, by the aid of which Solomon was said to have built his temple. From

Asmodeus, prince of the Jann, Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, wrested the secret of a worm no bigger than a

barleycorn, which could split the hardest substance. This worm was called schamir. "If Solomon desired to

possess himself of the worm, he must find the nest of the moorhen, and cover it with a plate of glass, so that

the mother bird could not get at her young without breaking the glass. She would seek schamir for the

purpose, and the worm must be obtained from her." As the Jewish king did need the worm in order to hew the

stones for that temple which was to be built without sound of hammer, or axe, or any tool of iron,[28] he sent

Benaiah to obtain it. According to another account, schamir was a mystic stone which enabled Solomon to

penetrate the earth in search of mineral wealth. Directed by a Jinni, the wise king covered a raven's eggs with

a plate of crystal, and thus obtained schamir which the bird brought in order to break the plate.[29]

[29] Compare the Mussulman account of the building of the temple, in BaringGould, Legends of the

Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 337, 338. And see the story of Diocletian's ostrich, Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ed.

Wright, Vol I. p. lxiv. See also the pretty story of the knight unjustly imprisoned, id. p. cii.

In these traditions, which may possibly be of Aryan descent, due to the prolonged intercourse between the

Jews and the Persians, a new feature is added to those before enumerated: the rocksplitting talisman is

always found in the possession of a bird. The same feature in the myth reappears on Aryan soil. The

springwort, whose marvellous powers we have noticed in the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained,

according to Pliny, by stopping up the hole in a tree where a woodpecker keeps its young. The bird flies

away, and presently returns with the springwort, which it applies to the plug, causing it to shoot out with a

loud explosion. The same account is given in German folklore. Elsewhere, as in Iceland, Normandy, and

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 18

In the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir, or "ravenstone," also renders its possessor invisible,a

property which it shares with one of the treasurefinding plants, the fern.[30] In this respect it resembles the

ring of Gyges, as in its divining and rocksplitting qualities it resembles that other ring which the African

magrician gave to Aladdin, to enable him to descend into the cavern where stood the wonderful lamp.

[30] "We have the receipt of fernseed. We walk invisible." Shakespeare, Henry IV. See Ralston, Songs of

According to one North German tradition, the luckflower also will make its finder invisible at pleasure. But,

as the myth shrewdly adds, it is absolutely essential that the flower be found by accident: he who seeks for it

never finds it! Thus all cavils are skilfully forestalled, even if not satisfactorily disposed of. The same kind of

reasoning is favoured by our modern dealers in mystery: somehow the "conditions" always are askew

In the North of Europe schamir appears strangely and grotesquely metamorphosed. The hand of a man that

has been hanged, when dried and prepared with certain weird unguents and set on fire, is known as the Hand

of Glory; and as it not only bursts open all safelocks, but also lulls to sleep all persons within the circle of its

influence, it is of course invaluable to thieves and burglars. I quote the following story from Thorpe's

"Northern Mythology": "Two fellows once came to Huy, who pretended to be exceedingly fatigued, and

when they had supped would not retire to a sleepingroom, but begged their host would allow them to take a

nap on the hearth. But the maidservant, who did not like the looks of the two guests, remained by the

kitchen door and peeped through a chink, when she saw that one of them drew a thief's hand from his pocket,

the fingers of which, after having rubbed them with an ointment, he lighted, and they all burned except one.

Again they held this finger to the fire, but still it would not burn, at which they appeared much surprised, and

one said, 'There must surely be some one in the house who is not yet asleep.' They then hung the hand with its

four burning fingers by the chimney, and went out to call their associates. But the maid followed them

instantly and made the door fast, then ran up stairs, where the landlord slept, that she might wake him, but

was unable, notwithstanding all her shaking and calling. In the mean time the thieves had returned and were

endeavouring to enter the house by a window, but the maid cast them down from the ladder. They then took a

different course, and would have forced an entrance, had it not occurred to the maid that the burning fingers

might probably be the cause of her master's profound sleep. Impressed with this idea she ran to the kitchen

and blew them out, when the master and his menservants instantly awoke, and soon drove away the

robbers." The same event is said to have occurred at Stainmore in England; and Torquermada relates of

Mexican thieves that they carry with them the left hand of a woman who has died in her first childbed, before

which talisman all bolts yield and all opposition is benumbed. In 1831 "some Irish thieves attempted to

commit a robbery on the estate of Mr. Naper, of Loughcrew, county Meath. They entered the house armed

with a dead man's hand with a lighted candle in it, believing in the superstitious notion that a candle placed in

a dead man's hand will not be seen by any but those by whom it is used; and also that if a candle in a dead

hand be introduced into a house, it will prevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inmates,

In the Middle Ages the hand of glory was used, just like the diviningrod, for the detection of buried

Here, then, we have a large and motley group of objectsthe forked rod of ash or hazel, the springwort and

the luckflower, leaves, worms, stones, rings, and dead men's handswhich are for the most part competent

to open the way into cavernous rocks, and which all agree in pointing out hidden wealth. We find, moreover,

that many of these charmed objects are carried about by birds, and that some of them possess, in addition to

their generic properties, the specific power of benumbing people's senses. What, now, is the common origin

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 19

of this whole group of superstitions? And since mythology has been shown to be the result of primeval

attempts to explain the phenomena of nature, what natural phenomenon could ever have given rise to so

many seemingly wanton conceptions? Hopeless as the problem may at first sight seem, it has nevertheless

been solved. In his great treatise on "The Descent of Fire," Dr. Kuhn has shown that all these legends and

traditions are descended from primitive myths explanatory of the lightning and the stormcloud.[32]

To us, who are nourished from childhood on the truths revealed by science, the sky is known to be merely an

optical appearance due to the partial absorption of the solar rays in passing through a thick stratum of

atmospheric air; the clouds are known to be large masses of watery vapour, which descend in raindrops

when sufficiently condensed; and the lightning is known to be a flash of light accompanying an electric

discharge. But these conceptions are extremely recondite, and have been attained only through centuries of

philosophizing and after careful observation and laborious experiment. To the untaught mind of a child or of

an uncivilized man, it seems far more natural and plausible to regard the sky as a solid dome of blue crystal,

the clouds as snowy mountains, or perhaps even as giants or angels, the lightning as a flashing dart or a fiery

serpent. In point of fact, we find that the conceptions actually entertained are often far more grotesque than

these. I can recollect once framing the hypothesis that the flaming clouds of sunset were transient apparitions,

vouchsafed us by way of warning, of that burning Calvinistic hell with which my childish imagination had

been unwisely terrified;[33] and I have known of a fouryearold boy who thought that the snowy clouds of

noonday were the white robes of the angels hung out to dry in the sun.[34] My little daughter is anxious to

know whether it is necessary to take a balloon in order to get to the place where God lives, or whether the

same end can be accomplished by going to the horizon and crawling up the sky;[35] the Mohammedan of old

was working at the same problem when he called the rainbow the bridge EsSirat, over which souls must

pass on their way to heaven. According to the ancient Jew, the sky was a solid plate, hammered out by the

gods, and spread over the earth in order to keep up the ocean overhead;[36] but the plate was full of little

windows, which were opened whenever it became necessary to let the rain come through.[37] With equal

plausibility the Greek represented the rainy sky as a sieve in which the daughters of Danaos were vainly

trying to draw water; while to the Hindu the rainclouds were celestial cattle milked by the windgod. In

primitive Aryan lore, the sky itself was a blue sea, and the clouds were ships sailing over it; and an English

legend tells how one of these ships once caught its anchor on a gravestone in the churchyard, to the great

astonishment of the people who were coming out of church. Charon's ferryboat was one of these vessels,

and another was Odin's golden ship, in which the souls of slain heroes were conveyed to Valhalla. Hence it

was once the Scandinavian practice to bury the dead in boats; and in Altmark a penny is still placed in the

mouth of the corpse, that it may have the means of paying its fare to the ghostly ferryman.[38] In such a

vessel drifted the Lady of Shalott on her fatal voyage; and of similar nature was the dusky barge, "dark as a

funeralscarf from stem to stern," in which Arthur was received by the blackhooded queens.[39]

[33] "Saga me forwhan byth seo sunne read on aefen? Ic the secge, forthon heo locath on helle.Tell me,

why is the sun red at even? I tell thee, because she looketh on hell." Thorpe, Analecta AngloSaxonica, p.

115, apud Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 63. Barbaric thought had partly anticipated my childish theory.

[34] "Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder, that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and of

the snow, that they are shaking up the feather beds in heaven." BaringGould, Book of Werewolves, p.

[35] "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call

foreigners papalangi, or 'heavenbursters,' as having broken in from another world outside."Max Muller,

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 20

[36] "And said the gods, let there be a hammered plate in the midst of the waters, and let it be dividing

[38] See Kelly, IndoEuropean FolkLore, p 120; who states also that in Bengal the Garrows burn their dead

In their character of cows, also, the clouds were regarded as psychopomps; and hence it is still a popular

superstition that a cow breaking into the yard foretokens a death in the family.

[39] The sungod Freyr had a cloudship called Skithblathnir, which is thus described in Dasent's Prose

Edda: "She is so great, that all the AEsir, with their weapons and wargear, may find room on board her"; but

"when there is no need of faring on the sea in her, she is made. . . . with so much craft that Freyr may fold her

together like a cloth, and keep her in his bag." This same virtue was possessed by the fairy pavilion which the

Peri Banou gave to Ahmed; the cloud which is no bigger than a man's hand may soon overspread the whole

But the fact that a natural phenomenon was explained in one way did not hinder it from being explained in a

dozen other ways. The fact that the sun was generally regarded as an allconquering hero did not prevent its

being called an egg, an apple, or a frog squatting on the waters, or Ixion's wheel, or the eye of Polyphemos, or

the stone of Sisyphos, which was no sooner pushed to the zenith than it rolled down to the horizon. So the

sky was not only a crystal dome, or a celestial ocean, but it was also the Aleian land through which

Bellerophon wandered, the country of the Lotoseaters, or again the realm of the Graiai beyond the twilight;

and finally it was personified and worshipped as Dyaus or Varuna, the Vedic prototypes of the Greek Zeus

and Ouranos. The clouds, too, had many other representatives besides ships and cows. In a future paper it will

be shown that they were sometimes regarded as angels or houris; at present it more nearly concerns us to

know that they appear, throughout all Aryan mythology, under the form of birds. It used to be a matter of

hopeless wonder to me that Aladdin's innocent request for a roc's egg to hang in the dome of his palace

should have been regarded as a crime worthy of punishment by the loss of the wonderful lamp; the obscurest

part of the whole affair being perhaps the Jinni's passionate allusion to the egg as his master: "Wretch! dost

thou command me to bring thee my master, and hang him up in the midst of this vaulted dome?" But the

incident is to some extent cleared of its mystery when we learn that the roc's egg is the bright sun, and that

the roc itself is the rushing stormcloud which, in the tale of Sindbad, haunts the sparkling starry firmament,

symbolized as a valley of diamonds.[40] According to one Arabic authority, the length of its wings is ten

thousand fathoms. But in European tradition it dwindles from these huge dimensions to the size of an eagle, a

raven, or a woodpecker. Among the birds enumerated by Kuhn and others as representing the stormcloud

are likewise the wren or "kinglet" (French roitelet); the owl, sacred to Athene; the cuckoo, stork, and

sparrow; and the redbreasted robin, whose name Robert was originally an epithet of the lightninggod Thor.

In certain parts of France it is still believed that the robbing of a wren's nest will render the culprit liable to be

struck by lightning. The same belief was formerly entertained in Teutonic countries with respect to the robin;

and I suppose that from this superstition is descended the prevalent notion, which I often encountered in

[40] Euhemerism has done its best with this bird, representing it as an immense vulture or condor or as a

reminiscence of the extinct dodo. But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaproth, well preserves its true character

when it describes it as "a bird which in flying obscures the sun, and of whose quills are made watertuns."

See Nouveau Journal Asiatique, Tom. XII. p. 235. The big bird in the Norse tale of the "Blue Belt" belongs to

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 21

Now, as the raven or woodpecker, in the various myths of schamir, is the dark stormcloud, so the

rocksplitting worm or plant or pebble which the bird carries in its beak and lets fall to the ground is nothing

more or less than the flash of lightning carried and dropped by the cloud. "If the cloud was supposed to be a

great bird, the lightnings were regarded as writhing worms or serpents in its beak. These fiery serpents, elikiai

grammoeidws feromenoi, are believed in to this day by the Canadian Indians, who call the thunder their

[41] BaringGould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 146. Compare Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 237, seq.

But these are not the only mythical conceptions which are to be found wrapped up in the various myths of

schamir and the diviningrod. The persons who told these stories were not weaving ingenious allegories

about thunderstorms; they were telling stories, or giving utterance to superstitions, of which the original

meaning was forgotten. The old grannies who, along with a stoical indifference to the fate of quails and

partridges, used to impress upon me the wickedness of killing robins, did not add that I should be struck by

lightning if I failed to heed their admonitions. They had never heard that the robin was the bird of Thor; they

merely rehearsed the remnant of the superstition which had survived to their own times, while the essential

part of it had long since faded from recollection. The reason for regarding a robin's life as more sacred than a

partridge's had been forgotten; but it left behind, as was natural, a vague recognition of that mythical sanctity.

The primitive meaning of a myth fades away as inevitably as the primitive meaning of a word or phrase; and

the rabbins who told of a worm which shatters rocks no more thought of the writhing thunderbolts than the

modern reader thinks of oystershells when he sees the word ostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer as

he writes the phrase good bye. It is only in its callow infancy that the full force of a myth is felt, and its

period of luxuriant development dates from the time when its physical significance is lost or obscured. It was

because the Greek had forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky, that he could make him king over an

anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu Dyaus, who carried his significance in his name as plainly as the

Greek Helios, never attained such an exalted position; he yielded to deities of less obvious pedigree, such as

Since, therefore, the mythtellers recounted merely the wonderful stories which their own nurses and

grandmas had told them, and had no intention of weaving subtle allegories or wrapping up a physical truth in

mystic emblems, it follows that they were not bound to avoid incongruities or to preserve a philosophical

symmetry in their narratives. In the great majority of complex myths, no such symmetry is to be found. A

score of different mythical conceptions would get wrought into the same story, and the attempt to pull them

apart and construct a single harmonious system of conceptions out of the pieces must often end in ingenious

absurdity. If Odysseus is unquestionably the sun, so is the eye of Polyphemos, which Odysseus puts out.[42]

But the Greek poet knew nothing of the incongruity, for he was thinking only of a superhuman hero freeing

himself from a giant cannibal; he knew nothing of Sanskrit, or of comparative mythology, and the sources of

[42] "If Polyphemos's eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the solar hero, extinguishes himself, a very primitive

instance of suicide." Mahaffy, Prolegomena, p. 57. See also Brown, Poseidon, pp. 39, 40. This objection

would be relevant only in case Homer were supposed to be constructing an allegory with entire knowledge of

its meaning. It has no validity whatever when we recollect that Homer could have known nothing of the

We need not be surprised, then, to find that in one version of the schamirmyth the cloud is the bird which

carries the worm, while in another version the cloud is the rock or mountain which the talisman cleaves open;

nor need we wonder at it, if we find stories in which the two conceptions are mingled together without regard

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 22

[43] The Sanskrit mythteller indeed mixes up his materials in a way which seems ludicrous to a Western

reader. He describes Indra (the sungod) as not only cleaving the cloudmountains with his sword, but also

cutting off their wings and hurling them from the sky. See Burnouf, Bhagavata Purana, VI. 12, 26.

In early Aryan mythology there is nothing by which the clouds are more frequently represented than by rocks

or mountains. Such were the Symplegades, which, charmed by the harp of the windgod Orpheus, parted to

make way for the talking ship Argo, with its crew of solar heroes.[44] Such, too, were the mountains Ossa

and Pelion, which the giants piled up one upon another in their impious assault upon Zeus, the lord of the

bright sky. As Mr. BaringGould observes: "The ancient Aryan had the same name for cloud and mountain.

To him the piles of vapour on the horizon were so like Alpine ranges, that he had but one word whereby to

designate both.[45] These great mountains of heaven were opened by the lightning. In the sudden flash he

beheld the dazzling splendour within, but only for a moment, and then, with a crash, the celestial rocks closed

again. Believing these vaporous piles to contain resplendent treasures of which partial glimpse was obtained

by mortals in a momentary gleam, tales were speedily formed, relating the adventures of some who had

[44] Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better, explanation of the Symplegades as the gates of Night

through which the solar ship, having passed successfully once, may henceforth pass forever. See the details of

[45] The Sanskrit parvata, a bulging or inflated body, means both "cloud" and "mountain." "In the Edda, too,

the rocks, said to have been fashioned out of Ymir's bones, are supposed to be intended for clouds. In Old

Norse Klakkr means both cloud and rock; nay, the English word CLOUD itself has been identified with the

AngloSaxon clud, rock. See Justi, Orient und Occident, Vol. II. p. 62." Max Muller, RigVeda, Vol. 1. p.

This sudden flash is the smiting of the cloudrock by the arrow of Ahmed, the resistless hammer of Thor, the

spear of Odin, the trident of Poseidon, or the rod of Hermes. The forked streak of light is the archetype of the

diviningrod in its oldest form,that in which it not only indicates the hidden treasures, but, like the staff of

the Ilsenstein shepherd, bursts open the enchanted crypt and reveals them to the astonished wayfarer. Hence

the one thing essential to the diviningrod, from whatever tree it be chosen, is that it shall be forked.

It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons which led the ancients to speak of the lightning as a worm,

serpent, trident, arrow, or forked wand; but when we inquire why it was sometimes symbolized as a flower or

leaf; or when we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as the ash, hazel, whitethorn, and mistletoe, were

supposed to be in a certain sense embodiments of it, we are entering upon a subject too complicated to be

satisfactorily treated within the limits of the present paper. It has been said that the point of resemblance

between a cow and a comet, that both have tails, was quite enough for the primitive wordmaker: it was

certainly enough for the primitive mythteller.[46] Sometimes the pinnate shape of a leaf, the forking of a

branch, the tricleft corolla, or even the red colour of a flower, seems to have been sufficient to determine the

association of ideas. The Hindu commentators of the Veda certainly lay great stress on the fact that the

palasa, one of their lightningtrees, is tridentleaved. The mistletoe branch is forked, like a wishbone,[47]

and so is the stem which bears the forgetmenot or wild scorpion grass. So too the leaves of the Hindu ficus

religiosa resemble long spearheads.[48] But in many cases it is impossible for us to determine with

confidence the reasons which may have guided primitive men in their choice of talismanic plants. In the case

of some of these stories, it would no doubt be wasting ingenuity to attempt to assign a mythical origin for

each point of detail. The ointment of the dervise, for instance, in the Arabian tale, has probably no special

mythical significance, but was rather suggested by the exigencies of the story, in an age when the old

mythologies were so far disintegrated and mingled together that any one talisman would serve as well as

another the purposes of the narrator. But the lightningplants of IndoEuropean folklore cannot be thus

summarily disposed of; for however difficult it may be for us to perceive any connection between them and

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 23

the celestial phenomena which they represent, the myths concerning them are so numerous and explicit as to

render it certain that some such connection was imagined by the mythmakers. The superstition concerning

the hand of glory is not so hard to interpret. In the mythology of the Finns, the stormcloud is a black man

with a bright copper hand; and in Hindustan, Indra Savitar, the deity who slays the demon of the cloud, is

goldenhanded. The selection of the hand of a man who has been hanged is probably due to the superstition

which regarded the stormgod Odin as peculiarly the lord of the gallows. The man who is raised upon the

gallows is placed directly in the track of the wild huntsman, who comes with his hounds to carry off the

victim; and hence the notion, which, according to Mr. Kelly, is "very common in Germany and not extinct in

[46] In accordance with the mediaeval "doctrine of signatures," it was maintained "that the hard, stony seeds

of the Gromwell must be good for gravel, and the knotty tubers of scrophularia for scrofulous glands; while

the scaly pappus of scaliosa showed it to be a specific in leprous diseases, the spotted leaves of pulmonaria

that it was a sovereign remedy for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage in the fissures of rocks that

it would disintegrate stone in the bladder." Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, Introd., p. xiv. See also

[47] Indeed, the wishbone, or forked clavicle of a fowl, itself belongs to the same family of talismans as the

[48] The ash, on the other hand, has been from time immemorial used for spears in many parts of the Aryan

domain. The word oesc meant, in AngloSaxon, indifferently "ashtree," or "spear"; and the same is, or has

been, true of the French fresne and the Greek melia. The root of oesc appears in the Sanskrit as, "to throw" or

"lance," whence asa, "a bow," and asana, "an arrow." See Pictet, Origines IndoEuropeennes, I. 222.

The paths of comparative mythology are devious, but we have now pursued them long enough I believe, to

have arrived at a tolerably clear understanding of the original nature of the diviningrod. Its power of

revealing treasures has been sufficiently explained; and its affinity for water results so obviously from the

character of the lightningmyth as to need no further comment. But its power of detecting criminals still

In Greek mythology, the being which detects and punishes crime is the Erinys, the prototype of the Latin

Fury, figured by late writers as a horrible monster with serpent locks. But this is a degradation of the original

conception. The name Erinys did not originally mean Fury, and it cannot be explained from Greek sources

alone. It appears in Sanskrit as Saranyu, a word which signifies the light of morning creeping over the sky.

And thus we are led to the startling conclusion that, as the light of morning reveals the evil deeds done under

the cover of night, so the lovely Dawn, or Erinys, came to be regarded under one aspect as the terrible

detector and avenger of iniquity. Yet startling as the conclusion is, it is based on established laws of phonetic

But what has the avenging daybreak to do with the lightning and the diviningrod? To the modern mind the

association is not an obvious one: in antiquity it was otherwise. Myths of the daybreak and myths of the

lightning often resemble each other so closely that, except by a delicate philological analysis, it is difficult to

distinguish the one from the other. The reason is obvious. In each case the phenomenon to be explained is the

struggle between the daygod and one of the demons of darkness. There is essentially no distinction to the

mind of the primitive man between the Panis, who steal Indra's bright cows and keep them in a dark cavern

all night, and the throttling snake Ahi or Echidna, who imprisons the waters in the stronghold of the

thundercloud and covers the earth with a shortlived darkness. And so the poisoned arrows of Bellerophon,

which slay the stormdragon, differ in no essential respect from the shafts with which Odysseus slaughters

the nightdemons who have for ten long hours beset his mansion. Thus the diviningrod, representing as it

does the weapon of the god of day, comes legitimately enough by its function of detecting and avenging

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 24

But the lightning not only reveals strange treasures and gives water to the thirsty land and makes plain what

is doing under cover of darkness; it also sometimes kills, benumbs, or paralyzes. Thus the head of the Gorgon

Medusa turns into stone those who look upon it. Thus the ointment of the dervise, in the tale of Baba

Abdallah, not only reveals all the treasures of the earth, but instantly thereafter blinds the unhappy man who

tests its powers. And thus the hand of glory, which bursts open bars and bolts, benumbs also those who

happen to be near it. Indeed, few of the favoured mortals who were allowed to visit the caverns opened by

sesame or the luckflower, escaped without disaster. The monkish tale of "The Clerk and the Image," in

which the primeval mythical features are curiously distorted, well illustrates this point.

In the city of Rome there formerly stood an image with its right hand extended and on its forefinger the

words "strike here." Many wise men puzzled in vain over the meaning of the inscription; but at last a certain

priest observed that whenever the sun shone on the figure, the shadow of the finger was discernible on the

ground at a little distance from the statue. Having marked the spot, he waited until midnight, and then began

to dig. At last his spade struck upon something hard. It was a trapdoor, below which a flight of marble steps

descended into a spacious hall, where many men were sitting in solemn silence amid piles of gold and

diamonds and long rows of enamelled vases. Beyond this he found another room, a gynaecium filled with

beautiful women reclining on richly embroidered sofas; yet here, too, all was profound silence. A superb

banquetinghall next met his astonished gaze; then a silent kitchen; then granaries loaded with forage; then a

stable crowded with motionless horses. The whole place was brilliantly lighted by a carbuncle which was

suspended in one corner of the receptionroom; and opposite stood an archer, with his bow and arrow raised,

in the act of taking aim at the jewel. As the priest passed back through this hall, he saw a diamondhilted

knife lying on a marble table; and wishing to carry away something wherewith to accredit his story, he

reached out his hand to take it; but no sooner had he touched it than all was dark. The archer had shot with his

arrow, the bright jewel was shivered into a thousand pieces, the staircase had fled, and the priest found

[49] Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, in the "Faery Queen," where, however, the knight fares better

than this poor priest. Usually these lightningcaverns were like Ixion's treasurehouse, into which none

might look and live. This conception is the foundation of part of the story of BlueBeard and of the Arabian

Usually, however, though the lightning is wont to strike dead, with its basilisk glance, those who rashly enter

its mysterious caverns, it is regarded rather as a benefactor than as a destroyer. The feelings with which the

mythmaking age contemplated the thundershower as it revived the earth paralyzed by a long drought, are

shown in the myth of Oidipous. The Sphinx, whose name signifies "the one who binds," is the demon who

sits on the cloudrock and imprisons the rain, muttering, dark sayings which none but the allknowing sun

may understand. The flash of solar light which causes the monster to fling herself down from the cliff with a

fearful roar, restores the land to prosperity. But besides this, the association of the thunderstorm with the

approach of summer has produced many myths in which the lightning is symbolized as the liferenewing

wand of the victorious sungod. Hence the use of the diviningrod in the cure of disease; and hence the large

family of schamirmyths in which the dead are restored to life by leaves or herbs. In Grimm's tale of the

Three Snake Leaves," a prince is buried alive (like Sindbad) with his dead wife, and seeing a snake

approaching her body, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently another snake, 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."[50] In the Greek story, told by AElian and

Apollodoros, Polyidos is shut up with the corpse of Glaukos, which he is ordered to restore to life. He kills a

dragon which is approaching the body, but is presently astonished at seeing another dragon come with a blade

of grass and place it upon its dead companion, which instantly rises from the ground. Polyidos takes the same

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 25

blade of grass, and with it resuscitates Glaukos. The same incident occurs in the Hindu story of Panch Phul

We need not wonder, then, at the extraordinary therapeutic properties which are in all Aryan folklore

ascribed to the various lightningplants. In Sweden sanitary amulets are made of mistletoetwigs, and the

plant is supposed to be a specific against epilepsy and an antidote for poisons. In Cornwall children are

passed through holes in ashtrees in order to cure them of hernia. Ash rods are used in some parts of England

for the cure of diseased sheep, cows, and horses; and in particular they are supposed to neutralize the venom

of serpents. The notion that snakes are afraid of an ashtree is not extinct even in the United States. The other

day I was told, not by an old granny, but by a man fairly educated and endowed with a very unusual amount

of good commonsense, that a rattlesnake will sooner go through fire than creep over ash leaves or into the

shadow of an ashtree. Exactly the same statement is made by Piny, who adds that if you draw a circle with

an ash rod around the spot of ground on which a snake is lying, the animal must die of starvation, being as

effectually imprisoned as Ugolino in the dungeon at Pisa. In Cornwall it is believed that a blow from an ash

stick will instantly kill any serpent. The ash shares this virtue with the hazel and fern. A Swedish peasant will

tell you that snakes may be deprived of their venom by a touch with a hazel wand; and when an ancient

Greek had occasion to make his bed in the woods, he selected fern leaves if possible, in the belief that the

But the beneficent character of the lightning appears still more clearly in another class of myths. To the

primitive man the shaft of light coming down from heaven was typical of the original descent of fire for the

benefit and improvement of the human race. The Sioux Indians account for the origin of fire by a myth of

unmistakable kinship; they say that "their first ancestor obtained his fire from the sparks which a friendly

panther struck from the rocks as he scampered up a stony hill."[52] This panther is obviously the counterpart

of the Aryan bird which drops schamir. But the Aryan imagination hit upon a far more remarkable

conception. The ancient Hindus obtained fire by a process similar to that employed by Count Rumford in his

experiments on the generation of heat by friction. They first wound a couple of cords around a pointed stick

in such a way that the unwinding of the one would wind up the other, and then, placing the point of the stick

against a circular disk of wood, twirled it rapidly by alternate pulls on the two strings. This instrument is

called a chark, and is still used in South Africa,[53] in Australia, in Sumatra, and among the Veddahs of

Ceylon. The Russians found it in Kamtchatka; and it was formerly employed in America, from Labrador to

the Straits of Magellan.[54] The Hindus churned milk by a similar process;[55] and in order to explain the

thunderstorm, a Sanskrit poem tells how "once upon a time the Devas, or gods, and their opponents, the

Asuras, made a truce, and joined together in churning the ocean to procure amrita, the drink of immortality.

They took Mount Mandara for a churningstick, and, wrapping the great serpent Sesha round it for a rope,

they made the mountain spin round to and fro, the Devas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at its

head."[56] In this myth the churningstick, with its flying serpentcords, is the lightning, and the armrita, or

drink of immortality, is simply the rainwater, which in Aryan folklore possesses the same healing virtues

as the lightning. "In Sclavonic myths it is the water of life which restores the dead earth, a water brought by a

bird from the depths of a gloomy cave."[57] It is the celestial soma or mead which Indra loves to drink; it is

the ambrosial nectar of the Olympian gods; it is the charmed water which in the Arabian Nights restores to

human shape the victims of wicked sorcerers; and it is the elixir of life which mediaeval philosophers tried to

discover, and in quest of which Ponce de Leon traversed the wilds of Florida.[58]

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 26

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

"Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and wood, and prepare a fire, which, to George's

astonishment, he lighted thus. He got a block of wood, in the middle of which he made a hole; then he cut

and pointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the block, worked it round between his palms for some

time and with increasing rapidity. Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after it burst into a

flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices of shark and roasted them."Reade, Never too Late to Mend,

[55] The production of fire by the drill is often called churning, e. g. "He took the uvati [chark], and sat down

[56] Kelly, IndoEuropean FolkLore, p. 39. Burnouf, Bhagavata Purana, VIII. 6, 32.

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

The most interesting point in this Hindu myth is the name of the peaked mountain Mandara, or Manthara,

which the gods and devils took for their churningstick. The word means "a churningstick," and it appears

also, with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the firedrill, pramantha. Now Kuhn has proved that this

name, pramantha, is etymologically identical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent Titan, who stole

fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the richest of boons. This sublime personage was

originally nothing but the celestial drill which churns fire out of the clouds; but the Greeks had so entirely

forgotten his origin that they interpreted his name as meaning "the one who thinks beforehand," and

accredited him with a brother, Epimetheus, or "the one who thinks too late." The Greeks had adopted another

name, trypanon, for their firedrill, and thus the primitive character of Prometheus became obscured.

I have said above that it was regarded as absolutely essential that the diviningrod should be forked. To this

rule, however, there was one exception, and if any further evidence be needed to convince the most sceptical

that the diviningrod is nothing but a symbol of the lightning, that exception will furnish such evidence. For

this exceptional kind of diviningrod was made of a pointed stick rotating in a block of wood, and it was the

presence of hidden water or treasure which was supposed to excite the rotatory motion.

In the myths relating to Prometheus, the lightninggod appears as the originator of civilization, sometimes as

the creator of the human race, and always as its friend,[59] suffering in its behalf the most fearful tortures at

the hands of the jealous Zeus. In one story he creates man by making a clay image and infusing into it a spark

of the fire which he had brought from heaven; in another story he is himself the first man. In the

Peloponnesian myth Phoroneus, who is Prometheus under another name, is the first man, and his mother was

an ashtree. In Norse mythology, also, the gods were said to have made the first man out of the ashtree

Yggdrasil. The association of the heavenly fire with the lifegiving forces of nature is very common in the

myths of both hemispheres, and in view of the facts already cited it need not surprise us. Hence the Hindu

Agni and the Norse Thor were patrons of marriage, and in Norway, the most lucky day on which to be

married is still supposed to be Thursday, which in old times was the day of the firegod.[60] Hence the

lightningplants have divers virtues in matters pertaining to marriage. The Romans made their wedding

torches of whitethorn; hazelnuts are still used all over Europe in divinations relating to the future lover or

sweetheart;[61] and under a mistletoe bough it is allowable for a gentleman to kiss a lady. A vast number of

kindred superstitions are described by Mr. Kelly, to whom I am indebted for many of these examples.[62]

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 27

[59] In the Vedas the raingod Soma, originally the personification of the sacrificial ambrosia, is the deity

who imparts to men life, knowledge, and happiness. See Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 85. Tylor, Primitive

[60] We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the Greek firegod Hephaistos the husband of

[61] "Our country maidens are well aware that triple leaves plucked at hazard from the common ash are worn

in the breast, for the purpose of causing prophetic dreams respecting a dilatory lover. The leaves of the

yellow trefoil are supposed to possess similar virtues."Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire FolkLore, p.

