Chapter 2

which they had to develop for themselves tools, languages, clothes, and institutions, is assuredly the belief of anthropologists. A race without tools, language, clothes, pottery, and social institutions, or with these in the shape of undeveloped speech, stone knives, and 'possum or other skins, is what we call a race of savages. Such we believe the ancestors of mankind to have been--at any rate after the Fall.

Now when Mr. Max Muller began to write his book, he accepted this postulate of anthropology (i. 15). When he reached i. 197 he abandoned and denounced this postulate.

I quote his acceptance of the postulate (i. 15):--

'Even Mr. A. Lang has to admit that we have not got much beyond Fontenelle, when he wrote in the last century:

'"Why are the legends [myths] about men, beasts, and gods so wildly incredible and revolting? . . . The answer is that the earliest men were in a state of almost inconceivable ignorance and savagery, and that the Greeks inherited their myths from people in the same savage stage (en un pareil etat de sauvagerie). Look at the Kaffirs and Iroquois if you want to know what the earliest men were like, and remember that the very Iroquois and Kaffirs have a long past behind them"'--that is to say, are polite and cultivated compared to the earliest men of all.

Here is an uncompromising statement by Fontenelle of the postulate that the Greeks (an Aryan people) must have passed through the same stage as modern savages--Kaffirs and Iroquois--now occupy. But (i. 15) Mr. Max Muller eagerly accepts the postulate:--

'There is not a word of Fontenelle's to which I should not gladly subscribe; there is no advice of his which I have not tried to follow in all my attempts to explain the myths of India and Greece by an occasional reference to Polynesian or African folklore.'

Well, if Mr. Max Muller 'gladly subscribes,' in p. 15, to the postulate of an original universal stage of savagery, whence civilised races inherit their incredibly repulsive myths, why, in pp. 197, 198, does he denounce that very postulate as not proven, not capable of being proved, very mischievous, and one of the evils resulting from our method of comparing savage and civilised rites and beliefs? I must be permitted to complain that I do not know which is Mr. Max Muller's real opinion--that given with such hearty conviction in p. 15, or that stated with no less earnestness in pp. 197, 198. I trust that I shall not be thought to magnify a mere slip of the pen. Both passages--though, as far as I can see, self-contradictory--appear to be written with the same absence of levity. Fontenelle, I own, speaks of Greeks, not Semites, as being originally savages. But I pointed out {124} that he considered it safer to 'hedge' by making an exception of the Israelites. There is really nothing in Genesis against the contention that the naked, tool-less, mean, and frivolous Adam was a savage.

The Fallacy of 'Admits'

As the purpose of this essay is mainly logical, I may point out the existence of a fallacy not marked, I think, in handbooks of Logic. This is the fallacy of saying that an opponent 'admits' what, on the contrary, he has been the first to point out and proclaim. He is thus suggested into an attitude which is the reverse of his own. Some one--I am sorry to say that I forget who he was--showed me that Fontenelle, in De l'Origine des Fables, {125a} briefly stated the anthropological theory of the origin of myths, or at least of that repulsive element in them which 'makes mythology mythological,' as Mr. Max Muller says. I was glad to have a predecessor in a past less remote than that of Eusebius of Caesarea. 'A briefer and better system of mythology,' I wrote, 'could not be devised; but the Mr. Casaubons of this world have neglected it, and even now it is beyond their comprehension.' {125b} To say this in this manner is not to '_admit_ that we have not got much beyond Fontenelle.' I do not want to get beyond Fontenelle. I want to go back to his 'forgotten common-sense,' and to apply his ideas with method and criticism to a range of materials which he did not possess or did not investigate.

Now, on p. 15, Mr. Max Muller had got as far as accepting Fontenelle; on pp. 197, 198 he burns, as it were, that to which he had 'gladly subscribed.'

Conclusion as to our Method

All this discussion of fetishes arose out of our author's selection of the subject as an example of the viciousness of our method. He would not permit us 'simply to place side by side' savage and Greek myths and customs, because it did harm (i. 195); and the harm done was proved by the Nemesis of De Brosses. Now, first, a method may be a good method, yet may be badly applied. Secondly, I have shown that the Nemesis does not attach to all of us modern anthropologists. Thirdly, I have proved (unless I am under some misapprehension, which I vainly attempt to detect, and for which, if it exists, I apologise humbly) that Mr. Max Muller, on p. 15, accepts the doctrine which he denounces on p. 197. {126} Again, I am entirely at one with Mr. Max Muller when he says (p. 210) 'we have as yet really no scientific treatment of Shamanism.' This is a pressing need, but probably a physician alone could do the work--a physician double with a psychologist. See, however, the excellent pages in Dr. Tylor's Primitive Culture, and in Mr. William James's Principles of Psychology, on 'Mediumship.'

THE RIDDLE THEORY

What the Philological Theory Needs

The great desideratum of the philological method is a proof that the 'Disease of Language,' ex hypothesi the most fertile source of myths, is a vera causa. Do simple poetical phrases, descriptive of heavenly phenomena, remain current in the popular mouth after the meanings of appellatives (Bright One, Dark One, &c.) have been forgotten, so that these appellatives become proper names--Apollo, Daphne, &c.? Mr. Max Muller seems to think some proof of this process as a vera causa may be derived from 'Folk Riddles.'

The Riddle Theory

We now come, therefore, to the author's treatment of popular riddles (devinettes), so common among savages and peasants. Their construction is simple: anything in Nature you please is described by a poetical periphrasis, and you are asked what it is. Thus Geistiblindr asks,

What is the Dark One That goes over the earth, Swallows water and wood, But is afraid of the wind? &c.

Or we find,

What is the gold spun from one window to another?

The answers, the obvious answers, are (1) 'mist' and (2) 'sunshine.'

In Mr. Max Muller's opinion these riddles 'could not but lead to what we call popular myths or legends.' Very probably; but this does not aid us to accept the philological method. The very essence of that method is the presumed absolute loss of the meaning of, e.g. 'the Dark One.' Before there can be a myth, ex hypothesi the words Dark One must have become hopelessly unintelligible, must have become a proper name. Thus suppose, for argument's sake only, that Cronos once meant Dark One, and was understood in that sense. People (as in the Norse riddle just cited) said, 'Cronos [i.e. the Dark One--meaning mist] swallows water and wood.' Then they forgot that Cronos was their old word for the Dark One, and was mist; but they kept up, and understood, all the rest of the phrase about what mist does. The expression now ran, 'Cronos [whatever that may be] swallows water and wood.' But water comes from mist, and water nourishes wood, therefore 'Cronos swallows his children.' Such would be the development of a myth on Mr. Max Muller's system. He would interpret 'Cronos swallows his children,' by finding, if he could, the original meaning of Cronos. Let us say that he did discover it to mean 'the Dark One.' Then he might think Cronos meant 'night;' 'mist' he would hardly guess.

