CHAPTER XII

RACE IN FOLKLORE AND MYTH

The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the disputes of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox, but it is an orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar who enters the sacred enclosure.--Andrew Lang.

It has been well said, that while it is not science to know the contents of myths, it is science to know why the human race has produced them. It is not my intention to trace minutely the history of that science, but I may hazard the remark, that she could not be said to have reached years of discretion till she began to compare one thing with another; and even when mythology had become comparative mythology, her horizon remained till within recent years comparatively narrow. In other words, the comparisons were wont to be very circumscribed: you might, one was told, compare the myths of Greeks and Teutons and Hindus, because those nations were considered to be of the same stock; but even within that range comparisons were scarcely contemplated, except in the case of myths enshrined in the most classical literatures of those nations. This kind of mythology was eclectic rather than comparative, and it was apt to regard myths as a mere disease of language. By-and-by, however, the student showed a preference for a larger field and a wider range; and in so doing he was, whether consciously or unconsciously, beginning to keep step with a larger movement extending to the march of all the kindred sciences, and especially that of language.

At one time the student of language was satisfied with mummified speech, wrapped up, as it were, in the musty coils of the records of the past: in fact, he often became a mere researcher of the dead letter of language, instead of a careful observer of the breath of life animating her frame. So long as that remained the case, glottology deserved the whole irony of Voltaire's well-known account of etymology as being in fact, 'une science où les voyelles ne font rien, et les consonnes fort peu de chose.' In the course, however, of recent years a great change has come over the scene: not only have the laws of the Aryan consonants gained greatly in precision, but those of the Aryan vowels have at last been discovered to a considerable extent. The result for me and others who learnt that the Aryan peasant of idyllic habits harped eternally on the three notes of a, i, u, is that we have to unlearn this and a great deal more: in fact, the vowels prove to be far more troublesome than the consonants. But difficult as these lessons are, the glottologist must learn them, unless he is content to remain with the stragglers who happen to be unable to move on. Now the change to which I allude, in connexion with the study of language, has been inseparably accompanied with the paying of increased attention to actual speech, with a more careful scrutiny of dialects, even obscure dialects such as the literary man is wont to regard with scorn.

Similarly the student of mythology now seeks the wherewithal of his comparisons from the mouth of the traveller and the missionary, wherever they may roam; not from the Rig-Veda or the Iliad alone, but from the rude stories of the peasant, and the wild fancies of the savage from Tierra del Fuego to Greenland's icy mountains. The parallel may be drawn still closer. Just as the glottologist, fearing lest the written letter may have slurred over or hidden away important peculiarities of ancient speech, resorts for a corrective to the actuality of modern Aryan, so the mythologist, apt to suspect the testimony of the highly respectable bards of the Rig-Veda, may on occasion give ear to the fresh evidence of a savage, however inconsequent it may sound. The movements to which I allude in glottology and mythology began so recently that their history has not yet been written. Suffice it to say that in glottology, or the science of language, the names most intimately connected with the new departure are those of Ascoli, J. Schmidt, and Fick, those of Leskien, Brugmann, Osthoff, and De Saussure; while of the names of the teachers of the anthropological method of studying myths, several are by this time household words in this country. But, so far as I know, the first to give a systematic exposition of the subject was Professor Tylor, in his work on Primitive Culture, published first in 1871.

Such has been the intimate connexion between mythology and glottology that I may be pardoned for going back again to the latter. It is applicable in its method to all languages, but, as a matter of fact, it came into being in the domain of Aryan philology, so that it has been all along principally the science of comparing the Aryan languages with one another. It began with Sir William Jones' discovery of the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, and for a long time it took the lead of the more closely related sciences: this proved partly beneficial and partly the reverse. In the case of ethnology, for instance, the influence of glottology has probably done more harm than good, since it has opened up a wide field for confounding race with language. In the case of mythology the same influence has been partly helpful, and it has partly fallen short of being such. Where names could be analysed with certainty, and where they could be equated, leaving little room for doubt, as in the case of that of the Greek Zeus, the Norse Týr, and the Sanskrit Dyaus, the science of language rendered a veritable help to mythology; but where the students of language, all pointing in different directions, claimed each to hold in his hand the one safety-lamp, beyond the range of which the mythologist durst not take a single step except at the imminent risk of breaking his neck, the help may be pronounced, to say the least of it, as somewhat doubtful. The anthropological method of studying myths put an end to the unequal relation between the students of the two sciences, and it is now pretty well agreed that the proper relationship between them is that of mutual aid. This will doubtless prove the solution of the whole matter, but it would be premature to say that the period of strained relations is quite over, since the mythologist has so recently made good his escape from the embarrassing attentions of the students of language, that he has not yet quite got out of his ears the bewildering notes of the chorus of discordant cries of 'Dawn,' 'Sun,' and 'Storm-cloud.'