[62] In Peru, a mighty and farworshipped deity was Catequil, the thundergod, .... he who in thunderflash

and clap hurls from his sling the small, round, smooth thunderstones, treasured in the villages as

firefetishes and charms to kindle the flames of love."Tylor, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 239

Thus we reach at last the completed conception of the diviningrod, or as it is called in this sense the

wishrod, with its kindred talismans, from Aladdin's lamp and the purse of Bedreddin Hassan, to the

Sangreal, the philosopher's stone, and the goblets of Oberon and Tristram. These symbols of the reproductive

energies of nature, which give to the possessor every good and perfect gift, illustrate the uncurbed belief in

the power of wish which the ancient man shared with modern children. In the Norse story of Frodi's quern,

the myth assumes a whimsical shape. The prose Edda tells of a primeval age of gold, when everybody had

whatever he wanted. This was because the giant Frodi had a mill which ground out peace and plenty and

abundance of gold withal, so that it lay about the roads like pebbles. Through the inexcusable avarice of

Frodi, this wonderful implement was lost to the world. For he kept his maidservants working at the mill

until they got out of patience, and began to make it grind out hatred and war. Then came a mighty searover

by night and slew Frodi and carried away the maids and the quern. When he got well out to sea, he told them

to grind out salt, and so they did with a vengeance. They ground the ship full of salt and sank it, and so the

Mr. Kelly rightly identifies Frodi with the sungod Fro or Freyr, and observes that the magic mill is only

another form of the firechurn, or chark. According to another version the quern is still grinding away and

keeping the sea salt, and over the place where it lies there is a prodigious whirlpool or maelstrom which sucks

In its completed shape, the lightningwand is the caduceus, or rod of Hermes. I observed, in the preceding

paper, that in the Greek conception of Hermes there have been fused together the attributes of two deities

who were originally distinct. The Hermes of the Homeric Hymn is a windgod; but the later Hermes

Agoraios, the patron of gymnasia, the mutilation of whose statues caused such terrible excitement in Athens

during the Peloponnesian War, is a very different personage. He is a firegod, invested with many solar

attributes, and represents the quickening forces of nature. In this capacity the invention of fire was ascribed to

him as well as to Prometheus; he was said to be the friend of mankind, and was surnamed Ploutodotes, or

The Norse windgod Odin has in like manner acquired several of the attributes of Freyr and Thor.[63] His

lightningspear, which is borrowed from Thor, appears by a comical metamorphosis as a wishrod which

will administer a sound thrashing to the enemies of its possessor. Having cut a hazel stick, you have only to

lay down an old coat, name your intended victim, wish he was there, and whack away: he will howl with pain

at every blow. This wonderful cudgel appears in Dasent's tale of "The Lad who went to the North Wind,"

with which we may conclude this discussion. The story is told, with little variation, in Hindustan, Germany,

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 28

[63] In Polynesia, "the great deity Maui adds a new complication to his enigmatic solarcelestial character by

The North Wind, representing the mischievous Hermes, once blew away a poor woman's meal. So her boy

went to the North Wind and demanded his rights for the meal his mother had lost. "I have n't got your meal,"

said the Wind, "but here's a tablecloth which will cover itself with an excellent dinner whenever you tell it

to." So the lad took the cloth and started for home. At nightfall he stopped at an inn, spread his cloth on the

table, and ordered it to cover itself with good things, and so it did. But the landlord, who thought it would be

money in his pocket to have such a cloth, stole it after the boy had gone to bed, and substituted another just

like it in appearance. Next day the boy went home in great glee to show off for his mother's astonishment

what the North Wind had given him, but all the dinner he got that day was what the old woman cooked for

him. In his despair he went back to the North Wind and called him a liar, and again demanded his rights for

the meal he had lost. "I have n't got your meal," said the Wind, "but here's a ram which will drop money out

of its fleece whenever you tell it to." So the lad travelled home, stopping over night at the same inn, and when

he got home he found himself with a ram which did n't drop coins out of its fleece. A third time he visited the

North Wind, and obtained a bag with a stick in it which, at the word of command, would jump out of the bag

and lay on until told to stop. Guessing how matters stood as to his cloth and ram, he turned in at the same

tavern, and going to a bench lay down as if to sleep. The landlord thought that a stick carried about in a bag

must be worth something, and so he stole quietly up to the bag, meaning to get the stick out and change it.

But just as he got within whacking distance, the boy gave the word, and out jumped the stick and beat the

thief until he promised to give back the ram and the tablecloth. And so the boy got his rights for the meal

IT is related by Ovid that Lykaon, king of Arkadia, once invited Zeus to dinner, and served up for him a dish

of human flesh, in order to test the god's omniscience. But the trick miserably failed, and the impious

monarch received the punishment which his crime had merited. He was transformed into a wolf, that he

might henceforth feed upon the viands with which he had dared to pollute the table of the king of Olympos.

From that time forth, according to Pliny, a noble Arkadian was each year, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led

to the margin of a certain lake. Hanging his clothes upon a tree, he then plunged into the water and became a

wolf. For the space of nine years he roamed about the adjacent woods, and then, if he had not tasted human

flesh during all this time, he was allowed to swim back to the place where his clothes were hanging, put them

on, and return to his natural form. It is further related of a certain Demainetos, that, having once been present

at a human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and was transformed into a wolf for a term of ten

These and other similar mythical germs were developed by the mediaeval imagination into the horrible

A werewolf, or loupgarou[65] was a person who had the power of transforming himself into a wolf, being

endowed, while in the lupine state, with the intelligence of a man, the ferocity of a wolf, and the irresistible

strength of a demon. The ancients believed in the existence of such persons; but in the Middle Ages the

metamorphosis was supposed to be a phenomenon of daily occurrence, and even at the present day, in

secluded portions of Europe, the superstition is still cherished by peasants. The belief, moreover, is supported

by a vast amount of evidence, which can neither be argued nor poohpoohed into insignificance. It is the

business of the comparative mythologist to trace the pedigree of the ideas from which such a conception may

have sprung; while to the critical historian belongs the task of ascertaining and classifying the actual facts

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[65] Werewolf = manwolf, wer meaning "man." Garou is a Gallic corruption of werewolf, so that

The mediaeval belief in werewolves is especially adapted to illustrate the complicated manner in which

divers mythical conceptions and misunderstood natural occurrences will combine to generate a

longenduring superstition. Mr. Cox, indeed, would have us believe that the whole notion arose from an

unintentional play upon words; but the careful survey of the field, which has been taken by Hertz and

BaringGould, leads to the conclusion that many other circumstances have been at work. The delusion,

though doubtless purely mythical in its origin, nevertheless presents in its developed state a curious mixture

With regard to the Arkadian legend, taken by itself, Mr. Cox is probably right. The story seems to belong to

that large class of myths which have been devised in order to explain the meaning of equivocal words whose

true significance has been forgotten. The epithet Lykaios, as applied to Zeus, had originally no reference to

wolves: it means "the bright one," and gave rise to lycanthropic legends only because of the similarity in

sound between the names for "wolf" and "brightness." Aryan mythology furnishes numerous other instances

of this confusion. The solar deity, Phoibos Lykegenes, was originally the "offspring of light"; but popular

etymology made a kind of werewolf of him by interpreting his name as the "wolfborn." The name of the

hero Autolykos means simply the "selfluminous"; but it was more frequently interpreted as meaning "a very

wolf," in allusion to the supposed character of its possessor. Bazra, the name of the citadel of Carthage, was

the Punic word for "fortress"; but the Greeks confounded it with byrsa, "a hide," and hence the story of the

oxhides cut into strips by Dido in order to measure the area of the place to be fortified. The old theory that

the Irish were Phoenicians had a similar origin. The name Fena, used to designate the old Scoti or Irish, is the

plural of Fion, "fair," seen in the name of the hero Fion Gall, or "Fingal"; but the monkish chroniclers

identified Fena with phoinix, whence arose the myth; and by a like misunderstanding of the epithet Miledh,

or "warrior," applied to Fion by the Gaelic bards, there was generated a mythical hero, Milesius, and the

soubriquet "Milesian," colloquially employed in speaking of the Irish.[66] So the Franks explained the name

of the town Daras, in Mesopotamia, by the story that the Emperor Justinian once addressed the chief

magistrate with the exclamation, daras, "thou shalt give":[67] the Greek chronicler, Malalas, who spells the

name Doras, informs us with equal complacency that it was the place where Alexander overcame

Codomannus with dorn, "the spear." A certain passage in the Alps is called Scaletta, from its resemblance to

a staircase; but according to a local tradition it owes its name to the bleaching skeletons of a company of

Moors who were destroyed there in the eighth century, while attempting to penetrate into Northern Italy. The

name of Antwerp denotes the town built at a "wharf"; but it sounds very much like the Flemish handt werpen,

"handthrowing": "hence arose the legend of the giant who cut of the hands of those who passed his castle

without paying him blackmail, and threw them into the Scheldt."[68] In the myth of Bishop Hatto, related in

a previous paper, the Mausethurm is a corruption of mautthurm; it means "customstower," and has

nothing to do with mice or rats. Doubtless this etymology was the cause of the floating myth getting fastened

to this particular place; that it did not give rise to the myth itself is shown by the existence of the same tale in

other places. Somewhere in England there is a place called Chateau Vert; the peasantry have corrupted it into

Shotover, and say that it has borne that name ever since Little John shot over a high hill in the

neighbourhood.[69] Latium means "the flat land"; but, according to Virgil, it is the place where Saturn once

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 30

[69] Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon which is based the myth of the "confusion of

tongues" in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really BabIl, or "the gate of God"; but the

Hebrew writer erroneously derives the word from the root balal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical

explanation,that Babel was a place where human speech became confused. See Rawlinson, in Smith's

Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I. p. 149; Renan, Histoire des Langues Semitiques, Vol. I. p. 32; Donaldson,

[70] Vilg. AEn. VIII. 322. With Latium compare plat?s, Skr. prath (to spread out), Eng. flat. Ferrar,

It was in this way that the constellation of the Great Bear received its name. The Greek word arktos,

answering to the Sanskrit riksha, meant originally any bright object, and was applied to the bearfor what

reason it would not be easy to stateand to that constellation which was most conspicuous in the latitude of

the early home of the Aryans. When the Greeks had long forgotten why these stars were called arktoi, they

symbolized them as a Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, as Max Muller observes, "the name of the Arctic

regions rests on a misunderstanding of a name framed thousands of years ago in Central Asia, and the

surprise with which many a thoughtful observer has looked at these seven bright stars, wondering why they

were ever called the Bear, is removed by a reference to the early annals of human speech." Among the

Algonquins the sungod Michabo was represented as a hare, his name being compounded of michi, "great,"

and wabos, "a hare"; yet wabos also meant "white," so that the god was doubtless originally called simply

"the Great White One." The same naive process has made bears of the Arkadians, whose name, like that of

the Lykians, merely signified that they were "children of light"; and the metamorphosis of Kallisto, mother of

Arkas, into a bear, and of Lykaon into a wolf, rests apparently upon no other foundation than an erroneous

etymology. Originally Lykaon was neither man nor wolf; he was but another form of Phoibos Lykegenes, the

lightborn sun, and, as Mr. Cox has shown, his legend is but a variation of that of Tantalos, who in time of

drought offers to Zeus the flesh of his own offspring, the withered fruits, and is punished for his impiety.

It seems to me, however, that this explanation, though valid as far as it goes, is inadequate to explain all the

features of the werewolf superstition, or to account for its presence in all Aryan countries and among many

peoples who are not of Aryan origin. There can be no doubt that the mythmakers transformed Lykaon into a

wolf because of his unlucky name; because what really meant "bright man" seemed to them to mean

"wolfman"; but it has by no means been proved that a similar equivocation occurred in the case of all the

primitive Aryan werewolves, nor has it been shown to be probable that among each people the being with the

uncanny name got thus accidentally confounded with the particular beast most dreaded by that people.

Etymology alone does not explain the fact that while Gaul has been the favourite haunt of the manwolf,

Scandinavia has been preferred by the manbear, and Hindustan by the mantiger. To account for such a

Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of primitive thinking than the close community of nature which it

assumes between man and brute. The doctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some shape or other all

over the world, implies a fundamental identity between the two; the Hindu is taught to respect the flocks

browsing in the meadow, and will on no account lift his hand against a cow, for who knows but it may he his

own grandmother? The recent researches of Mr. M`Lennan and Mr. Herbert Spencer have served to connect

this feeling with the primeval worship of ancestors and with the savage customs of totemism.[71]

[71] M`Lennan, "The Worship of Animals and Plants," Fortnightly Review, N. S. Vol. VI. pp. 407427,

562582, Vol. VII. pp 194216; Spencer, "The Origin of Animal Worship," Id. Vol. VII. pp. 535550,

The worship of ancestors seems to have been every where the oldest systematized form of fetichistic religion.

The reverence paid to the chieftain of the tribe while living was continued and exaggerated after his death

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 31

The uncivilized man is everywhere incapable of grasping the idea of death as it is apprehended by civilized

people. He cannot understand that a man should pass away so as to be no longer capable of communicating

with his fellows. The image of his dead chief or comrade remains in his mind, and the savage's philosophic

realism far surpasses that of the most extravagant mediaeval schoolmen; to him the persistence of the idea

implies the persistence of the reality. The dead man, accordingly, is not really dead; he has thrown off his

body like a husk, yet still retains his old appearance, and often shows himself to his old friends, especially

after nightfall. He is no doubt possessed of more extensive powers than before his transformation,[72] and

may very likely have a share in regulating the weather, granting or withholding rain. Therefore, argues the

uncivilized mind, he is to be cajoled and propitiated more sedulously now than before his strange

[72] Thus is explained. the singular conduct of the Hindu, who slays himself before his enemy's door, in

order to acquire greater power of injuring him. "A certain Brahman, on whose lands a Kshatriya raja had built

a house, ripped himself up in revenge, and became a demon of the kind called Brahmadasyu, who has been

ever since the terror of the whole country, and is the most common villagedeity in Kharakpur. Toward the

close of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of whose house a man had wrongfully, as they

thought, taken forty rupees; whereupon one of the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his own mother's head,

with the professed view, entertained by both mother and son, that her spirit, excited by the beating of a large

drum during forty days might haunt, torment, and pursue to death the taker of their money and those

This kind of worship still maintains a languid existence as the state religion of China, and it still exists as a

portion of Brahmanism; but in the Vedic religion it is to be seen in all its vigour and in all its naive

simplicity. According to the ancient Aryan, the pitris, or "Fathers" (Lat. patres), live in the sky along with

Yama, the great original Pitri of mankind. This first man came down from heaven in the lightning, and back

to heaven both himself and all his offspring must have gone. There they distribute light unto men below, and

they shine themselves as stars; and hence the Christianized German peasant, fifty centuries later, tells his

children that the stars are angels' eyes, and the English cottager impresses it on the youthful mind that it is

wicked to point at the stars, though why he cannot tell. But the Pitris are not stars only, nor do they content

themselves with idly looking down on the affairs of men, after the fashion of the laissezfaire divinities of

Lucretius. They are, on the contrary, very busy with the weather; they send rain, thunder, and lightning; and

they especially delight in rushing over the housetops in a great gale of wind, led on by their chief, the

It has been elsewhere shown that the howling dog, or wishhound of Hermes, whose appearance under the

windows of a sick person is such an alarming portent, is merely the tempest personified. Throughout all

Aryan mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the nightwind, with their howling dogs,

gathering into their throng the souls of those just dying as they pass by their houses.[73] Sometimes the

whole complex conception is wrapped up in the notion of a single dog, the messenger of the god of shades,

who comes to summon the departing soul. Sometimes, instead of a dog, we have a great ravening wolf who

comes to devour its victim and extinguish the sunlight of life, as that old wolf of the tribe of Fenrir devoured

little Red RidingHood with her robe of scarlet twilight.[74] Thus we arrive at a true werewolf myth. The

stormwind, or howling Rakshasa of Hindu folklore, is "a great misshapen giant with red beard and red

hair, with pointed protruding teeth, ready to lacerate and devour human flesh; his body is covered with

coarse, bristling hair, his huge mouth is open, he looks from side to side as he walks, lusting after the flesh

and blood of men, to satisfy his raging hunger and quench his consuming thirst. Towards nightfall his

strength increases manifold; he can change his shape at will; he haunts the woods, and roams howling

[73] Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still customary to open the windows when a person dies, in order

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[74] The story of little Red RidingHood is "mutilated in the English version, but known more perfectly by

old wives in Germany, who can tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was swallowed

with her grandmother by the wolf, till they both came out safe and sound when the hunter cut open the

sleeping beast." Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of Vasilissa the

Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb, who "was swallowed by the cow and came out unhurt"; the

story of Saktideva swallowed by the fish and cut out again, in Somadeva Bhatta, II. 118184; and the story of

Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old Testament. All these are different versions of the same myth, and

refer to the alternate swallowing up and casting forth of Day by Night, which is commonly personified as a

wolf, and now and then as a great fish. Compare Grimm's story of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. cit.,

Now if the stormwind is a host of Pitris, or one great Pitri who appears as a fearful giant, and is also a pack

of wolves or wishhounds, or a single savage dog or wolf, the inference is obvious to the mythopoeic mind

that men may become wolves, at least after death. And to the uncivilized thinker this inference is

strengthened, as Mr. Spencer has shown, by evidence registered on his own tribal totem or heraldic emblem.

The bears and lions and leopards of heraldry are the degenerate descendants of the totem of savagery which

designated the tribe by a beastsymbol. To the untutored mind there is everything in a name; and the

descendant of Brown Bear or Yellow Tiger or Silver Hyaena cannot be pronounced unfaithful to his own

style of philosophizing, if he regards his ancestors, who career about his hut in the darkness of night, as

Thus we not only see a ray of light thrown on the subject of metempsychosis, but we get a glimpse of the

curious process by which the intensely realistic mind of antiquity arrived at the notion that men could be

transformed into beasts. For the belief that the soul can temporarily quit the body during lifetime has been

universally entertained; and from the conception of wolflike ghosts it was but a short step to the conception

of corporeal werewolves. In the Middle Ages the phenomena of trance and catalepsy were cited in proof of

the theory that the soul can leave the body and afterwards return to it. Hence it was very difficult for a person

accused of witchcraft to prove an alibi; for to any amount of evidence showing that the body was innocently

reposing at home and in bed, the rejoinder was obvious that the soul may nevertheless have been in

attendance at the witches' Sabbath or busied in maiming a neighbour's cattle. According to one mediaeval

notion, the soul of the werewolf quit its human body, which remained in a trance until its return.[76]

[76] In those days even an afterdinner nap seems to have been thought uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, I.

The mythological basis of the werewolf superstition is now, I believe, sufficiently indicated. The belief,

however, did not reach its complete development, or acquire its most horrible features, until the pagan habits

of thought which had originated it were modified by contact with Christian theology. To the ancient there

was nothing necessarily diabolical in the transformation of a man into a beast. But Christianity, which

retained such a host of pagan conceptions under such strange disguises, which degraded the "Allfather"

Odin into the ogre of the castle to which Jack climbed on his beanstalk, and which blended the beneficent

lightninggod Thor and the mischievous Hermes and the faunlike Pan into the grotesque Teutonic Devil,

did not fail to impart a new and fearful character to the belief in werewolves. Lycanthropy became regarded

as a species of witchcraft; the werewolf was supposed to have obtained his peculiar powers through the

favour or connivance of the Devil; and hundreds of persons were burned alive or broken on the wheel for

having availed themselves of the privilege of beastmetamorphosis. The superstition, thus widely extended

and greatly intensified, was confirmed by many singular phenomena which cannot be omitted from any

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 33

The first of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity, characteristic of Scandinavia, but not unknown in

other countries. In times when killing one's enemies often formed a part of the necessary business of life,

persons were frequently found who killed for the mere love of the thing; with whom slaughter was an end

desirable in itself, not merely a means to a desirable end. What the miser is in an age which worships

mammon, such was the Berserker in an age when the current idea of heaven was that of a place where people

could hack each other to pieces through all eternity, and when the man who refused a challenge was punished

with confiscation of his estates. With these Northmen, in the ninth century, the chief business and amusement

in life was to set sail for some pleasant country, like Spain or France, and make all the coasts and navigable

rivers hideous with rapine and massacre. When at home, in the intervals between their freebooting

expeditions, they were liable to become possessed by a strange homicidal madness, during which they would

array themselves in the skins of wolves or bears, and sally forth by night to crack the backbones, smash the

skulls, and sometimes to drink with fiendish glee the blood of unwary travellers or loiterers. These fits of

madness were usually followed by periods of utter exhaustion and nervous depression.[77]

[77] See Dasent, Burnt Njai, Vol. I. p. xxii.; Grettis Saga, by Magnusson and Morris, chap. xix.; Viga Glum's

Saga, by Sir Edmund Head, p. 13, note, where the Berserkers are said to have maddened themselves with

drugs. Dasent compares them with the Malays, who work themselves into a frenzy by means of arrack, or

Such, according to the unanimous testimony of historians, was the celebrated "Berserker rage," not peculiar

to the Northland, although there most conspicuously manifested. Taking now a step in advance, we find that

in comparatively civilized countries there have been many cases of monstrous homicidal insanity. The two

most celebrated cases, among those collected by Mr. BaringGould, are those of the Marechal de Retz, in

1440, and of Elizabeth, a Hungarian countess, in the seventeenth century. The Countess Elizabeth enticed

young girls into her palace on divers pretexts, and then coolly murdered them, for the purpose of bathing in

their blood. The spectacle of human suffering became at last such a delight to her, that she would apply with

her own hands the most excruciating tortures, relishing the shrieks of her victims as the epicure relishes each

sip of his old Chateau Margaux. In this way she is said to have murdered six hundred and fifty persons before

her evil career was brought to an end; though, when one recollects the famous men in buckram and the

notorious trio of crows, one is inclined to strike off a cipher, and regard sixtyfive as a sufficiently imposing

and far less improbable number. But the case of the Marechal de Retz is still more frightful. A marshal of

France, a scholarly man, a patriot, and a man of holy life, he became suddenly possessed by an uncontrollable

desire to murder children. During seven years he continued to inveigle little boys and girls into his castle, at

the rate of about TWO EACH WEEK, (?) and then put them to death in various ways, that he might witness

their agonies and bathe in their blood; experiencing after each occasion the most dreadful remorse, but led on

by an irresistible craving to repeat the crime. When this unparalleled iniquity was finally brought to light, the

castle was found to contain bins full of children's bones. The horrible details of the trial are to be found in the

Going a step further, we find cases in which the propensity to murder has been accompanied by cannibalism.

In 1598 a tailor of Chalons was sentenced by the parliament of Paris to be burned alive for lycanthropy. "This

wretched man had decoyed children into his shop, or attacked them in the gloaming when they strayed in the

woods, had torn them with his teeth and killed them, after which he seems calmly to have dressed their flesh

as ordinary meat, and to have eaten it with a great relish. The number of little innocents whom he destroyed is

unknown. A whole caskful of bones was discovered in his house."[78] About 1850 a beggar in the village of

Polomyia, in Galicia, was proved to have killed and eaten fourteen children. A house had one day caught fire

and burnt to the ground, roasting one of the inmates, who was unable to escape. The beggar passed by soon

after, and, as he was suffering from excessive hunger, could not resist the temptation of making a meal off the

charred body. From that moment he was tormented by a craving for human flesh. He met a little orphan girl,

about nine years old, and giving her a pinchbeck ring told her to seek for others like it under a tree in the

neighbouring wood. She was slain, carried to the beggar's hovel, and eaten. In the course of three years

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thirteen other children mysteriously disappeared, but no one knew whom to suspect. At last an innkeeper

missed a pair of ducks, and having no good opinion of this beggar's honesty, went unexpectedly to his cabin,

burst suddenly in at the door, and to his horror found him in the act of hiding under his cloak a severed head;

a bowl of fresh blood stood under the oven, and pieces of a thigh were cooking over the fire.[79]

This occurred only about twenty years ago, and the criminal, though ruled by an insane appetite, is not known

to have been subject to any mental delusion. But there have been a great many similar cases, in which the

homicidal or cannibal craving has been accompanied by genuine hallucination. Forms of insanity in which

the afflicted persons imagine themselves to be brute animals are not perhaps very common, but they are not

unknown. I once knew a poor demented old man who believed himself to be a horse, and would stand by the

hour together before a manger, nibbling hay, or deluding himself with the presence of so doing. Many of the

cannibals whose cases are related by Mr. BaringGould, in his chapter of horrors, actually believed

themselves to have been transformed into wolves or other wild animals. Jean Grenier was a boy of thirteen,

partially idiotic, and of strongly marked canine physiognomy; his jaws were large and projected forward, and

his canine teeth were unnaturally long, so as to protrude beyond the lower lip. He believed himself to be a

werewolf. One evening, meeting half a dozen young girls, he scared them out of their wits by telling them

that as soon as the sun had set he would turn into a wolf and eat them for supper. A few days later, one little

girl, having gone out at nightfall to look after the sheep, was attacked by some creature which in her terror

she mistook for a wolf, but which afterwards proved to be none other than Jean Grenier. She beat him off

with her sheepstaff, and fled home. As several children had mysteriously disappeared from the

neighbourhood, Grenier was at once suspected. Being brought before the parliament of Bordeaux, he stated

that two years ago he had met the Devil one night in the woods and had signed a compact with him and

received from him a wolfskin. Since then he had roamed about as a wolf after dark, resuming his human

shape by daylight. He had killed and eaten several children whom he had found alone in the fields, and on

one occasion he had entered a house while the family were out and taken the baby from its cradle. A careful

investigation proved the truth of these statements, so far as the cannibalism was concerned. There is no doubt

that the missing children were eaten by Jean Grenier, and there is no doubt that in his own mind the

halfwitted boy was firmly convinced that he was a wolf. Here the lycanthropy was complete.

In the year 1598, "in a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, some countrymen came one day upon the

corpse of a boy of fifteen, horribly mutilated and bespattered with blood. As the men approached, two

wolves, which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket. The men gave chase immediately,

following their bloody tracks till they lost them; when, suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth

chattering with fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard, and with his hands dyed in blood.

His nails were long as claws, and were clotted with fresh gore and shreds of human flesh."[80]

This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, halfwitted creature under the dominion of a cannibal appetite. He

was employed in tearing to pieces the corpse of the boy when these countrymen came up. Whether there were

any wolves in the case, except what the excited imaginations of the men may have conjured up, I will not

presume to determine; but it is certain that Roulet supposed himself to be a wolf, and killed and ate several

persons under the influence of the delusion. He was sentenced to death, but the parliament of Paris reversed

The annals of the Middle Ages furnish many cases similar to these of Grenier and Roulet. Their share in

maintaining the werewolf superstition is undeniable; but modern science finds in them nothing that cannot be

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 35

readily explained. That stupendous process of breeding, which we call civilization, has been for long ages

strengthening those kindly social feelings by the possession of which we are chiefly distinguished from the

brutes, leaving our primitive bestial impulses to die for want of exercise, or checking in every possible way

their further expansion by legislative enactments. But this process, which is transforming us from savages

into civilized men, is a very slow one; and now and then there occur cases of what physiologists call atavism,

or reversion to an ancestral type of character. Now and then persons are born, in civilized countries, whose

intellectual powers are on a level with those of the most degraded Australian savage, and these we call idiots.

And now and then persons are born possessed of the bestial appetites and cravings of primitive man, his

fiendish cruelty and his liking for human flesh. Modern physiology knows how to classify and explain these

abnormal cases, but to the unscientific mediaeval mind they were explicable only on the hypothesis of a

diabolical metamorphosis. And there is nothing strange in the fact that, in an age when the prevailing habits

of thought rendered the transformation of men into beasts an easily admissible notion, these monsters of

cruelty and depraved appetite should have been regarded as capable of taking on bestial forms. Nor is it

strange that the hallucination under which these unfortunate wretches laboured should have taken such a

shape as to account to their feeble intelligence for the existence of the appetites which they were conscious of

not sharing with their neighbours and contemporaries. If a myth is a piece of unscientific philosophizing, it

must sometimes be applied to the explanation of obscure psychological as well as of physical phenomena.

Where the modern calmly taps his forehead and says, "Arrested development," the terrified ancient made the

We shall be assisted in this explanation by turning aside for a moment to examine the wild superstitions about

"changelings," which contributed, along with so many others, to make the lives of our ancestors anxious and

miserable. These superstitions were for the most part attempts to explain the phenomena of insanity, epilepsy,

and other obscure nervous diseases. A man who has hitherto enjoyed perfect health, and whose actions have

been consistent and rational, suddenly loses all selfcontrol and seems actuated by a will foreign to himself.

Modern science possesses the key to this phenomenon; but in former times it was explicable only on the

hypothesis that a demon had entered the body of the lunatic, or else that the fairies had stolen the real man

and substituted for him a diabolical phantom exactly like him in stature and features. Hence the numerous

legends of changelings, some of which are very curious. In Irish folklore we find the story of one Rickard,

surnamed the Rake, from his worthless character. A goodnatured, idle fellow, he spent all his evenings in

dancing,an accomplishment in which no one in the village could rival him. One night, in the midst of a

lively reel, he fell down in a fit. "He's struck with a fairydart," exclaimed all the friends, and they carried

him home and nursed him; but his face grew so thin and his manner so morose that by and by all began to

suspect that the true Rickard was gone and a changeling put in his place. Rickard, with all his

accomplishments, was no musician; and so, in order to put the matter to a crucial test, a bagpipe was left in

the room by the side of his bed. The trick succeeded. One hot summer's day, when all were supposed to be in

the field making hay, some members of the family secreted in a clothespress saw the bedroom door open a

little way, and a lean, foxy face, with a pair of deepsunken eyes, peer anxiously about the premises. Having

satisfied itself that the coast was clear, the face withdrew, the door was closed, and presently such ravishing

strains of music were heard as never proceeded from a bagpipe before or since that day. Soon was heard the

rustle of innumerable fairies, come to dance to the changeling's music. Then the "fairyman" of the village,

who was keeping watch with the family, heated a pair of tongs redhot, and with deafening shouts all burst at

once into the sickchamber. The music had ceased and the room was empty, but in at the window glared a

fiendish face, with such fearful looks of hatred, that for a moment all stood motionless with terror. But when

the fairyman, recovering himself, advanced with the hot tongs to pinch its nose, it vanished with an

unearthly yell, and there on the bed was Rickard, safe and sound, and cured of his epilepsy.[81]

Comparing this legend with numerous others relating to changelings, and stripping off the fantastic garb of

fairylore with which popular imagination has invested them, it seems impossible to doubt that they have

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 36

arisen from myths devised for the purpose of explaining the obscure phenomena of mental disease. If this be

so, they afford an excellent collateral illustration of the belief in werewolves. The same mental habits which

led men to regard the insane or epileptic person as a changeling, and which allowed them to explain catalepsy

as the temporary departure of a witch's soul from its body, would enable them to attribute a wolf's nature to

the maniac or idiot with cannibal appetites. And when the mythforming process had got thus far, it would

not stop short of assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible lupine body; for all ancient mythology teemed

It remains for us to sum up,to tie into a bunch the keys which have helped us to penetrate into the secret

causes of the werewolf superstition. In a previous paper we saw what a host of myths, fairytales, and

superstitious observances have sprung from attempts to interpret one simple natural phenomenon,the

descent of fire from the clouds. Here, on the other hand, we see what a heterogeneous multitude of mythical

elements may combine to build up in course of time a single enormous superstition, and we see how

curiously fact and fancy have cooperated in keeping the superstition from falling. In the first place the

worship of dead ancestors with wolf totems originated the notion of the transformation of men into divine or

superhuman wolves; and this notion was confirmed by the ambiguous explanation of the stormwind as the

rushing of a troop of dead men's souls or as the howling of wolflike monsters. Mediaeval Christianity

retained these conceptions, merely changing the superhuman wolves into evil demons; and finally the

occurrence of cases of Berserker madness and cannibalism, accompanied by lycanthropic hallucinations,

being interpreted as due to such demoniacal metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf superstition of the

Middle Ages. The etymological proceedings, to which Mr. Cox would incontinently ascribe the origin of the

entire superstition, seemed to me to have played a very subordinate part in the matter. To suppose that Jean

Grenier imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word for wolf sounded like the word for light, and

thus gave rise to the story of a lightdeity who became a wolf, seems to me quite inadmissible. Yet as far as

such verbal equivocations may have prevailed, they doubtless helped to sustain the delusion.

Thus we need no longer regard our werewolf as an inexplicable creature of undetermined pedigree. But any

account of him would be quite imperfect which should omit all consideration of the methods by which his

change of form was accomplished. By the ancient Romans the werewolf was commonly called a

"skinchanger" or "turncoat" (versipellis), and similar epithets were applied to him in the Middle Ages The

mediaeval theory was that, while the werewolf kept his human form, his hair grew inwards; when he wished

to become a wolf, he simply turned himself inside out. In many trials on record, the prisoners were closely

interrogated as to how this inversion might be accomplished; but I am not aware that any one of them ever

gave a satisfactory answer. At the moment of change their memories seem to have become temporarily

befogged. Now and then a poor wretch had his arms and legs cut off, or was partially flayed, in order that the

ingrowing hair might be detected.[82] Another theory was, that the possessed person had merely to put on a

wolf's skin, in order to assume instantly the lupine form and character; and in this may perhaps be seen a

vague reminiscence of the alleged fact that Berserkers were in the habit of haunting the woods by night,

clothed in the hides of wolves or bears.[83] Such a wolfskin was kept by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the other

hand, confessed to using a magic salve or ointment. A fourth method of becoming a werewolf was to obtain a

girdle, usually made of human skin. Several cases are related in Thorpe's "Northern Mythology." One hot day

in harvesttime some reapers lay down to sleep in the shade; when one of them, who could not sleep, saw the

man next him arise quietly and gird him with a strap, whereupon he instantly vanished, and a wolf jumped up

from among the sleepers and ran off across the fields. Another man, who possessed such a girdle, once went

away from home without remembering to lock it up. His little son climbed up to the cupboard and got it, and

as he proceeded to buckle it around his waist, he became instantly transformed into a strangelooking beast.

Just then his father came in, and seizing the girdle restored the child to his natural shape. The boy said that no

[82] "En 1541, a Padoue, dit Wier, un homme qui se croyait change en loup courait la campagne, attaquant et

mettant a mort ceux qu'il rencontrait. Apres bien des difficultes, on parvint s'emparer de lui. Il dit en

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 37

confidence a ceux qui l'arreterent: Je suis vraiment un loup, et si ma peau ne parait pas etre celle d'un loup,

c'est parce qu'elle est retournee et que les poils sont en dedans.Pour s'assurer du fait, on coupa le

malheureux aux differentes parties du corps, on lui emporta les bras et les jambes."Taine, De l'Intelligence,

Tom. II. p. 203. See the account of Slavonic werewolves in Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp.

[83] Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in history rather surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis,

dismisses with a sneer the subject of the Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimous testimony of the

Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the convictions of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of

witchcraft." I have not the special knowledge requisite for pronouncing an opinion on this point, but Mr.

Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions are not such as to make one feel obliged to accept his

bare assertion, unaccompanied by critical arguments. The madness of the bearsarks may, no doubt, be the

same thing us the frenzy of Herakles; but something more than mere dogmatism is needed to prove it.

Sometimes the werewolf transformation led to unlucky accidents. At Caseburg, as a man and his wife were

making hay, the woman threw down her pitchfork and went away, telling her husband that if a wild beast

should come to him during her absence he must throw his hat at it. Presently a shewolf rushed towards him.