That is all very clear, but the point is this--in devinettes, or riddles, the meaning of 'the Dark One' is _not_ lost:--

'Thy riddle is _easy_ Blind Gest, To read'--

Heidrick answers.

What the philological method of mythology needs is to prove that such poetical statements about natural phenomena as the devinettes contain survived in the popular mouth, and were perfectly intelligible except just the one mot d'enigme--say, 'the Dark One.' That (call it Cronos='Dark One'), and that alone, became unintelligible in the changes of language, and so had to be accepted as a proper name, Cronos--a god who swallows things at large.

Where is the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with just the one central necessary word obsolete and changed into a mysterious proper name? The world is full of proper names which have lost their meaning--Athene, Achilles, Artemis, and so on but we need proof that poetical sayings, or riddles, survive and are intelligible except one word, which, being unintelligible, becomes a proper name. Riddles, of course, prove nothing of this kind:--

Thy riddle is easy Blind Gest To read!

Yet Mr. Max Muller offers the suggestion that the obscurity of many of these names of mythical gods and heroes 'may be due . . . to the riddles to which they had given rise, and which would have ceased to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible, like those of Helios and Selene' (i. 92). People, he thinks, in making riddles 'would avoid the ordinary appellatives, and the use of little-known names in most mythologies would thus find an intelligible explanation.' Again, 'we can see how essential it was that in such mythological riddles the principal agents should not be called by their regular names.' This last remark, indeed, is obvious. To return to the Norse riddle of the Dark One that swallows wood and water. It would never do in a riddle to call the Dark One by his ordinary name, 'Mist.' You would not amuse a rural audience by asking 'What is the mist that swallows wood and water?' That would be even easier than Mr. Burnand's riddle for very hot weather:--

My first is a boot, my second is a jack.

Conceivably Mr. Max Muller may mean that in riddles an almost obsolete word was used to designate the object. Perhaps, instead of 'the Dark One,' a peasant would say, 'What is the Rooky One?' But as soon as nobody knew what 'the Rooky One' meant, the riddle would cease to exist--Rooky One and all. You cannot imagine several generations asking each other--

What is the Rooky One that swallows?

if nobody knew the answer. A man who kept boring people with a mere 'sell' would be scouted; and with the death of the answerless riddle the difficult word 'Rooky' would die. But Mr. Max Muller says, 'Riddles would cease to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible.' The reverse is the fact. In the riddles he gives there are seldom any 'names;' but the epithets and descriptions are as clear as words can be:--

Who are the mother and children in a house, all having bald heads?--The moon and stars.

Language cannot be clearer. Yet the riddle has not 'ceased to be a riddle,' as Mr. Max Muller thinks it must do, though the words are 'clear and intelligible.' On the other hand, if the language is _not_ clear and intelligible, the riddle would cease to exist. It would not amuse if nobody understood it. You might as well try to make yourself socially acceptable by putting conundrums in Etruscan as by asking riddles in words not clear and intelligible in themselves, though obscure in their reference. The difficulty of a riddle consists, not in the obscurity of words or names, but in the description of familiar things by terms, clear as terms, denoting their appearance and action. The mist is described as 'dark,' 'swallowing,' 'one that fears the wind,' and so forth. The _words_ are pellucid.

Thus 'ordinary appellatives' (i. 99) are _not_ 'avoided' in riddles, though _names_ (sun, mist) cannot be used in the question because they give the answer to the riddle.

For all these reasons ancient riddles cannot explain the obscurity of mythological names. As soon as the name was too obscure, the riddle and the name would be forgotten, would die together. So we know as little as ever of the purely hypothetical process by which a riddle, or popular poetical saying, remains intelligible in a language, while the mot d'enigme, becoming unintelligible, turns into a proper name--say, Cronos. Yet the belief in this process as a vera causa is essential to our author's method.

Here Mr. Max Muller warns us that his riddle theory is not meant to explain 'the obscurities of _all_ mythological names. This is a stratagem that should be stopped from the very first.' It were more graceful to have said 'a misapprehension.'

Another 'stratagem' I myself must guard against. I do not say that _no_ unintelligible strings of obsolete words may continue to live in the popular mouth. Old hymns, ritual speeches, and charms may and do survive, though unintelligible. They are reckoned all the more potent, because all the more mysterious. But an unintelligible riddle or poetical saying does not survive, so we cannot thus account for mythology as a disease of language.

Mordvinian Mythology

Still in the very natural and laudable pursuit of facts which will support the hypothesis of a disease of language, Mr. Max Muller turns to Mordvinian mythology. 'We have the accounts of real scholars' about Mordvinian prayers, charms, and proverbs (i. 235). The Mordvinians, Ugrian tribes, have the usual departmental Nature-gods--as Chkai, god of the sun (chi=sun). He 'lives in the sun, or is the sun' (i. 236). His wife is the Earth or earth goddess, Vediava. They have a large family, given to incest. The morals of the Mordvinian gods are as lax as those of Mordvinian mortals. (Compare the myths and morals of Samos, and the Samian Hera.) Athwart the decent god Chkai comes the evil god Chaitan--obviously Shaitan, a Mahommedan contamination. There are plenty of minor gods, and spirits good and bad. Dawn was a Mordvinian girl; in Australia she was a lubra addicted to lubricity.

_How does this help philological mythology_?

Mr. Max Muller is pleased to find solar and other elemental gods among the Mordvinians. But the discovery in no way aids his special theory. Nobody has ever denied that gods who are the sun or live in the sun are familiar, and are the centres of myths among most races. I give examples in C. and M. (pp. 104, 133, New Zealand and North America) and in M. R. R. (i. 124-135, America, Africa, Australia, Aztec, Hervey Islands, Samoa, and so on). Such Nature-myths--of sun, sky, earth--are perhaps universal; but they do not arise from disease of language. These myths deal with natural phenomena plainly and explicitly. The same is the case among the Mordvinians. 'The few names preserved to us are clearly the names of the agents behind the salient phenomena of Nature, in some cases quite intelligible, in others easily restored to their original meaning.' The meanings of the names not being forgotten, but obvious, there is no disease of language. All this does not illustrate the case of Greek divine names by resemblance, but by difference. Real scholars know what Mordvinian divine names mean. They do not know what many Greek divine names mean--as Hera, Artemis, Apollo, Athene; there is even much dispute about Demeter.

No anthropologist, I hope, is denying that Nature-myths and Nature-gods exist. We are only fighting against the philological effort to get at the elemental phenomena which may be behind Hera, Artemis, Athene, Apollo, by means of contending etymological conjectures. We only oppose the philological attempt to account for all the features in a god's myth as manifestations of the elemental qualities denoted by a name which may mean at pleasure dawn, storm, clear air, thunder, wind, twilight, water, or what you will. Granting Chkai to be the sun, does that explain why he punishes people who bake bread on Friday? (237.) Our opponent does not seem to understand the portee of our objections. The same remarks apply to the statement of Finnish mythology here given, and familiar in the Kalewala. Departmental divine beings of natural phenomena we find everywhere, or nearly everywhere, in company, of course, with other elements of belief--totemism, worship of spirits, perhaps with monotheism in the background. That is as much our opinion as Mr. Max Muller's. What we are opposing is the theory of disease of language, and the attempt to explain, by philological conjectures, gods and heroes whose obscure _names_ are the only sources of information.