Now that I have touched on the friendly relations which ought to exist between the science of language and the science of myth, I may perhaps be allowed to notice a point or two where it is possible or desirable for the one to render service to the other. The student of language naturally wants the help of the student of myth, ritual, and religion on matters which most immediately concern his own department of study; and I may perhaps be excused for taking my stand on Celtic ground, and calling attention to some of my own difficulties. Here is one of them: when one would say in English 'It rains' or 'It freezes,' I should have to say in my own language, Y mae hi'n bwrw glaw and Y mae hi'n rhewi, which literally means 'She is casting rain' and 'She is freezing.' Nor is this sort of locution confined to weather topics, for when you would say 'He is badly off' or 'He is hard up,' a Welshman might say, Y mae hi'n drwg arno or Y mae hi'n galed arno, that is literally, 'She is evil on him' or 'She is hard on him.' And the same feminine pronoun fixes itself in other locutions in the language. Now I wish to invoke the student of myth, ritual, and religion to help in the identification of this ubiquitous 'she' of the Welsh. Whenever it is mentioned to Englishmen, it merely calls to their minds the Highland 'she' of English and Scotch caricature, as for instance when Sir Walter Scott makes Donald appeal in the following strain to Lord Menteith's man, Anderson, who had learnt manners in France: 'What the deil, man, can she no drink after her ain master without washing the cup and spilling the ale, and be tamned to her!' The Highlander denies the charge which our caricature tries to fasten on him; but even granting that it was once to some extent justified, it is easy to explain it by a reference to Gaelic, where the pronouns se and sibh, for 'he' and 'you' respectively, approach in pronunciation the sound of the English pronoun 'she.' This may have led to confusion in the mouths of Highlanders who had but very imperfectly mastered English. In any case, it is far too superficial to be quoted as a parallel to the hi, 'she,' in question in Welsh. A cautious Celtist, if such there be, might warn us, before proceeding further with the search, to make sure that the whole phenomenon is not a mere accident of Welsh phonetics, and that it is not a case of two pronouns, one meaning 'she' and the other 'it,' being confounded as the result merely of phonetic decay. The answer to that is, that the language knows nothing of any neuter pronoun which could assume the form of the hi which occupies us; and further, that in locutions where the legitimate representative of the neuter might be expected, the pronoun used is a different one, ef, e, meaning both 'he' and 'it,' as in ï-e for ï-ef, 'it is he, she, it or they,' nag-e, 'not he, she, it or they,' ef a allai or fe allai, 'perhaps, peradventure, peut-être, il est possible.' The French sentence suggests the analogous question, what was the original force of denotation of the 'il' in such sentences as 'il fait beau,' 'il pleut,' and 'il neige'? In such cases it now denotes nobody in particular, but has it always been one of his names? French historical grammar may be able, unaided, to dispose of the attenuated fortunes of M. Il, but we have to look for help to the student of myth and allied subjects to enable us to identify the great 'she' persistently eluding our search in the syntax of the Welsh language. Only two feminine names suggest themselves to me as in any way appropriate: one is tynghed, 'fate or fortune,' and the other is Dôn, mother of some of the most nebulous personages in Celtic literature.