The man threw his hat at it, but a boy came up from another part of the field and stabbed the animal with his

A parallel legend shows that this woman wished to have the hat thrown at her, in order that she might be

henceforth free from her liability to become a werewolf. A man was one night returning with his wife from a

merrymaking when he felt the change coming on. Giving his wife the reins, he jumped from the wagon,

telling her to strike with her apron at any animal which might come to her. In a few moments a wolf ran up to

the side of the vehicle, and, as the woman struck out with her apron, it bit off a piece and ran away. Presently

the man returned with the piece of apron in his mouth and consoled his terrified wife with the information

A terrible case at a village in Auvergne has found its way into the annals of witchcraft. "A gentleman while

hunting was suddenly attacked by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the beast made

a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady,

contrived to cut off one of its forepaws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the best of his way

homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend, to whom he exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather (as it now

appeared) a woman's hand, upon which was a weddingring. His wife's ring was at once recognized by the

other. His suspicions aroused, he immediately went in search of his wife, who was found sitting by the fire in

the kitchen, her arm hidden beneath her apron, when the husband, seizing her by the arm, found his terrible

suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there, evidently just fresh from the wound. She was given into

custody, and in the event was burned at Riom, in presence of thousands of spectators."[84]

[84] Williams, Superstitions of Witchcraft, p. 179. See a parallel case of a catwoman, in Thorpe's Northern

Mythology, II. 26. "Certain witches at Thurso for a long time tormented an honest fellow under the usual

form of cats, till one night he put them to flight with his broadsword, and cut off the leg of one less nimble

than the rest; taking it up, to his amazement he found it to be a woman's leg, and next morning he discovered

Sometimes a werewolf was cured merely by recognizing him while in his brute shape. A Swedish legend tells

of a cottager who, on entering the forest one day without recollecting to say his Patter Noster, got into the

power of a Troll, who changed him into a wolf. For many years his wife mourned him as dead. But one

Christmas eve the old Troll, disguised as a beggarwoman, came to the house for alms; and being taken in and

kindly treated, told the woman that her husband might very likely appear to her in wolfshape. Going at night

to the pantry to lay aside a joint of meat for tomorrow's dinner, she saw a wolf standing with its paws on the

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 38

windowsill, looking wistfully in at her. "Ah, dearest," said she, "if I knew that thou wert really my husband,

I would give thee a bone." Whereupon the wolfskin fell off, and her husband stood before her in the same

In Denmark it was believed that if a woman were to creep through a colt's placental membrane stretched

between four sticks, she would for the rest of her life bring forth children without pain or illness; but all the

boys would in such case be werewolves, and all the girls Maras, or nightmares. In this grotesque superstition

appears that curious kinship between the werewolf and the wife or maiden of supernatural race, which serves

admirably to illustrate the nature of both conceptions, and the elucidation of which shall occupy us

It is, perhaps, needless to state that in the personality of the nightmare, or Mara, there was nothing equine.

The Mara was a female demon,[85] who would come at night and torment men or women by crouching on

their chests or stomachs and stopping their respiration. The scene is well enough represented in Fuseli's

picture, though the frenziedlooking horse which there accompanies the demon has no place in the original

superstition. A Netherlandish story illustrates the character of the Mara. Two young men were in love with

the same damsel. One of them, being tormented every night by a Mara, sought advice from his rival, and it

was a treacherous counsel that he got. "Hold a sharp knife with the point towards your breast, and you'll

never see the Mara again," said this false friend. The lad thanked him, but when he lay down to rest he

thought it as well to be on the safe side, and so held the knife handle downward. So when the Mara came,

instead of forcing the blade into his breast, she cut herself badly, and fled howling; and let us hope, though

the legend here leaves us in the dark, that this poor youth, who is said to have been the comelier of the two,

[85] "The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph; compare AngloSaxon wudurmaere (woodmare)

But the Mara sometimes appeared in less revolting shape, and became the mistress or even the wife of some

mortal man to whom she happened to take a fancy. In such cases she would vanish on being recognized.

There is a welltold monkish tale of a pious knight who, journeying one day through the forest, found a

beautiful lady stripped naked and tied to a tree, her back all covered with deep gashes streaming with blood,

from a flogging which some bandits had given her. Of course he took her home to his castle and married her,

and for a while they lived very happily together, and the fame of the lady's beauty was so great that kings and

emperors held tournaments in honor of her. But this pious knight used to go to mass every Sunday, and

greatly was he scandalized when he found that his wife would never stay to assist in the Credo, but would

always get up and walk out of church just as the choir struck up. All her husband's coaxing was of no use;

threats and entreaties were alike powerless even to elicit an explanation of this strange conduct. At last the

good man determined to use force; and so one Sunday, as the lady got up to go out, according to custom, he

seized her by the arm and sternly commanded her to remain. Her whole frame was suddenly convulsed, and

her dark eyes gleamed with weird, unearthly brilliancy. The services paused for a moment, and all eyes were

turned toward the knight and his lady. "In God's name, tell me what thou art," shouted the knight; and

instantly, says the chronicler, "the bodily form of the lady melted away, and was seen no more; whilst, with a

cry of anguish and of terror, an evil spirit of monstrous form rose from the ground, clave the chapel roof

In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her affinity to the Nixies, or Swanmaidens. A peasant discovered that

his sweetheart was in the habit of coming to him by night as a Mara. He kept strict watch until he discovered

her creeping into the room through a small knothole in the door. Next day he made a peg, and after she had

come to him, drove in the peg so that she was unable to escape. They were married and lived together many

years; but one night it happened that the man, joking with his wife about the way in which he had secured

her, drew the peg from the knothole, that she might see how she had entered his room. As she peeped

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 39

The wellknown pathological phenomena of nightmare are sufficient to account for the mediaeval theory of a

fiend who sits upon one's bosom and hinders respiration; but as we compare these various legends relating to

the Mara, we see that a more recondite explanation is needed to account for all her peculiarities. Indigestion

may interfere with our breathing, but it does not make beautiful women crawl through keyholes, nor does it

bring wives from the spiritworld. The Mara belongs to an ancient family, and in passing from the regions of

monkish superstition to those of pure mythology we find that, like her kinsman the werewolf, she had once

seen better days. Christianity made a demon of the Mara, and adopted the theory that Satan employed these

seductive creatures as agents for ruining human souls. Such is the character of the knight's wife, in the

monkish legend just cited. But in the Danish tale the Mara appears as one of that large family of supernatural

wives who are permitted to live with mortal men under certain conditions, but who are compelled to flee

away when these conditions are broken, as is always sure to be the case. The eldest and one of the loveliest of

this family is the Hindu nymph Urvasi, whose love adventures with Pururavas are narrated in the Puranas,

and form the subject of the wellknown and exquisite Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa. Urvasi is allowed to live

with Pururavas so long as she does not see him undressed. But one night her kinsmen, the Gandharvas, or

clouddemons, vexed at her long absence from heaven, resolved to get her away from her mortal companion,

They stole a pet lamb which had been tied at the foot of her couch, whereat she bitterly upbraided her

husband. In rage and mortification, Pururavas sprang up without throwing on his tunic, and grasping his

sword sought the robber. Then the wicked Gandharvas sent a flash of lightning, and Urvasi, seeing her naked

The different versions of this legend, which have been elaborately analyzed by comparative mythologists,

leave no doubt that Urvasi is one of the dawnnymphs or bright fleecy clouds of early morning, which vanish

as the splendour of the sun is unveiled. We saw, in the preceding paper, that the ancient Aryans regarded the

sky as a sea or great lake, and that the clouds were explained variously as Phaiakian ships with birdlike

beaks sailing over this lake, or as bright birds of divers shapes and hues. The light fleecy cirrhi were regarded

as mermaids, or as swans, or as maidens with swan's plumage. In Sanskrit they are called Apsaras, or "those

who move in the water," and the Elves and Maras of Teutonic mythology have the same significance. Urvasi

appears in one legend as a bird; and a South German prescription for getting rid of the Mara asserts that if she

be wrapped up in the bedclothes and firmly held, a white dove will forthwith fly from the room, leaving the

[86] See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 91; Weber, Indische Studien. I. 197; Wolf, Beitrage zur deutschen

In the story of Melusina the cloudmaiden appears as a kind of mermaid, but in other respects the legend

resembles that of Urvasi. Raymond, Count de la Foret, of Poitou, having by an accident killed his patron and

benefactor during a hunting excursion, fled in terror and despair into the deep recesses of the forest. All the

afternoon and evening he wandered through the thick dark woods, until at midnight he came upon a strange

scene. All at once "the boughs of the trees became less interlaced, and the trunks fewer; next moment his

horse, crashing through the shrubs, brought him out on a pleasant glade, white with rime, and illumined by

the new moon; in the midst bubbled up a limpid fountain, and flowed away over a pebblyfloor with a

soothing murmur. Near the fountainhead sat three maidens in glimmering white dresses, with long waving

golden hair, and faces of inexpressible beauty."[87] One of them advanced to meet Raymond, and according

to all mythological precedent, they were betrothed before daybreak. In due time the fountainnymph[88]

became Countess de la Foret, but her husband was given to understand that all her Saturdays would be passed

in strictest seclusion, upon which he must never dare to intrude, under penalty of losing her forever. For many

years all went well, save that the fair Melusina's children were, without exception, misshapen or disfigured.

But after a while this strange weekly seclusion got bruited about all over the neighbourhood, and people

shook their heads and looked grave about it. So many gossiping tales came to the Count's ears, that he began

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 40

to grow anxious and suspicious, and at last he determined to know the worst. He went one Saturday to

Melusina's private apartments, and going through one empty room after another, at last came to a locked door

which opened into a bath; looking through a keyhole, there he saw the Countess transformed from the waist

downwards into a fish, disporting herself like a mermaid in the water. Of course he could not keep the secret,

but when some time afterwards they quarrelled, must needs address her as "a vile serpent, contaminator of his

honourable race." So she disappeared through the window, but ever afterward hovered about her husband's

[88] The word nymph itself means "cloudmaiden," as is illustrated by the kinship between the Greek numph

The wellknown story of Undine is similar to that of Melusina, save that the naiad's desire to obtain a human

soul is a conception foreign to the spirit of the myth, and marks the degradation which Christianity had

inflicted upon the denizens of fairyland. In one of Dasent's tales the watermaiden is replaced by a kind of

werewolf. A white bear marries a young girl, but assumes the human shape at night. She is never to look

upon him in his human shape, but how could a young bride be expected to obey such an injunction as that?

She lights a candle while he is sleeping, and discovers the handsomest prince in the world; unluckily she

drops tallow on his shirt, and that tells the story. But she is more fortunate than poor Raymond, for after a

tiresome journey to the "land east of the sun and west of the moon," and an arduous washingmatch with a

parcel of ugly Trolls, she washes out the spots, and ends her husband's enchantment.[89]

[89] This is substantially identical with the stories of Beauty and the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba

In the majority of these legends, however, the Apsaras, or cloudmaiden, has a shirt of swan's feathers which

plays the same part as the wolfskin cape or girdle of the werewolf. If you could get hold of a werewolf's sack

and burn it, a permanent cure was effected. No danger of a relapse, unless the Devil furnished him with a new

wolfskin. So the swanmaiden kept her human form, as long as she was deprived of her tunic of feathers.

IndoEuropean folklore teems with stories of swanmaidens forcibly wooed and won by mortals who had

stolen their clothes. A man travelling along the road passes by a lake where several lovely girls are bathing;

their dresses, made of feathers curiously and daintily woven, lie on the shore. He approaches the place

cautiously and steals one of these dresses.[90] When the girls have finished their bathing, they all come and

get their dresses and swim away as swans; but the one whose dress is stolen must needs stay on shore and

marry the thief. It is needless to add that they live happily together for many years, or that finally the good

man accidentally leaves the cupboard door unlocked, whereupon his wife gets back her swanshirt and flies

away from him, never to return. But it is not always a shirt of feathers. In one German story, a nobleman

hunting deer finds a maiden bathing in a clear pool in the forest. He runs stealthily up to her and seizes her

necklace, at which she loses the power to flee. They are married, and she bears seven sons at once, all of

whom have gold chains about their necks, and are able to transform themselves into swans whenever they

like. A Flemish legend tells of three Nixies, or watersprites, who came out of the Meuse one autumn

evening, and helped the villagers celebrate the end of the vintage. Such graceful dancers had never been seen

in Flanders, and they could sing as well as they could dance. As the night was warm, one of them took off her

gloves and gave them to her partner to hold for her. When the clock struck twelve the other two started off in

hot haste, and then there was a hue and cry for gloves. The lad would keep them as lovetokens, and so the

poor Nixie had to go home without them; but she must have died on the way, for next morning the waters of

[90] The featherdress reappears in the Arabian story of Hasssn of ElBasrah, who by stealing it secures

possession of the Jinniya. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 380. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People,

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 41

In the Faro Islands it is believed that seals cast off their skins every ninth night, assume human forms, and

sing and dance like men and women until daybreak, when they resume their skins and their seal natures. Of

course a man once found and hid one of these sealskins, and so got a mermaid for a wife; and of course she

recovered the skin and escaped.[91] On the coasts of Ireland it is supposed to be quite an ordinary thing for

young seafairies to get human husbands in this way; the brazen things even come to shore on purpose, and

leave their red caps lying around for young men to pick up; but it behooves the husband to keep a strict watch

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

This mermaid's cap has contributed its quota to the superstitions of witchcraft. An Irish story tells how Red

James was aroused from sleep one night by noises in the kitchen. Going down to the door, he saw a lot of old

women drinking punch around the fireplace, and laughing and joking with his housekeeper. When the

they flew up chimney. So Jimmy burst into the room, and seized the housekeeper's cap, and went along with

them. They flew across the sea to a castle in England, passed through the keyholes from room to room and

into the cellar, where they had a famous carouse. Unluckily Jimmy, being unused to such good cheer, got

drunk, and forgot to put on his cap when the others did. So next morning the lord's butler found him

deaddrunk on the cellar floor, surrounded by empty casks. He was sentenced to be hung without any trial

worth speaking of; but as he was carted to the gallows an old woman cried out, "Ach, Jimmy alanna! Would

you be afther dyin' in a strange land without your red birredh?" The lord made no objections, and so the red

cap was brought and put on him. Accordingly when Jimmy had got to the gallows and was making his last

speech for the edification of the spectators, he unexpectedly and somewhat irrelevantly exclaimed, "By

yarrow and rue," etc., and was off like a rocket, shooting through the blue air en route for old Ireland.[92]

In another Irish legend an enchanted ass comes into the kitchen of a great house every night, and washes the

dishes and scours the tins, so that the servants lead an easy life of it. After a while in their exuberant gratitude

they offer him any present for which he may feel inclined to ask. He desires only "an ould coat, to keep the

chill off of him these could nights"; but as soon as he gets into the coat he resumes his human form and bids

them good by, and thenceforth they may wash their own dishes and scour their own tins, for all him.

But we are diverging from the subject of swanmaidens, and are in danger of losing ourselves in that

labyrinth of popular fancies which is more intricate than any that Daidalos ever planned. The significance of

all these sealskins and featherdresses and mermaid caps and werewolfgirdles may best be sought in the

etymology of words like the German leichnam, in which the body is described as a garment of flesh for the

soul.[93] In the naive philosophy of primitive thinkers, the soul, in passing from one visible shape to another,

had only to put on the outward integument of the creature in which it wished to incarnate itself. With respect

to the mode of metamorphosis, there is little difference between the werewolf and the swanmaiden; and the

similarity is no less striking between the genesis of the two conceptions. The original werewolf is the

nightwind, regarded now as a manlike deity and now as a howling lupine fiend; and the original

swanmaiden is the light fleecy cloud, regarded either as a womanlike goddess or as a bird swimming in the

sky sea. The one conception has been productive of little else but horrors; the other has given rise to a great

variety of fanciful creations, from the treacherous mermaid and the fiendish nightmare to the gentle Undine,

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 42

We have seen that the original werewolf, howling in the wintry blast, is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of

departed souls; he is the wild ancestor of the deathdog, whose voice under the window of a sickchamber is

even now a sound of illomen. The swanmaiden has also been supposed to summon the dying to her home

in the Phaiakian land. The Valkyries, with their shirts of swanplumage, who hovered over Scandinavian

battlefields to receive the souls of falling heroes, were identical with the Hindu Apsaras; and the Houris of

the Mussulman belong to the same family. Even for the angels,women with large wings, who are seen in

popular pictures bearing mortals on high towards heaven,we can hardly claim a different kinship.

Melusina, when she leaves the castle of Lusignan, becomes a Banshee; and it has been a common superstition

among sailors, that the appearance of a mermaid, with her comb and lookingglass, foretokens shipwreck,

WHEN Maitland blasphemously asserted that God was but "a Bogie of the nursery," he unwittingly made a

remark as suggestive in point of philology as it was crude and repulsive in its atheism. When examined with

the lenses of linguistic science, the "Bogie" or "Bugaboo" or "Bugbear" of nursery lore turns out to be

identical, not only with the fairy "Puck," whom Shakespeare has immortalized, but also with the Slavonic

"Bog" and the "Baga" of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, both of which are names for the Supreme Being. If we

proceed further, and inquire after the ancestral form of these epithets,so strangely incongruous in their

significations,we shall find it in the Old Aryan "Bhaga," which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the

Vedas, and has left a memento of itself in the surname of the Phrygian Zeus "Bagaios." It seems originally to

have denoted either the unclouded sun or the sky of noonday illumined by the solar rays. In Sayana's

commentary on the RigVeda, Bhaga is enumerated among the seven (or eight) sons of Aditi, the boundless

Orient; and he is elsewhere described as the lord of life, the giver of bread, and the bringer of happiness.[94]

[94] Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. IV. p. 12; Muller, RigVeda Sanhita, Vol. I. pp. 230251; Fick,

Thus the same name which, to the Vedic poet, to the Persian of the time of Xerxes, and to the modern

Russian, suggests the supreme majesty of deity, is in English associated with an ugly and ludicrous fiend,

closely akin to that grotesque Northern Devil of whom Southey was unable to think without laughing. Such is

the irony of fate toward a deposed deity. The German name for idolAbgott, that is, "exgod," or

"dethroned god"sums up in a single etymology the history of the havoc wrought by monotheism among

the ancient symbols of deity. In the hospitable Pantheon of the Greeks and Romans a niche was always in

readiness for every new divinity who could produce respectable credentials; but the triumph of monotheism

converted the stately mansion into a Pandemonium peopled with fiends. To the monotheist an "exgod" was

simply a devilish deceiver of mankind whom the true God had succeeded in vanquishing; and thus the word

demon, which to the ancient meant a divine or semidivine being, came to be applied to fiends exclusively.

Thus the Teutonic races, who preserved the name of their highest divinity, Odin,originally, Guodan,by

which to designate the God of the Christian,[95] were unable to regard the Bog of ancient tradition as

[95] In the North American Review, October, 1869, p. 354, I have collected a number of facts which seem to

me to prove beyond question that the name God is derived from Guodan, the original form of Odin, the

supreme deity of our Pagan forefathers. The case is exactly parallel to that of the French Dieu, which is

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 43

The most striking illustration of this process is to be found in the word devil itself: To a reader unfamiliar

with the endless tricks which language delights in playing, it may seem shocking to be told that the Gypsies

use the word devil as the name of God.[96] This, however, is not because these people have made the

archfiend an object of worship, but because the Gypsy language, descending directly from the Sanskrit, has

retained in its primitive exalted sense a word which the English language has received only in its debased and

perverted sense. The Teutonic words devil, teufel, diuval, djofull, djevful, may all be traced back to the Zend

dev,[97] a name in which is implicitly contained the record of the oldest monotheistic revolution known to

history. The influence of the socalled Zoroastrian reform upon the longsubsequent development of

Christianity will receive further notice in the course of this paper; for the present it is enough to know that it

furnished for all Christendom the name by which it designates the author of evil. To the Parsee follower of

Zarathustra the name of the Devil has very nearly the same signification as to the Christian; yet, as Grimm

has shown, it is nothing else than a corruption of deva, the Sanskrit name for God. When Zarathustra

overthrew the primeval Aryan natureworship in Bactria, this name met the same evil fate which in early

Christian times overtook the word demon, and from a symbol of reverence became henceforth a symbol of

detestation.[98] But throughout the rest of the Aryan world it achieved a nobler career, producing the Greek

theos, the Lithuanian diewas, the Latin deus, and hence the modern French Dieu, all meaning God.

[96] See Pott, Die Zigeuner, II. 311; Kuhn, Beitrage, I. 147. Yet in the worship of dewel by the Gypsies is to

be found the element of diabolism invariably present in barbaric worship. "Dewel, the great god in heaven

(dewa, deus), is rather feared than loved by these weatherbeaten outcasts, for he harms them on their

wanderings with his thunder and lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere with their dark doings.

Therefore they curse him foully when misfortune falls on them; and when a child dies, they say that Dewel

[98] The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformation degraded the Vedic gods into demons. "In

Buddhism we find these ancient devas, Indra and the rest, carried about at shows, as servants of Buddha, as

goblins, or fabulous heroes." Max Muller, Chips, I. 25. This is like the Christian change of Odin into an ogre,

If we trace back this remarkable word to its primitive source in that once lost but now partially recovered

mothertongue from which all our Aryan languages are descended, we find a root div or dyu, meaning "to

shine." From the firstmentioned form comes deva, with its numerous progeny of good and evil appellatives;

from the latter is derived the name of Dyaus, with its brethren, Zeus and Jupiter. In Sanskrit dyu, as a noun,

means "sky" and "day"; and there are many passages in the RigVeda where the character of the god Dyaus,

as the personification of the sky or the brightness of the ethereal heavens, is unmistakably apparent. This key

unlocks for us one of the secrets of Greek mythology. So long as there was for Zeus no better etymology than

that which assigned it to the root zen, "to live,"[99] there was little hope of understanding the nature of Zeus.

But when we learn that Zeus is identical with Dyaus, the bright sky, we are enabled to understand Horace's

expression, "sub Jove frigido," and the prayer of the Athenians, "Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the land of the

Athenians, and on the fields."[100] Such expressions as these were retained by the Greeks and Romans long

after they had forgotten that their supreme deity was once the sky. Yet even the Brahman, from whose mind

the physical significance of the god's name never wholly disappeared, could speak of him as Father Dyaus,

the great Pitri, or ancestor of gods and men; and in this reverential name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact

equivalent of the Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father. The same root can be followed into Old German, where

Zio is the god of day; and into AngloSaxon, where Tiwsdaeg, or the day of Zeus, is the ancestral form of

[99] ZeusDiaZhnadi on ............ Plato Kratylos, p. 396, A., with Stallbaum's note. See also Proklos,

Comm. ad Timaeum, II. p. 226, Schneider; and compare PseudoAristotle, De Mundo, p. 401, a, 15, who

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 44

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

Thus we again reach the same results which were obtained from the examination of the name Bhaga. These

various names for the supreme Aryan god, which without the help afforded by the Vedas could never have

been interpreted, are seen to have been originally applied to the sunillumined firmament. Countless other

examples, when similarly analyzed, show that the earliest Aryan conception of a Divine Power, nourishing

man and sustaining the universe, was suggested by the light of the mighty Sun; who, as modern science has

shown, is the originator of all life and motion upon the globe, and whom the ancients delighted to believe the

source, not only of "the golden light,"[101] but of everything that is bright, joygiving, and pure.

Nevertheless, in accepting this conclusion as well established by linguistic science, we must be on our guard

against an error into which writers on mythology are very liable to fall. Neither sky nor sun nor light of day,

neither Zeus nor Apollo, neither Dyaus nor Indra, was ever worshipped by the ancient Aryan in anything like

a monotheistic sense. To interpret Zeus or Jupiter as originally the supreme Aryan god, and to regard classic

paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to sin against the canons of a sound

inductive philosophy. Philology itself teaches us that this could not have been so. Father Dyaus was

originally the bright sky and nothing more. Although his name became generalized, in the classic languages,

into deus, or God, it is quite certain that in early days, before the Aryan separation, it had acquired no such

exalted significance. It was only in Greece and Romeor, we may say, among the still united ItaloHellenic

tribesthat JupiterZeus attained a preeminence over all other deities. The people of Iran quite rejected

him, the Teutons preferred Thor and Odin, and in India he was superseded, first by Indra, afterwards by

Brahma and Vishnu. We need not, therefore, look for a single supreme divinity among the old Aryans; nor

may we expect to find any sense, active or dormant, of monotheism in the primitive intelligence of

uncivilized men.[102] The whole fabric of comparative mythology, as at present constituted, and as described

above, in the first of these papers, rests upon the postulate that the earliest religion was pure fetichism.

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

[102] The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than the tribes of North America. "In no Indian

language could the early missionaries find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and Oki meant

anything endowed with supernatural powers, from a snakeskin or a greasy Indian conjurer up to Manabozho

and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to use a circumlocution,`the great chief of men,' or 'he who lives in

the sky.' " Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. "The Algonquins used no oaths, for their language

supplied none; doubtless because their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to swear by." Ibid, p. 31.

In the unsystematic natureworship of the old Aryans the gods are presented to us only as vague powers,

with their nature and attributes dimly defined, and their relations to each other fluctuating and often

contradictory. There is no theogony, no regular subordination of one deity to another. The same pair of

divinities appear now as father and daughter, now as brother and sister, now as husband and wife; and again

they quite lose their personality, and are represented as mere natural phenomena. As Muller observes, "The

poets of the Veda indulged freely in theogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradictions.

They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god of gods, they knew of Varuna as the

ruler of all; but they were by no means startled at the idea that their Indra had a mother, or that their Agni

[Latin ignis] was born like a babe from the friction of two firesticks, or that Varuna and his brother Mitra

were nursed in the lap of Aditi."[103] Thus we have seen Bhaga, the daylight, represented as the offspring, of

Aditi, the boundless Orient; but he had several brothers, and among them were Mitra, the sun, Varuna, the

overarching firmament, and Vivasvat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have here but so many different

names for what is at bottom one and the same conception. The common element which, in Dyaus and

Varuna, in Bhaga and Indra, was made an object of worship, is the brightness, warmth, and life of day, as

contrasted with the darkness, cold, and seeming death of the nighttime. And this common element was

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 45

personified in as many different ways as the unrestrained fancy of the ancient worshipper saw fit to

Thus we begin to see why a few simple objects, like the sun, the sky, the dawn, and the night, should be

represented in mythology by such a host of gods, goddesses, and heroes. For at one time the Sun is

represented as the conqueror of hydras and dragons who hide away from men the golden treasures of light

and warmth, and at another time he is represented as a weary voyager traversing the skysea amid many

perils, with the steadfast purpose of returning to his western home and his twilight bride; hence the different

conceptions of Herakles, Bellerophon, and Odysseus. Now he is represented as the son of the Dawn, and

again, with equal propriety, as the son of the Night, and the fickle lover of the Dawn; hence we have, on the

one hand, stories of a virgin mother who dies in giving birth to a hero, and, on the other hand, stories of a

beautiful maiden who is forsaken and perhaps cruelly slain by her treacherous lover. Indeed, the Sun's

adventures with so many dawnmaidens have given him quite a bad character, and the legends are numerous

in which he appears as the prototype of Don Juan. Yet again his separation from the bride of his youth is

described as due to no fault of his own, but to a resistless decree of fate, which hurries him away as Aineias

was compelled to abandon Dido. Or, according to a third and equally plausible notion, he is a hero of ascetic

virtues, and the dawnmaiden is a wicked enchantress, daughter of the sensual Aphrodite, who vainly

endeavours to seduce him. In the story of Odysseus these various conceptions are blended together. When

enticed by artful women,[105] he yields for a while to the temptation; but by and by his longing to see

Penelope takes him homeward, albeit with a record which Penelope might not altogether have liked. Again,

though the Sun, "always roaming with a hungry heart," has seen many cities and customs of strange men, he

is nevertheless confined to a single path,a circumstance which seems to have occasioned much speculation

in the primeval mind. Garcilaso de la Vega relates of a certain Peruvian Inca, who seems to have been an

"infidel" with reference to the orthodox mythology of his day, that he thought the Sun was not such a mighty

god after all; for if he were, he would wander about the heavens at random instead of going forever, like a

horse in a treadmill, along the same course. The American Indians explained this circumstance by myths

which told how the Sun was once caught and tied with a chain which would only let him swing a little way to

one side or the other. The ancient Aryan developed the nobler myth of the labours of Herakles, performed in

obedience to the bidding of Eurystheus. Again, the Sun must needs destroy its parents, the Night and the

Dawn; and accordingly his parents, forewarned by prophecy, expose him in infancy, or order him to be put to

death; but his tragic destiny never fails to be accomplished to the letter. And again the Sun, who engages in

quarrels not his own, is sometimes represented as retiring moodily from the sight of men, like Achilleus and

Meleagros: he is shortlived and illfated, born to do much good and to be repaid with ingratitude; his life

depends on the duration of a burning brand, and when that is extinguished he must die.

[105] It should be borne in mind, however, that one of the women who tempt Odysseus is not a

dawnmaiden, but a goddess of darkness; Kalypso answers to VenusUrsula in the myth of Tannhauser.

Kirke, on the other hand, seems to be a dawnmaiden, like Medeia, whom she resembles. In her the wisdom

of the dawngoddess Athene, the loftiest of Greek divinities, becomes degraded into the art of an

enchantress. She reappears, in the Arabian Nights, as the wicked Queen Labe, whose sorcery none of her

The myth of the great Theban hero, Oidipous, well illustrates the multiplicity of conceptions which clustered

about the daily career of the solar orb. His father, Laios, had been warned by the Delphic oracle that he was

in danger of death from his own son. The newly born Oidipous was therefore exposed on the hillside, but,

like Romulus and Remus, and all infants similarly situated in legend, was duly rescued. He was taken to

Corinth, where he grew up to manhood. Journeying once to Thebes, he got into a quarrel with an old man

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 46

whom he met on the road, and slew him, who was none other than his father, Laios. Reaching Thebes, he

found the city harassed by the Sphinx, who afflicted the land with drought until she should receive an answer

to her riddles. Oidipous destroyed the monster by solving her dark sayings, and as a reward received the

kingdom, with his own mother, Iokaste, as his bride. Then the Erinyes hastened the discovery of these dark

deeds; Iokaste died in her bridal chamber; and Oidipous, having blinded himself, fled to the grove of the

Eumenides, near Athens, where, amid flashing lightning and peals of thunder, he died.

Oidipous is the Sun. Like all the solar heroes, from Herakles and Perseus to Sigurd and William Tell, he

performs his marvellous deeds at the behest of others. His father, Laios, is none other than the Vedic Dasyu,

the nightdemon who is sure to be destroyed by his solar offspring In the evening, Oidipous is united to the

Dawn, the mother who had borne him at daybreak; and here the original story doubtless ended. In the Vedic

hymns we find Indra, the Sun, born of Dahana (Daphne), the Dawn, whom he afterwards, in the evening

twilight, marries. To the Indian mind the story was here complete; but the Greeks had forgotten and outgrown

the primitive signification of the myth. To them Oidipous and Iokaste were human, or at least

anthropomorphic beings; and a marriage between them was a fearful crime which called for bitter expiation.

Thus the latter part of the story arose in the effort to satisfy a moral feeling As the name of Laios denotes the

dark night, so, like Iole, Oinone, and Iamos, the word Iokaste signifies the delicate violet tints of the morning

and evening clouds. Oidipous was exposed, like Paris upon Ida (a Vedic word meaning "the earth"), because

the sunlight in the morning lies upon the hillside.[106] He is borne on to the destruction of his father and the

incestuous marriage with his mother by an irresistible Moira, or Fate; the sun cannot but slay the darkness

and hasten to the couch of the violet twilight.[107] The Sphinx is the stormdemon who sits on the

cloudrock and imprisons the rain; she is the same as Medusa, Ahi, or Echidna, and Chimaira, and is akin to

the throttling snakes of darkness which the jealous Here sent to destroy Herakles in his cradle. The idea was

not derived from Egypt, but the Greeks, on finding Egyptian figures resembling their conception of the

Sphinx, called them by the same name. The omniscient Sun comprehends the sense of her dark mutterings,

and destroys her, as Indra slays Vritra, bringing down rain upon the parched earth. The Erinyes, who bring to

light the crimes of Oidipous, have been explained, in a previous paper, as the personification of daylight,

which reveals the evil deeds done under the cover of night. The grove of the Erinyes, like the garden of the

Hyperboreans, represents "the fairy network of clouds, which are the first to receive and the last to lose the

light of the sun in the morning and in the evening; hence, although Oidipous dies in a thunderstorm, yet the

Eumenides are kind to him, and his last hour is one of deep peace and tranquillity."[108] To the last remains

with him his daughter Antigone, "she who is born opposite," the pale light which springs up opposite to the

[106] The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage; but the story of his perils in infancy belongs to solar

mythology as much as the stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. His grandfather,

Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name being identical with that of the nightdemon, Azidahaka,

who appears in the ShahNameh as the biting serpent Zohak. See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, II.

[107] In mediaeval legend this resistless Moira is transformed into the curse which prevents the Wandering

These examples show that a storyroot may be as prolific of heterogeneous offspring as a wordroot. Just as

we find the root spak, "to look," begetting words so various as sceptic, bishop, speculate, conspicsuous,

species, and spice, we must expect to find a simple representation of the diurnal course of the sun, like those

lyrically given in the Veda, branching off into stories as diversified as those of Oidipous, Herakles, Odysseus,

and Siegfried. In fact, the types upon which stories are constructed are wonderfully few. Some clever

playwrightI believe it was Scribehas said that there are only seven possible dramatic situations; that is,

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 47

all the plays in the world may be classed with some one of seven archetypal dramas.[109] If this be true, the

astonishing complexity of mythology taken in the concrete, as compared with its extreme simplicity when

[109] In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England, Mr.

BaringGould has made an ingenious and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire existing mass of

household legends to about fifty storyroots; and his list, though both redundant and defective, is

The extreme limits of divergence between stories descended from a common root are probably reached in the

myths of light and darkness with which the present discussion is mainly concerned The subject will be best

elucidated by taking a single one of these myths and following its various fortunes through different regions

of the Aryan world. The myth of Hercules and Cacus has been treated by M. Breal in an essay which is one

of the most valuable contributions ever made to the study of comparative mythology; and while following his

The battle between Hercules and Cacus, although one of the oldest of the traditions common to the whole

IndoEuropean race, appears in Italy as a purely local legend, and is narrated as such by Virgil, in the eighth

book of the AEneid; by Livy, at the beginning of his history; and by Propertius and Ovid. Hercules,

journeying through Italy after his victory over Geryon, stops to rest by the bank of the Tiber. While he is

taking his repose, the threeheaded monster Cacus, a son of Vulcan and a formidable brigand, comes and

steals his cattle, and drags them tailforemost to a secret cavern in the rocks. But the lowing of the cows

arouses Hercules, and he runs toward the cavern where the robber, already frightened, has taken refuge.