Helios is the sun-god; he is, or lives in, the sun. Apollo may have been the sun-god too, but we still distrust the attempts to prove this by contending guesses at the origin of his name. Moreover, if all Greek gods could be certainly explained, by undisputed etymologies, as originally elemental, we still object to such logic as that which turns Saranyu into 'grey dawn.' We still object to the competing interpretations by which almost every detail of very composite myths is explained as a poetical description of some elemental process or phenomenon. Apollo _may_ once have been the sun, but why did he make love as a dog?

Lettish Mythology

These remarks apply equally well to our author's dissertation on Lettish mythology (ii. 430 et seq.). The meaning of statements about the sun and sky 'is not to be mistaken in the mythology of the Letts.' So here is no disease of language. The meaning is not to be mistaken. Sun and moon and so on are spoken of by their natural unmistakable names, or in equally unmistakable poetical periphrases, as in riddles. The daughter of the sun hung a red cloak on a great oak-tree. This 'can hardly have been meant for anything but the red of the evening or the setting sun, sometimes called her red cloak' (ii. 439). Exactly so, and the Australians of Encounter Bay also think that the sun is a woman. 'She has a lover among the dead, who has given her a red kangaroo skin, and in this she appears at her rising.' {135} This tale was told to Mr. Meyer in 1846, before Mr. Max Muller's Dawn had become 'inevitable,' as he says.

The Lettish and Australian myths are folk-poetry; they have nothing to do with a disease of language or forgotten meanings of words which become proper names. All this is surely distinct. We proclaim the abundance of poetical Nature-myths; we 'disable' the hypothesis that they arise from a disease of language.

The Chances of Fancy

One remark has to be added. Mannhardt regarded many or most of the philological solutions of gods into dawn or sun, or thunder or cloud, as empty jeux d'esprit. And justly, for there is no name named among men which a philologist cannot easily prove to be a synonym or metaphorical term for wind or weather, dawn or sun. Whatever attribute any word connotes, it can be shown to connote some attribute of dawn or sun. Here parody comes in, and gives a not overstrained copy of the method, applying it to Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Nansen, or whom you please. And though a jest is not a refutation, a parody may plainly show the absolutely capricious character of the philological method.

ARTEMIS

I do not here examine our author's constructive work. I have often criticised its logical method before, and need not repeat myself. The etymologies, of course, I leave to be discussed by scholars. As we have seen, they are at odds on the subject of phonetic laws and their application to mythological names. On the mosses and bogs of this Debatable Land some of them propose to erect the science of comparative mythology. Meanwhile we look on, waiting till the mosses shall support a ponderous edifice.

Our author's treatment of Artemis, however, has for me a peculiar interest (ii. 733-743). I really think that it is not mere vanity which makes me suppose that in this instance I am at least one of the authors whom Mr. Max Muller is writing _about_ without name or reference. If so, he here sharply distinguishes between me on the one hand and 'classical scholars' on the other, a point to which we shall return. He says--I cite textually (ii. 732):--

Artemis

'The last of the great Greek goddesses whom we have to consider is Artemis. Her name, we shall see, has received many interpretations, but none that can be considered as well established--none that, even if it were so, would help us much in disentangling the many myths told about her. Easy to understand as her character seems when we confine our attention to Homer, it becomes extremely complicated when we take into account the numerous local forms of worship of which she was the object.

'We have here a good opportunity of comparing the interpretations put forward by _those who think that a study of the myths and customs of uncivilised tribes can help us towards an understanding of Greek deities, and the views advocated by classical scholars_ {138} who draw their information, first of all, from Greek sources, and afterwards only from a comparison of the myths and customs of cognate races, more particularly from what is preserved to us in ancient Vedic literature, before they plunge into the whirlpool of ill-defined and unintelligible Kafir folklore. The former undertake to explain Artemis by showing us the progress of human intelligence from the coarsest spontaneous and primitive ideas to the most beautiful and brilliant conception of poets and sculptors. They point out traces of hideous cruelties amounting almost to cannibalism, and of a savage cult of beasts in the earlier history of the goddess, who was celebrated by dances of young girls disguised as bears or imitating the movements of bears, &c. She was represented as [Greek], and this idea, we are told, was borrowed from the East, which is a large term. We are told that her most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia, where we can see the goddess still closely connected with the worship of animals, a characteristic feature of the lowest stage of religious worship among the lowest races of mankind. We are then told the old story of Lykaon, the King of Arkadia, who had a beautiful daughter called Kallisto. As Zeus fell in love with her, Hera from jealousy changed her into a bear, and Artemis killed her with one of her arrows. Her child, however, was saved by Hermes, at the command of Zeus; and while Kallisto was changed to the constellation of the Ursa, her son Arkas became the ancestor of the Arkadians. Here, we are told, we have a clear instance of men being the descendants of animals, and of women being changed into wild beasts and stars--beliefs well known among the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois.'

* * * * *

Here I recognise Mr. Max Muller's version of my remarks on Artemis. {139a} Our author has just remarked in a footnote that Schwartz 'does not mention the title of the book where his evidence has been given.' It _is_ an inconvenient practice, but with Mr. Max Muller this reticence is by no means unusual. _He_ 'does not mention the book where 'my 'evidence is given.'

Anthropologists are here (unless I am mistaken) contrasted with 'classical scholars who draw their information, first of all, from Greek sources.' I need not assure anyone who has looked into my imperfect works that I also drew my information about Artemis 'first of all from Greek sources,' in the original. Many of these sources, to the best of my knowledge, are not translated: one, Homer, I have translated myself, with Professor Butcher and Messrs. Leaf and Myers, my old friends.

The idea and representation of Artemis as [Greek] (many-breasted), 'we are told, was borrowed from the East, a large term.' I say 'she is even blended in ritual with a monstrous many-breasted divinity of Oriental religion.' {139b} Is this 'large term' too vague? Then consider the Artemis of Ephesus and 'the alabaster statuette of the goddess' in Roscher's Lexikon, p. 558. Compare, for an Occidental parallel, the many- breasted goddess of the maguey plant, in Mexico. {140} Our author writes, 'we are told that Artemis's most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia.' My words are, 'The Attic and Arcadian legends of Artemis are confessedly _among the oldest_.' Why should 'Attic' and the qualifying phrase be omitted?