There is, however, no evidence to show that either of them is really the 'she' of whom we are in quest; but I have something to say about both as illustrating the other side of the theme, how the study of language may help mythology. This I have so far only illustrated by a reference to the equation of Zeus with Dyaus and their congeners. Within the range of Celtic legend the case is similar with Dôn, who figures on Welsh ground, as I have hinted, as mother of certain heroes of the oldest chapters of the Mabinogion. For it is from her that Gwydion, the bard and arch-magician, and Gofannon the smith his brother, are called sons of Dôn; and so in the case of Arianrhod, daughter of Dôn, mother of Llew, and owner of the sea-laved castle of Caer Arianrhod, not far distant from the prehistoric mound of Dinas Dinlle, near the western mouth of the Menai Straits, as already mentioned in another chapter, p. 208 above. In Irish legend, we detect Dôn under the Irish form of her name, Danu or Donu, genitive Danann or Donann, and she is almost singular there in always being styled a divinity. From her the great mythical personages of Irish legend are called Tuatha Dé Danann, or 'the Goddess Danu's Tribes,' and sometimes Fir Déa, or 'the Men of the Divinity.' The last stage in the Welsh history of Dôn consists of her translation to the skies, where the constellation of Cassiopeia is supposed to constitute Llys Dôn or Dôn's Court, as the Corona Borealis is identified with Caer Arianrhod or 'the Castle of Dôn's Daughter'; but, as was perhaps fitting, the dimensions of both are reduced to comparative littleness by Caer Gwydion, 'the Magician Gwydion's Battlements,' spread over the radiant expanse of the whole Milky Way [239]. Now the identification of this ancient goddess Danu or Dôn as that in whom the oldest legends of the Irish Goidels and the Welsh Goidels converge, has been the work not so much of mythology as of the science of language; for it was the latter that showed how to call back a little colouring into the vanishing lineaments of this faded ancestral divinity [240].

For my next illustration, namely tynghed, 'fate,' I would cite a passage from the opening of one of the most Celtic of Welsh stories, that of Kulhwch and Olwen. Kulhwch's father, after being for some time a widower, marries again, and conceals from his second wife the fact that he has a son. She finds it out and lets her husband know it; so he sends for his son Kulhwch, and the following is the account of the son's interview with his stepmother, as given in Lady Charlotte Guest's translation, ii. 252:--'His stepmother said unto him, "It were well for thee to have a wife, and I have a daughter who is sought of every man of renown in the world." "I am not of an age to wed," answered the youth. Then said she unto him, "I declare to thee, that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspadaden Penkawr." And the youth blushed, and the love of the maiden diffused itself through all his frame, although he had never seen her. And his father inquired of him, "What has come over thee, my son, and what aileth thee?" "My stepmother has declared to me, that I shall never have a wife until I obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspadaden Penkawr." "That will be easy for thee," answered his father. "Arthur is thy cousin. Go, therefore, unto Arthur to cut thy hair, and ask this of him as a boon."'

The physical theory of love for an unknown lady at the first mention of her name, and the allusion to the Celtic tonsure, will have doubtless caught the reader's attention, but I only wish to speak of the words which the translator has rendered, 'I declare to thee, that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain Olwen.' More closely rendered, the original might be translated thus: 'I swear thee a destiny that thy side touch not a wife till thou obtain Olwen.' The word in the Welsh for destiny is tynghet (for an earlier tuncet), and the corresponding Irish word is attested as tocad. Both these words have a tendency, like 'fate,' to be used mostly in peiorem partem. Formerly, however, they might be freely used in an auspicious sense likewise, as for instance in the woman's name Tunccetace, on an early inscribed stone in Pembrokeshire. If her name had been rendered into Latin she would have probably been called Fortunata, as a namesake of good fortune. I render the Welsh mi a tynghaf dynghet itt [241] into English, 'I swear thee a destiny'; but, more literally still, one might possibly render it 'I swear thee a swearing,' that is, 'I swear thee an oath,' meaning 'I swear for thee an oath which will bind thee.' The stepmother, it is true, is not represented going through the form of words, for what she said appears to have been a regular formula, just like that of putting a person in Medieval Irish story under gessa or bonds of magic; but an oath or form of imprecation was once doubtless a dark reality behind this formula. In the southern part of my native county of Cardigan, the phrase in question has been in use within the last thirty years, and the practice which it denotes is still so well known as to be the subject of local stories. A friend of mine, who is not yet fifty, vividly remembers listening to an uncle of his relating how narrowly he once escaped having the oath forced on him. He was in the hilly portion of the parish of Llanwenog, coming home across country in the dead of a midsummer's night, when leaping over a fence he unexpectedly came down close to a man actively engaged in sheep-stealing. The uncle instantly took to his heels, while the thief pursued him with a knife. If the thief had caught him, it is understood that he would have held his knife at his throat and forced on him an oath of secrecy. I have not been able to ascertain the wording of the oath, but all I can learn goes to show that it was dreaded only less than death itself. In fact, there are stories current of men who failed to recover from the effects of the oath, but lingered and died in a comparatively short time. Since I got the foregoing story I have made inquiries of others in South Cardiganshire, and especially of a medical friend of mine, who speaks chiefly as to his native parish of Llangynllo. I found that the idea is perfectly familiar to him and my other informants; but, strange to say, from nobody could I gather that the illness is considered to result necessarily from the violent administration of the tynghed to the victim, or from the latter's disregarding the secrecy of it by disclosing to his friends the name of the criminal. In fact, I cannot discover that any such secrecy is emphasized so long as the criminal is not publicly brought before a court of justice. Rather is it that the tynghed effects blindly the ruin of the sworn man's health, regardless of his conduct. At any rate, that is the interpretation which I am forced to put on what I have been told.