Armed with a huge flinty rock, he breaks open the entrance of the cavern, and confronts the demon within,

who vomits forth flames at him and roars like the thunder in the stormcloud. After a short combat, his

hideous body falls at the feet of the invincible hero, who erects on the spot an altar to Jupiter Inventor, in

commemoration of the recovery of his cattle. Ancient Rome teemed with reminiscences of this event, which

Livy regarded as first in the long series of the exploits of his countrymen. The place where Hercules pastured

his oxen was known long after as the Forum Boarium; near it the Porta Trigemina preserved the recollection

of the monster's triple head; and in the time of Diodorus Siculus sightseers were shown the cavern of Cacus

on the slope of the Aventine. Every tenth day the earlier generations of Romans celebrated the victory with

solemn sacrifices at the Ara Maxima; and on days of triumph the fortunate general deposited there a tithe of

In this famous myth, however, the god Hercules did not originally figure. The Latin Hercules was an

essentially peaceful and domestic deity, watching over households and enclosures, and nearly akin to

Terminus and the Penates. He does not appear to have been a solar divinity at all. But the purely accidental

resemblance of his name to that of the Greek deity Herakles,[110] and the manifest identity of the

Cacusmyth with the story of the victory of Herakles over Geryon, led to the substitution of Hercules for the

original hero of the legend, who was none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine name Sancus. Now

Johannes Lydus informs us that, in Sabine, Sancus signified "the sky," a meaning which we have already

seen to belong to the name Jupiter. The same substitution of the Greek hero for the Roman divinity led to the

alteration of the name of the demon overcome by his thunderbolts. The corrupted title Cacus was supposed to

be identical with the Greek word kakos, meaning "evil" and the corruption was suggested by the epithet of

Herakles, Alexikakos, or "the averter of ill." Originally, however, the name was Caecius, "he who blinds or

darkens," and it corresponds literally to the name of the Greek demon Kaikias, whom an old proverb,

[110] There is nothing in common between the names Hercules and Herakles. The latter is a compound,

formed like Themistokles; the former is a simple derivative from the root of hercere, "to enclose." If Herakles

had any equivalent in Latin, it would necessarily begin with S, and not with H, as septa corresponds to epta,

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 48

sequor to epomai, etc. It should be noted, however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition of his History,

abandons this view, and observes: "Auch der griechische Herakles ist fruh als Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in

Italien einheimisch und dort in eigenthumlicher Weise aufgefasst worden, wie es scheint zunachst als Gott

des gewagten Gewinns und der ausserordentlichen Vermogensvermehrung." Romische Geschichte, I. 181.

One would gladly learn Mommsen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less defensible opinion.

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

Thus the significance of the myth becomes apparent. The threeheaded Cacus is seen to be a near kinsman of

Geryon's threeheaded dog Orthros, and of the threeheaded Kerberos, the hellhound who guards the dark

regions below the horizon. He is the original werewolf or Rakshasa, the fiend of the storm who steals the

bright cattle of Helios, and hides them in the black cavernous rock, from which they are afterwards rescued

by the schamir or lightningstone of the solar hero. The physical character of the myth is apparent even in the

description of Virgil, which reads wonderfully like a Vedic hymn in celebration of the exploits of Indra. But

when we turn to the Veda itself, we find the correctness of the interpretation demonstrated again and again,

with inexhaustible prodigality of evidence. Here we encounter again the threeheaded Orthros under the

identical title of Vritra, "he who shrouds or envelops," called also Cushna, "he who parches," Pani, "the

robber," and Ahi, "the strangler." In many hymns of the RigVeda the story is told over and over, like a

musical theme arranged with variations. Indra, the god of light, is a herdsman who tends a herd of bright

golden or violetcoloured cattle. Vritra, a snakelike monster with three heads, steals them and hides them in

a cavern, but Indra slays him as Jupiter slew Caecius, and the cows are recovered. The language of the myth

is so significant, that the Hindu commentators of tile Veda have themselves given explanations of it similar to

those proposed by modern philologists. To them the legend never became devoid of sense, as the myth of

These celestial cattle, with their resplendent coats of purple and gold, are the clouds lit up by the solar rays;

but the demon who steals them is not always the fiend of the storm, acting in that capacity. They are stolen

every night by Vritra the concealer, and Caecius the darkener, and Indra is obliged to spend hours in looking

for them, sending Sarama, the inconstant twilight, to negotiate for their recovery. Between the stormmyth

and the myth of night and morning the resemblance is sometimes so close as to confuse the interpretation of

the two. Many legends which Max Muller explains as myths of the victory of day over night are explained by

Dr. Kuhn as stormmyths; and the disagreement between two such powerful champions would be a standing

reproach to what is rather prematurely called the SCIENCE of comparative mythology, were it not easy to

show that the difference is merely apparent and nonessential. It is the old story of the shield with two sides;

and a comparison of the ideas fundamental to these myths will show that there is no valid ground for

disagreement in the interpretation of them. The myths of schamir and the diviningrod, analyzed in a

previous paper, explain the rending of the thundercloud and the procuring of water without especial

reference to any struggle between opposing divinities. But in the myth of Hercules and Cacus, the

fundamental idea is the victory of the solar god over the robber who steals the light. Now whether the robber

carries off the light in the evening when Indra has gone to sleep, or boldly rears his black form against the sky

during the daytime, causing darkness to spread over the earth, would make little difference to the framers of

the myth. To a chicken a solar eclipse is the same thing as nightfall, and he goes to roost accordingly. Why,

then, should the primitive thinker have made a distinction between the darkening of the sky caused by black

clouds and that caused by the rotation of the earth? He had no more conception of the scientific explanation

of these phenomena than the chicken has of the scientific explanation of an eclipse. For him it was enough to

know that the solar radiance was stolen, in the one case as in the other, and to suspect that the same demon

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 49

The Veda itself sustains this view. It is certain that the victory of Indra over Vritra is essentially the same as

his victory over the Panis. Vritra, the stormfiend, is himself called one of the Panis; yet the latter are

uniformly represented as nightdemons. They steal Indra's golden cattle and drive them by circuitous paths to

a dark hidingplace near the eastern horizon. Indra sends the dawnnymph, Sarama, to search for them, but

as she comes within sight of the dark stable, the Panis try to coax her to stay with them: "Let us make thee

our sister, do not go away again; we will give thee part of the cows, O darling."[113] According to the text of

this hymn, she scorns their solicitations, but elsewhere the fickle dawnnymph is said to coquet with the

powers of darkness. She does not care for their cows, but will take a drink of milk, if they will be so good as

to get it for her. Then she goes back and tells Indra that she cannot find the cows. He kicks her with his foot,

and she runs back to the Panis, followed by the god, who smites them all with his unerring arrows and

[114] As Max Muller observes, "apart from all mythological considerations, Sarama in Sanskrit is the same

word as Helena in Greek." Op. cit. p. 490. The names correspond phonetically letter for letter, as, Surya

corresponds to Helios, Sarameyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu to Achilleus. Muller has plausibly suggested that

These nightdemons, the Panis, though not apparently regarded with any strong feeling of moral

condemnation, are nevertheless hated and dreaded as the authors of calamity. They not only steal the

daylight, but they parch the earth and wither the fruits, and they slay vegetation during the winter months. As

Caecius, the "darkener," became ultimately changed into Cacus, the "evil one," so the name of Vritra, the

"concealer," the most famous of the Panis, was gradually generalized until it came to mean "enemy," like the

English word fiend, and began to be applied indiscriminately to any kind of evil spirit. In one place he is

called Adeva, the "enemy of the gods," an epithet exactly equivalent to the Persian dev.

In the Zendavesta the myth of Hercules and Cacus has given rise to a vast system of theology. The fiendish

Panis are concentrated in Ahriman or Anromainyas, whose name signifies the "spirit of darkness," and who

carries on a perpetual warfare against Ormuzd or Ahuramazda, who is described by his ordinary surname,

Spentomainyas, as the "spirit of light." The ancient polytheism here gives place to a refined dualism, not very

different from what in many Christian sects has passed current as monotheism. Ahriman is the archfiend, who

struggles with Ormuzd, not for the possession of a herd of perishable cattle, but for the dominion of the

universe. Ormuzd creates the world pure and beautiful, but Ahriman comes after him and creates everything

that is evil in it. He not only keeps the earth covered with darkness during half of the day, and withholds the

rain and destroys the crops, but he is the author of all evil thoughts and the instigator of all wicked actions.

Like his progenitor Vritra and his offspring Satan, he is represented under the form of a serpent; and the

destruction which ultimately awaits these demons is also in reserve for him. Eventually there is to be a day of

reckoning, when Ahriman will be bound in chains and rendered powerless, or when, according to another

account, he will be converted to righteousness, as Burns hoped and Origen believed would be the case with

This dualism of the ancient Persians has exerted a powerful influence upon the development of Christian

theology. The very idea of an archfiend Satan, which Christianity received from Judaism, seems either to

have been suggested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to have derived its principal characteristics from that

source. There is no evidence that the Jews, previous to the Babylonish captivity, possessed the conception of

a Devil as the author of all evil. In the earlier books of the Old Testament Jehovah is represented as

dispensing with his own hand the good and the evil, like the Zeus of the Iliad.[115] The story of the serpent

in Edenan Aryan story in every particular, which has crept into the Pentateuchis not once alluded to in

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 50

the Old Testament; and the notion of Satan as the author of evil appears only in the later books, composed

after the Jews had come into close contact with Persian ideas.[116] In the Book of Job, as Reville observes,

Satan is "still a member of the celestial court, being one of the sons of the Elohim, but having as his special

office the continual accusation of men, and having become so suspicious by his practice as public accuser,

that he believes in the virtue of no one, and always presupposes interested motives for the purest

manifestations of human piety." In this way the character of this angel became injured, and he became more

and more an object of dread and dislike to men, until the later Jews ascribed to him all the attributes of

Ahriman, and in this singularly altered shape he passed into Christian theology. Between the Satan of the

Book of Job and the mediaeval Devil the metamorphosis is as great as that which degraded the stern Erinys,

who brings evil deeds to light, into the demonlike Fury who torments wrongdoers in Tartarus; and, making

allowance for difference of circumstances, the process of degradation has been very nearly the same in the

[115] "I create evil," Isaiah xiv. 7; "Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it?" Amos iii. 6;

[116] Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent in the Eden myth is intended for Satan. The

identification is entirely the work of modern dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to the habit, so

common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning about the Bible as if it were a single book, and

not a collection of writings of different ages and of very different degrees of historic authenticity. In a future

work, entitled "Aryana Vaedjo," I hope to examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the garden

The mediaeval conception of the Devil is a grotesque compound of elements derived from all the systems of

pagan mythology which Christianity superseded. He is primarily a rebellious angel, expelled from heaven

along with his followers, like the giants who attempted to scale Olympos, and like the impious Efreets of

Arabian legend who revolted against the beneficent rule of Solomon. As the serpent prince of the outer

darkness, he retains the old characteristics of Vritra, Ahi, Typhon, and Echidna. As the black dog which

appears behind the stove in Dr. Faust's study, he is the classic hellhound Kerberos, the Vedic Carvara. From

the sylvan deity Pan he gets his goatlike body, his horns and cloven hoofs. Like the windgod Orpheus, to

whose music the trees bent their heads to listen, he is an unrivalled player on the bagpipes. Like those other

windgods the psychopomp Hermes and the wild huntsman Odin, he is the prince of the powers of the air:

his flight through the midnight sky, attended by his troop of witches mounted on their brooms, which

sometimes break the boughs and sweep the leaves from the trees, is the same as the furious chase of the

Erlking Odin or the Burckar Vittikab. He is Dionysos, who causes red wine to flow from the dry wood, alike

on the deck of the Tyrrhenian pirateship and in Auerbach's cellar at Leipzig. He is Wayland, the smith, a

skilful worker in metals and a wonderful architect, like the classic firegod Hephaistos or Vulcan; and, like

Hephaistos, he is lame from the effects of his fall from heaven. From the lightninggod Thor he obtains his

red beard, his pitchfork, and his power over thunderbolts; and, like that ancient deity, he is in the habit of

beating his wife behind the door when the rain falls during sunshine. Finally, he takes a hint from Poseidon

and from the swanmaidens, and appears as a waterimp or Nixy (whence probably his name of Old Nick),

and as the Davy (deva) whose "locker" is situated at the bottom of the sea.[117]

[117] For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. II. pp 358, 366; to which I am

indebted for several of the details here given. Compare Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, I. 661, seq.

According to the Scotch divines of the seventeenth century, the Devil is a learned scholar and profound

thinker. Having profited by six thousand years of intense study and meditation, he has all science,

philosophy, and theology at his tongue's end; and, as his skill has increased with age, he is far more than a

match for mortals in cunning.[118] Such, however, is not the view taken by mediaeval mythology, which

usually represents his stupidity as equalling his malignity. The victory of Hercules over Cacus is repeated in a

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 51

hundred mediaeval legends in which the Devil is overreached and made a laughingstock. The germ of this

notion may be found in the blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, which is itself a victory of the sunhero

over the nightdemon, and which curiously reappears in a MiddleAge story narrated by Mr. Cox. "The

Devil asks a man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing; and when the man answers that he is

moulding eyes, asks him further whether he can give him a pair of new eyes. He is told to come again another

day; and when he makes his appearance accordingly, the man tells him that the operation cannot be

performed rightly unless he is first tightly bound with his back fastened to a bench. While he is thus pinioned

he asks the man's name. The reply is Issi (`himself'). When the lead is melted, the Devil opens his eyes wide

to receive the deadly stream. As soon as he is blinded, he starts up in agony, bearing away the bench to which

he had been bound; and when some workpeople in the fields ask him who had thus treated him, his answer is,

'Issi teggi' (`Self did it'). With a laugh they bid him lie on the bed which he has made: 'selbst gethan, selbst

[118] "Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are cited in Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. II.

p. 368. The same belief is implied in the quaint monkish tale of "Celestinus and the Miller's Horse." See

In his attempts to obtain human souls the Devil is frequently foiled by the superior cunning of mortals. Once,

he agreed to build a house for a peasant in exchange for the peasant's soul; but if the house were not finished

before cockcrow, the contract was to be null and void. Just as the Devil was putting on the last tile the man

imitated a cockcrow and waked up all the roosters in the neighbourhood, so that the fiend had his labour for

his pains. A merchant of Louvain once sold himself to the Devil, who heaped upon him all manner of riches

for seven years, and then came to get him. The merchant "took the Devil in a friendly manner by the hand

and, as it was just evening, said, 'Wife, bring a light quickly for the gentleman.' 'That is not at all necessary,'

said the Devil; 'I am merely come to fetch you.' 'Yes, yes, that I know very well,' said the merchant, 'only just

grant me the time till this little candleend is burnt out, as I have a few letters to sign and to put on my coat.'

'Very well,' said the Devil, 'but only till the candle is burnt out.' 'Good,' said the merchant, and going into the

next room, ordered the maidservant to place a large cask full of water close to a very deep pit that was dug

in the garden. The menservants also carried, each of them, a cask to the spot; and when all was done, they

were ordered each to take a shovel, and stand round the pit. The merchant then returned to the Devil, who

seeing that not more than about an inch of candle remained, said, laughing, 'Now get yourself ready, it will

soon be burnt out.' 'That I see, and am content; but I shall hold you to your word, and stay till it IS burnt.' 'Of

course,' answered the Devil; 'I stick to my word.' 'It is dark in the next room,' continued the merchant, 'but I

must find the great book with clasps, so let me just take the light for one moment.' 'Certainly,' said the Devil,

'but I'll go with you.' He did so, and the merchant's trepidation was now on the increase. When in the next

room he said on a sudden, 'Ah, now I know, the key is in the garden door.' And with these words he ran out

with the light into the garden, and before the Devil could overtake him, threw it into the pit, and the men and

the maids poured water upon it, and then filled up the hole with earth. Now came the Devil into the garden

and asked, 'Well, did you get the key? and how is it with the candle? where is it?' 'The candle?' said the

merchant. 'Yes, the candle.' 'Ha, ha, ha! it is not yet burnt out,' answered the merchant, laughing, 'and will not

be burnt out for the next fifty years; it lies there a hundred fathoms deep in the earth.' When the Devil heard

One day a fowler, who was a terrible bungler and could n't hit a bird at a dozen paces, sold his soul to the

Devil in order to become a Freischutz. The fiend was to come for him in seven years, but must be always able

to name the animal at which he was shooting, otherwise the compact was to be nullified. After that day the

fowler never missed his aim, and never did a fowler command such wages. When the seven years were out

the fowler told all these things to his wife, and the twain hit upon an expedient for cheating the Devil. The

woman stripped herself, daubed her whole body with molasses, and rolled herself up in a featherbed, cut

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open for this purpose. Then she hopped and skipped about the field where her husband stood parleying with

Old Nick. "there's a shot for you, fire away," said the Devil. "Of course I'll fire, but do you first tell me what

kind of a bird it is; else our agreement is cancelled, Old Boy." There was no help for it; the Devil had to own

himself nonplussed, and off he fled, with a whiff of brimstone which nearly suffocated the Freischutz and his

[120] Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. p. 259. In the Norse story of "Not a Pin to choose between

them," the old woman is in doubt as to her own identity, on waking up after the butcher has dipped her in a

tarbarrel and rolled her on a heap of feathers; and when Tray barks at her, her perplexity is as great as the

In the legend of Gambrinus, the fiend is still more ingloriously defeated. Gambrinus was a fiddler, who, being

jilted by his sweetheart, went out into the woods to hang himself. As he was sitting on the bough, with the

cord about his neck, preparatory to taking the fatal plunge, suddenly a tall man in a green coat appeared

before him, and offered his services. He might become as wealthy as he liked, and make his sweetheart burst

with vexation at her own folly, but in thirty years he must give up his soul to Beelzebub. The bargain was

struck, for Gambrinus thought thirty years a long time to enjoy one's self in, and perhaps the Devil might get

him in any event; as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Aided by Satan, he invented chimingbells and

lagerbeer, for both of which achievements his name is held in grateful remembrance by the Teuton. No

sooner had the Holy Roman Emperor quaffed a gallon or two of the new beverage than he made Gambrinus

Duke of Brabant and Count of Flanders, and then it was the fiddler's turn to laugh at the discomfiture of his

old sweetheart. Gambrinus kept clear of women, says the legend, and so lived in peace. For thirty years he sat

beneath his belfry with the chimes, meditatively drinking beer with his nobles and burghers around him. Then

Beelzebub sent Jocko, one of his imps, with orders to bring back Gambrinus before midnight. But Jocko was,

like Swiveller's Marchioness, ignorant of the taste of beer, never having drunk of it even in a sip, and the

Flemish schoppen were too much for him. He fell into a drunken sleep, and did not wake up until noon next

day, at which he was so mortified that he had not the face to go back to hell at all. So Gambrinus lived on

tranquilly for a century or two, and drank so much beer that he turned into a beerbarrel.[121]

The character of gullibility attributed to the Devil in these legends is probably derived from the Trolls, or

"nightfolk," of Northern mythology. In most respects the Trolls resemble the Teutonic elves and fairies, and

the Jinn or Efreets of the Arabian Nights; but their pedigree is less honourable. The fairies, or "White

Ladies," were not originally spirits of darkness, but were nearly akin to the swanmaidens, dawnnymphs,

and dryads, and though their wrath was to be dreaded, they were not malignant by nature. Christianity, having

no place for such beings, degraded them into something like imps; the most charitable theory being that they

were angels who had remained neutral during Satan's rebellion, in punishment for which Michael expelled

them from heaven, but has left their ultimate fate unannounced until the day of judgment. The Jinn appear to

have been similarly degraded on the rise of Mohammedanism. But the Trolls were always imps of darkness.

They are descended from the Jotuns, or FrostGiants of Northern paganism, and they correspond to the

Panis, or nightdemons of the Veda. In many Norse tales they are said to burst when they see the risen

sun.[122] They eat human flesh, are ignorant of the simplest arts, and live in the deepest recesses of the forest

or in caverns on the hillside, where the sunlight never penetrates. Some of these characteristics may very

likely have been suggested by reminiscences of the primeval Lapps, from whom the Aryan invaders wrested

the dominion of Europe.[123] In some legends the Trolls are represented as an ancient race of beings now

superseded by the human race. " 'What sort of an earthworm is this?' said one Giant to another, when they

met a man as they walked. 'These are the earthworms that will one day eat us up, brother,' answered the

other; and soon both Giants left that part of Germany." " 'See what pretty playthings, mother!' cries the

Giant's daughter, as she unties her apron, and shows her a plough, and horses, and a peasant. 'Back with them

this instant,' cries the mother in wrath, 'and put them down as carefully as you can, for these playthings can

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do our race great harm, and when these come we must budge.' " Very naturally the primitive Teuton,

possessing already the conception of nightdemons, would apply it to these men of the woods whom even to

this day his uneducated descendants believe to be sorcerers, able to turn men into wolves. But whatever

contributions historical fact may have added to his character, the Troll is originally a creation of mythology,

like Polyphemos, whom he resembles in his uncouth person, his cannibal appetite, and his lack of wit. His

ready gullibility is shown in the story of "Boots who ate a Match with the Troll." Boots, the brother of

Cinderella, and the counterpart alike of Jack the Giantkiller, and of Odysseus, is the youngest of three

brothers who go into a forest to cut wood. The Troll appears and threatens to kill any one who dares to

meddle with his timber. The elder brothers flee, but Boots puts on a bold face. He pulled a cheese out of his

scrip and squeezed it till the whey began to spurt out. "Hold your tongue, you dirty Troll," said he, "or I'll

squeeze you as I squeeze this stone." So the Troll grew timid and begged to be spared,[124] and Boots let him

off on condition that he would hew all day with him. They worked till nightfall, and the Troll's giant strength

accomplished wonders. Then Boots went home with the Troll, having arranged that he should get the water

while his host made the fire. When they reached the hut there were two enormous iron pails, so heavy that

none but a Troll could lift them, but Boots was not to be frightened. "Bah!" said he. "Do you suppose I am

going to get water in those paltry handbasins? Hold on till I go and get the spring itself!" "O dear!" said the

Troll, "I'd rather not; do you make the fire, and I'll get the water." Then when the soup was made, Boots

challenged his new friend to an eatingmatch; and tying his scrip in front of him, proceeded to pour soup into

it by the ladleful. By and by the giant threw down his spoon in despair, and owned himself conquered. "No,

no! don't give it up yet," said Boots, "just cut a hole in your stomach like this, and you can eat forever." And

suiting the action to the words, he ripped open his scrip. So the silly Troll cut himself open and died, and

[123] See Dasent's Introduction, p. cxxxix; Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, Vol. IV. p. 344; and

[124] "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one occasion, when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram.

Now the Leopard had never seen a Ram before, and accordingly, approaching submissively, he said, 'Good

day, friend! what may your name be?' The other, in his gruff voice, and striking his breast with his forefoot,

said, 'I am a Ram; who are you?' 'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead than alive; and then, taking

leave of the Ram, he ran home as fast as he could." Bleek, Hottentot Fables, p. 24.

Once there was a Troll whose name was WindandWeather, and Saint Olaf hired him to build a church. If

the church were completed within a certain specified time, the Troll was to get possession of Saint Olaf. The

saint then planned such a stupendous edifice that he thought the giant would be forever building it; but the

work went on briskly, and at the appointed day nothing remained but to finish the point of the spire. In his

consternation Olaf rushed about until he passed by the Troll's den, when he heard the giantess telling her

children that their father, WindandWeather, was finishing his church, and would be home tomorrow with

Saint Olaf. So the saint ran back to the church and bawled out, "Hold on, WindandWeather, your spire is

crooked!" Then the giant tumbled down from the roof and broke into a thousand pieces. As in the cases of the

Mara and the werewolf, the enchantment was at an end as soon as the enchanter was called by name.

These Trolls, like the Arabian Efreets, had an ugly habit of carrying off beautiful princesses. This is strictly in

keeping with their character as nightdemons, or Panis. In the stories of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant,

the nightdemon carries off the dawnmaiden after having turned into stone her solar brethren. But Boots, or

Indra, in search of his kinsfolk, by and by arrives at the Troll's castle, and then the dawnnymph, true to her

fickle character, cajoles the Giant and enables Boots to destroy him. In the famous myth which serves as the

basis for the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the dragon Fafnir steals the Valkyrie Brynhild and keeps

her shut up in a castle on the Glistening Heath, until some champion shall be found powerful enough to

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 54

rescue her. The castle is as hard to enter as that of the Sleeping Beauty; but Sigurd, the Northern Achilleus,

riding on his deathless horse, and wielding his resistless sword Gram, forces his way in, slays Fafnir, and

In the preceding paper the Valkyries were shown to belong to the class of cloudmaidens; and between the

tale of Sigurd and that of Hercules and Cacus there is no difference, save that the bright sunlit clouds which

are represented in the one as cows are in the other represented as maidens. In the myth of the Argonauts they

reappear as the Golden Fleece, carried to the far east by Phrixos and Helle, who are themselves Niblungs, or

"Children of the Mist" (Nephele), and there guarded by a dragon. In all these myths a treasure is stolen by a

fiend of darkness, and recovered by a hero of light, who slays the demon. Andremembering what Scribe

said about the fewness of dramatic typesI believe we are warranted in asserting that all the stories of lovely

women held in bondage by monsters, and rescued by heroes who perform wonderful tasks, such as Don

Quixote burned to achieve, are derived ultimately from solar myths, like the myth of Sigurd and Brynhild. I

do not mean to say that the storytellers who beguiled their time in stringing together the incidents which

make up these legends were conscious of their solar character. They did not go to work, with malice

prepense, to weave allegories and apologues. The Greeks who first told the story of Perseus and Andromeda,

the Arabians who devised the tale of Codadad and his brethren, the Flemings who listened over their

beermugs to the adventures of CulotteVerte, were not thinking of sungods or dawnmaidens, or

nightdemons; and no theory of mythology can be sound which implies such an extravagance. Most of these

stories have lived on the lips of the common people; and illiterate persons are not in the habit of allegorizing

in the style of mediaeval monks or rabbinical commentators. But what has been amply demonstrated is, that

the sun and the clouds, the light and the darkness, were once supposed to be actuated by wills analogous to

the human will; that they were personified and worshipped or propitiated by sacrifice; and that their doings

were described in language which applied so well to the deeds of human or quasihuman beings that in

course of time its primitive purport faded from recollection. No competent scholar now doubts that the myths

of the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for philology itself shows that the names employed in them

are the names of the great phenomena of nature. And when once a few striking stories had thus

arisen,when once it had been told how Indra smote the Panis, and how Sigurd rescued Brynhild, and how

Odysseus blinded the Kyklops,then certain mythic or dramatic types had been called into existence; and to

these types, preserved in the popular imagination, future stories would inevitably conform. We need,

therefore, have no hesitation in admitting a common origin for the vanquished Panis and the outwitted Troll

or Devil; we may securely compare the legends of St. George and Jack the Giantkiller with the myth of

Indra slaying Vritra; we may see in the invincible Sigurd the prototype of many a doughty knighterrant of

romance; and we may learn anew the lesson, taught with fresh emphasis by modern scholarship, that in the

I am the more explicit on this point, because it seems to me that the unguarded language of many students of

mythology is liable to give rise to misapprehensions, and to discredit both the method which they employ and

the results which they have obtained. If we were to give full weight to the statements which are sometimes

made, we should perforce believe that primitive men had nothing to do but to ponder about the sun and the

clouds, and to worry themselves over the disappearance of daylight. But there is nothing in the scientific

interpretation of myths which obliges us to go any such length. I do not suppose that any ancient Aryan,

possessed of good digestive powers and endowed with sound commonsense, ever lay awake half the night

wondering whether the sun would come back again.[125] The child and the savage believe of necessity that

the future will resemble the past, and it is only philosophy which raises doubts on the subject.[126] The

predominance of solar legends in most systems of mythology is not due to the lack of "that Titanic assurance

with which we say, the sun MUST rise";[127] nor again to the fact that the phenomena of day and night are

the most striking phenomena in nature. Eclipses and earthquakes and floods are phenomena of the most

terrible and astounding kind, and they have all generated myths; yet their contributions to folklore are

scanty compared with those furnished by the strife between the daygod and his enemies. The sunmyths

have been so prolific because the dramatic types to which they have given rise are of surpassing human

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 55

interest. The dragon who swallows the sun is no doubt a fearful personage; but the hero who toils for others,

who slays hydraheaded monsters, and dries the tears of fairhaired damsels, and achieves success in spite of

incredible obstacles, is a being with whom we can all sympathize, and of whom we never weary of hearing.

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

[126] Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives about the countries within the arctic circle where

during part of the year the sun never sets. "Their astonishment now knew no bounds. 'Ah! that must be

another sun, not the same as the one we see here,' said an old man; and in spite of all my arguments to the

contrary, the others adopted this opinion." Grey's Journals, I. 293, cited in Tylor, Early History of Mankind,

With many of these legends which present the myth of light and darkness in its most attractive form, the

reader is already acquainted, and it is needless to retail stories which have been told over and over again in

books which every one is presumed to have read. I will content myself with a weird Irish legend, narrated by

Mr. Patrick Kennedy,[128] in which we here and there catch glimpses of the primitive mythical symbols, as

Long before the Danes ever came to Ireland, there died at Muskerry a Sculloge, or country farmer, who by

dint of hard work and close economy had amassed enormous wealth. His only son did not resemble him.

When the young Sculloge looked about the house, the day after his father's death, and saw the big chests full

of gold and silver, and the cupboards shining with piles of sovereigns, and the old stockings stuffed with

large and small coin, he said to himself, "Bedad, how shall I ever be able to spend the likes o' that!" And so

he drank, and gambled, and wasted his time in hunting and horseracing, until after a while he found the

chests empty and the cupboards povertystricken, and the stockings lean and penniless. Then he mortgaged

his farmhouse and gambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that a few hundred

pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a

thimbleful of water in the millrace, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house all gone, and the upper

millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over everything." So he made up his mind

As he was returning late in the evening from this farewell hunt, passing through a lonely glen he came upon

an old man playing backgammon, betting on his left hand against his right, and crying and cursing because

the right WOULD win. "Come and bet with me," said he to Sculloge. "Faith, I have but a sixpence in the

world," was the reply; "but, if you like, I'll wager that on the right." "Done," said the old man, who was a

Druid; "if you win I'll give you a hundred guineas." So the game was played, and the old man, whose right

hand was always the winner, paid over the guineas and told Sculloge to go to the Devil with them.

Instead of following this bit of advice, however, the young farmer went home and began to pay his debts, and

next week he went to the glen and won another game, and made the Druid rebuild his mill. So Sculloge

became prosperous again, and by and by he tried his luck a third time, and won a game played for a beautiful

wife. The Druid sent her to his house the next morning before he was out of bed, and his servants came

knocking at the door and crying, "Wake up! wake up! Master Sculloge, there's a young lady here to see you."