Otfried Muller

Mr. Max Muller goes on--citing, as I also do, Otfried Muller:--'Otfried Muller in 1825 treated the same myth without availing himself of the light now to be derived from the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois. He quoted Pausanias as stating that the tumulus of Kallisto was near the sanctuary of Artemis Kalliste, and he simply took Kallisto for an epithet of Artemis, which, as in many other cases, had been taken for a separate personality.' Otfried also pointed out, as we both say, that at Brauron, in Attica, Artemis was served by young maidens called [Greek] (bears); and he concluded, 'This cannot possibly be a freak of chance, but the metamorphosis [of Kallisto] has its foundation in the fact that the animal [the bear] was sacred to the goddess.'

Thus it is acknowledged that Artemis, under her name of Callisto, was changed into a she-bear, and had issue, Arkas--whence the Arcadians. Mr. Max Muller proceeds (ii. 734)--'He [Otfried] did not go so far as some modern mythologists who want us to believe that originally the animal, the she-bear, was the goddess, and that a later worship had replaced the ancient worship of the animal pur et simple.'

Did I, then, tell anybody that 'originally the she-bear was the goddess'? No, I gave my reader, not a dogma, but the choice between two alternative hypotheses. I said, 'It will become probable that the she-bear actually _was_ the goddess at an extremely remote period, or at all events that the goddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over, an ancient worship of the animal' (ii. 212, 213).

Mr. Max Muller's error, it will be observed, consists in writing 'and' where I wrote 'or.' To make such rather essential mistakes is human; to give references is convenient, and not unscholarly.

In fact, this is Mr. Max Muller's own opinion, for he next reports his anonymous author (myself) as saying ('we are now told'), 'though without any reference to Pausanias or any other Greek writers, that the young maidens, the [Greek], when dancing around Artemis, were clad in bearskins, and that this is a pretty frequent custom in the dances of totemic races. In support of this, however, we are not referred to really totemic races . . . but to the Hirpi of Italy, and to the [Greek] in Egypt.' Of course I never said that the [Greek] danced around Artemis! I did say, after observing that they were described as 'playing the bear,' 'they even in archaic ages wore bear-skins,' for which I cited Claus {141a} and referred to Suchier, {141b} including the reference in brackets [ ] to indicate that I borrowed it from a book which I was unable to procure. {142a} I then gave references for the classical use of a saffron vest by the [Greek].

Beast Dances

For the use of beast-skins in such dances among totemists I cite Bancroft (iii. 168) and (M. R. R. ii. 107) Robinson {142b} (same authority). I may now also refer to Robertson Smith: {142c} 'the meaning of such a disguise [a fish-skin, among the Assyrians] _is well known from many savage rituals_; it means that the worshipper presents himself as a fish,' as a bear, or what not. {142d} Doubtless I might have referred more copiously to savage rituals, but really I thought that savage dances in beast-skins were familiar from Catlin's engravings of Mandan and Nootka wolf or buffalo dances. I add that the Brauronian rites 'point to a time when the goddess was herself a bear,' having suggested an alternative theory, and added confirmation. {142e} But I here confess that while beast-dances and wearing of skins of sacred beasts are common, to prove these sacred beasts to be totems is another matter. It is so far inferred rather than demonstrated. Next I said that the evolution of the bear into the classical Artemis 'almost escapes our inquiry. We find nothing more akin to it than the relation borne by the Samoan gods to the various totems in which they are supposed to be manifest.' This Mr. Max Muller quotes (of course, without reference or marks of quotation) and adds, 'pace Dr. Codrington.' Have I incurred Dr. Codrington's feud? He doubts or denies totems in Melanesia. Is Samoa in Melanesia, par exemple? {143a} Our author (i. 206) says that 'Dr. Codrington will have no totems in his islands.' But Samoa is not one of the doctor's fortunate isles. For Samoa I refer, not to Dr. Codrington, but to Mr. Turner. {143b} In Samoa the 'clans' revere each its own sacred animals, 'but combine with it the belief that the spiritual deity reveals itself in each separate animal.' {143c} I expressly contrast the Samoan creed with 'pure totemism.' {143d}

So much for our author's success in stating and criticising my ideas. If he pleases, I will not speak of Samoan totems, but of Samoan sacred animals. It is better and more exact.

The View of Classical Scholars

They (ii. 735) begin by pointing out Artemis's connection with Apollo and the moon. So do I! 'If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun . . . Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon.' {143e} 'If Apollo was of solar origin,' asks the author (ii. 735), 'what could his sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some goddess connected with the moon?' Very likely; quis negavit? Then our author, like myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as 'sister of Apollo.' 'Her chapels,' I say, 'are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,' 'chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.' How odd! The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar do more? Our author then says that the Greek sportsman 'surprised the beasts in their lairs' by night. Not very sportsmanlike! I don't find it in Homer or in Xenophon. Oh for exact references! The moon, the nocturnal sportswoman, is Artemis: here we have also the authority of Theodore de Banville (Diane court dans la noire foret). And the nocturnal hunt is Dian's; so she is protectress of the chase. Exactly what I said! {144a}

All this being granted by me beforehand (though possibly that might not be guessed from my critic), our author will explain Artemis's human sacrifice of a girl in a fawn-skin--bloodshed, bear and all--with no aid from Kamilarois, Cahrocs, and Samoans.

Mr. Max Muller's Explanation

Greek races traced to Zeus--usually disguised, for amorous purposes, as a brute. The Arcadians had an eponymous heroic ancestor, 'Areas;' they also worshipped Artemis. Artemis, as a virgin, could not become a mother of Areas by Zeus, or by anybody. Callisto was also Artemis. Callisto was the mother of Areas. But, to save the character of Artemis, Callisto was now represented as one of her nymphs. Then, Areas reminding the Arcadians of [Greek] (a bear), while they knew the Bear constellation, 'what was more natural than that Callisto should be changed into an arktos, a she-bear . . . placed by Zeus, her lover, in the sky' as the Bear?

Nothing could be more natural to a savage; they all do it. {144b} But that an Aryan, a Greek, should talk such nonsense as to say that he was the descendant of a bear who was changed into a star, and all merely because 'Areas reminded the Arcadians of arktos,' seems to me an extreme test of belief, and a very unlikely thing to occur.

Wider Application of the Theory

Let us apply the explanation more widely. Say that a hundred animal names are represented in the known totem-kindreds of the world. Then had each such kin originally an eponymous hero whose name, like that of Areas in Arcady, accidentally 'reminded' his successors of a beast, so that a hundred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors? Perhaps this was what occurred; the explanation, at all events, fits the wolf of the Delawares and the other ninety-nine as well as it fits the Arcades. By a curious coincidence all the names of eponymous heroes chanced to remind people of beasts. But _whence come the names of eponymous heroes_? From their tribes, of course--Ion from Ionians, Dorus from Dorians, and so on. Therefore (in the hundred cases) the names of the _tribes_ derive from names of animals. Indeed, the names of totem-kins _are_ the names of animals--wolves, bears, cranes. Mr. Max Muller remarks that the name 'Arcades' _may_ come from [Greek], a bear (i. 738); so the Arcadians (Proselenoi, the oldest of races, 'men before the moon') may be--Bears. So, of course (in this case), they would necessarily be Bears _before_ they invented Areas, an eponymous hero whose name is derived from the pre- existing tribal name. His name, then, could not, before they invented it, remind them of a bear. It was from their name [Greek] (Bears) that they developed _his_ name Areas, as in all such cases of eponymous heroes. I slightly incline to hold that this is exactly what occurred. A bear-kin claimed descent from a bear, and later, developing an eponymous hero, Areas, regarded him as son of a bear. Philologically 'it is possible;' I say no more.