The phrase tyngu tynghed [242], intelligible still in Wales, recalls another instance of the importance of the spoken word, to wit, the Latin fatum. Nay, it seems to suggest that the latter might have perhaps originally been part of some such a formula as alicui fatum fari, 'to say one a saying,' in the pregnant sense of applying to him words of power. This is all the more to the point, as it is well known how closely Latin and Celtic are related to one another, and how every advance in the study of those languages goes to add emphasis to their kinship. From the kinship of the languages one may expect, to a certain extent, a similarity of rites and customs, and one has not to go further for this than the very story which I have cited. When Kulhwch's father first married, he is said to have sought a gwreic kynmwyt ac ef [243], which means 'a wife of the same food with him.' Thus the wedded wife was she, probably, who ate with her husband, and we are reminded of the food ceremony which constituted the aristocratic marriage in ancient Rome: it was called confarreatio, and in the course of it an offering of cake, called farreum libum, used to be made to Jupiter. A great French student of antiquity, M. Fustel de Coulanges, describes the ceremony thus [244]:--'Les deux époux, comme en Grèce, font un sacrifice, versent la libation, prononcent quelques prières, et mangent ensemble un gâteau de fleur de farine (panis farreus).' Lastly, my attention has been directed to the place given to bread in the stories of Llyn y Fan Fach and Llyn Elfarch. For on turning back to pp. 3-6, 17-8, 28, the reader will find too much made of the bread to allow us to suppose that it had no meaning in the courtship. The young farmer having fallen in love at first sight with the lake maiden, it looks as if he wished, by inducing her to share the bread he was eating, to go forthwith through a form of marriage by a kind of confarreation that committed her to a contract to be his wife without any tedious delay.

To return to the Latin fatum, I would point out that the Romans had a plurality of fata; but how far they were suggested by the Greek moirai is not quite clear: nor is it known that the ancient Welsh had more than one tynghed. In the case, however, of old Norse literature, we come across the Fate there as one bearing a name which is perhaps cognate with the Welsh tynghed. I allude to a female figure, called Þokk, who appears in the touching myth of Balder's death. When Balder had fallen at the hands of Loki and Hödr, his mother Frigg asked who would like to earn her good will by going as her messenger to treat with Hell for the release of Balder. Hermódr the Swift, another of the sons of Woden, undertook to set out on that journey on his father's charger Sleipnir. For nine dreary nights he pursued his perilous course without interruption, through glens dark and deep, till he came to the river called Yell, when he was questioned as to his errand by the maid in charge of the Yell bridge. On and on he rode afterwards till he came to the fence of Hell's abode, which his horse cleared at full speed. Hermódr entered the hall, and there found his brother Balder seated in the place of honour. He abode with him that night, and in the morning he asked Hell to let Balder ride home with him to the Anses. He urged Hell to consider the grief which everybody and everything felt for Balder. She replied that she would put that to the test by letting Balder go if everything animate and inanimate would weep for him; but he would be detained if anybody or anything declined to do so. Hermódr made his way back alone to the Anses, and announced to Frigg the answer which Hell had given to her request. Messengers were sent forth without delay to bid all the world beweep Woden's son out of the power of Hell. This was done accordingly by all, by men and animals, by earth and stones, by trees and all metals, 'as you have doubtless seen these things weep,' says the writer of the Prose Edda, 'when they pass from frost to warmth.' When the messengers, however, were on their way home, after discharging their duty, they chanced on a cave where dwelt a giantess called Þokk, whom they ordered to join in the weeping for Balder; but she only answered:--

Þokk will weep dry tears At Balder's bale-fire. What is the son of man, quick or dead, to me! Let Hell keep what she holds [245].

In this ogress Þokk, deaf to the appeals of the tenderer feelings, we seem to have the counterpart of our Celtic tocad and tynghed; and the latter's name as a part of the formula in the Welsh story, while giving us the key of the myth, shows how the early Aryan knew of nothing more binding than the magic force of an oath. On the one hand, this conception of destiny carries with it the marks of its humble origin, and one readily agrees with Cicero's words, De Divinatione,