"Bedad, it's the vanithee[129] herself," said Sculloge; and getting up in a hurry, he spent three quarters of an

hour in dressing himself. At last he went down stairs, and there on the sofa was the prettiest lady ever seen in

Ireland! Naturally, Sculloge's heart beat fast and his voice trembled, as he begged the lady's pardon for this

Druidic style of wooing, and besought her not to feel obliged to stay with him unless she really liked him. But

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the young lady, who was a king's daughter from a far country, was wondrously charmed with the handsome

farmer, and so well did they get along that the priest was sent for without further delay, and they were

married before sundown. Sabina was the vanithee's name; and she warned her husband to have no more

dealings with Lassa Buaicht, the old man of the glen. So for a while all went happily, and the Druidic bride

was as good as she was beautiful But by and by Sculloge began to think he was not earning money fast

enough. He could not bear to see his wife's white hands soiled with work, and thought it would be a fine thing

if he could only afford to keep a few more servants, and drive about with Sabina in an elegant carriage, and

"I will play one more game and set the stakes high," said Sculloge to himself one evening, as he sat

pondering over these things; and so, without consulting Sabina, he stole away to the glen, and played a game

for ten thousand guineas. But the evil Druid was now ready to pounce on his prey, and he did not play as of

old. Sculloge broke into a cold sweat with agony and terror as he saw the left hand win! Then the face of

Lassa Buaicht grew dark and stern, and he laid on Sculloge the curse which is laid upon the solar hero in

misfortune, that he should never sleep twice under the same roof, or ascend the couch of the dawnnymph,

his wife, until he should have procured and brought to him the sword of light. When Sculloge reached home,

more dead than alive, he saw that his wife knew all. Bitterly they wept together, but she told him that with

courage all might be set right. She gave him a Druidic horse, which bore him swiftly over land and sea, like

the enchanted steed of the Arabian Nights, until he reached the castle of his wife's father who, as Sculloge

now learned, was a good Druid, the brother of the evil Lassa Buaicht. This good Druid told him that the

sword of light was kept by a third brother, the powerful magician, Fiach O'Duda, who dwelt in an enchanted

castle, which many brave heroes had tried to enter, but the dark sorcerer had slain them all. Three high walls

surrounded the castle, and many had scaled the first of these, but none had ever returned alive. But Sculloge

was not to be daunted, and, taking from his fatherinlaw a black steed, he set out for the fortress of Fiach

O'Duda. Over the first high wall nimbly leaped the magic horse, and Sculloge called aloud on the Druid to

come out and surrender his sword. Then came out a tall, dark man, with coalblack eyes and hair and

melancholy visage, and made a furious sweep at Sculloge with the flaming blade. But the Druidic beast

sprang back over the wall in the twinkling of an eye and rescued his rider, leaving, however, his tail behind in

the courtyard. Then Sculloge returned in triumph to his fatherinlaw's palace, and the night was spent in

Next day Sculloge rode out on a white horse, and when he got to Fiach's castle, he saw the first wall lying in

rubbish. He leaped the second, and the same scene occurred as the day before, save that the horse escaped

The third day Sculloge went out on foot, with a harp like that of Orpheus in his hand, and as he swept its

strings the grass bent to listen and the trees bowed their heads. The castle walls all lay in ruins, and Sculloge

made his way unhindered to the upper room, where Fiach lay in Druidic slumber, lulled by the harp. He

seized the sword of light, which was hung by the chimney sheathed in a dark scabbard, and making the best

of his way back to the good king's palace, mounted his wife's steed, and scoured over land and sea until he

found himself in the gloomy glen where Lassa Buaicht was still crying and cursing and betting on his left

"Here, treacherous fiend, take your sword of light!" shouted Sculloge in tones of thunder; and as he drew it

from its sheath the whole valley was lighted up as with the morning sun, and next moment the head of the

wretched Druid was lying at his feet, and his sweet wife, who had come to meet him, was laughing and

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THE theory of mythology set forth in the four preceding papers, and illustrated by the examination of

numerous myths relating to the lightning, the stormwind, the clouds, and the sunlight, was originally framed

with reference solely to the mythic and legendary lore of the Aryan world. The phonetic identity of the names

of many Western gods and heroes with the names of those Vedic divinities which are obviously the

personifications of natural phenomena, suggested the theory which philosophical considerations had already

foreshadowed in the works of Hume and Comte, and which the exhaustive analysis of Greek, Hindu, Keltic,

and Teutonic legends has amply confirmed. Let us now, before proceeding to the consideration of barbaric

folklore, briefly recapitulate the results obtained by modern scholarship working strictly within the limits of

In the first place, it has been proved once for all that the languages spoken by the Hindus, Persians, Greeks,

Romans, Kelts, Slaves, and Teutons are all descended from a single ancestral language, the Old Aryan, in the

same sense that French, Italian, and Spanish are descended from the Latin. And from this undisputed fact it is

an inevitable inference that these various races contain, along with other elements, a raceelement in

common, due to their Aryan pedigree. That the IndoEuropean races are wholly Aryan is very improbable,

for in every case the countries overrun by them were occupied by inferior races, whose blood must have

mingled in varying degrees with that of their conquerors; but that every IndoEuropean people is in great part

In the second place, along with a common fund of moral and religious ideas and of legal and ceremonial

observances, we find these kindred peoples possessed of a common fund of myths, superstitions, proverbs,

popular poetry, and household legends. The Hindu mother amuses her child with fairytales which often

correspond, even in minor incidents, with stories in Scottish or Scandinavian nurseries; and she tells them in

words which are phonetically akin to words in Swedish and Gaelic. No doubt many of these stories might

have been devised in a dozen different places independently of each other; and no doubt many of them have

been transmitted laterally from one people to another; but a careful examination shows that such cannot have

been the case with the great majority of legends and beliefs. The agreement between two such stories, for

instance, as those of Faithful John and Rama and Luxman is so close as to make it incredible that they should

have been independently fabricated, while the points of difference are so important as to make it extremely

improbable that the one was ever copied from the other. Besides which, the essential identity of such myths

as those of Sigurd and Theseus, or of Helena and Sarama, carries us back historically to a time when the

scattered IndoEuropean tribes had not yet begun to hold commercial and intellectual intercourse with each

other, and consequently could not have interchanged their epic materials or their household stories. We are

therefore driven to the conclusionwhich, startling as it may seem, is after all the most natural and plausible

one that can be statedthat the Aryan nations, which have inherited from a common ancestral stock their

languages and their customs, have inherited also from the same common original their fireside legends. They

have preserved Cinderella and Punchkin just as they have preserved the words for father and mother, ten and

twenty; and the former case, though more imposing to the imagination, is scientifically no less intelligible

Thirdly, it has been shown that these venerable tales may be grouped in a few pretty well defined classes; and

that the archetypal myth of each classthe primitive story in conformity to which countless subsequent tales

have been generatedwas originally a mere description of physical phenomena, couched in the poetic

diction of an age when everything was personified, because all natural phenomena were supposed to be due

to the direct workings of a volition like that of which men were conscious within themselves. Thus we are led

to the striking conclusion that mythology has had a common root, both with science and with religious

philosophy. The myth of Indra conquering Vritra was one of the theorems of primitive Aryan science; it was

a provisional explanation of the thunderstorm, satisfactory enough until extended observation and reflection

supplied a better one. It also contained the germs of a theology; for the lifegiving solar light furnished an

important part of the primeval conception of deity. And finally, it became the fruitful parent of countless

myths, whether embodied in the stately epics of Homer and the bards of the Nibelungenlied, or in the

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Such is the theory which was suggested half a century ago by the researches of Jacob Grimm, and which, so

far as concerns the mythology of the Aryan race, is now victorious along the whole line. It remains for us to

test the universality of the general principles upon which it is founded, by a brief analysis of sundry legends

and superstitions of the barbaric world. Since the fetichistic habit of explaining the outward phenomena of

nature after the analogy of the inward phenomena of conscious intelligence is not a habit peculiar to our

Aryan ancestors, but is, as psychology shows, the inevitable result of the conditions under which uncivilized

thinking proceeds, we may expect to find the barbaric mind personifying the powers of nature and making

myths about their operations the whole world over. And we need not be surprised if we find in the resulting

mythologic structures a strong resemblance to the familiar creations of the Aryan intelligence. In point of

fact, we shall often be called upon to note such resemblance; and it accordingly behooves us at the outset to

inquire how far a similarity between mythical tales shall be taken as evidence of a common traditional origin,

and how far it may be interpreted as due merely to the similar workings of the untrained intelligence in all

Analogies drawn from the comparison of languages will here be of service to us, if used discreetly; otherwise

they are likely to bewilder far more than to enlighten us. A theorem which Max Muller has laid down for our

guidance in this kind of investigation furnishes us with an excellent example of the tricks which a superficial

analogy may play even with the trained scholar, when temporarily off his guard. Actuated by a praiseworthy

desire to raise the study of myths to something like the high level of scientific accuracy already attained by

the study of words, Max Muller endeavours to introduce one of the most useful canons of philology into a

department of inquiry where its introduction could only work the most hopeless confusion. One of the earliest

lessons to be learned by the scientific student of linguistics is the uselessness of comparing together directly

the words contained in derivative languages. For example, you might set the English twelve side by side with

the Latin duodecim, and then stare at the two words to all eternity without any hope of reaching a conclusion,

good or bad, about either of them: least of all would you suspect that they are descended from the same

radical. But if you take each word by itself and trace it back to its primitive shape, explaining every change of

every letter as you go, you will at last reach the old Aryan dvadakan, which is the parent of both these

strangely metamorphosed words.[130] Nor will it do, on the other hand, to trust to verbal similarity without a

historical inquiry into the origin of such similarity. Even in the same language two words of quite different

origin may get their corners rubbed off till they look as like one another as two pebbles. The French words

souris, a "mouse," and souris, a "smile," are spelled exactly alike; but the one comes from Latin sorex and the

[130] For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on "The Genesis of Language," North American Review,

Now Max Muller tells us that this principle, which is indispensable in the study of words, is equally

indispensable in the study of myths.[131] That is, you must not rashly pronounce the Norse story of the

Heartless Giant identical with the Hindu story of Punchkin, although the two correspond in every essential

incident. In both legends a magician turns several members of the same family into stone; the youngest

member of the family comes to the rescue, and on the way saves the lives of sundry grateful beasts; arrived at

the magician's castle, he finds a captive princess ready to accept his love and to play the part of Delilah to the

enchanter. In both stories the enchanter's life depends on the integrity of something which is elaborately

hidden in a fardistant island, but which the fortunate youth, instructed by the artful princess and assisted by

his menagerie of grateful beasts, succeeds in obtaining. In both stories the youth uses his advantage to free all

his friends from their enchantment, and then proceeds to destroy the villain who wrought all this wickedness.

Yet, in spite of this agreement, Max Muller, if I understand him aright, would not have us infer the identity of

the two stories until we have taken each one separately and ascertained its primitive mythical significance.

Otherwise, for aught we can tell, the resemblance may be purely accidental, like that of the French words for

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A little reflection, however, will relieve us from this perplexity, and assure us that the alleged analogy

between the comparison of words and the comparison of stories is utterly superficial. The transformations of

wordswhich are often astounding enoughdepend upon a few wellestablished physiological principles

of utterance; and since philology has learned to rely upon these principles, it has become nearly as sure in its

methods and results as one of the socalled "exact sciences." Folly enough is doubtless committed within its

precincts by writers who venture there without the laborious preparation which this science, more than almost

any other, demands. But the proceedings of the trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of the

trained astronomer. And though the former may seem to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel when

he coolly tells you that violin and fiddle are the same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to

do with each other, he is nevertheless no more indulging in guesswork than the astronomer who confesses

his ignorance as to the habitability of Venus while asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydrogen in

the atmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example out of a hundred, every philologist knows that s may become r,

and that the broad asound may dwindle into the closer osound; but when you adduce some plausible

etymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o into a, apart from the demonstrable

Now in the study of stories there are no such simple rules all cut and dried for us to go by. There is no

uniform psychological principle which determines that the threeheaded snake in one story shall become a

threeheaded man in the next. There is no Grimm's Law in mythology which decides that a Hindu magician

shall always correspond to a Norwegian Troll or a Keltic Druid. The laws of association of ideas are not so

simple in application as the laws of utterance. In short, the study of myths, though it can be made sufficiently

scientific in its methods and results, does not constitute a science by itself, like philology. It stands on a

footing similar to that occupied by physical geography, or what the Germans call "earthknowledge." No one

denies that all the changes going on over the earth's surface conform to physical laws; but then no one

pretends that there is any single proximate principle which governs all the phenomena of rainfall, of

soilcrumbling, of magnetic variation, and of the distribution of plants and animals. All these things are

explained by principles obtained from the various sciences of physics, chemistry, geology, and physiology.

And in just the same way the development and distribution of stories is explained by the help of divers

resources contributed by philology, psychology, and history. There is therefore no real analogy between the

cases cited by Max Muller. Two unrelated words may be ground into exactly the same shape, just as a pebble

from the North Sea may be undistinguishable from another pebble on the beach of the Adriatic; but two

stories like those of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant are no more likely to arise independently of each other

than two coral reefs on opposite sides of the globe are likely to develop into exactly similar islands.

Shall we then say boldly, that close similarity between legends is proof of kinship, and go our way without

further misgivings? Unfortunately we cannot dispose of the matter in quite so summary a fashion; for it

remains to decide what kind and degree of similarity shall be considered satisfactory evidence of kinship.

And it is just here that doctors may disagree. Here is the point at which our "science" betrays its weakness as

compared with the sister study of philology. Before we can decide with confidence in any case, a great mass

of evidence must be brought into court. So long as we remained on Aryan ground, all went smoothly enough,

because all the external evidence was in our favour. We knew at the outset, that the Aryans inherit a common

language and a common civilization, and therefore we found no difficulty in accepting the conclusion that

they have inherited, among other things, a common stock of legends. In the barbaric world it is quite

otherwise. Philology does not pronounce in favour of a common origin for all barbaric culture, such as it is.

The notion of a single primitive language, standing in the same relation to all existing dialects as the relation

of old Aryan to Latin and English, or that of old Semitic to Hebrew and Arabic, was a notion suited only to

the infancy of linguistic science. As the case now stands, it is certain that all the languages actually existing

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cannot be referred to a common ancestor, and it is altogether probable that there never was any such common

ancestor. I am not now referring to the question of the unity of the human race. That question lies entirely

outside the sphere of philology. The science of language has nothing to do with skulls or complexions, and no

comparison of words can tell us whether the black men are brethren of the white men, or whether yellow and

red men have a common pedigree: these questions belong to comparative physiology. But the science of

language can and does tell us that a certain amount of civilization is requisite for the production of a language

sufficiently durable and widespread to give birth to numerous mutually resembling offspring Barbaric

languages are neither widespread nor durable. Among savages each little group of families has its own

dialect, and coins its own expressions at pleasure; and in the course of two or three generations a dialect gets

so strangely altered as virtually to lose its identity. Even numerals and personal pronouns, which the Aryan

has preserved for fifty centuries, get lost every few years in Polynesia. Since the time of Captain Cook the

Tahitian language has thrown away five out of its ten simple numerals, and replaced them by brandnew

ones; and on the Amazon you may acquire a fluent command of some Indian dialect, and then, coming back

after twenty years, find yourself worse off than Rip Van Winkle, and your learning all antiquated and useless.

How absurd, therefore, to suppose that primeval savages originated a language which has held its own like

the old Aryan and become the prolific mother of the three or four thousand dialects now in existence! Before

a durable language can arise, there must be an aggregation of numerous tribes into a people, so that there may

be need of communication on a large scale, and so that tradition may be strengthened. Wherever mankind

have associated in nations, permanent languages have arisen, and their derivative dialects bear the

conspicuous marks of kinship; but where mankind have remained in their primitive savage isolation, their

languages have remained sporadic and transitory, incapable of organic development, and showing no traces

The bearing of these considerations upon the origin and diffusion of barbaric myths is obvious. The

development of a common stock of legends is, of course, impossible, save where there is a common

language; and thus philology pronounces against the kinship of barbaric myths with each other and with

similar myths of the Aryan and Semitic worlds. Similar stories told in Greece and Norway are likely to have a

common pedigree, because the persons who have preserved them in recollection speak a common language

and have inherited the same civilization. But similar stories told in Labrador and South Africa are not likely

to be genealogically related, because it is altogether probable that the Esquimaux and the Zulu had acquired

their present race characteristics before either of them possessed a language or a culture sufficient for the

production of myths. According to the nature and extent of the similarity, it must be decided whether such

stories have been carried about from one part of the world to another, or have been independently originated

Here the methods of philology suggest a rule which will often be found useful. In comparing, the

vocabularies of different languages, those words which directly imitate natural sounds such as whiz, crash,

crackleare not admitted as evidence of kinship between the languages in which they occur. Resemblances

between such words are obviously no proof of a common ancestry; and they are often met with in languages

which have demonstrably had no connection with each other. So in mythology, where we find two stories of

which the primitive character is perfectly transparent, we need have no difficulty in supposing them to have

originated independently. The myth of Jack and his Beanstalk is found all over the world; but the idea of a

country above the sky, to which persons might gain access by climbing, is one which could hardly fail to

occur to every barbarian. Among the American tribes, as well as among the Aryans, the rainbow and the

MilkyWay have contributed the idea of a Bridge of the Dead, over which souls must pass on the way to the

other world. In South Africa, as well as in Germany, the habits of the fox and of his brother the jackal have

given rise to fables in which brute force is overcome by cunning. In many parts of the world we find

curiously similar stories devised to account for the stumpy tails of the bear and hyaena, the hairless tail of the

rat, and the blindness of the mole. And in all countries may be found the beliefs that men may be changed

into beasts, or plants, or stones; that the sun is in some way tethered or constrained to follow a certain course;

that the stormcloud is a ravenous dragon; and that there are talismans which will reveal hidden treasures. All

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these conceptions are so obvious to the uncivilized intelligence, that stories founded upon them need not be

supposed to have a common origin, unless there turns out to be a striking similarity among their minor

details. On the other hand, the numerous myths of an alldestroying deluge have doubtless arisen partly from

reminiscences of actually occurring local inundations, and partly from the fact that the Scriptural account of a

deluge has been carried all over the world by Catholic and Protestant missionaries.[132]

[132] For various legends of a deluge, see BaringGould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp.

By way of illustrating these principles, let us now cite a few of the American myths so carefully collected by

Dr. Brinton in his admirable treatise. We shall not find in the mythology of the New World the wealth of wit

and imagination which has so long delighted us in the stories of Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd, and

Indra. The mythic lore of the American Indians is comparatively scanty and prosaic, as befits the product of a

lower grade of culture and a more meagre intellect. Not only are the personages less characteristically

pourtrayed, but there is a continual tendency to extravagance, the sure index of an inferior imagination.

Nevertheless, after making due allowances for differences in the artistic method of treatment, there is

between the mythologies of the Old and the New Worlds a fundamental resemblance. We come upon solar

myths and myths of the storm curiously blended with culturemyths, as in the cases of Hermes, Prometheus,

and Kadmos. The American parallels to these are to be found in the stories of Michabo, Viracocha, Ioskeha,

and Quetzalcoatl. "As elsewhere the world over, so in America, many tribes had to tell of .... an august

character, who taught them what they knew,the tillage of the soil, the properties of plants, the art of

picturewriting, the secrets of magic; who founded their institutions and established their religions; who

governed them long with glory abroad and peace at home; and finally did not die, but, like Frederic

Barbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great heroes, vanished mysteriously, and still lives

somewhere, ready at the right moment to return to his beloved people and lead them to victory and

happiness."[133] Everyone is familiar with the numerous legends of whiteskinned, fullbearded heroes, like

the mild Quetzalcoatl, who in times long previous to Columbus came from the far East to impart the

rudiments of civilization and religion to the red men. By those who first heard these stories they were

supposed, with naive Euhemerism, to refer to preColumbian visits of Europeans to this continent, like that

of the Northmen in the tenth century. But a scientific study of the subject has dissipated such notions. These

legends are far too numerous, they are too similar to each other, they are too manifestly symbolical, to admit

of any such interpretation. By comparing them carefully with each other, and with correlative myths of the

One of the most widely famous of these cultureheroes was Manabozho or Michabo, the Great Hare. With

entire unanimity, says Dr. Brinton, the various branches of the Algonquin race, "the Powhatans of Virginia,

the Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the Ottawas of the far North, and the

Western tribes, perhaps without exception, spoke of this chimerical beast,' as one of the old missionaries calls

it, as their common ancestor. The totem, or clan, which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar

respect." Not only was Michabo the ruler and guardian of these numerous tribes,he was the founder of

their religious rites, the inventor of picturewriting, the ruler of the weather, the creator and preserver of earth

and heaven. "From a grain of sand brought from the bottom of the primeval ocean he fashioned the habitable

land, and set it floating on the waters till it grew to such a size that a strong young wolf, running constantly,

died of old age ere he reached its limits." He was also, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter. "One of his footsteps

measured eight leagues, the Great Lakes were the beaverdams he built, and when the cataracts impeded his

progress he tore them away with his hands." "Sometimes he was said to dwell in the skies with his brother,

the Snow, or, like many great spirits, to have built his wigwam in the far North on some floe of ice in the

Arctic Ocean..... But in the oldest accounts of the missionaries he was alleged to reside toward the East; and

in the holy formulae of the meda craft, when the winds are invoked to the medicine lodge, the East is

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summoned in his name, the door opens in that direction, and there, at the edge of the earth where the sun

rises, on the shore of the infinite ocean that surrounds the land, he has his house, and sends the luminaries

forth on their daily journeys."[134] From such accounts as this we see that Michabo was no more a wise

instructor and legislator than Minos or Kadmos. Like these heroes, he is a personification of the solar

lifegiving power, which daily comes forth from its home in the east, making the earth to rejoice. The

etymology of his name confirms the otherwise clear indications of the legend itself. It is compounded of

michi, "great," and wabos, which means alike "hare" and "white." "Dialectic forms in Algonquin for white

are wabi, wape, wampi, etc.; for morning, wapan, wapanch, opah; for east, wapa, wanbun, etc.; for day,

wompan, oppan; for light, oppung." So that Michabo is the Great White One, the God of the Dawn and the

East. And the etymological confusion, by virtue of which he acquired his soubriquet of the Great Hare,

affords a curious parallel to what has often happened in Aryan and Semitic mythology, as we saw when

Keeping in mind this solar character of Michabo, let us note how full of meaning are the myths concerning

him. In the first cycle of these legends, "he is grandson of the Moon, his father is the West Wind, and his

mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment of conception. For the Moon is the goddess of

night; the Dawn is her daughter, who brings forth the Morning, and perishes herself in the act; and the West,

the spirit of darkness, as the East is of light, precedes, and as it were begets the latter, as the evening does the

morning. Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought the unnatural father to revenge the

death of his mother, and then commenced a long and desperate struggle. It began on the mountains. The West

was forced to give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains and lakes, and at last he

came to the brink of this world. 'Hold,' cried he, 'my son, you know my power, and that it is impossible to kill

me.' What is this but the diurnal combat of light and darkness, carried on from what time 'the jocund morn

stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops,' across the wide world to the sunset, the struggle that knows no

Even the Veda nowhere affords a more transparent narrative than this. The Iroquois tradition is very similar.

In it appear twin brothers,[136] born of a virgin mother, daughter of the Moon, who died in giving them life.

Their names, Ioskeha and Tawiskara, signify in the Oneida dialect the White One and the Dark One. Under

the influence of Christian ideas the contest between the brothers has been made to assume a moral character,

like the strife between Ormuzd and Ahriman. But no such intention appears in the original myth, and Dr.

Brinton has shown that none of the American tribes had any conception of a Devil. When the quarrel came to

blows, the dark brother was signally discomfited; and the victorious Ioskeha, returning to his grandmother,

"established his lodge in the far East, on the horders of the Great Ocean, whence the sun comes. In time he

became the father of mankind, and special guardian of the Iroquois." He caused the earth to bring forth, he

stocked the woods with game, and taught his children the use of fire. "He it was who watched and watered

their crops; 'and, indeed, without his aid,' says the old missionary, quite out of patience with their puerilities,

'they think they could not boil a pot.' " There was more in it than poor Brebouf thought, as we are forcibly

reminded by recent discoveries in physical science. Even civilized men would find it difficult to boil a pot

without the aid of solar energy. Call him what we will,Ioskeha, Michabo, or Phoibos,the beneficent Sun

is the master and sustainer of us all; and if we were to relapse into heathenism, like ErckmannChatrian's

innkeeper, we could not do better than to select him as our chief object of worship.

[136] Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the Dioskouroi, and the brothers True and Untrue of

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The same principles by which these simple cases are explained furnish also the key to the more complicated

mythology of Mexico and Peru. Like the deities just discussed, Viracocha, the supreme god of the Quichuas,

rises from the bosom of Lake Titicaca and journeys westward, slaying with his lightnings the creatures who

oppose him, until he finally disappears in the Western Ocean. Like Aphrodite, he bears in his name the

evidence of his origin, Viracocha signifying "foam of the sea"; and hence the "White One" (l'aube), the god

of light rising white on the horizon, like the foam on the surface of the waves. The Aymaras spoke of their

original ancestors as white; and to this day, as Dr. Brinton informs us, the Peruvians call a white man

Viracocha. The myth of Quetzalcoatl is of precisely the same character. All these solar heroes present in most

of their qualities and achievements a striking likeness to those of the Old World. They combine the attributes

of Apollo, Herakles, and Hermes. Like Herakles, they journey from east to west, smiting the powers of

darkness, storm, and winter with the thunderbolts of Zeus or the unerring arrows of Phoibos, and sinking in a

blaze of glory on the western verge of the world, where the waves meet the firmament. Or like Hermes, in a

second cycle of legends, they rise with the soft breezes of a summer morning, driving before them the bright

celestial cattle whose udders are heavy with refreshing rain, fanning the flames which devour the forests,

blustering at the doors of wigwams, and escaping with weird laughter through vents and crevices. The white

skins and flowing beards of these American heroes may be aptly compared to the fair faces and long golden

locks of their Hellenic compeers. Yellow hair was in all probability as rare in Greece as a full beard in Peru

or Mexico; but in each case the description suits the solar character of the hero. One important class of

incidents, however is apparently quite absent from the American legends. We frequently see the Dawn

described as a virgin mother who dies in giving birth to the Day; but nowhere do we remember seeing her

pictured as a lovely or valiant or crafty maiden, ardently wooed, but speedily forsaken by her solar lover.

Perhaps in no respect is the superior richness and beauty of the Aryan myths more manifest than in this.

Brynhild, Urvasi, Medeia, Ariadne, Oinone, and countless other kindred heroines, with their brilliant legends,

could not be spared from the mythology of our ancestors without, leaving it meagre indeed. These were the

materials which Kalidasa, the Attic dramatists, and the bards of the Nibelungen found ready, awaiting their

artistic treatment. But the mythology of the New World, with all its pretty and agreeable naivete, affords

hardly enough, either of variety in situation or of complexity in motive, for a grand epic or a genuine tragedy.

But little reflection is needed to assure us that the imagination of the barbarian, who either carries away his

wife by brute force or buys her from her relatives as he would buy a cow, could never have originated

legends in which maidens are lovingly solicited, or in which their favour is won by the performance of deeds

of valour. These stories owe their existence to the romantic turn of mind which has always characterized the

Aryan, whose civilization, even in the times before the dispersion of his race, was sufficiently advanced to

allow of his entertaining such comparatively exalted conceptions of the relations between men and women.

The absence of these myths from barbaric folklore is, therefore, just what might be expected; but it is a fact

which militates against any possible hypothesis of the common origin of Aryan and barbaric mythology. If

there were any genetic relationship between Sigurd and Ioskeha, between Herakles and Michabo, it would be

hard to tell why Brynhild and Iole should have disappeared entirely from one whole group of legends, while

retained, in some form or other, throughout the whole of the other group. On the other hand, the resemblances

above noticed between Aryan and American mythology fall very far short of the resemblances between the

stories told in different parts of the Aryan domain. No barbaric legend, of genuine barbaric growth, has yet

been cited which resembles any Aryan legend as the story of Punchkin resembles the story of the Heartless

Giant. The myths of Michabo and Viracocha are direct copies, so to speak, of natural phenomena, just as

imitative words are direct copies of natural sounds. Neither the Redskin nor the IndoEuropean had any

choice as to the main features of the career of his solar divinity. He must be born of the Night,or of the

Dawn,must travel westward, must slay harassing demons. Eliminating these points of likeness, the

resemblance between the Aryan and barbaric legends is at once at an end. Such an identity in point of details

as that between the wooden horse which enters Ilion, and the horse which bears Sigurd into the place where

Brynhild is imprisoned, and the Druidic steed which leaps with Sculloge over the walls of Fiach's enchanted

castle, is, I believe, nowhere to be found after we leave IndoEuropean territory.

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Our conclusion, therefore, must be, that while the legends of the Aryan and the nonAryan worlds contain

common mythical elements, the legends themselves are not of common origin. The fact that certain mythical

ideas are possessed alike by different races, shows that in each case a similar human intelligence has been at

work explaining similar phenomena; but in order to prove a family relationship between the culture of these

different races, we need something more than this. We need to prove not only a community of mythical ideas,

but also a community between the stories based upon these ideas. We must show not only that Michabo is

like Herakles in those striking features which the contemplation of solar phenomena would necessarily

suggest to the imagination of the primitive mythmaker, but also that the two characters are similarly

conceived, and that the two careers agree in seemingly arbitrary points of detail, as is the case in the stories of

Punchkin and the Heartless Giant. The mere fact that solar heroes, all over the world, travel in a certain path

and slay imps of darkness is of great value as throwing light upon primeval habits of thought, but it is of no

value as evidence for or against an alleged community of civilization between different races. The same is

true of the sacredness universally attached to certain numbers. Dr. Blinton's opinion that the sanctity of the

number four in nearly all systems of mythology is due to a primitive worship of the cardinal points, becomes

very probable when we recollect that the similar preeminence of seven is almost demonstrably connected

with the adoration of the sun, moon, and five visible planets, which has left its record in the structure and

[137] See Humboldt's Kosmos, Tom. III. pp. 469476. A fetichistic regard for the cardinal points has not

always been absent from the minds of persons instructed in a higher theology as witness a wellknown

passage in Irenaeus, and also the custom, wellnigh universal in Europe, of building Christian churches in a

In view of these considerations, the comparison of barbaric myths with each other and with the legends of the

Aryan world becomes doubly interesting, as illustrating the similarity in the workings of the untrained

intelligence the world over. In our first paper we saw how the moonspots have been variously explained by

IndoEuropeans, as a man with a thornbush or as two children bearing a bucket of water on a pole. In

Ceylon it is said that as Sakyamuni was one day wandering half starved in the forest, a pious hare met him,

and offered itself to him to be slain and cooked for dinner; whereupon the holy Buddha set it on high in the

moon, that future generations of men might see it and marvel at its piety. In the Samoan Islands these dark

patches are supposed to be portions of a woman's figure. A certain woman was once hammering something

with a mallet, when the moon arose, looking so much like a breadfruit that the woman asked it to come

down and let her child eat off a piece of it; but the moon, enraged at the insult, gobbled up woman, mallet,

and child, and there, in the moon's belly, you may still behold them. According to the Hottentots, the Moon

once sent the Hare to inform men that as she died away and rose again, so should men die and again come to

life. But the stupid Hare forgot the purport of the message, and, coming down to the earth, proclaimed it far

and wide that though the Moon was invariably resuscitated whenever she died, mankind, on the other hand,

should die and go to the Devil. When the silly brute returned to the lunar country and told what he had done,

the Moon was so angry that she took up an axe and aimed a blow at his head to split it. But the axe missed

and only cut his lip open; and that was the origin of the "harelip." Maddened by the pain and the insult, the

Hare flew at the Moon and almost scratched her eyes out; and to this day she bears on her face the marks of

[138] Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 72. Compare the Fiji story of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo,

Again, every reader of the classics knows how Selene cast Endymion into a profound slumber because he

refused her love, and how at sundown she used to come and stand above him on the Latmian hill, and watch

him as he lay asleep on the marble steps of a temple half hidden among drooping elmtrees, over which

clambered vines heavy with dark blue grapes. This represents the rising moon looking down on the setting

sun; in Labrador a similar phenomenon has suggested a somewhat different story. Among the Esquimaux the

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Sun is a maiden and the Moon is her brother, who is overcome by a wicked passion for her. Once, as this girl

was at a dancingparty in a friend's hut, some one came up and took hold of her by the shoulders and shook

her, which is (according to the legend) the Esquimaux manner of declaring one's love. She could not tell who

it was in the dark, and so she dipped her hand in some soot and smeared one of his cheeks with it. When a

light was struck in the hut, she saw, to her dismay, that it was her brother, and, without waiting to learn any

more, she took to her heels. He started in hot pursuit, and so they ran till they got to the end of the

world,the jumpingoff place,when they both jumped into the sky. There the Moon still chases his sister,

the Sun; and every now and then he turns his sooty cheek toward the earth, when he becomes so dark that you

Another story, which I cite from Mr. Tylor, shows that Malays, as well as IndoEuropeans, have conceived

of the clouds as swanmaidens. In the island of Celebes it is said that "seven heavenly nymphs came down

from the sky to bathe, and they were seen by Kasimbaha, who thought first that they were white doves, but in

the bath he saw that they were women. Then he stole one of the thin robes that gave the nymphs their power

of flying, and so he caught Utahagi, the one whose robe he had stolen, and took her for his wife, and she bore

him a son. Now she was called Utahagi from a single white hair she had, which was endowed with magic

power, and this hair her husband pulled out. As soon as he had done it, there arose a great storm, and Utahagi

went up to heaven. The child cried for its mother, and Kasimbaha was in great grief, and cast about how he

should follow Utahagi up into the sky." Here we pass to the myth of Jack and the Beanstalk. "A rat gnawed

the thorns off the rattans, and Kasimbaha clambered up by them with his son upon his back, till he came to

heaven. There a little bird showed him the house of Utahagi, and after various adventures he took up his

In Siberia we find a legend of swanmaidens, which also reminds us of the story of the Heartless Giant. A

certain Samojed once went out to catch foxes, and found seven maidens swimming in a lake surrounded by

gloomy pinetrees, while their feather dresses lay on the shore. He crept up and stole one of these dresses,

and by and by the swanmaiden came to him shivering with cold and promising to become his wife if he

would only give her back her garment of feathers. The ungallant fellow, however, did not care for a wife, but

a little revenge was not unsuited to his way of thinking. There were seven robbers who used to prowl about

the neighbourhood, and who, when they got home, finding their hearts in the way, used to hang them up on

some pegs in the tent. One of these robbers had killed the Samojed's mother; and so he promised to return the

swanmaiden's dress after she should have procured for him these seven hearts. So she stole the hearts, and

the Samojed smashed six of them, and then woke up the seventh robber, and told him to restore his mother to

life, on pain of instant death, Then the robber produced a purse containing the old woman's soul, and going to

the graveyard shook it over her bones, and she revived at once. Then the Samojed smashed the seventh heart,

and the robber died; and so the swanmaiden got back her plumage and flew away rejoicing.[141]

Swanmaidens are also, according to Mr. BaringGould, found among the Minussinian Tartars. But there

they appear as foul demons, like the Greek Harpies, who delight in drinking the blood of men slain in battle.

There are forty of them, who darken the whole firmament in their flight; but sometimes they all coalesce into

In South Africa we find the werewolf himself.[142] A certain Hottentot was once travelling with a

Bushwoman and her child, when they perceived at a distance a troop of wild horses. The man, being hungry,

asked the woman to turn herself into a lioness and catch one of these horses, that they might eat of it;

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whereupon the woman set down her child, and taking off a sort of petticoat made of human skin became

instantly transformed into a lioness, which rushed across the plain, struck down a wild horse and lapped its

blood. The man climbed a tree in terror, and conjured his companion to resume her natural shape. Then the

lioness came back, and putting on the skirt made of human skin reappeared as a woman, and took up her

child, and the two friends resumed their journey after making a meal of the horse's flesh.[143]

[142] Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wallace says: "It is universally believed in Lombock

that some men have the power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake of devouring

their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such transformations." Wallace, Malay Archipelago, Vol. I.