The Bear Dance

'The dances of the maidens called [Greek], would receive an easy interpretation. They were Arkades, and why not [Greek] (bears)?' And if [Greek], why not clad in bear-skins, and all the rest? (ii. 738). This is our author's explanation; it is also my own conjecture. The Arcadians were bears, knew it, and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or Nootkas dance a buffalo dance or a wolf dance. But all such dances are not totemistic. They have often other aims. One only names such dances totemistic when performed by people who call themselves by the name of the animal represented, and claim descent from him. Our author says genially, 'if anybody prefers to say that the arctos was something like a totem of the Arcadians . . . why not?' But, if the arctos was a totem, that fact explains the Callisto story and Attic bear dance, while the philological theory--Mr. Max Muller's theory--does not explain it. What is oddest of all, Mr. Max Muller, as we have seen, says that the bear- dancing girls were 'Arkades.' Now we hear of no bear dances in Arcadia. The dancers were Athenian girls. This, indeed, is the point. We have a bear Callisto (Artemis) in Arcady, where a folk etymology might explain it by stretching a point. But no etymology will explain bear dances to Artemis in Attica. So we find bears doubly connected with Artemis. The Athenians were not Arcadians.

As to the meaning and derivation of Artemis, or Artamis, our author knows nothing (ii. 741). I say, 'even [Greek] ([Greek], bear) has occurred to inventive men.' Possibly I invented it myself, though not addicted to etymological conjecture.

THE FIRE-WALK

The Method of Psychical Research

As a rule, mythology asks for no aid from Psychical Research. But there are problems in religious rite and custom where the services of the Cendrillon of the sciences, the despised youngest sister, may be of use. As an example I take the famous mysterious old Fire-rite of the Hirpi, or wolf-kin, of Mount Soracte. I shall first, following Mannhardt, and making use of my own trifling researches in ancient literature, describe the rite itself.

Mount Soracte

Everyone has heard of Mount Soracte, white with shining snow, the peak whose distant cold gave zest to the blazing logs on the hearth of Horace. Within sight of his windows was practised, by men calling themselves 'wolves' (Hirpi), a rite of extreme antiquity and enigmatic character. On a peak of Soracte, now Monte di Silvestre, stood the ancient temple of Soranus, a Sabine sun-god. {148a} Virgil {148b} identifies Soranus with Apollo. At the foot of the cliff was the precinct of Feronia, a Sabine goddess. Mr. Max Muller says that Feronia corresponds to the Vedic Bhuranyu, a name of Agni, the Vedic fire-god (ii. 800). Mannhardt prefers, of course, a derivation from _far_ (grain), as in confarreatio, the ancient Roman bride-cake form of marriage. Feronia Mater=Sanskrit bharsani mata, Getreide Mutter. {149a} It is a pity that philologists so rarely agree in their etymologies. In Greek the goddess is called Anthephorus, Philostephanus, and even Persephone--probably the Persephone of flowers and garlands. {149b}

Hirpi Sorani

Once a year a fete of Soranus and Feronia was held, in the precinct of the goddess at Soracte. The ministrants were members of certain local families called Hirpi (wolves). Pliny says, {149c} 'A few families, styled Hirpi, at a yearly sacrifice, walk over a burnt pile of wood, yet are not scorched. On this account they have a perpetual exemption, by decree of the Senate, from military and all other services.' Virgil makes Aruns say, {149d} 'Highest of gods, Apollo, guardian of Soracte, thou of whom we are the foremost worshippers, thou for whom the burning pile of pinewood is fed, while we, strong in faith, walk through the midst of the fire, and press our footsteps in the glowing mass. . . .' Strabo gives the same facts. Servius, the old commentator on Virgil, confuses the Hirpi, not unnaturally, with the Sabine 'clan,' the Hirpini. He says, {149e} 'Varro, always an enemy of religious belief, writes that the Hirpini, when about to walk the fire, smear the soles of their feet with a drug' (medicamentum). Silius Italicus (v. 175) speaks of the ancient rite, when 'the holy bearer of the bow (Apollo) rejoices in the kindled pyres, and the ministrant thrice gladly bears entrails to the god through the harmless flames.' Servius gives an aetiological myth to account for the practice. 'Wolves came and carried off the entrails from the fire; shepherds, following them, were killed by mortal vapours from a cave; thence ensued a pestilence, because they had followed the wolves. An oracle bade them "play the wolf," i.e. live on plunder, whence they were called Hirpi, wolves,' an attempt to account for a wolf clan-name. There is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia seemed all on fire, and the people were about carrying off the statue, it suddenly grew green again. {150a}

Mannhardt decides that the so-called wolves leaped through the sun-god's fire, in the interest of the health of the community. He elucidates this by a singular French popular custom, held on St. John's Eve, at Jumieges. The Brethren of the Green Wolf select a leader called Green Wolf, there is an ecclesiastical procession, cure and all, a souper maigre, the lighting of the usual St. John's fire, a dance round the fire, the capture of next year's Green Wolf, a mimicry of throwing him into the fire, a revel, and next day a loaf of pain benit, above a pile of green leaves, is carried about. {150b}

The wolf, thinks Mannhardt, is the Vegetation-spirit in animal form. Many examples of the 'Corn-wolf' in popular custom are given by Mr. Frazer in The Golden Bough (ii. 3-6). The Hirpi of Soracte, then, are so called because they play the part of Corn-wolves, or Korndamonen in wolf shape. But Mannhardt adds, 'this _seems_, at least, to be the explanation.' He then combats Kuhn's theory of Feronia as lightning goddess. {151a} He next compares the strange Arcadian cannibal rites on Mount Lycaeus. {151b}

Mannhardt's Deficiency

In all this ingenious reasoning, Mannhardt misses a point. What the Hirpi did was _not_ merely to leap through light embers, as in the Roman Palilia, and the parallel doings in Scotland, England, France, and elsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John's Eve). The Hirpi would not be freed from military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. Nor would Varro have found it necessary to explain so easy and common a feat by the use of a drug with which the feet were smeared. Mannhardt, as Mr. Max Muller says, ventured himself little 'among red skins and black skins.' He read Dr. Tylor, and appreciated the method of illustrating ancient rites and beliefs from the living ways of living savages. {151c} But, in practice, he mainly confined himself to illustrating ancient rites and beliefs by survival in modern rural folk-lore. I therefore supplement Mannhardt's evidence from European folk-lore by evidence from savage life, and by a folk-lore case which Mannhardt did not know.