The werewolf also appears in North America, duly furnished with his wolfskin sack; but neither in America

nor in Africa is he the genuine European werewolf, inspired by a diabolic frenzy, and ravening for human

flesh. The barbaric myths testify to the belief that men can be changed into beasts or have in some cases

descended from beast ancestors, but the application of this belief to the explanation of abnormal cannibal

cravings seems to have been confined to Europe. The werewolf of the Middle Ages was not merely a

transformed man,he was an insane cannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due to the machinations of the

Devil, showed its power over his physical organism by changing the shape of it. The barbaric werewolf is the

product of a lower and simpler kind of thinking. There is no diabolism about him; for barbaric races, while

believing in the existence of hurtful and malicious fiends, have not a sufficiently vivid sense of moral

abnormity to form the conception of diabolism. And the cannibal craving, which to the mediaeval European

was a phenomenon so strange as to demand a mythological explanation, would not impress the barbarian as

In the folklore of the Zulus, one of the most quickwitted and intelligent of African races, the cannibal

possesses many features in common with the Scandinavian Troll, who also has a liking for human flesh. As

we saw in the preceding paper, the Troll has very likely derived some of his characteristics from

reminiscences of the barbarous races who preceded the Aryans in Central and Northern Europe. In like

manner the longhaired cannibal of Zulu nursery literature, who is always represented as belonging to a

distinct race, has been supposed to be explained by the existence of inferior races conquered and displaced by

the Zulus. Nevertheless, as Dr. Callaway observes, neither the longhaired mountain cannibals of Western

Africa, nor the Fulahs, nor the tribes of Eghedal described by Barth, "can be considered as answering to the

description of longhaired as given in the Zulu legends of cannibals; neither could they possibly have formed

their historical basis..... It is perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legends are not common men; they

are magnified into giants and magicians; they are remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and terrible

warriors." Very probably they may have a mythical origin in modes of thought akin to those which begot the

Panis of the Veda and the Northern Trolls. The parallelism is perhaps the most remarkable one which can be

found in comparing barbaric with Aryan folklore. Like the Panis and Trolls, the cannibals are represented as

the foes of the solar hero Uthlakanyana, who is almost as great a traveller as Odysseus, and whose presence

of mind amid trying circumstances is not to be surpassed by that of the incomparable Boots. Uthlakanyana is

as precocious as Herakles or Hermes. He speaks before he is born, and no sooner has he entered the world

than he begins to outwit other people and get possession of their property. He works bitter ruin for the

cannibals, who, with all their strength and fleetness, are no better endowed with quick wit than the Trolls,

whom Boots invariably victimizes. On one of his journeys, Uthlakanyana fell in with a cannibal. Their

greetings were cordial enough, and they ate a bit of leopard together, and began to build a house, and killed a

couple of cows, but the cannibal's cow was lean, while Uthlakanyana's was fat. Then the crafty traveller,

fearing that his companion might insist upon having the fat cow, turned and said, " 'Let the house be thatched

now then we can eat our meat. You see the sky, that we shall get wet.' The cannibal said, 'You are right, child

of my sister; you are a man indeed in saying, let us thatch the house, for we shall get wet.' Uthlakanyana said,

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'Do you do it then; I will go inside, and push the thatchingneedle for you, in the house.' The cannibal went

up. His hair was very, very long. Uthlakanyana went inside and pushed the needle for him. He thatched in the

hair of the cannibal, tying it very tightly; he knotted it into the thatch constantly, taking it by separate locks

and fastening it firmly, that it might be tightly fastened to the house." Then the rogue went outside and began

to eat of the cow which was roasted. "The cannibal said, 'What are you about, child of my sister? Let us just

finish the house; afterwards we can do that; we will do it together.' Uthlakanyana replied, 'Come down then. I

cannot go into the house any more. The thatching is finished.' The cannibal assented. When he thought he

was going to quit the house, he was unable to quit it. He cried out saying, 'Child of my sister, how have you

managed your thatching?' Uthlakanyana said, 'See to it yourself. I have thatched well, for I shall not have any

dispute. Now I am about to eat in peace; I no longer dispute with anybody, for I am now alone with my cow.'

" So the cannibal cried and raved and appealed in vain to Uthlakanyana's sense of justice, until by and by "the

sky came with hailstones and lightning Uthlakanyana took all the meat into the house; he stayed in the house

and lit a fire. It hailed and rained. The cannibal cried on the top of the house; he was struck with the

hailstones, and died there on the house. It cleared. Uthlakanyana went out and said, 'Uncle, just come down,

and come to me. It has become clear. It no longer rains, and there is no more hail, neither is there any more

lightning. Why are you silent?' So Uthlakanyana ate his cow alone, until he had finished it. He then went on

In another Zulu legend, a girl is stolen by cannibals, and shut up in the rock Itshelikantunjambili, which, like

the rock of the Forty Thieves, opens and shuts at the command of those who understand its secret. She gets

possession of the secret and escapes, and when the monsters pursue her she throws on the ground a calabash

full of sesame, which they stop to eat. At last, getting tired of running, she climbs a tree, and there she finds

her brother, who, warned by a dream, has come out to look for her. They ascend the tree together until they

come to a beautiful country well stocked with fat oxen. They kill an ox, and while its flesh is roasting they

amuse themselves by making a stout thong of its hide. By and by one of the cannibals, smelling the cooking

meat, comes to the foot of the tree, and looking up discovers the boy and girl in the skycountry! They invite

their feast, and throw him an end of the thong by which to climb up. When the cannibal is dangling midway

between earth and heaven, they let go the rope, and down he falls with a terrible crash.[145]

[145] Callaway, op. cit. pp. 142152; cf. a similar story in which the lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op.

In this story the enchanted rock opened by a talismanic formula brings us again into contact with

IndoEuropean folklore. And that the conception has in both cases been suggested by the same natural

phenomenon is rendered probable by another Zulu tale, in which the cannibal's cave is opened by a swallow

which flies in the air. Here we have the elements of a genuine lightningmyth. We see that among these

African barbarians, as well as among our own forefathers, the clouds have been conceived as birds carrying

the lightning which can cleave the rocks. In America we find the same notion prevalent. The Dakotahs

explain the thunder as "the sound of the cloudbird flapping his wings," and the Caribs describe the lightning

as a poisoned dart which the bird blows through a hollow reed, after the Carib style of shooting.[146] On the

other hand, the Kamtchatkans know nothing of a cloudbird, but explain the lightning as something

analogous to the flames of a volcano. The Kamtchatkans say that when the mountain goblins have got their

stoves well heated up, they throw overboard, with true barbaric shiftlessness, all the brands not needed for

immediate use, which makes a volcanic eruption. So when it is summer on earth, it is winter in heaven; and

the gods, after heating up their stoves, throw away their spare kindlingwood, which makes the lightning.[147]

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When treating of IndoEuropean solar myths, we saw the unvarying, unresting course of the sun variously

explained as due to the subjection of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to the

curse laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has worked at the same problem; but the explanations

which it has given are more childlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the Sun used to race

through the sky so fast that men could not get enough daylight to hunt game for their subsistence. By and by

an inventive genius, named Maui, conceived the idea of catching the Sun in a noose and making him go more

deliberately. He plaited ropes and made a strong net, and, arming himself with the jawbone of his ancestress,

Murirangawhenua, called together all his brethren, and they journeyed to the place where the Sun rises,

and there spread the net. When the Sun came up, he stuck his head and forepaws into the net, and while the

brothers tightened the ropes so that they cut him and made him scream for mercy, Maui beat him with the

jawbone until he became so weak that ever since he has only been able to crawl through the sky. According

to another Polynesian myth, there was once a grumbling Radical, who never could be satisfied with the way

in which things are managed on this earth. This bold Radical set out to build a stone house which should last

forever; but the days were so short and the stones so heavy that he despaired of ever accomplishing his

project. One night, as he lay awake thinking the matter over, it occurred to him that if he could catch the Sun

in a net, he could have as much daylight as was needful in order to finish his house. So he borrowed a noose

from the god Itu, and, it being autumn, when the Sun gets sleepy and stupid, he easily caught the luminary.

The Sun cried till his tears made a great freshet which nearly drowned the island; but it was of no use; there

Similar stories are met with in North America. A DogRib Indian once chased a squirrel up a tree until he

reached the sky. There he set a snare for the squirrel and climbed down again. Next day the Sun was caught

in the snare, and night came on at once. That is to say, the sun was eclipsed. "Something wrong up there,"

thought the Indian, "I must have caught the Sun"; and so he sent up ever so many animals to release the

captive. They were all burned to ashes, but at last the mole, going up and burrowing out through the

GROUND OF THE SKY, (!) succeeded in gnawing asunder the cords of the snare. Just as it thrust its head

out through the opening made in the skyground, it received a flash of light which put its eyes out, and that is

why the mole is blind. The Sun got away, but has ever since travelled more deliberately.[148]

These sunmyths, many more of which are to be found collected in Mr. Tylor's excellent treatise on "The

Early History of Mankind," well illustrate both the similarity and the diversity of the results obtained by the

primitive mind, in different times and countries, when engaged upon similar problems. No one would think

of referring these stories to a common traditional origin with the myths of Herakles and Odysseus; yet both

classes of tales were devised to explain the same phenomenon. Both to the Aryan and to the Polynesian the

steadfast but deliberate journey of the sun through the firmament was a strange circumstance which called for

explanation; but while the meagre intelligence of the barbarian could only attain to the quaint conception of a

man throwing a noose over the sun's head, the rich imagination of the IndoEuropean created the noble

picture of Herakles doomed to serve the son of Sthenelos, in accordance with the resistless decree of fate.

Another worldwide myth, which shows how similar are the mental habits of uncivilized men, is the myth of

the tortoise. The Hindu notion of a great tortoise that lies beneath the earth and keeps it from falling is

familiar to every reader. According to one account, this tortoise, swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the

earth on his back; but by and by, when the gods get ready to destroy mankind, the tortoise will grow weary

and sink under his load, and then the earth will be overwhelmed by a deluge. Another legend tells us that

when the gods and demons took Mount Mandara for a churningstick and churned the ocean to make

ambrosia, the god Vishnu took on the form of a tortoise and lay at the bottom of the sea, as a pivot for the

whirling mountain to rest upon. But these versions of the myth are not primitive. In the original conception

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the world is itself a gigantic tortoise swimming in a boundless ocean; the flat surface of the earth is the lower

plate which covers the reptile's belly; the rounded shell which covers his back is the sky; and the human race

lives and moves and has its being inside of the tortoise. Now, as Mr. Tylor has pointed out, many tribes of

Redskins hold substantially the same theory of the universe. They regard the tortoise as the symbol of the

world, and address it as the mother of mankind. Once, before the earth was made, the king of heaven

quarrelled with his wife, and gave her such a terrible kick that she fell down into the sea. Fortunately a

tortoise received her on his back, and proceeded to raise up the earth, upon which the heavenly woman

became the mother of mankind. These first men had white faces, and they used to dig in the ground to catch

badgers. One day a zealous burrower thrust his knife too far and stabbed the tortoise, which immediately sank

into the sea and drowned all the human race save one man.[149] In Finnish mythology the world is not a

tortoise, but it is an egg, of which the white part is the ocean, the yolk is the earth, and the arched shell is the

sky. In India this is the mundane egg of Brahma; and it reappears among the Yorubas as a pair of calabashes

put together like oystershells, one making a dome over the other. In Zululand the earth is a huge beast

called Usilosimapundu, whose face is a rock, and whose mouth is very large and broad and red: "in some

countries which were on his body it was winter, and in others it was early harvest." Many broad rivers flow

over his back, and he is covered with forests and hills, as is indicated in his name, which means "the rugose

or knottybacked beast." In this group of conceptions may be seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish, which

lay still so long that sand and clay gradually accumulated upon its back, and at last it became covered with

trees. And lastly, passing from barbaric folklore and from the Arabian Nights to the highest level of

IndoEuropean intelligence, do we not find both Plato and Kepler amusing themselves with speculations in

[150] Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. By the Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone.

TWELVE years ago, when, in concluding his "Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age," Mr. Gladstone

he would seem to have intended it as a last farewell to classical studies. Yet, whatever his intentions may

have been, they have yielded to the sweet desire of revisiting familiar ground,a desire as strong in the

breast of the classical scholar as was the yearning which led Odysseus to reject the proffered gift of

immortality, so that he might but once more behold the wreathed smoke curling about the roofs of his native

Ithaka. In this new treatise, on the "Youth of the World," Mr. Gladstone discusses the same questions which

were treated in his earlier work; and the main conclusions reached in the "Studies on Homer" are here so little

modified with reference to the recent progress of archaeological inquiries, that the book can hardly be said to

have had any other reason for appearing, save the desire of loitering by the ships of the Argives, and of

The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his new work is either a very appropriate one or a strange misnomer,

according to the point of view from which it is regarded. Such being the case, we might readily acquiesce in

its use, and pass it by without comment, trusting that the author understood himself when he adopted it, were

it not that by incidental references, and especially by his allusions to the legendary literature of the Jews, Mr.

Gladstone shows that he means more by the title than it can fairly be made to express. An author who seeks

to determine prehistoric events by references to Kadmos, and Danaos, and Abraham, is at once liable to the

suspicion of holding very inadequate views as to the character of the epoch which may properly be termed

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the "youth of the world." Often in reading Mr. Gladstone we are reminded of Renan's strange suggestion that

an exploration of the Hindu Kush territory, whence probably came the primitive Aryans, might throw some

new light on the origin of language. Nothing could well be more futile. The primitive Aryan language has

already been partly reconstructed for us; its grammatical forms and syntactic devices are becoming familiar to

scholars; one great philologist has even composed a tale in it; yet in studying this longburied dialect we are

not much nearer the first beginnings of human speech than in studying the Greek of Homer, the Sanskrit of

the Vedas, or the Umbrian of the Igovine Inscriptions. The Aryan mothertongue had passed into the last of

the three stages of linguistic growth long before the breakup of the tribal communities in Aryanavaedjo,

and at that early date presented a less primitive structure than is to be seen in the Chinese or the Mongolian of

our own times. So the state of society depicted in the Homeric poems, and well illustrated by Mr. Gladstone,

is many degrees less primitive than that which is revealed to us by the archaeological researches either of

Pictet and Windischmann, or of Tylor, Lubbock, and M'Lennan. We shall gather evidences of this as we

proceed. Meanwhile let us remember that at least eleven thousand years before the Homeric age men lived in

communities, and manufactured pottery on the banks of the Nile; and let us not leave wholly out of sight that

more distant period, perhaps a million years ago, when sparse tribes of savage men, contemporaneous with

the mammoths of Siberia and the cavetigers of Britain, struggled against the intense cold of the glacial

Nevertheless, though the Homeric age appears to be a late one when considered with reference to the whole

career of the human race, there is a point of view from which it may be justly regarded as the "youth of the

world." However long man may have existed upon the earth, he becomes thoroughly and distinctly human in

the eyes of the historian only at the epoch at which he began to create for himself a literature. As far back as

we can trace the progress of the human race continuously by means of the written word, so far do we feel a

true historical interest in its fortunes, and pursue our studies with a sympathy which the mere lapse of time is

powerless to impair. But the primeval man, whose history never has been and never will be written, whose

career on the earth, dateless and chartless, can be dimly revealed to us only by palaeontology, excites in us a

very different feeling. Though with the keenest interest we ransack every nook and corner of the earth's

surface for information about him, we are all the while aware that what we are studying is human zoology

and not history. Our Neanderthal man is a specimen, not a character. We cannot ask him the Homeric

question, what is his name, who were his parents, and how did he get where we found him. His language has

died with him, and he can render no account of himself. We can only regard him specifically as Homo

Anthropos, a creature of bigger brain than his congener Homo Pithekos, and of vastly greater promise. But

For the historian, therefore, who studies man in his various social relations, the youth of the world is the

period at which literature begins. We regard the history of the western world as beginning about the tenth

century before the Christian era, because at that date we find literature, in Greece and Palestine, beginning to

throw direct light upon the social and intellectual condition of a portion of mankind. That great empires, rich

in historical interest and in materials for sociological generalizations, had existed for centuries before that

date, in Egypt and Assyria, we do not doubt, since they appear at the dawn of history with all the marks of

great antiquity; but the only steady historical light thrown upon them shines from the pages of Greek and

Hebrew authors, and these know them only in their latest period. For information concerning their early

careers we must look, not to history, but to linguistic archaeology, a science which can help us to general

We mention the tenth century before Christ as the earliest period at which we can begin to study human

society in general and Greek society in particular, through the medium of literature. But, strictly speaking, the

epoch in question is one which cannot be fixed with accuracy. The earliest ascertainable date in Greek history

is that of the Olympiad of Koroibos, B. C. 776. There is no doubt that the Homeric poems were written

before this date, and that Homer is therefore strictly prehistoric. Had this fact been duly realized by those

scholars who have not attempted to deny it, a vast amount of profitless discussion might have been avoided.

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Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson must be learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable

reach of critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from reality, in the absence of a

tolerable stock of evidence." We do not know who Homer was; we do not know where or when he lived; and

in all probability we shall never know. The data for settling the question are not now accessible, and it is not

likely that they will ever be discovered. Even in early antiquity the question was wrapped in an obscurity as

deep as that which shrouds it today. The case between the seven or eight cities which claimed to be the

birthplace of the poet, and which Welcker has so ably discussed, cannot be decided. The feebleness of the

evidence brought into court may be judged from the fact that the claims of Chios and the story of the poet's

blindness rest alike upon a doubtful allusion in the Hymn to Apollo, which Thukydides (III. 104) accepted as

authentic. The majority of modern critics have consoled themselves with the vague conclusion that, as

between the two great divisions of the early Greek world, Homer at least belonged to the Asiatic. But Mr.

Gladstone has shown good reasons for doubting this opinion. He has pointed out several instances in which

the poems seem to betray a closer topographical acquaintance with European than with Asiatic Greece, and

concludes that Athens and Argos have at least as good a claim to Homer as Chios or Smyrna.

It is far more desirable that we should form an approximate opinion as to the date of the Homeric poems, than

that we should seek to determine the exact locality in which they originated. Yet the one question is hardly

less obscure than the other. Different writers of antiquity assigned eight different epochs to Homer, of which

the earliest is separated from the most recent by an interval of four hundred and sixty years,a period as

long as that which separates the Black Prince from the Duke of Wellington, or the age of Perikles from the

Christian era. While Theopompos quite preposterously brings him down as late as the twentythird

Olympiad, Krates removes him to the twelfth century B. C. The date ordinarily accepted by modern critics is

the one assigned by Herodotos, 880 B. C. Yet Mr. Gladstone shows reasons, which appear to me convincing,

I refer to the muchabused legend of the Children of Herakles, which seems capable of yielding an item of

trustworthy testimony, provided it be circumspectly dealt with. I differ from Mr. Gladstone in not regarding

the legend as historical in its present shape. In my apprehension, Hyllos and Oxylos, as historical personages,

have no value whatever; and I faithfully follow Mr. Grote, in refusing to accept any date earlier than the

Olympiad of Koroibos. The tale of the "Return of the Herakleids" is undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the

legend of Hengst and Horsa; yet, like the latter, it doubtless embodies a historical occurrence. One cannot

approve, as scholarlike or philosophical, the scepticism of Mr. Cox, who can see in the whole narrative

nothing but a solar myth. There certainly was a time when the Dorian tribesdescribed in the legend as the

allies of the Children of Heraklesconquered Peloponnesos; and that time was certainly subsequent to the

composition of the Homeric poems. It is incredible that the Iliad and the Odyssey should ignore the existence

of Dorians in Peloponnesos, if there were Dorians not only dwelling but ruling there at the time when the

poems were written. The poems are very accurate and rigorously consistent in their use of ethnical

appellatives; and their author, in speaking of Achaians and Argives, is as evidently alluding to peoples

directly known to him, as is Shakespeare when he mentions Danes and Scotchmen. Now Homer knows

Achaians, Argives, and Pelasgians dwelling in Peloponnesos; and he knows Dorians also, but only as a

people inhabiting Crete. (Odyss. XIX. 175.) With Homer, moreover, the Hellenes are not the Greeks in

general but only a people dwelling in the north, in Thessaly. When these poems were written, Greece was not

known as Hellas, but as Achaia,the whole country taking its name from the Achaians, the dominant race in

Peloponnesos. Now at the beginning of the truly historical period, in the eighth century B. C., all this is

changed. The Greeks as a people are called Hellenes; the Dorians rule in Peloponnesos, while their lands are

tilled by Argive Helots; and the Achaians appear only as an insignificant people occupying the southern shore

of the Corinthian Gulf. How this change took place we cannot tell. The explanation of it can never be

obtained from history, though some light may perhaps be thrown upon it by linguistic archaeology. But at all

events it was a great change, and could not have taken place in a moment. It is fair to suppose that the

HellenoDorian conquest must have begun at least a century before the first Olympiad; for otherwise the

geographical limits of the various Greek races would not have been so completely established as we find

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them to have been at that date. The Greeks, indeed, supposed it to have begun at least three centuries earlier,

but it is impossible to collect evidence which will either refute or establish that opinion. For our purposes it is

enough to know that the conquest could not have taken place later than 900 B. C.; and if this be the case, the

MINIMUM DATE for the composition of the Homeric poems must be the tenth century before Christ; which

is, in fact, the date assigned by Aristotle. Thus far, and no farther, I believe it possible to go with safety.

Whether the poems were composed in the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth century cannot be determined. We are

justified only in placing them far enough back to allow the HellenoDorian conquest to intervene between

their composition and the beginning of recorded history. The tenth century B. C. is the latest date which will

account for all the phenomena involved in the case, and with this result we must be satisfied. Even on this

showing, the Iliad and Odyssey appear as the oldest existing specimens of Aryan literature, save perhaps the

The apparent difficulty of preserving such long poems for three or four centuries without the aid of writing

may seem at first sight to justify the hypothesis of Wolf, that they are mere collections of ancient ballads, like

those which make up the Mahabharata, preserved in the memories of a dozen or twenty bards, and first

arranged under the orders of Peisistratos. But on a careful examination this hypothesis is seen to raise more

difficulties than it solves. What was there in the position of Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the sixth

century B. C., so authoritative as to compel all Greeks to recognize the recension then and there made of their

revered poet? Besides which the celebrated ordinance of Solon respecting the rhapsodes at the Panathenaia

obliges us to infer the existence of written manuscripts of Homer previous to 550 B. C. As Mr. Grote well

observes, the interference of Peisistratos "presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient aggregate, the main

lineaments of which were familiar to the Grecian public, although many of the rhapsodes in their practice

may have deviated from it both by omission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian recitations

conformably with such understood general type, Peisistratos might hope both to procure respect for Athens

and to constitute a fashion for the rest of Greece. But this step of 'collecting the torn body of sacred Homer' is

something generically different from the composition of a new Iliad out of preexisting songs: the former is

As for Wolf's objection, that the Iliad and Odyssey are too long to have been preserved by memory, it may be

met by a simple denial. It is a strange objection indeed, coming from a man of Wolf's retentive memory. I do

not see how the acquisition of the two poems can be regarded as such a very arduous task; and if literature

were as scanty now as in Greek antiquity, there are doubtless many scholars who would long since have had

them at their tongues' end. Sir G. C. Lewis, with but little conscious effort, managed to carry in his head a

very considerable portion of Greek and Latin classic literature; and Niebuhr (who once restored from

recollection a book of accounts which had been accidentally destroyed) was in the habit of referring to book

and chapter of an ancient author without consulting his notes. Nay, there is Professor Sophocles, of Harvard

University, who, if you suddenly stop and interrogate him in the street, will tell you just how many times any

given Greek word occurs in Thukydides, or in AEschylos, or in Plato, and will obligingly rehearse for you the

context. If all extant copies of the Homeric poems were to be gathered together and burnt up today, like Don

Quixote's library, or like those Arabic manuscripts of which Cardinal Ximenes made a bonfire in the streets

of Granada, the poems could very likely be reproduced and orally transmitted for several generations; and

much easier must it have been for the Greeks to preserve these books, which their imagination invested with a

quasisanctity, and which constituted the greater part of the literary furniture of their minds. In Xenophon's

time there were educated gentlemen at Athens who could repeat both Iliad and Odyssey verbatim. (Xenoph.

Sympos., III. 5.) Besides this, we know that at Chios there was a company of bards, known as Homerids,

whose business it was to recite these poems from memory; and from the edicts of Solon and the Sikyonian

Kleisthenes (Herod., V. 67), we may infer that the case was the same in other parts of Greece. Passages from

the Iliad used to be sung at the Pythian festivals, to the accompaniment of the harp (Athenaeus, XIV. 638),

and in at least two of the Ionic islands of the AEgaean there were regular competitive exhibitions by trained

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young men, at which prizes were given to the best reciter. The difficulty of preserving the poems, under such

circumstances, becomes very insignificant; and the Wolfian argument quite vanishes when we reflect that it

would have been no easier to preserve a dozen or twenty short poems than two long ones. Nay, the coherent,

orderly arrangement of the Iliad and Odyssey would make them even easier to remember than a group of

When we come to interrogate the poems themselves, we find in them quite convincing evidence that they

were originally composed for the ear alone, and without reference to manuscript assistance. They abound in

catchwords, and in verbal repetitions. The "Catalogue of Ships," as Mr. Gladstone has acutely observed, is

arranged in welldefined sections, in such a way that the end of each section suggests the beginning of the

next one. It resembles the versus memoriales found in oldfashioned grammars. But the most convincing

proof of all is to be found in the changes which Greek pronunciation went through between the ages of

Homer and Peisistratos. "At the time when these poems were composed, the digamma (or w) was an effective

consonant, and figured as such in the structure of the verse; at the time when they were committed to writing,

it had ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never found a place in any of the manuscripts,insomuch that

the Alexandrian critics, though they knew of its existence in the much later poems of Alkaios and Sappho,

never recognized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplexities of metre, occasioned by the loss of the

digamma, were corrected by different grammatical stratagems. But the whole history of this lost letter is very

curious, and is rendered intelligible only by the supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide

Many of these facts are of course fully recognized by the Wolfians; but the inference drawn from them, that

the Homeric poems began to exist in a piecemeal condition, is, as we have seen, unnecessary. These poems

may indeed be compared, in a certain sense, with the early sacred and epic literature of the Jews, Indians, and

Teutons. But if we assign a plurality of composers to the Psalms and Pentateuch, the Mahabharata, the Vedas,

and the Edda, we do so because of internal evidence furnished by the books themselves, and not because

these books could not have been preserved by oral tradition. Is there, then, in the Homeric poems any such

internal evidence of dual or plural origin as is furnished by the interlaced Elohistic and Jehovistic documents

of the Pentateuch? A careful investigation will show that there is not. Any scholar who has given some

attention to the subject can readily distinguish the Elohistic from the Jehovistic portions of the Pentateuch;

and, save in the case of a few sporadic verses, most Biblical critics coincide in the separation which they

make between the two. But the attempts which have been made to break up the Iliad and Odyssey have

resulted in no such harmonious agreement. There are as many systems as there are critics, and naturally

enough. For the Iliad and the Odyssey are as much alike as two peas, and the resemblance which holds

between the two holds also between the different parts of each poem. From the appearance of the injured

Chryses in the Grecian camp down to the intervention of Athene on the field of contest at Ithaka, we find in

each book and in each paragraph the same style, the same peculiarities of expression, the same habits of

thought, the same quite unique manifestations of the faculty of observation. Now if the style were

commonplace, the observation slovenly, or the thought trivial, as is wont to be the case in balladliterature,

this argument from similarity might not carry with it much conviction. But when we reflect that throughout

the whole course of human history no other works, save the best tragedies of Shakespeare, have ever been

written which for combined keenness of observation, elevation of thought, and sublimity of style can

compare with the Homeric poems, we must admit that the argument has very great weight indeed. Let us

take, for example, the sixth and twentyfourth books of the Iliad. According to the theory of Lachmann, the

most eminent champion of the Wolfian hypothesis, these are by different authors. Human speech has perhaps

never been brought so near to the limit of its capacity of expressing deep emotion as in the scene between

Priam and Achilleus in the twentyfourth book; while the interview between Hektor and Andromache in the

sixth similarly wellnigh exhausts the power of language. Now, the literary critic has a right to ask whether it

is probable that two such passages, agreeing perfectly in turn of expression, and alike exhibiting the same

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unapproachable degree of excellence, could have been produced by two different authors. And the

physiologistwith some inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Galton's theory that the Greeks surpassed us in

genius even as we surpass the negroeshas a right to ask whether it is in the natural course of things for two

such wonderful poets, strangely agreeing in their minutest psychological characteristics, to be produced at the

same time. And the difficulty thus raised becomes overwhelming when we reflect that it is the coexistence of

not two only, but at least twenty such geniuses which the Wolfian hypothesis requires us to account for. That

theory worked very well as long as scholars thoughtlessly assumed that the Iliad and Odyssey were analogous

to ballad poetry. But, except in the simplicity of the primitive diction, there is no such analogy. The power

and beauty of the Iliad are never so hopelessly lost as when it is rendered into the style of a modern ballad.

One might as well attempt to preserve the grandeur of the triumphant close of Milton's Lycidas by turning it

into the light Anacreontics of the ode to "Eros stung by a Bee." The peculiarity of the Homeric poetry, which

defies translation, is its union of the simplicity characteristic of an early age with a sustained elevation of

The same conclusion is forced upon us when we examine the artistic structure of these poems. With regard to

the Odyssey in particular, Mr. Grote has elaborately shown that its structure is so thoroughly integral, that no

considerable portion could be subtracted without converting the poem into a more or less admirable fragment.

The Iliad stands in a somewhat different position. There are unmistakable peculiarities in its structure, which

have led even Mr. Grote, who utterly rejects the Wolfian hypothesis, to regard it as made up of two poems;

although he inclines to the belief that the later poem was grafted upon the earlier by its own author, by way of

further elucidation and expansion; just as Goethe, in his old age, added a new part to "Faust." According to

Mr. Grote, the Iliad, as originally conceived, was properly an Achilleis; its design being, as indicated in the

opening lines of the poem, to depict the wrath of Achilleus and the unutterable woes which it entailed upon

the Greeks The plot of this primitive Achilleis is entirely contained in Books I., VIII., and XI.XXII.; and, in

Mr. Grote's opinion, the remaining books injure the symmetry of this plot by unnecessarily prolonging the

duration of the Wrath, while the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, unduly anticipates the conduct of

Agamemnon in the nineteenth, and is therefore, as a piece of bungling work, to be referred to the hands of an

inferior interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these books, with the exception of the ninth, were

subsequently added by the poet, with a view to enlarging the original Achilleis into a real Iliad, describing the

war of the Greeks against Troy. With reference to this hypothesis, I gladly admit that Mr. Grote is, of all men

now living, the one best entitled to a reverential hearing on almost any point connected with Greek antiquity.

Nevertheless it seems to me that his theory rests solely upon imagined difficulties which have no real

existence. I doubt if any scholar, reading the Iliad ever so much, would ever be struck by these alleged

inconsistencies of structure, unless they were suggested by some a priori theory. And I fear that the Wolfian

theory, in spite of Mr. Grote's emphatic rejection of it, is responsible for some of these overrefined

criticisms. Even as it stands, the Iliad is not an account of the war against Troy. It begins in the tenth year of

the siege, and it does not continue to the capture of the city. It is simply occupied with an episode in the

war,with the wrath of Achilleus and its consequences, according to the plan marked out in the opening

lines. The supposed additions, therefore, though they may have given to the poem a somewhat wider scope,

have not at any rate changed its primitive character of an Achilleis. To my mind they seem even called for by

the original conception of the consequences of the wrath. To have inserted the battle at the ships, in which

Sarpedon breaks down the wall of the Greeks, immediately after the occurrences of the first book, would

have been too abrupt altogether. Zeus, after his reluctant promise to Thetis, must not be expected so suddenly

to exhibit such fell determination. And after the long series of books describing the valorous deeds of Aias,

Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Menelaos, the powerful intervention of Achilleus appears in far

grander proportions than would otherwise be possible. As for the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, I

am unable to see how the final reconciliation with Agamemnon would be complete without it. As Mr.

Gladstone well observes, what Achilleus wants is not restitution, but apology; and Agamemnon offers no

apology until the nineteenth book. In his answer to the ambassadors, Achilleus scornfully rejects the

proposals which imply that the mere return of Briseis will satisfy his righteous resentment, unless it be

accompanied with that public humiliation to which circumstances have not yet compelled the leader of the

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Greeks to subject himself. Achilleus is not to be bought or cajoled. Even the extreme distress of the Greeks in

the thirteenth book does not prevail upon him; nor is there anything in the poem to show that he ever would

have laid aside his wrath, had not the death of Patroklos supplied him with a new and wholly unforeseen

motive. It seems to me that his entrance into the battle after the death of his friend would lose half its poetic

effect, were it not preceded by some such scene as that in the ninth book, in which he is represented as deaf to

all ordinary inducements. As for the two concluding books, which Mr. Grote is inclined to regard as a

subsequent addition, not necessitated by the plan of the poem, I am at a loss to see how the poem can be

considered complete without them. To leave the bodies of Patroklos and Hektor unburied would be in the

highest degree shocking to Greek religious feelings. Remembering the sentence incurred, in far less

superstitious times, by the generals at Arginusai, it is impossible to believe that any conclusion which left

Patroklos's manes unpropitiated, and the mutilated corpse of Hektor unransomed, could have satisfied either

the poet or his hearers. For further particulars I must refer the reader to the excellent criticisms of Mr.

Gladstone, and also to the article on "Greek History and Legend" in the second volume of Mr. Mill's

"Dissertations and Discussions." A careful study of the arguments of these writers, and, above all, a thorough

and independent examination of the Iliad itself, will, I believe, convince the student that this great poem is

The arguments of those who would attribute the Iliad and Odyssey, taken as wholes, to two different authors,

rest chiefly upon some apparent discrepancies in the mythology of the two poems; but many of these

difficulties have been completely solved by the recent progress of the science of comparative mythology.

Thus, for example, the fact that, in the Iliad, Hephaistos is called the husband of Charis, while in the Odyssey

he is called the husband of Aphrodite, has been cited even by Mr. Grote as evidence that the two poems are

not by the same author. It seems to me that one such discrepancy, in the midst of complete general

agreement, would be much better explained as Cervantes explained his own inconsistency with reference to

the stealing of Sancho's mule, in the twentysecond chapter of "Don Quixote." But there is no discrepancy.

Aphrodite, though originally the moongoddess, like the German Horsel, had before Homer's time acquired

many of the attributes of the dawngoddess Athene, while her lunar characteristics had been to a great extent

transferred to Artemis and Persephone. In her renovated character, as goddess of the dawn, Aphrodite became

identified with Charis, who appears in the RigVeda as dawngoddess. In the postHomeric mythology, the

two were again separated, and Charis, becoming divided in personality, appears as the Charites, or Graces,

who were supposed to be constant attendants of Aphrodite. But in the Homeric poems the two are still

identical, and either Charis or Aphrodite may be called the wife of the firegod, without inconsistency.

Thus to sum up, I believe that Mr. Gladstone is quite right in maintaining that both the Iliad and Odyssey are,

from beginning to end, with the exception of a few insignificant interpolations, the work of a single author,

whom we have no ground for calling by any other name than that of Homer. I believe, moreover, that this

author lived before the beginning of authentic history, and that we can determine neither his age nor his

country with precision. We can only decide that he was a Greek who lived at some time previous to the year

Here, however, I must begin to part company with Mr. Gladstone, and shall henceforth unfortunately have

frequent occasion to differ from him on points of fundamental importance. For Mr. Gladstone not only

regards the Homeric age as strictly within the limits of authentic history, but he even goes much further than

this. He would not only fix the date of Homer positively in the twelfth century B. C., but he regards the

Trojan war as a purely historical event, of which Homer is the authentic historian and the probable

eyewitness. Nay, he even takes the word of the poet as proof conclusive of the historical character of events

happening several generations before the Troika, according to the legendary chronology. He not only regards

Agamemnon, Achilleus, and Paris as actual personages, but he ascribes the same reality to characters like

Danaos, Kadmos, and Perseus, and talks of the Pelopid and Aiolid dynasties, and the empire of Minos, with

as much confidence as if he were dealing with Karlings or Capetians, or with the epoch of the Crusades.

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It is disheartening, at the present day, and after so much has been finally settled by writers like Grote,

Mommsen, and Sir G. C. Lewis, to come upon such views in the work of a man of scholarship and

intelligence. One begins to wonder how many more times it will be necessary to prove that dates and events

are of no historical value, unless attested by nearly contemporary evidence. Pausanias and Plutarch were able

men no doubt, and Thukydides was a profound historian; but what these writers thought of the Herakleid

invasion, the age of Homer, and the war of Troy, can have no great weight with the critical historian, since

even in the time of Thukydides these events were as completely obscured by lapse of time as they are now.

There is no literary Greek history before the age of Hekataios and Herodotos, three centuries subsequent to

the first recorded Olympiad. A portion of this period is satisfactorily covered by inscriptions, but even these

fail us before we get within a century of this earliest ascertainable date. Even the career of the lawgiver

Lykourgos, which seems to belong to the commencement of the eighth century B. C., presents us, from lack

of anything like contemporary records, with many insoluble problems. The HellenoDorian conquest, as we

have seen, must have occurred at some time or other; but it evidently did not occur within two centuries of

the earliest known inscription, and it is therefore folly to imagine that we can determine its date or ascertain

the circumstances which attended it. Anterior to this event there is but one fact in Greek antiquity directly

known to us,the existence of the Homeric poems. The belief that there was a Trojan war rests exclusively

upon the contents of those poems: there is no other independent testimony to it whatever. But the Homeric

poems are of no value as testimony to the truth of the statements contained in them, unless it can be proved

that their author was either contemporary with the Troika, or else derived his information from contemporary

witnesses. This can never be proved. To assume, as Mr. Gladstone does, that Homer lived within fifty years

after the Troika, is to make a purely gratuitous assumption. For aught the wisest historian can tell, the interval

may have been five hundred years, or a thousand. Indeed the Iliad itself expressly declares that it is dealing

with an ancient state of things which no longer exists. It is difficult to see what else can be meant by the

statement that the heroes of the Troika belong to an order of men no longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad, V.

304.) Most assuredly Achilleus the son of Thetis, and Sarpedon the son of Zeus, and Helena the daughter of

Zeus, are no ordinary mortals, such as might have been seen and conversed with by the poet's grandfather.

They belong to an inferior order of gods, according to the peculiar anthropomorphism of the Greeks, in which

deity and humanity are so closely mingled that it is difficult to tell where the one begins and the other ends.

Diomedes, singlehanded, vanquishes not only the gentle Aphrodite, but even the god of battles himself, the

terrible Ares. Nestor quaffs lightly from a goblet which, we are told, not two men among the poet's

contemporaries could by their united exertions raise and place upon a table. Aias and Hektor and Aineias hurl

enormous masses of rock as easily as an ordinary man would throw a pebble. All this shows that the poet, in

his naive way, conceiving of these heroes as personages of a remote past, was endeavouring as far as possible

to ascribe to them the attributes of superior beings. If all that were divine, marvellous, or superhuman were to

be left out of the poems, the supposed historical residue would hardly be worth the trouble of saving. As Mr.

Cox well observes, "It is of the very essence of the narrative that Paris, who has deserted Oinone, the child of

the stream Kebren, and before whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had appeared as claimants for the golden

apple, steals from Sparta the beautiful sister of the Dioskouroi; that the chiefs are summoned together for no

other purpose than to avenge her woes and wrongs; that Achilleus, the son of the seanymph 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 Briseis, and that henceforth 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 Athene; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes, and Sleep and Death bear

away the lifeless Sarpedon on their noiseless wings to the faroff land of light." In view of all this it is

evident that Homer was not describing, like a salaried historiographer, the state of things which existed in the

time of his father or grandfather. To his mind the occurrences which he described were those of a remote, a

This conclusion, which I have thus far supported merely by reference to the Iliad itself, becomes irresistible

as soon as we take into account the results obtained during the past thirty years by the science of comparative

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mythology. As long as our view was restricted to Greece, it was perhaps excusable that Achilleus and Paris

should be taken for exaggerated copies of actual persons. Since the day when Grimm laid the foundations of

the science of mythology, all this has been changed. It is now held that Achilleus and Paris and Helena are to

be found, not only in the Iliad, but also in the RigVeda, and therefore, as mythical conceptions, date, not

from Homer, but from a period preceding the dispersion of the Aryan nations. The tale of the Wrath of

Achilleus, far from originating with Homer, far from being recorded by the author of the Iliad as by an

eyewitness, must have been known in its essential features in Aryanavaedjo, at that remote epoch when the

Indian, the Greek, and the Teuton were as yet one and the same. For the story has been retained by the three

races alike, in all its principal features; though the Veda has left it in the sky where it originally belonged,

while the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied have brought it down to earth, the one locating it in Asia Minor, and

[153] For the precise extent to which I would indorse the theory that the Iliadmyth is an account of the

victory of light over darkness, let me refer to what I have said above on p. 134. I do not suppose that the

struggle between light and darkness was Homer's subject in the Iliad any more than it was Shakespeare's

subject in "Hamlet." Homer's subject was the wrath of the Greek hero, as Shakespeare's subject was the

vengeance of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the story of Hamlet, when traced back to its Norse original, is

unmistakably the story of the quarrel between summer and winter; and the moody prince is as much a solar

hero as Odin himself. See Simrock, Die Quellen des Shakespeare, I. 127133. Of course Shakespeare knew

nothing of this, as Homer knew nothing of the origin of his Achilleus. The two stories, therefore, are not to be

taken as sunmyths in their present form. They are the offspring of other stories which were sunmyths; they

are stories which conform to the sunmyth type after the manner above illustrated in the paper on Light and

Darkness. [Hence there is nothing unintelligible in the inconsistencywhich seems to puzzle Max Muller

(Science of Language, 6th ed. Vol. II. p. 516, note 20)of investing Paris with many of the characteristics of

the children of light. Supposing, as we must, that the primitive sense of the Iliadmyth had as entirely

disappeared in the Homeric age, as the primitive sense of the Hamletmyth had disappeared in the times of

Elizabeth, the fit ground for wonder is that such inconsistencies are not more numerous.] The physical theory

of myths will be properly presented and comprehended, only when it is understood that we accept the

physical derivation of such stories as the Iliadmyth in much the same way that we are bound to accept the

physical etymologies of such words as soul, consider, truth, convince, deliberate, and the like. The late Dr.

Gibbs of Yale College, in his "Philological Studies,"a little book which I used to read with delight when a

boy,describes such etymologies as "faded metaphors." In similar wise, while refraining from

characterizing the Iliad or the tragedy of Hamletany more than I would characterize Le Juif Errant by Sue,

or La Maison Forestiere by ErckmannChatrianas naturemyths, I would at the same time consider these

In the RigVeda the Panis are the genii of night and winter, corresponding to the Nibelungs, or "Children of

the Mist," in the Teutonic legend, and to the children of Nephele (cloud) in the Greek myth of the Golden

Fleece. The Panis steal the cattle of the Sun (Indra, Helios, Herakles), and carry them by an unknown route to

a dark cave eastward. Sarama, the creeping Dawn, is sent by Indra to find and recover them. The Panis then

tamper with Sarama, and try their best to induce her to betray her solar lord. For a while she is prevailed upon

to dally with them; yet she ultimately returns to give Indra the information needful in order that he might

conquer the Panis, just as Helena, in the slightly altered version, ultimately returns to her western home,

carrying with her the treasures (ktemata, Iliad, II. 285) of which Paris had robbed Menelaos. But, before the

bright Indra and his solar heroes can reconquer their treasures they must take captive the offspring of Brisaya,

the violet light of morning. Thus Achilleus, answering to the solar champion Aharyu, takes captive the

daughter of Brises. But as the sun must always be parted from the morninglight, to return to it again just

before setting, so Achilleus loses Briseis, and regains her only just before his final struggle. In similar wise

Herakles is parted from Iole ("the violet one"), and Sigurd from Brynhild. In sullen wrath the hero retires

from the conflict, and his Myrmidons are no longer seen on the battlefield, as the sun hides behind the dark

cloud and his rays no longer appear about him. Yet toward the evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in his

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 78

might, clothed in the dazzling armour wrought for him by the firegod Hephaistos, and with his invincible

spear slays the great stormcloud, which during his absence had wellnigh prevailed over the champions of

the daylight. But his triumph is shortlived; for having trampled on the clouds that had opposed him, while

yet crimsoned with the fierce carnage, the sharp arrow of the nightdemon Paris slays him at the Western

Gates. We have not space to go into further details. In Mr. Cox's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," and

"Tales of Ancient Greece," the reader will find the entire contents of the Iliad and Odyssey thus minutely

illustrated by comparison with the Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibelungs.

Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they are modern in comparison with the tale of Achilleus

and Helena, as here unfolded. The date of the entrance of the Greeks into Europe will perhaps never be

determined; but I do not see how any competent scholar can well place it at less than eight hundred or a

thousand years before the time of Homer. Between the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic

lauguages had time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier, therefore, than the Homeric "juventus

mundi" was that "youth of the world," in which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no abstract terms, and

possessing no philosophy but fetichism, deliberately spoke of the Sun, and the Dawn, and the Clouds, as

persons or as animals. The Veda, though composed much later than this,perhaps as late as the

Iliad,nevertheless preserves the record of the mental life of this period. The Vedic poet is still dimly aware

that Sarama is the fickle twilight, and the Panis the nightdemons who strive to coax her from her allegiance

to the daygod. He keeps the scene of action in the sky. But the Homeric Greek had long since forgotten that

Helena and Paris were anything more than semidivine mortals, the daughter of Zeus and the son of the

Zeusdescended Priam. The Hindu understood that Dyaus ("the bright one") meant the sky, and Sarama ("the

creeping one") the dawn, and spoke significantly when he called the latter the daughter of the former. But the

Greek could not know that Zeus was derived from a root div, "to shine," or that Helena belonged to a root sar,

"to creep." Phonetic change thus helped him to rise from fetichism to polytheism. His naturegods became

thoroughly anthropomorphic; and he probably no more remembered that Achilleus originally signified the

sun, than we remember that the word God, which we use to denote the most vast of conceptions, originally

meant simply the Stormwind. Indeed, when the fetichistic tendency led the Greek again to personify the

powers of nature, he had recourse to new names formed from his own language. Thus, beside Apollo we have

Helios; Selene beside Artemis and Persephone; Eos beside Athene; Gaia beside Demeter. As a further

consequence of this decomposition and new development of the old Aryan mythology, we find, as might be

expected, that the Homeric poems are not always consistent in their use of their mythic materials. Thus, Paris,

the nightdemon, isto Max Muller's perplexityinvested with many of the attributes of the bright solar

heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and Cyrus, he is doomed to bring ruin on his parents; like them he

is exposed in his infancy on the hillside, and rescued by a shepherd." All the solar heroes begin life in this

way. Whether, like Apollo, born of the dark night (Leto), or like Oidipous, of the violet dawn (Iokaste), they

are alike destined to bring destruction on their parents, as the night and the dawn are both destroyed by the

sun. The exposure of the child in infancy represents the long rays of the morningsun resting on the hillside.

Then Paris forsakes Oinone ("the winecoloured one"), but meets her again at the gloaming when she lays

herself by his side amid the crimson flames of the funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar hero, is made to fight

on the side of the Niblungs or Trojans, attended by his friend Glaukos ("the brilliant one"). They command

the Lykians, or "children of light"; and with them comes also Memnon, son of the Dawn, from the fiery land

The Iliadmyth must therefore have been current many ages before the Greeks inhabited Greece, long before

there was any Ilion to be conquered. Nevertheless, this does not forbid the supposition that the legend, as we

have it, may have been formed by the crystallization of mythical conceptions about a nucleus of genuine

tradition. In this view I am upheld by a most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A. Freeman, who finds in

The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage. He is supposed to have been a Frenchman, at a time

when neither the French nation nor the French language can properly be said to have existed; and he is

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 79

represented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was not thought of until long after the Karolingian era.

The legendary deeds of Charlemagne are not conformed to the ordinary rules of geography and chronology.

He is a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth,an avatar, or at least a representative, of Odin in his

solar capacity. If in his case legend were not controlled and rectified by history, he would be for us as unreal

History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor Karl, German in race, name, and language, who was one

of the two or three greatest men of action that the world has ever seen, and who in the ninth century ruled

over all Western Europe. To the historic Karl corresponds in many particulars the mythical Charlemagne. The

legend has preserved the fact, which without the information supplied by history we might perhaps set down

as a fiction, that there was a time when Germany, Gaul, Italy, and part of Spain formed a single empire. And,

as Mr. Freeman has well observed, the mythical crusades of Charlemagne are good evidence that there were

Now the case of Agamemnon may be much like that of Charlemagne, except that we no longer have history

to help us in rectifying the legend. The Iliad preserves the tradition of a time when a large portion of the

islands and mainland of Greece were at least partially subject to a common suzerain; and, as Mr. Freeman has

again shrewdly suggested, the assignment of a place like Mykenai, instead of Athens or Sparta or Argos, as

the seat of the suzerainty, is strong evidence of the trustworthiness of the tradition. It appears to show that the

legend was constrained by some remembered fact, instead of being guided by general probability.

Charlemagne's seat of government has been transferred in romance from Aachen to Paris; had it really been

at Paris, says Mr. Freeman, no one would have thought of transferring it to Aachen. Moreover, the story of

Agamemnon, though uncontrolled by historic records, is here at least supported by archaeologic remains,

which prove Mykenai to have been at some time or other a place of great consequence. Then, as to the Trojan

war, we know that the Greeks several times crossed the AEgaean and colonized a large part of the seacoast of

Asia Minor. In order to do this it was necessary to oust from their homes many warlike communities of

Lydians and Bithynians, and we may be sure that this was not done without prolonged fighting. There may

very probably have been now and then a levy en masse in prehistoric Greece, as there was in mediaeval

Europe; and whether the great suzerain at Mykenai ever attended one or not, legend would be sure to send

It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon and Menelaos may represent dimly remembered sovereigns or

heroes, with their characters and actions distorted to suit the exigencies of a narrative founded upon a solar

myth. The character of the Nibelungenlied here well illustrates that of the Iliad. Siegfried and Brunhild,

Hagen and Gunther, seem to be mere personifications of physical phenomena; but Etzel and Dietrich are none

other than Attila and Theodoric surrounded with mythical attributes; and even the conception of Brunhild has

been supposed to contain elements derived from the traditional recollection of the historical Brunehault.

When, therefore, Achilleus is said, like a true sungod, to have died by a wound from a sharp instrument in

the only vulnerable part of his body, we may reply that the legendary Charlemagne conducts himself in many

respects like a solar deity. If Odysseus detained by Kalypso represents the sun ensnared and held captive by

the pale goddess of night, the legend of Frederic Barbarossa asleep in a Thuringian mountain embodies a

portion of a kindred conception. We know that Charlemagne and Frederic have been substituted for Odin; we

may suspect that with the mythical impersonations of Achilleus and Odysseus some traditional figures may

be blended. We should remember that in early times the solarmyth was a sort of type after which all

wonderful stories would be patterned, and that to such a type tradition also would be made to conform.

In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to Euhemerism. If there is any one conclusion

concerning the Homeric poems which the labours of a whole generation of scholars may be said to have

satisfactorily established, it is this, that no trustworthy history can be obtained from either the Iliad or the

Odyssey merely by sifting out the mythical element. Even if the poems contain the faint reminiscence of an

actual event, that event is inextricably wrapped up in mythical phraseology, so that by no cunning of the

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 80

scholar can it be construed into history. In view of this it is quite useless for Mr. Gladstone to attempt to base

historical conclusions upon the fact that Helena is always called "Argive Helen," or to draw ethnological

inferences from the circumstances that Menelaos, Achilleus, and the rest of the Greek heroes, have yellow

hair, while the Trojans are never so described. The Argos of the myth is not the city of Peloponnesos, though

doubtless so construed even in Homer's time. It is "the bright land" where Zeus resides, and the epithet is

applied to his wife Here and his daughter Helena, as well as to the dog of Odysseus, who reappears with

Sarameyas in the Veda. As for yellow hair, there is no evidence that Greeks have ever commonly possessed

it; but no other colour would do for a solar hero, and it accordingly characterizes the entire company of them,

wherever found, while for the Trojans, or children of night, it is not required.

A wider acquaintance with the results which have been obtained during the past thirty years by the

comparative study of languages and mythologies would have led Mr. Gladstone to reconsider many of his

views concerning the Homeric poems, and might perhaps have led him to cut out half or two thirds of his

book as hopelessly antiquated. The chapter on the divinities of Olympos would certainly have had to be

rewritten, and the ridiculous theory of a primeval revelation abandoned. One can hardly preserve one's

gravity when Mr. Gladstone derives Apollo from the Hebrew Messiah, and Athene from the Logos. To

accredit Homer with an acquaintance with the doctrine of the Logos, which did not exist until the time of

Philo, and did not receive its authorized Christian form until the middle of the second century after Christ, is

certainly a strange proceeding. We shall next perhaps be invited to believe that the authors of the Volsunga

Saga obtained the conception of Sigurd from the "ThirtyNine Articles." It is true that these deities, Athene

and Apollo, are wiser, purer, and more dignified, on the whole, than any of the other divinities of the

Homeric Olympos. They alone, as Mr. Gladstone truly observes, are never deceived or frustrated. For all

Hellas, Apollo was the interpreter of futurity, and in the maid Athene we have perhaps the highest conception

of deity to which the Greek mind had attained in the early times. In the Veda, Athene is nothing but the dawn;

but in the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous glories of daybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene

becomes the impersonation of the illuminating and knowledgegiving light of the sky. As the dawn, she is

daughter of Zeus, the sky, and in mythic language springs from his forehead; but, according to the Greek

conception, this imagery signifies that she shares, more than any other deity, in the boundless wisdom of

Zeus. The knowledge of Apollo, on the other hand, is the peculiar privilege of the sun, who, from his lofty

position, sees everything that takes place upon the earth. Even the secondary divinity Helios possesses this

Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a Phoenician ancestry for the Greek divinities. But the same lack of

acquaintance with the old Aryan mythology vitiates all his conclusions. No doubt the Greek mythology is in

some particulars tinged with Phoenician conceptions. Aphrodite was originally a purely Greek divinity, but in

course of time she acquired some of the attributes of the Semitic Astarte, and was hardly improved by the

change. Adonis is simply a Semitic divinity, imported into Greece. But the same cannot be proved of

Poseidon;[154] far less of Hermes, who is identical with the Vedic Sarameyas, the rising wind, the son of

Sarama the dawn, the lying, tricksome windgod, who invented music, and conducts the souls of dead men to

the house of Hades, even as his counterpart the Norse Odin rushes over the treetops leading the host of the

departed. When one sees Iris, the messenger of Zeus, referred to a Hebrew original, because of Jehovah's

promise to Noah, one is at a loss to understand the relationship between the two conceptions. Nothing could

be more natural to the Greeks than to call the rainbow the messenger of the skygod to earthdwelling men;

to call it a token set in the sky by Jehovah, as the Hebrews did, was a very different thing. We may admit the

very close resemblance between the myth of Bellerophon and Anteia, and that of Joseph and Zuleikha; but

the fact that the Greek story is explicable from Aryan antecedents, while the Hebrew story is isolated, might

perhaps suggest the inference that the Hebrews were the borrowers, as they undoubtedly were in the case of

the myth of Eden. Lastly, to conclude that Helios is an Eastern deity, because he reigns in the East over

Thrinakia, is wholly unwarranted. Is not Helios pure Greek for the sun? and where should his sacred island be

placed, if not in the East? As for his oxen, which wrought such dire destruction to the comrades of Odysseus,

and which seem to Mr. Gladstone so anomalous, they are those very same unhappy cattle, the clouds, which

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were stolen by the stormdemon Cacus and the winddeity Hermes, and which furnished endless material for

[154] I have no opinion as to the nationality of the Earthshaker, and, regarding the etymology of his name, I

believe we can hardly do better than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox, that it is unknown. It may well be doubted,

however, whether much good is likely to come of comparisons between Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah,

or of distinctions between the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See Brown's Poseidon; a Link

between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London, 1872,a book which is open to several of the criticisms here

But the whole subject of comparative mythology seems to be terra incognita to Mr. Gladstone. He pursues the

even tenour of his way in utter disregard of Grimm, and Kuhn, and Breal, and Dasent, and Burnouf. He takes

no note of the RigVeda, nor does he seem to realize that there was ever a time when the ancestors of the

Greeks and Hindus worshipped the same gods. Two or three times he cites Max Muller, but makes no use of

the copious data which might be gathered from him. The only work which seems really to have attracted his

attention is M. Jacolliot's very discreditable performance called "The Bible in India." Mr. Gladstone does not,

indeed, unreservedly approve of this book; but neither does he appear to suspect that it is a disgraceful piece

of charlatanry, written by a man ignorant of the very rudiments of the subject which he professes to handle.

Mr. Gladstone is equally out of his depth when he comes to treat purely philological questions. Of the science

of philology, as based upon established laws of phonetic change, he seems to have no knowledge whatever.

He seems to think that two words are sufficiently proved to be connected when they are seen to resemble

each other in spelling or in sound. Thus he quotes approvingly a derivation of the name Themis from an

assumed verb them, "to speak," whereas it is notoriously derived from tiqhmi, as statute comes ultimately

from stare. His reference of hieros, "a priest," and geron, "an old man," to the same root, is utterly baseless;

the one is the Sanskrit ishiras, "a powerful man," the other is the Sanskrit jaran, "an old man." The lists of

words on pages 96100 are disfigured by many such errors; and indeed the whole purpose for which they are

given shows how sadly Mr. Gladstone's philology is in arrears. The theory of Niebuhrthat the words

common to Greek and Latin, mostly descriptive of peaceful occupations, are Pelasgianwas serviceable

enough in its day, but is now rendered wholly antiquated by the discovery that such words are Aryan, in the

widest sense. The Pelasgian theory works very smoothly so long as we only compare the Greek with the

Latin words,as, for instance, sugon with jugum; but when we add the English yoke and the Sanskrit

yugam, it is evident that we have got far out of the range of the Pelasgoi. But what shall we say when we find

Mr. Gladstone citing the Latin thalamus in support of this antiquated theory? Doubtless the word thalamus is,

or should be, significative of peaceful occupations; but it is not a Latin word at all, except by adoption. One

might as well cite the word ensemble to prove the original identity or kinship between English and French.

When Mr. Gladstone, leaving the dangerous ground of pure and applied philology, confines himself to

illustrating the contents of the Homeric poems, he is always excellent. His chapter on the "Outer Geography"

of the Odyssey is exceedingly interesting; showing as it does how much may be obtained from the patient and

attentive study of even a single author. Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the SURFACE of the Iliad and

Odyssey, so to speak, is extensive and accurate. It is when he attempts to penetrate beneath the surface and

survey the treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth, that he shows himself unprovided with the talisman of

the wise dervise, which alone can unlock those mysteries. But modern philology is an exacting science: to

approach its higher problems requires an amount of preparation sufficient to terrify at the outset all but the

boldest; and a man who has had to regulate taxation, and make out financial statements, and lead a political

party in a great nation, may well be excused for ignorance of philology. It is difficult enough for those who

have little else to do but to pore over treatises on phonetics, and thumb their lexicons, to keep fully abreast

with the latest views in linguistics. In matters of detail one can hardly ever broach a new hypothesis without

misgivings lest somebody, in some weekly journal published in Germany, may just have anticipated and

refuted it. Yet while Mr. Gladstone may be excused for being unsound in philology, it is far less excusable

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 82

that he should sit down to write a book about Homer, abounding in philological statements, without the

slightest knowledge of what has been achieved in that science for several years past. In spite of all

drawbacks, however, his book shows an abiding taste for scholarly pursuits, and therefore deserves a certain

kind of praise. I hope,though just now the idea savours of the ludicrous,that the day may some time

arrive when OUR Congressmen and Secretaries of the Treasury will spend their vacations in writing books

NO earnest student of human culture can as yet have forgotten or wholly outlived the feeling of delight

awakened by the first perusal of Max Muller's brilliant "Essay on Comparative Mythology,"a work in

which the scientific principles of mythinterpretation, though not newly announced, were at least brought

home to the reader with such an amount of fresh and striking concrete illustration as they had not before

received. Yet it must have occurred to more than one reader that, while the analyses of myths contained in

this noble essay are in the main sound in principle and correct in detail, nevertheless the author's theory of the

genesis of myth is expressed, and most likely conceived, in a way that is very suggestive of carelessness and

fallacy. There are obvious reasons for doubting whether the existence of mythology can be due to any

"disease," abnormity, or hypertrophy of metaphor in language; and the criticism at once arises, that with the

mythmakers it was not so much the character of the expression which originated the thought, as it was the

thought which gave character to the expression. It is not that the early Aryans were mythmakers because

their language abounded in metaphor; it is that the Aryan mothertongue abounded in metaphor because the

men and women who spoke it were mythmakers. And they were mythmakers because they had nothing but

the phenomena of human will and effort with which to compare objective phenomena. Therefore it was that

they spoke of the sun as an unwearied voyager or a matchless archer, and classified inanimate no less than

animate objects as masculine and feminine. Max Muller's way of stating his theory, both in this Essay and in

his later Lectures, affords one among several instances of the curious manner in which he combines a

marvellous penetration into the significance of details with a certain looseness of general conception.[155]

The principles of philological interpretation are an indispensable aid to us in detecting the hidden meaning of

many a legend in which the powers of nature are represented in the guise of living and thinking persons; but

before we can get at the secret of the mythmaking tendency itself, we must leave philology and enter upon a

psychological study. We must inquire into the characteristics of that primitive style of thinking to which it

seemed quite natural that the sun should be an unerring archer, and the thundercloud a black demon or

gigantic robber finding his richly merited doom at the hands of the indignant Lord of Light.

[155] "The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Dawn, finds out the criminal, was originally quite free

SOME DAY OR OTHER. It became mythological, however, as soon as the etymological meaning of Erinys

was forgotten, and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time, assumed the rank of a personal being."Science

of Language, 6th edition, II. 615. This paragraph, in which the italicizing is mine, contains Max Muller's

theory in a nutshell. It seems to me wholly at variance with the facts of history. The facts concerning

primitive culture which are to be cited in this paper will show that the case is just the other way. Instead of

the expression "Erinys finds the criminal" being originally a metaphor, it was originally a literal statement of

what was believed to be fact. The Dawn (not "a portion of time,"(!) but the rosy flush of the morning sky)

was originally regarded as a real person. Primitive men, strictly speaking, do not talk in metaphors; they

believe in the literal truth of their similes and personifications, from which, by survival in culture, our poetic

metaphors are lineally descended. Homer's allusion to a rolling stone as essumenos or "yearning" (to keep on

rolling), is to us a mere figurative expression; but to the savage it is the description of a fact.

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 83

Among recent treatises which have dealt with this interesting problem, we shall find it advantageous to give

especial attention to Mr. Tylor's "Primitive Culture,"[156] one of the few erudite works which are at once

truly great and thoroughly entertaining. The learning displayed in it would do credit to a German specialist,

both for extent and for minuteness, while the orderly arrangement of the arguments and the elegant lucidity of

the style are such as we are accustomed to expect from French essaywriters. And what is still more

admirable is the way in which the enthusiasm characteristic of a genial and original speculator is tempered by

the patience and caution of a coolheaded critic. Patience and caution are nowhere more needed than in

writers who deal with mythology and with primitive religious ideas; but these qualities are too seldom found

in combination with the speculative boldness which is required when fresh theories are to be framed or new

paths of investigation opened. The state of mind in which the explaining powers of a favourite theory are

fondly contemplated is, to some extent, antagonistic to the state of mind in which facts are seen, with the eye

of impartial criticism, in all their obstinate and uncompromising reality. To be able to preserve the balance

between the two opposing tendencies is to give evidence of the most consummate scientific training. It is

from the want of such a balance that the recent great work of Mr. Cox is at times so unsatisfactory. It may, I

fear, seem illnatured to say so, but the eagerness with which Mr. Cox waylays every available illustration of

the physical theory of the origin of myths has now and then the curious effect of weakening the reader's

conviction of the soundness of the theory. For my own part, though by no means inclined to waver in

adherence to a doctrine once adopted on good grounds, I never felt so much like rebelling against the

mythologic supremacy of the Sun and the Dawn as when reading Mr. Cox's volumes. That Mr. Tylor, while

defending the same fundamental theory, awakens no such rebellious feelings, is due to his clear perception

and realization of the fact that it is impossible to generalize in a single formula such manysided

correspondences as those which primitive poetry end philosophy have discerned between the life of man and

the life of outward nature. Whoso goes roaming up and down the elfland of popular fancies, with sole intent

to resolve each episode of myth into some answering physical event, his only criterion being outward

resemblance, cannot be trusted in his conclusions, since wherever he turns for evidence he is sure to find

something that can be made to serve as such. As Mr. Tylor observes, no household legend or nursery rhyme

is safe from his hermeneutics. "Should he, for instance, demand as his property the nursery 'Song of

Sixpence,' his claim would be easily established,obviously the fourandtwenty blackbirds are the

fourandtwenty hours, and the pie that holds them is the underlying earth covered with the overarching

sky,how true a touch of nature it is that when the pie is opened, that is, when day breaks, the birds begin to

sing; the King is the Sun, and his counting out his money is pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of

Danae; the Queen is the Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight; the Maid is the 'rosyfingered'

Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her master, and hangs out the clouds, his clothes, across the sky; the

particular blackbird, who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour of sunrise." In all

this interpretation there is no a priori improbability, save, perhaps, in its unbroken symmetry and

completeness. That some points, at least, of the story are thus derived from antique interpretations of physical

events, is in harmony with all that we know concerning nursery rhymes. In short, "the timehonoured rhyme

really wants but one thing to prove it a sunmyth, that one thing being a proof by some argument more valid

than analogy." The character of the argument which is lacking may be illustrated by a reference to the rhyme

about Jack and Jill, explained some time since in the paper on "The Origins of FolkLore." If the argument be

thought valid which shows these illfated children to be the spots on the moon, it is because the proof

consists, not in the analogy, which is in this case not especially obvious, but in the fact that in the Edda, and

among ignorant Swedish peasants of our own day, the story of Jack and Jill is actually given as an

explanation of the moonspots. To the neglect of this distinction between what is plausible and what is

supported by direct evidence, is due much of the crude speculation which encumbers the study of myths.

[156] Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and

It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology into the wider inquiry into the characteristic features of

the mode of thinking in which myths originated, that we can best appreciate the practical value of that union

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 84

of speculative boldness and critical sobriety which everywhere distinguishes him. It is pleasant to meet with a

writer who can treat of primitive religious ideas without losing his head over allegory and symbolism, and

who duly realizes the fact that a savage is not a rabbinical commentator, or a cabalist, or a Rosicrucian, but a

plain man who draws conclusions like ourselves, though with feeble intelligence and scanty knowledge. The

mystic allegory with which such modern writers as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity is no

part of their original clothing, but is rather the late product of a style of reasoning from analogy quite similar

to that which we shall perceive to have guided the mythmakers in their primitive constructions. The myths

and customs and beliefs which, in an advanced stage of culture, seem meaningless save when characterized

by some quaintly wrought device of symbolic explanation, did not seem meaningless in the lower culture

which gave birth to them. Myths, like words, survive their primitive meanings. In the early stage the myth is

part and parcel of the current mode of philosophizing; the explanation which it offers is, for the time, the

natural one, the one which would most readily occur to any one thinking on the theme with which the myth is

concerned. But by and by the mode of philosophizing has changed; explanations which formerly seemed

quite obvious no longer occur to any one, but the myth has acquired an independent substantive existence,

and continues to be handed down from parents to children as something true, though no one can tell why it is

true: Lastly, the myth itself gradually fades from remembrance, often leaving behind it some utterly

unintelligible custom or seemingly absurd superstitious notion. For example,to recur to an illustration

already cited in a previous paper,it is still believed here and there by some venerable granny that it is

wicked to kill robins; but he who should attribute the belief to the old granny's refined sympathy with all

sentient existence, would be making one of the blunders which are always committed by those who reason a

priori about historical matters without following the historical method. At an earlier date the superstition

existed in the shape of a belief that the killing of a robin portends some calamity; in a still earlier form the

calamity is specified as death; and again, still earlier, as death by lightning. Another step backward reveals

that the dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the fact that he is the bird of Thor, the lightning god; and

finally we reach that primitive stage of philosophizing in which the lightning is explained as a red bird

dropping from its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, the belief that some harm is sure to come to

him who saves the life of a drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a case of survival in culture.