The Fire-walk

A modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets, geographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the Fire- walk. The only hint of explanation is the statement that the drug or juice of herbs preserved the Hirpi from harm. That theory may be kept in mind, and applied if it is found useful. Virgil's theory that the ministrants walk, pietate freti, corresponds to Mrs. Wesley's belief, when, after praying, she 'waded the flames' to rescue her children from the burning parsonage at Epworth. The hypothesis of Iamblichus, when he writes about the ecstatic or 'possessed' persons who cannot be injured by fire, is like that of modern spiritualists--the 'spirit' or 'daemon' preserves them unharmed.

I intentionally omit cases which are vaguely analogous to that of the Hirpi. In Icelandic sagas, in the Relations of the old Jesuit missionaries, in the Travels of Pallas and Gmelin, we hear of medicine- men and Berserks who take liberties with red-hot metal, live coals, and burning wood. Thus in the Icelandic Flatey Book (vol. i. p. 425) we read about the fighting evangelist of Iceland, a story of Thangbrandr and the foreign Berserkir. 'The Berserkir said: "I can walk through the burning fire with my bare feet." Then a great fire was made, which Thangbrandr hallowed, and the Berserkir went into it without fear, and burned his feet'--the Christian spell of Thangbrandr being stronger than the heathen spell of the Berserkir. What the saga says is not evidence, and some of the other tales are merely traditional. Others may be explained, perhaps, by conjuring. The mediaeval ordeal by fire may also be left on one side. In 1826 Lockhart published a translation of the Church Service for the Ordeal by Fire, a document given, he says, by Busching in Die Vorzeit for 1817. The accused communicates before carrying the red-hot iron bar, or walking on the red-hot ploughshare. The consecrated wafer is supposed to preserve him from injury, if he be guiltless. He carries the iron for nine yards, after which his hands are sealed up in a linen cloth and examined at the end of three days. 'If he be found clear of scorch or scar, glory to God.' Lockhart calls the service 'one of the most extraordinary records of the craft, the audacity, and the weakness of mankind.' {153}

The fraud is more likely to have lain in the pretended failure to find scorch or scar than in any method of substituting cold for hot iron, or of preventing the metal from injuring the subject of the ordeal. The rite did not long satisfy the theologians and jurists of the Middle Ages. It has been discussed by Lingard in his History of England, and by Dr. E. B. Tylor in Primitive Culture.

For the purpose of the present inquiry I also omit all the rites of leaping sportfully, and of driving cattle through light fires. Of these cases, from the Roman Palilia, or Parilia, downwards, there is a useful collection in Brand's Popular Antiquities under the heading 'Midsummer Eve.' One exception must be made for a passage from Torreblanca's Demonologia (p. 106). People are said 'pyras circumire et transilire in futuri mali averruncatione'--to 'go round about and leap over lighted pyres for the purpose of averting future evils,' as in Mannhardt's theory of the Hirpi. This may be connected with the Bulgarian rite, to be described later, but, as a rule, in all these instances, the fire is a light one of straw, and no sort of immunity is claimed by the people who do not walk through, but leap across it.

These kinds of analogous examples, then, it suffices merely to mention. For the others, in all affairs of this sort, the wide diffusion of a tale of miracle is easily explained. The fancy craves for miracles, and the universal mode of inventing a miracle is to deny the working, on a given occasion, of a law of Nature. Gravitation was suspended, men floated in air, inanimate bodies became agile, or fire did not burn. No less natural than the invention of the myth is the attempt to feign it by conjuring or by the use of some natural secret. But in the following modern instances the miracle of passing through the fire uninjured is apparently feigned with considerable skill, or is performed by the aid of some secret of Nature not known to modern chemistry. The evidence is decidedly good enough to prove that in Europe, India, and Polynesia the ancient rite of the Hirpi of Soracte is still a part of religious or customary ceremony.

Fijian Fire-walk

The case which originally drew my attention to this topic is that given by Mr. Basil Thomson in his South Sea Yarns (p. 195). Mr. Thomson informs me that he wrote his description on the day after he witnessed the ceremony, a precaution which left no room for illusions of memory. Of course, in describing a conjuring trick, one who is not an expert records, not what actually occurred, but what he was able to see, and the chances are that he did not see, and therefore omits, an essential circumstance, while he misstates other circumstances. I am informed by Mrs. Steel, the author of The Potter's Thumb and other stories of Indian life, that, in watching an Indian conjurer, she generally, or frequently, detects his method. She says that the conjurer often begins by whirling rapidly before the eyes of the spectators a small polished skull of a monkey, and she is inclined to think that the spectators who look at this are, in some way, more easily deluded. These facts are mentioned that I may not seem unaware of what can be said to impugn the accuracy of the descriptions of the Fire Rite, as given by Mr. Thomson and other witnesses.

Mr. Thomson says that the Wesleyan missionaries have nearly made a clean sweep of all heathen ceremonial in Fiji. 'But in one corner of Fiji, the island of Nbengga, a curious observance of mythological origin has escaped the general destruction, probably because the worthy iconoclasts had never heard of it.' The myth tells how the ancestor of the clan received the gift of fire-walking from a god, and the existence of the myth raises a presumption in favour of the antiquity of the observance.

* * * * *

'Once every year the masawe, a dracaena that grows in profusion on the grassy hillsides of the island, becomes fit to yield the sugar of which its fibrous root is full. To render it fit to eat, the roots must be baked among hot stones for four days. A great pit is dug, and filled with large stones and blazing logs, and when these have burned down, and the stones are at white heat, the oven is ready for the masawe. It is at this stage that the clan Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, is called on to "leap into the oven" (rikata na lovo), and walk unharmed upon the hot stones that would scorch and wither the feet of any but the descendants of the dauntless Tui Nkualita. Twice only had Europeans been fortunate enough to see the masawe cooked, and so marvellous had been the tales they told, and so cynical the scepticism with which they had been received, that nothing short of another performance before witnesses and the photographic camera would have satisfied the average "old hand."

'As we steamed up to the chiefs village of Waisoma, a cloud of blue smoke rolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly lighted. We found a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the sandy soil, a stone's throw from high-water mark, in a small clearing among the cocoanuts between the beach and the dense forest. The pit was piled high with great blazing logs and round stones the size of a man's head. Mingled with the crackling roar of the fire were loud reports as splinters flew off from the stones, warning us to guard our eyes. A number of men were dragging up more logs and rolling them into the blaze, while, above all, on the very brink of the fiery pit, stood Jonathan Dambea, directing the proceedings with an air of noble calm. As the stones would not be hot enough for four hours, there was ample time to hear the tradition that warrants the observance of the strange ceremony we were to see.

'When we were at last summoned, the fire had been burning for more than four hours. The pit was filled with a white-hot mass shooting out little tongues of white flame, and throwing out a heat beside which the scorching sun was a pleasant relief. A number of men were engaged, with long poles to which a loop of thick vine had been attached, in noosing the pieces of unburnt wood by twisting the pole, like a horse's twitch, until the loop was tight, and dragging the log out by main force. When the wood was all out there remained a conical pile of glowing stones in the middle of the pit. Ten men now drove the butts of green saplings into the base of the pile, and held the upper end while a stout vine was passed behind the row of saplings. A dozen men grasped each end of the vine, and with loud shouts hauled with all their might. The saplings, like the teeth of an enormous rake, tore through the pile of stones, flattening them out towards the opposite edge of the pit. The saplings were then driven in on the other side and the stones raked in the opposite direction, then sideways, until the bottom of the pit was covered with an even layer of hot stones. This process had taken fully half an hour, but any doubt as to the heat of the stones at the end was set at rest by the tongues of flame that played continually among them. The cameras were hard at work, and a large crowd of people pressed inwards towards the pit as the moment drew near. They were all excited except Jonathan, who preserved, even in the supreme moment, the air of holy calm that never leaves his face. All eyes are fixed expectant on the dense bush behind the clearing, whence the Shadrachs, Meshachs and Abednegos of the Pacific are to emerge. There is a cry of "Vutu! Vutu!" and forth from the bush, two and two, march fifteen men, dressed in garlands and fringes. They tramp straight to the brink of the pit. The leading pair show something like fear in their faces, but do not pause, perhaps because the rest would force them to move forward. They step down upon the stones and continue their march round the pit, planting their feet squarely and firmly on each stone. The cameras snap, the crowd surges forward, the bystanders fling in great bundles of green leaves. But the bundles strike the last man of the procession and cut him off from his fellows; so he stays where he is, trampling down the leaves as they are thrown to line the pit, in a dense cloud of steam from the boiling sap. The rest leap back to his assistance, shouting and trampling, and the pit turns into the mouth of an Inferno, filled with dusky frenzied fiends, half seen through the dense volume that rolls up to heaven and darkens the sunlight. After the leaves, palm-leaf baskets of the dracaena root are flung to them, more leaves, and then bystanders and every one join in shovelling earth over all till the pit is gone, and a smoking mound of fresh earth takes its place. This will keep hot for four days, and then the masawe will be cooked.

'As the procession had filed up to the pit, by a preconcerted arrangement with the noble Jonathan, a large stone had been hooked out of the pit to the feet of one of the party, who poised a pocket-handkerchief over it, and dropped it lightly upon the stone when the first man leapt into the oven, and snatched what remained of it up as the last left the stones. During the fifteen or twenty seconds it lay there every fold that touched the stone was charred, and the rest of it scorched yellow. So the stones were not cool. We caught four or five of the performers as they came out, and closely examined their feet. They were cool, and showed no trace of scorching, nor were their anklets of dried tree-fern leaf burnt. This, Jonathan explained, is part of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is as combustible as tinder, and there were flames shooting out among the stones. Sceptics had affirmed that the skin of a Fijian's foot being a quarter of an inch thick, he would not feel a burn. Whether this be true or not of the ball and heel, the instep is covered with skin no thicker than our own, and we saw the men plant their insteps fairly on the stone.'

* * * * *

Mr. Thomson's friend, Jonathan, said that young men had been selected because they would look better in a photograph, and, being inexperienced, they were afraid. A stranger would share the gift if he went in with one of the tribe. Some years ago a man fell and burned his shoulders. 'Any trick?' 'Here Jonathan's ample face shrunk smaller, and a shadow passed over his candid eye.' Mr. Thomson concludes: 'Perhaps the Na Ivilankata clan have no secret, and there is nothing wonderful in their performance; but, miracle or not, I am very glad I saw it.' The handkerchief dropped on the stone is 'alive to testify to it.' Mr. Thomson's photograph of the scene is ill-developed, and the fumes of steam somewhat interfere with the effect. A rough copy is published in Folk-Lore for September, 1895, but the piece could only be reproduced by a delicate drawing with the brush.

The parallel to the rite of the Hirpi is complete, except that red-hot stones, not the pyre of pine-embers, is used in Fiji. Mr. Thomson has heard of a similar ceremony in the Cook group of islands. As in ancient Italy, so in Fiji, a certain _clan_ have the privilege of fire-walking. It is far enough from Fiji to Southern India, as it is far enough from Mount Soracte to Fiji. But in Southern India the Klings practise the rite of the Hirpi and the Na Ivilankata. I give my informant's letter exactly as it reached me, though it has been published before in Longman's Magazine:

Kling Fire-walk

'Dear Sir,--Observing from your note in Longman's Magazine that you have mislaid my notes re fire-walking, I herewith repeat them. I have more than once seen it done by the "Klings," as the low-caste Tamil-speaking Hindus from Malabar are called, in the Straits Settlements. On one occasion I was present at a "fire-walking" held in a large tapioca plantation in Province Wellesley, before many hundreds of spectators, all the Hindu coolies from the surrounding estates being mustered. A trench had been dug about twenty yards long by six feet wide and two deep. This was piled with faggots and small wood four or five feet high. This was lighted at midday, and by four p.m. the trench was a bed of red-hot ashes, the heat from which was so intense that the men who raked and levelled it with long poles could not stand it for more than a minute at a time. A few yards from the end of the trench a large hole had been dug and filled with water. When all was ready, six men, ordinary coolies, dressed only in their "dholis," or loin-cloths, stepped out of the crowd, and, amidst tremendous excitement and a horrible noise of conches and drums, passed over the burning trench from end to end, in single file, at a quick walk, plunging one after the other into the water. Not one of them showed the least sign of injury. They had undergone some course of preparation by their priest, not a Brahman, but some kind of devil-doctor or medicine-man, and, as I understood it, they took on themselves and expiated the sins of the Kling community for the past year (a big job, if thieving and lying count; probably not). They are not, however, always so lucky, for I heard that on the next occasion one of the men fell and was terribly burnt, thus destroying the whole effect of the ceremony. I do not think this to be any part of the Brahmanical religion, though the ordeal by fire as a test of guilt is, or was, in use all over India. The fact is that the races of Southern India, where the Aryan element is very small, have kept all their savage customs and devil-worship under the form of Brahmanism.

'Another curious feat I saw performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, on the Chinese New Year. A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted stark naked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size of a wash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal. The heat reached one's face at two yards, but if it had been a tray of ices the man couldn't have been more unconcerned. There was a crowd of Chinese round him, all eagerly asking questions, and a pile of coppers accumulating beside him. A Chinese shopkeeper told me that the man "told fortunes," but from the circumstance of a gambling-house being close by, I concluded that his customers were getting tips on a system.

'Hoping these notes may be of service to you, 'I remain, 'Yours truly, 'STEPHEN PONDER.'