In the older form of the superstition it is held that the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned himself; and

thus we pass to the fetichistic interpretation of drowning as the seizing of the unfortunate person by the

waterspirit or nixy, who is naturally angry at being deprived of his victim, and henceforth bears a special

The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and of drowning as the work of a smiling but treacherous

fiend, are parts of that primitive philosophy of nature in which all forces objectively existing are conceived as

identical with the force subjectively known as volition. It is this philosophy, currently known as fetichism,

but treated by Mr. Tylor under the somewhat more comprehensive name of "animism," which we must now

consider in a few of its most conspicuous exemplifications. When we have properly characterized some of the

processes which the untrained mind habitually goes through, we shall have incidentally arrived at a fair

Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric or uncultivated mind reaches all manner of apparently

fanciful conclusions through reckless reasoning from analogy. It is through the operation of certain laws of

ideal association that all human thinking, that of the highest as well as that of the lowest minds, is conducted:

the discovery of the law of gravitation, as well as the invention of such a superstition as the Hand of Glory, is

at bottom but a case of association of ideas. The difference between the scientific and the mythologic

inference consists solely in the number of checks which in the former case combine to prevent any other than

the true conclusion from being framed into a proposition to which the mind assents. Countless accumulated

experiences have taught the modern that there are many associations of ideas which do not correspond to any

actual connection of cause and effect in the world of phenomena; and he has learned accordingly to apply to

his newly framed notions the rigid test of verification. Besides which the same accumulation of experiences

has built up an organized structure of ideal associations into which only the less extravagant newly framed

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notions have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the modern savage who is to some extent his

counterpart, must reason without the aid of these multifarious checks. That immense mass of associations

which answer to what are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilized modern have become

almost organic, have not been formed in the mind of the savage; nor has he learned the necessity of

experimentally testing any of his newly framed notions, save perhaps a few of the commonest. Consequently

there is nothing but superficial analogy to guide the course of his thought hither or thither, and the

conclusions at which he arrives will be determined by associations of ideas occurring apparently at

haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies with which European and barbaric folklore is filled, in the

framing of which the mythmaker was but reasoning according to the best methods at his command. To this

simplest class, in which the association of ideas is determined by mere analogy, belong such cases as that of

the Zulu, who chews a piece of wood in order to soften the heart of the man with whom he is about to trade

for cows, or the Hessian lad who "thinks he may escape the conscription by carrying a babygirl's cap in his

pocket,a symbolic way of repudiating manhood."[157] A similar style of thinking underlies the mediaeval

necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of his enemy and shooting at it with arrows, in order to

bring about the enemy's death; as also the case of the magic rod, mentioned in a previous paper, by means of

which a sound thrashing can be administered to an absent foe through the medium of an old coat which is

imagined to cover him. The principle involved here is one which is doubtless familiar to most children, and is

closely akin to that which Irving so amusingly illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a field of

cabbages or cornstalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and imagining himself a hero of chivalry

conquering singlehanded a host of caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies that the breaking of a mirror

heralds a death in the family, probably because of the destruction of the reflected human image; that the

"hair of the dog that bit you" will prevent hydrophobia if laid upon the wound; or that the tears shed by

human victims, sacrificed to mother earth, will bring down showers upon the land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord

Chesterfield's remark, "that the king had been ill, and that people generally expected the illness to be fatal,

because the oldest lion in the Tower, about the king's age, had just died. 'So wild and capricious is the human

mind,' " observes the elegant letterwriter. But indeed, as Mr. Tylor justly remarks, "the thought was neither

wild nor capricious; it was simply such an argument from analogy as the educated world has at length

painfully learned to be worthless, but which, it is not too much to declare, would to this day carry

considerable weight to the minds of four fifths of the human race." Upon such symbolism are based most of

the practices of divination and the great pseudoscience of astrology. "It is an old story, that when two

brothers were once taken ill together, Hippokrates, the physician, concluded from the coincidence that they

were twins, but Poseidonios, the astrologer, considered rather that they were born under the same

constellation; we may add that either argument would be thought reasonable by a savage." So when a Maori

fortress is attacked, the besiegers and besieged look to see if Venus is near the moon. The moon represents

the fortress; and if it appears below the companion planet, the besiegers will carry the day, otherwise they

will be repulsed. Equally primitive and childlike was Rousseau's train of thought on the memorable day at

Les Charmettes when, being distressed with doubts as to the safety of his soul, he sought to determine the

point by throwing a stone at a tree. "Hit, sign of salvation; miss, sign of damnation!" The tree being a large

one and very near at hand, the result of the experiment was reassuring, and the young philosopher walked

[158] Rousseau, Confessions, I. vi. For further illustration, see especially the note on the "doctrine of

When the savage, whose highest intellectual efforts result only in speculations of this childlike character, is

confronted with the phenomena of dreams, it is easy to see what he will make of them. His practical

knowledge of psychology is too limited to admit of his distinguishing between the solidity of waking

experience and what we may call the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have learned that the

dream is not to be relied on for telling the truth; the Zulu, for example, has even reached the perverse triumph

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of critical logic achieved by our own Aryan ancestors in the saying that "dreams go by contraries." But the

Zulu has not learned, nor had the primeval Aryan learned, to disregard the utterances of the dream as being

purely subjective phenomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern culture, the visions seen and the

voices heard in sleep possess as much objective reality as the gestures and shouts of waking hours. When the

savage relates his dream, he tells how he SAW certain dogs, dead warriors, or demons last night, the

implication being that the things seen were objects external to himself. As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude

language fails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he

did. From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to

others, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence in the absence of an alternative

interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells his adventures, is that his OTHER SELF has been

away and came back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find among various existing savage tribes,

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

Let us consider, for a moment, this assumption of the OTHER SELF, for upon this is based the great mass of

crude inference which constitutes the primitive man's philosophy of nature. The hypothesis of the OTHER

SELF, which serves to account for the savage's wanderings during sleep in strange lands and among strange

people, serves also to account for the presence in his dreams of parents, comrades, or enemies, known to be

dead and buried. The other self of the dreamer meets and converses with the other selves of his dead brethren,

joins with them in the hunt, or sits down with them to the wild cannibal banquet. Thus arises the belief in an

everpresent world of souls or ghosts, a belief which the entire experience of uncivilized man goes to

strengthen and expand. The existence of some tribe or tribes of savages wholly destitute of religious belief

has often been hastily asserted and as often called in question. But there is no question that, while many

savages are unable to frame a conception so general as that of godhood, on the other hand no tribe has ever

been found so low in the scale of intelligence as not to have framed the conception of ghosts or spiritual

personalities, capable of being angered, propitiated, or conjured with. Indeed it is not improbable a priori that

the original inference involved in the notion of the other self may be sufficiently simple and obvious to fall

within the capacity of animals even less intelligent than uncivilized man. An authentic case is on record of a

Skye terrier who, being accustomed to obtain favours from his master by sitting on his haunches, will also sit

before his pet indiarubber ball placed on the chimneypiece, evidently beseeching it to jump down and play

with him.[160] Such a fact as this is quite in harmony with Auguste Comte's suggestion that such intelligent

animals as dogs, apes, and elephants may be capable of forming a few fetichistic notions. The behaviour of

the terrier here rests upon the assumption that the ball is open to the same sort of entreaty which prevails with

the master; which implies, not that the wistful brute accredits the ball with a soul, but that in his mind the

distinction between life and inanimate existence has never been thoroughly established. Just this confusion

between things living and things not living is present throughout the whole philosophy of fetichism; and the

confusion between things seen and things dreamed, which suggests the notion of another self, belongs to this

same twilight stage of intelligence in which primeval man has not yet clearly demonstrated his immeasurable

[160] See Nature, Vol. VI. p. 262, August 1, 1872. The circumstances narrated are such as to exclude the

supposition that the sitting up is intended to attract the master's attention. The dog has frequently been seen

[161] "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attention Mr. Mark Twain's dog, who 'couldn't be

depended on for a special providence,' as being nearer to the actual dog of everyday life than is the Skye

terrier mentioned by a certain correspondent of Nature, to whose letter Mr. Fiske refers. The terrier is held to

have had 'a few fetichistic notions,' because he was found standing up on his hind legs in front of a

mantelpiece, upon which lay an indiarubber ball with which he wished to play, but which he could not

reach, and which, says the letterwriter, he was evidently beseeching to come down and play with him. We

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consider it more reasonable to suppose that a dog who had been drilled into a belief that standing upon his

hind legs was very pleasing to his master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to stand on his hind

legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way of getting what he desired was to induce somebody

to get it for him, may have stood up in front of the mantelpiece rather from force of habit and eagerness of

desire than because he had any fetichistic notions, or expected the indiarubber ball to listen to his

supplications. We admit, however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the dog is

capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October 1, 1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain

what was going on in the dog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I will only add another fact of

similar import. "The tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by

spiritual or living essences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a fullgrown

and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight

breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any

one stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked.

He must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any

apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his

territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. p. 64. Without insisting upon all the details of this explanation,

one may readily grant, I think, that in the dog, as in the savage, there is an undisturbed association between

motion and a living motor agency; and that out of a multitude of just such associations common to both, the

savage, with his greater generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.

The conception of a soul or other self, capable of going away from the body and returning to it, receives

decisive confirmation from the phenomena of fainting, trance, catalepsy, and ecstasy,[162] which occur less

rarely among savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, than among civilized men. "Further verification,"

observes Mr. Spencer, "is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body, during the absence of the

other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does it happen that the other self on returning denies all

knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this supposition, that the body has been 'possessed' by

some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and insanity." Still further, as Mr.

Spencer points out, when we recollect that savages are very generally unwilling to have their portraits taken,

lest a portion of themselves should get carried off and be exposed to foul play,[163] we must readily admit

that the weird reflection of the person and imitation of the gestures in rivers or still woodland pools will go

far to intensify the belief in the other self. Less frequent but uniform confirmation is to be found in echoes,

which in Europe within two centuries have been commonly interpreted as the voices of mocking fiends or

woodnymphs, and which the savage might well regard as the utterances of his other self.

[162] Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of these Greek words. Catalepsy, katalhyis, a seizing

of the body by some spirit or demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy, ekstasis, a displacement or removal of the

soul from the body, into which the demon enters and causes strange laughing, crying, or contortions. It is not

metaphor, but the literal belief ill a ghostworld, which has given rise to such words as these, and to such

[163] Something akin to the savage's belief in the animation of pictures may be seen in young children. I have

often been asked by my threeyearold boy, whether the dog in a certain picture would bite him if he were to

go near it; and I can remember that, in my own childhood, when reading a book about insects, which had the

formidable likeness of a spider stamped on the centre of the cover, I was always uneasy lest my finger should

With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken, lest it fall into the hands of some enemy who may

injure him by conjuring with it, may be compared the reluctance which he often shows toward telling his

name, or mentioning the name of his friend, or king, or tutelar ghostdeity. In fetichistic thought, the name is

an entity mysteriously associated with its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of its getting into hostile

hands. Along with this caution goes the similarly originated fear that the person whose name is spoken may

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resent such meddling with his personality. For the latter reason the Dayak will not allude by name to the

small pox, but will call it "the chief" or "jungleleaves"; the Laplander speaks of the bear as the "old man

with the fur coat"; in Annam the tiger is called "grandfather" or "Lord"; while in more civilized communities

such sayings are current as "talk of the Devil, and he will appear," with which we may also compare such

expressions as "Eumenides" or "gracious ones" for the Furies, and other like euphemisms. Indeed, the maxim

In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above specified, the name of the reigning chief is so

rigorously "tabu," that common words and even syllables resembling that name in sound must be omitted

from the language. In New Zealand, where a chiefs name was Maripi, or "knife," it became necessary to call

knives nekra; and in Tahiti, fetu, "star," had to be changed into fetia, and tui, "to strike," became tiai, etc.,

because the king's name was Tu. Curious freaks are played with the languages of these islands by this

everrecurring necessity. Among the Kafirs the women have come to speak a different dialect from the men,

because words resembling the names of their lords or male relatives are in like manner "tabu." The student of

human culture will trace among such primeval notions the origin of the Jew's unwillingness to pronounce the

name of Jehovah; and hence we may perhaps have before us the ultimate source of the horror with which the

Hebraizing Puritan regards such forms of light swearing"Mon Dieu," etc.as are still tolerated on the

continent of Europe, but have disappeared from good society in Puritanic England and America. The reader

interested in this group of ideas and customs may consult Tylor, Early History of Mankind, pp. 142, 363;

Max Muller, Science of Language, 6th edition, Vol. II. p. 37; Mackay, Religious Development of the Greeks

Chamisso's wellknown tale of Peter Schlemihl belongs to a widely diffused family of legends, which show

that a man's shadow has been generally regarded not only as an entity, but as a sort of spiritual attendant of

the body, which under certain circumstances it may permanently forsake. It is in strict accordance with this

idea that not only in the classic languages, but in various barbaric tongues, the word for "shadow" expresses

also the soul or other self. Tasmanians, Algonquins, CentralAmericans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus are

cited by Mr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the identity of the shadow with the ghost or phantasm seen in

dreams; the Basutos going so far as to think "that if a man walks on the riverbank, a crocodile may seize his

shadow in the water and draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick person is supposed to have his shadow

or other self temporarily detached from his body, and the convalescent is at times "reproached for exposing

himself before his shadow was safely settled down in him." If the sick man has been plunged into stupor, it is

because his other self has travelled away as far as the brink of the river of death, but not being allowed to

cross has come back and reentered him. And acting upon a similar notion the ailing Fiji will sometimes lie

down and raise a hue and cry for his soul to be brought back. Thus, continues Mr. Tylor, "in various countries

the bringing back of lost souls becomes a regular part of the sorcerer's or priest's profession."[164] On Aryan

soil we find the notion of a temporary departure of the soul surviving to a late date in the theory that the witch

may attend the infernal Sabbath while her earthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping at home. The primeval

conception reappears, clothed in bitterest sarcasm, in Dante's reference to his living contemporaries whose

souls he met with in the vaults of hell, while their bodies were still walking about on the earth, inhabited by

[164] Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that a dead body can cast no shadow, because that

appurtenance departed from it at the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and FolkLore, p.

The theory which identifies the soul with the shadow, and supposes the shadow to depart with the sickness

and death of the body, would seem liable to be attended with some difficulties in the way of verification, even

to the dim intelligence of the savage. But the propriety of identifying soul and breath is borne out by all

primeval experience. The breath, which really quits the body at its decease, has furnished the chief name for

the soul, not only to the Hebrew, the Sanskrit, and the classic tongues; not only to German and English,

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where geist, and ghost, according to Max Muller, have the meaning of "breath," and are akin to such words as

gas, gust, and geyser; but also to numerous barbaric languages. Among the natives of Nicaragua and

California, in Java and in West Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze which passes in and out

through the nostrils and mouth; and the Greenlanders, according to Cranz, reckon two separate souls, the

breath and the shadow. "Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in childbirth, the infant was

held over her face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for its future use.....

Their state of mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who can still fancy a good man's soul to

issue from his mouth at death like a little white cloud."[165] It is kept up, too, in Lancashire, where a

wellknown witch died a few years since; "but before she could 'shuffle off this mortal coil' she must needs

TRANSFER HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT to some trusty successor. An intimate acquaintance from a

neighbouring township was consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival was immediately closeted

with her dying friend. What passed between them has never fully transpired, but it is confidently affirmed

that at the close of the interview this associate RECEIVED THE WITCH'S LAST BREATH INTO HER

MOUTH AND WITH IT HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT. The dreaded woman thus ceased to exist, but her powers

for good or evil were transferred to her companion; and on passing along the road from Burnley to Blackburn

we can point out a farmhouse at no great distance with whose thrifty matron no neighbouring farmer will yet

Of the theory of embodiment there will be occasion to speak further on. At present let us not pass over the

fact that the other self is not only conceived as shadow or breath, which can at times quit the body during life,

but is also supposed to become temporarily embodied in the visible form of some bird or beast. In discussing

elsewhere the myth of Bishop Hatto, we saw that the soul is sometimes represented in the form of a rat or

mouse; and in treating of werewolves we noticed the belief that the spirits of dead ancestors, borne along in

the nightwind, have taken on the semblance of howling dogs or wolves. "Consistent with these quaint ideas

are ceremonies in vogue in China of bringing home in a cock (live or artificial) the spirit of a man deceased in

a distant place, and of enticing into a sick man's coat the departing spirit which has already left his body and

so conveying it back."[167] In Castren's great work on Finnish mythology, we find the story of the giant who

could not be killed because he kept his soul hidden in a twelveheaded snake which he carried in a bag as he

rode on horseback; only when the secret was discovered and the snake carefully killed, did the giant yield up

his life. In this Finnish legend we have one of the thousand phases of the story of the "Giant who had no

Heart in his Body," but whose heart was concealed, for safe keeping, in a duck's egg, or in a pigeon, carefully

disposed in some belfry at the world's end a million miles away, or encased in a wellnigh infinite series of

Chinese boxes.[168] Since, in spite of all these precautions, the poor giant's heart invariably came to grief, we

need not wonder at the Karen superstition that the soul is in danger when it quits the body on its excursions,

as exemplified in countless IndoEuropean stories of the accidental killing of the weird mouse or pigeon

which embodies the wandering spirit. Conversely it is held that the detachment of the other self is fraught

with danger to the self which remains. In the philosophy of "wraiths" and "fetches," the appearance of a

double, like that which troubled Mistress Affery in her waking dreams of Mr. Flintwinch, has been from time

out of mind a signal of alarm. "In New Zealand it is ominous to see the figure of an absent person, for if it be

shadowy and the face not visible, his death may erelong be expected, but if the face be seen he is dead

already. A party of Maoris (one of whom told the story) were seated round a fire in the open air, when there

appeared, seen only by two of them, the figure of a relative, left ill at home; they exclaimed, the figure

vanished, and on the return of the party it appeared that the sick man had died about the time of the

vision."[169] The belief in wraiths has survived into modern times, and now and then appears in the records

of that remnant of primeval philosophy known as "spiritualism," as, for example, in the case of the lady who

"thought she saw her own father look in at the churchwindow at the moment he was dying in his own

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[168] In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be embodied in pigeons or crows. "Thus when the

Deacon Theodore and his three schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs, as the 'Old

Believers' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. In Volhynia dead children are supposed to come back in the

spring to their native village under the semblance of swallows and other small birds, and to seek by soft

twittering or song to console their sorrowing parents." Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.

The belief in the "deathfetch," like the doctrine which identifies soul with shadow, is instructive as showing

that in barbaric thought the other self is supposed to resemble the material self with which it has customarily

been associated. In various savage superstitions the minute resemblance of soul to body is forcibly stated.

The Australian, for instance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumb of the corpse, so

that the departed soul may be incapacitated from throwing a spear. Even the halfcivilized Chinese prefer

crucifixion to decapitation, that their souls may not wander headless about the spiritworld.[170] Thus we

see how far removed from the Christian doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other self that

figures in dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitive conception that the savage who cherishes it will

bore holes in the coffin of his dead friend, so that the soul may again have a chance, if it likes, to revisit the

body. To this day, among the peasants in some parts of Northern Europe, when Odin, the spectral hunter,

rides by attended by his furious host, the windows in every sickroom are opened, in order that the soul, if it

chooses to depart, may not be hindered from joining in the headlong chase. And so, adds Mr. Tylor, after the

Indians of North America had spent a riotous night in singeing an unfortunate captive to death with

firebrands, they would howl like the fiends they were, and beat the air with brushwood, to drive away the

distressed and revengeful ghost. "With a kindlier feeling, the Congo negroes abstained for a whole year after

a death from sweeping the house, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost"; and even

now, "it remains a German peasant saying that it is wrong to slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in

it."[172] Dante's experience with the ghosts in hell and purgatory, who were astonished at his weighing down

the boat in which they were carried, is belied by the sweet German notion "that the dead mother's coming

back in the night to suckle the baby she has left on earth may be known by the hollow pressed down in the

bed where she lay." Almost universally ghosts, however impervious to thrust of sword or shot of pistol, can

eat and drink like Squire Westerns. And lastly, we have the grotesque conception of souls sufficiently

material to be killed over again, as in the case of the negro widows who, wishing to marry a second time, will

go and duck themselves in the pond, in order to drown the souls of their departed husbands, which are

supposed to cling about their necks; while, according to the Fiji theory, the ghost of every dead warrior must

go through a terrible fight with Samu and his brethren, in which, if he succeeds, he will enter Paradise, but if

he fails he will be killed over again and finally eaten by the dreaded Samu and his unearthly company.

[172] Tylor, op. cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survival this belief will take the shape that it is wrong to slam

a door, no reason being assigned; and in the succeeding stage, when the child asks why it is naughty to slam a

door, he will be told, because it is an evidence of bad temper. Thus do oldworld fancies disappear before the

From the conception of souls embodied in beastforms, as above illustrated, it is not a wide step to the

conception of beastsouls which, like human souls, survive the death of the tangible body. The widespread

superstitions concerning werewolves and swanmaidens, and the hardly less general belief in

metempsychosis, show that primitive culture has not arrived at the distinction attained by modern philosophy

between the immortal man and the soulless brute. Still more direct evidence is furnished by sundry savage

customs. The Kafir who has killed an elephant will cry that he did n't mean to do it, and, lest the elephant's

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soul should still seek vengeance, he will cut off and bury the trunk, so that the mighty beast may go crippled

to the spiritland. In like manner, the Samoyeds, after shooting a bear, will gather about the body offering

excuses and laying the blame on the Russians; and the American redskin will even put the pipe of peace into

the dead animal's mouth, and beseech him to forgive the deed. In Assam it is believed that the ghosts of slain

animals will become in the next world the property of the hunter who kills them; and the Kamtchadales

expressly declare that all animals, even flies and bugs, will live after death,a belief, which, in our own day,

has been indorsed on philosophical grounds by an eminent living naturalist.[173] The Greenlanders, too, give

evidence of the same belief by supposing that when after an exhausting fever the patient comes up in

unprecedented health and vigour, it is because he has lost his former soul and had it replaced by that of a

young child or a reindeer. In a recent work in which the crudest fancies of primeval savagery are thinly

disguised in a jargon learned from the superficial reading of modern books of science, M. Figuier maintains

that human souls are for the most part the surviving souls of deceased animals; in general, the souls of

precocious musical children like Mozart come from nightingales, while the souls of great architects have

The practice of begging pardon of the animal one has just slain is in some parts of the world extended to the

case of plants. When the Talein offers a prayer to the tree which he is about to cut down, it is obviously

because he regards the tree as endowed with a soul or ghost which in the next life may need to be propitiated.

And the doctrine of transmigration distinctly includes plants along with animals among the future existences

As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena of life, though to a much less conspicuous degree, it is not

incomprehensible that the savage should attribute souls to them. But the primitive process of

anthropomorphisation does not end here. Not only the horse and dog, the bamboo, and the oaktree, but even

lifeless objects, such as the hatchet, or bow and arrows, or food and drink of the dead man, possess other

selves which pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis and other contemporary savages, when questioned, expressly

declare that this is their belief. "If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the

service of the gods." The Algonquins told Charlevoix that since hatchets and kettles have shadows, no less

than men and women, it follows, of course, that these shadows (or souls) must pass along with human

shadows (or souls) into the spiritland. In this we see how simple and consistent is the logic which guides the

savage, and how inevitable is the genesis of the great mass of beliefs, to our minds so arbitrary and grotesque,

which prevail throughout the barbaric world. However absurd the belief that pots and kettles have souls may

seem to us, it is nevertheless the only belief which can be held consistently by the savage to whom pots and

kettles, no less than human friends or enemies, may appear in his dreams; who sees them followed by

shadows as they are moved about; who hears their voices, dull or ringing, when they are struck; and who

watches their doubles fantastically dancing in the water as they are carried across the stream.[175] To minds,

even in civilized countries, which are unused to the severe training of science, no stronger evidence can be

alleged than what is called "the evidence of the senses"; for it is only long familiarity with science which

teaches us that the evidence of the senses is trustworthy only in so far as it is correctly interpreted by reason.

For the truth of his belief in the ghosts of men and beasts, trees and axes, the savage has undeniably the

evidence of his senses which have so often seen, heard, and handled these other selves.

[175] Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comes in to complete the proof. "Mr. Darwin saw two

Malay women in Keeling Island, who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; this spoon had been

carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about

convulsively like a table or a hat at a modern spiritseance." Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.

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The funeral ceremonies of uncultured races freshly illustrate this crude philosophy, and receive fresh

illustration from it. On the primitive belief in the ghostly survival of persons and objects rests the almost

universal custom of sacrificing the wives, servants, horses, and dogs of the departed chief of the tribe, as well

as of presenting at his shrine sacred offerings of food, ornaments, weapons, and money. Among the Kayans

the slaves who are killed at their master's tomb are enjoined to take great care of their master's ghost, to wash

and shampoo it, and to nurse it when sick. Other savages think that "all whom they kill in this world shall

attend them as slaves after death," and for this reason the thrifty Dayaks of Borneo until lately would not

allow their young men to marry until they had acquired some post mortem property by procuring at least one

human head. It is hardly necessary to do more than allude to the Fiji custom of strangling all the wives of the

deceased at his funeral, or to the equally wellknown Hindu rite of suttee. Though, as Wilson has shown, the

latter rite is not supported by any genuine Vedic authority, but only by a shameless Brahmanic corruption of

the sacred text, Mr. Tylor is nevertheless quite right in arguing that unless the horrible custom had received

the sanction of a public opinion bequeathed from preVedic times, the Brahmans would have had no motive

for fraudulently reviving it; and this opinion is virtually established by the fact of the prevalence of widow

sacrifice among Gauls, Scandinavians, Slaves, and other European Aryans.[176] Though under English rule

the rite has been forcibly suppressed, yet the archaic sentiments which so long maintained it are not yet

extinct. Within the present year there has appeared in the newspapers a not improbable story of a beautiful

and accomplished Hindu lady who, having become the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and after living several

years in England amid the influences of modern society, nevertheless went off and privately burned herself to

The reader who thinks it farfetched to interpret funeral offerings of food, weapons, ornaments, or money, on

the theory of objectsouls, will probably suggest that such offerings may be mere memorials of affection or

esteem for the dead man. Such, indeed, they have come to be in many countries after surviving the phase of

culture in which they originated; but there is ample evidence to show that at the outset they were presented in

the belief that their ghosts would be eaten or otherwise employed by the ghost of the dead man. The stout

club which is buried with the dead Fiji sends its soul along with him that he may be able to defend himself

against the hostile ghosts which will lie in ambush for him on the road to Mbulu, seeking to kill and eat him.

Sometimes the club is afterwards removed from the grave as of no further use, since its ghost is all that the

dead man needs. In like manner, "as the Greeks gave the dead man the obolus for Charon's toll, and the old

Prussians furnished him with spending money, to buy refreshment on his weary journey, so to this day

German peasants bury a corpse with money in his mouth or hand," and this is also said to be one of the

regular ceremonies of an Irish wake. Of similar purport were the funeral feasts and oblations of food in

Greece and Italy, the "ricecakes made with ghee" destined for the Hindu sojourning in Yama's kingdom, and

the meat and gruel offered by the Chinaman to the manes of his ancestors. "Many travellers have described

the imagination with which the Chinese make such offerings. It is that the spirits of the dead consume the

impalpable essence of the food, leaving behind its coarse material substance, wherefore the dutiful sacrificers,

having set out sumptuous feasts for ancestral souls, allow them a proper time to satisfy their appetite, and

then fall to themselves."[177] So in the Homeric sacrifice to the gods, after the deity has smelled the sweet

savour and consumed the curling steam that rises ghostlike from the roasting viands, the assembled warriors

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

Thus far the course of fetichistic thought which we have traced out, with Mr. Tylor's aid, is such as is not

always obvious to the modern inquirer without considerable concrete illustration. The remainder of the

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process, resulting in that systematic and complete anthropomorphisation of nature which has given rise to

mythology, may be more succinctly described. Gathering together the conclusions already obtained, we find

that daily or frequent experience of the phenomena of shadows and dreams has combined with less frequent

experience of the phenomena of trance, ecstasy, and insanity, to generate in the mind of uncultured man the

notion of a twofold existence appertaining alike to all animate or inanimate objects: as all alike possess

material bodies, so all alike possess ghosts or souls. Now when the theory of objectsouls is expanded into a

general doctrine of spirits, the philosophic scheme of animism is completed. Once habituated to the

conception of souls of knives and tobaccopipes passing to the land of ghosts, the savage cannot avoid

carrying the interpretation still further, so that wind and water, fire and storm, are accredited with indwelling

spirits akin by nature to the soul which inhabits the human frame. That the mighty spirit or demon by whose

impelling will the trees are rooted up and tile stormclouds driven across the sky should resemble a freed

human soul, is a natural inference, since uncultured man has not attained to the conception of physical force

acting in accordance with uniform methods, and hence all events are to his mind the manifestations of

capricious volition. If the fire burns down his hut, it is because the fire is a person with a soul, and is angry

with him, and needs to be coaxed into a kindlier mood by means of prayer or sacrifice. Thus the savage has a

priori no alternative but to regard firesoul as something akin to humansoul; and in point of fact we find

that savage philosophy makes no distinction between the human ghost and the elemental demon or deity.

This is sufficiently proved by the universal prevalence of the worship of ancestors. The essential principle of

manesworship is that the tribal chief or patriarch, who has governed the community during life, continues

also to govern it after death, assisting it in its warfare with hostile tribes, rewarding brave warriors, and

punishing traitors and cowards. Thus from the conception of the living king we pass to the notion of what Mr.

Spencer calls "the godking," and thence to the rudimentary notion of deity. Among such higher savages as

the Zulus, the doctrine of divine ancestors has been developed to the extent of recognizing a first ancestor, the

Great Father, Unkulunkulu, who made the world. But in the stratum of savage thought in which barbaric or

Aryan folklore is for the most part based, we find no such exalted speculation. The ancestors of the rude

Veddas and of the Guinea negroes, the Hindu pitris (patres, "fathers"), and the Roman manes have become

elemental deities which send rain or sunshine, health or sickness, plenty or famine, arid to which their living

offspring appeal for guidance amid the vicissitudes of life.[179] The theory of embodiment, already alluded

to, shows how thoroughly the demons which cause disease are identified with human and object souls. In

Australasia it is a dead man's ghost which creeps up into the liver of the impious wretch who has ventured to

pronounce his name; while conversely in the wellknown European theory of demoniacal possession, it is a

fairy from elfland, or an imp from hell, which has entered the body of the sufferer. In the close kinship,

moreover, between diseasepossession and oraclepossession, where the body of tile Pythia, or the

medicineman, is placed under the direct control of some great deity,[180] we may see how by insensible

transitions the conception of the human ghost passes into the conception of the spiritual numen, or divinity.

[179] The following citation is interesting as an illustration of the directness of descent from heathen

manesworship to Christian saintworship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own adventurous

infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to the health and safety of young children, so that

nurses and mothers would carry sickly infants to present them in his little round temple at the foot of the

Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced by the church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers

Middleton, who drew public attention to its curious history, used to look in and see ten or a dozen women,

each with a sick child in her lap, sitting in silent reverence before the altar of the saint. The ceremony of

blessing children, especially after vaccination, may still be seen there on Thursday mornings." Op. cit. II.

[180] Want of space prevents me from remarking at length upon Mr. Tylor's admirable treatment of the

phenomena of oracular inspiration. Attention should be called, however, to the brilliant explanation of the

importance accorded by all religions to the rite of fasting. Prolonged abstinence from food tends to bring on a

mental state which is favourable to visions. The savage priest or medicineman qualifies himself for the

performance of his duties by fasting, and where this is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs; whence

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the sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic somajuice. The practice of fasting among civilized

To pursue this line of inquiry through the countless nymphs and dryads and nixies of the higher

natureworship up to the Olympian divinities of classic polytheism, would be to enter upon the history of

religious belief, and in so doing to lose sight of our present purpose, which has merely been to show by what

mental process the mythmaker can speak of natural objects in language which implies that they are

animated persons. Brief as our account of this process has been, I believe that enough has been said, not only

to reveal the inadequacy of purely philological solutions (like those contained in Max Muller's famous Essay)

to explain the growth of myths, but also to exhibit the vast importance for this purpose of the kind of

psychological inquiry into the mental habits of savages which Mr. Tylor has so ably conducted. Indeed,

however lacking we may still be in points of detail, I think we have already reached a very satisfactory

explanation of the genesis of mythology. Since the essential characteristic of a myth is that it is an attempt to

explain some natural phenomenon by endowing with human feelings and capacities the senseless factors in

the phenomenon, and since it has here been shown how uncultured man, by the best use he can make of his

rude common sense, must inevitably come, and has invariably come, to regard all objects as endowed with

souls, and all nature as peopled with suprahuman entities shaped after the general pattern of the human soul,

I am inclined to suspect that we have got very near to the root of the whole matter. We can certainly find no

difficulty in seeing why a waterspout should be described in the "Arabian Nights" as a living demon: "The

sea became troubled before them, and there arose from it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and

approaching the meadow,.... and behold it was a Jinni, of gigantic stature." We can see why the Moslem

cameldriver should find it most natural to regard the whirling simoom as a malignant Jinni; we may

understand how it is that the Persian sees in bodily shape the scarlet fever as "a blushing maid with locks of

flame and cheeks all rosy red"; and we need not consider it strange that the primeval Aryan should have

regarded the sun as a voyager, a climber, or an archer, and the clouds as cows driven by the windgod

Hermes to their milking. The identification of William Tell with the sun becomes thoroughly intelligible; nor

can we be longer surprised at the conception of the howling nightwind as a ravenous wolf. When pots and

kettles are thought to have souls that live hereafter, there is no difficulty in understanding how the blue sky

can have been regarded as the sire of gods and men. And thus, as the elves and bogarts of popular lore are in

many cases descended from ancient divinities of Olympos and Valhalla, so these in turn must acknowledge

THE following are some of the modern works most likely to be of use to the reader who is interested in the

HISELY, J. J. Dissertatio historiea inauguralis de Oulielmo Tellio, etc. Groningae, 1824.

HISELY, J. J. Recherches critiques sur l'histoire de Guillaume Tell. Lausanne, 1843.

LIEBENAU, H. Die TellSage zu dem Jahre 1230 historisoh nach neuesten Quellen. Aarau, 1864.

VISCHER, W. Die Sage von der Befreinng der Waldstatte, etc. Nebst einer Beilage: das alteste

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Myths and MythMakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 95

BORDIER, H. L. Le Grutli et Guillaume Tell, ou defense de la tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la

The same. La querelle sur les traditions concernant l'origine de la confederation suisse. Geneve et Bale, 1869.

RILLIET, A. Les origines de la confederation suisse: histoire et legende. 2eS ed., revue et corrigee. Geneve et

The same. Lettre a M. Henri Bordier a propos de sa defense de la tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la

HUNGERBUHLER, H. Etude critique sur les traditions relatives aux origines de la confederation suisse.

MEYER, KARL. Die Tellsage. [In Bartsch, Germanistische Studien, I. 159170. Wien, 1872.

See also the articles by M. Scherer, in Le Temps, 18 Feb., 1868; by M. Reuss, in the Revue critique d'histoire,

1868; by M. de Wiss, in the Journal de Geneve, 7 July, 1868; also Revue critique, 17 July, 1869; Journal de

Geneve, 24 Oct., 1868; Gazette de Lausanne, feuilleton litteraire, 25 Nov., 1868, "Les origines de la

confederation suisse," par M. Secretan; Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1869, "The Legend of Tell and Rutli."

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