* * * * *

In this rite the fire-pit is thrice as long (at a rough estimate) as that of the Fijians. The fire is of wooden embers, not heated stones. As in Fiji, a man who falls is burned, clearly suggesting that the feet and legs, but not the whole body, are in some way prepared to resist the fire. As we shall find to be the practice in Bulgaria, the celebrants place their feet afterwards in water. As in Bulgaria, drums are beaten to stimulate the fire-walkers. Neither here nor in Fiji are the performers said to be entranced, like the Bulgarian Nistinares. {161} On the whole, the Kling rite (which the Klings, I am informed, also practise in the islands whither they are carried as coolies) so closely resembles the Fijian and the Tongan that one would explain the likeness by transmission, were the ceremony not almost as like the rite of the Hirpi. For the Tongan fire-ritual, the source is The Polynesian Society's Journal, vol. ii. No. 2. pp. 105-108. My attention was drawn to this by Mr. Laing, writing from New Zealand. The article is by Miss Tenira Henry, of Honolulu, a young lady of the island. The Council of the Society, not having seen the rite, 'do not guarantee the truth of the story, but willingly publish it for the sake of the incantation.' Miss Henry begins with a description of the ti-plant (Dracaena terminalis), which 'requires to be well baked before being eaten.' She proceeds thus:

'The ti-ovens are frequently thirty feet in diameter, and the large stones, heaped upon small logs of wood, take about twenty-four hours to get properly heated. Then they are flattened down, by means of long green poles, and the trunks of a few banana-trees are stripped up and strewn over them to cause steam. The ti-roots are then thrown in whole, accompanied by short pieces of ape-root (Arum costatum), that are not quite so thick as the ti, but grow to the length of six feet and more. The oven is then covered over with large leaves and soil, and left so for about three days, when the ti and the ape are taken out well cooked, and of a rich, light-brown colour. The ape prevents the ti from getting too dry in the oven.

'There is a strange ceremony connected with the Uum Ti (or ti-oven), that used to be practised by the heathen priests at Raiatea, but can now be performed by only two individuals (Tupua and Taero), both descendants of priests. This ceremony consisted in causing people to walk in procession through the hot oven when flattened down, before anything had been placed in it, and without any preparation whatever, bare-footed or shod, and on their emergence not even smelling of fire. The manner of doing this was told by Tupua, who heads the procession in the picture, to Monsieur Morne, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, who also took the photograph {163} of it, about two years ago, at Uturoa, Raiatea, which, being on bad paper, was copied off by Mr. Barnfield, of Honolulu. All the white residents of the place, as well as the French officers, were present to see the ceremony, which is rarely performed nowadays.

'No one has yet been able to solve the mystery of this surprising feat, but it is to be hoped that scientists will endeavour to do so while those men who practise it still live.

Tupua's Incantation used in Walking Over the Uum-Ti.--Translation

'Hold the leaves of the ti-plant before picking them, and say: "O hosts of gods! awake, arise! You and I are going to the ti-oven to-morrow."

'If they float in the air, they are gods, but if their feet touch the ground they are human beings. Then break the ti-leaves off and look towards the direction of the oven, and say: "O hosts of gods! go to-night, and to-morrow you and I shall go." Then wrap the ti-leaves up in han (Hibiscus) leaves, and put them to sleep in the marae, where they must remain until morning, and say in leaving:

'"Arise! awake! O hosts of gods! Let your feet take you to the ti-oven; fresh water and salt water come also. Let the dark earth-worm and the light earth-worm go to the oven. Let the redness and the shades of fire all go. You will go; you will go to-night, and to-morrow it will be you and I; we shall go to the Uum-Ti." (This is for the night.)

'When the ti-leaves are brought away, they must be tied up in a wand and carried straight to the oven, and opened when all are ready to pass through; then hold the wand forward and say:

'"O men (spirits) who heated the oven! let it die out! O dark earth-worms! O light earthworms! fresh water and salt water, heat of the oven and redness of the oven, hold up the footsteps of the walkers, and fan the heat of the bed. O cold beings, let us lie in the midst of the oven! O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! hold the fan, and let us go into the oven for a little while!" Then, when all are ready to walk in, we say:

"Holder of the first footstep! Holder of the second footstep! Holder of the third footstep! Holder of the fourth footstep! Holder of the fifth footstep! Holder of the sixth footstep! Holder of the seventh footstep! Holder of the eighth footstep! Holder of the ninth footstep! Holder of the tenth footstep! "O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! all is covered!"

'Then everybody walks through without hurt, into the middle and around the oven, following the leader, with the wand beating from side to side.

'The Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies was a high-born woman in olden times, who made herself respected by the oppressive men when they placed women under so many restrictions. She is said to have had the lightning at her command, and struck men with it when they encroached on her rights.

'All the above is expressed in old Tahitian, and when quickly spoken is not easily understood by the modern listener. Many of the words, though found in the dictionary, are now obsolete, and the arrangement of others is changed. Oe and tana are never used now in place of the plural outou and tatou; but in old folk-lore it is the classical style of addressing the gods in the collective sense. Tahutahu means sorcery, and also to kindle a fire.'

* * * * *

So far Miss Henry, on this occasion, and the archaic nature of the hymn, with the reference to a mythical leader of the revolt of women, deserves the attention of anthropologists, apart from the singular character of the rite described. In the third number of the Journal (vol. ii.) the following editorial note is published:

'Miss Tenira Henry authorises us to say that her sister and her sister's little child were some of those who joined in the Uum-Ti ceremony referred to in vol. ii. p. 108, and in the preceding note, and actually walked over the red-hot stones. The illustration of the performance given in the last number of the Journal, it appears, is actually from a photograph taken by Lieutenant Morne, the original of which Miss Henry has sent us for inspection.--EDITOR.'

Corroborative Evidence

The following corroborative account is given in the Journal, from a source vaguely described as 'a pamphlet published in San Francisco, by Mr. Hastwell:'

'The natives of Raiatea have some performances so entirely out of the ordinary course of events as to institute (sic) inquiry relative to a proper solution.

'On September 20, 1885, I witnessed the wonderful, and to me inexplicable, performance of passing through the "fiery furnace."

'The furnace that I saw was an excavation of three or four feet in the ground, in a circular form (sloping upwards), and about thirty feet across. The excavation was filled with logs and wood, and then covered with large stones. A fire was built underneath, and kept burning for a day. When I witnessed it, on the second day, the flames were pouring up through the interstices of the rocks, which were heated to a red and white heat. When everything was in readiness, and the furnace still pouring out its intense heat, the natives marched up with bare feet to the edge of the furnace, where they halted for a moment, and after a few passes of the wand made of the branches of the ti-plant by the leader, who repeated a few words in the native language, they stepped down on the rocks and walked leisurely across to the other side, stepping from stone to stone. This was repeated five times, without any preparation whatever on their feet, and without injury or discomfort from the heated stones. There was not even the smell of fire on their garments.'

* * * * *

Mr. N. J. Tone, in the same periodical (ii. 3,193), says that he arrived just too late to see the same rite at Bukit Mestajam, in Province Wellesley, Straits Settlements; he did see the pit and the fire, and examined the naked feet, quite uninjured, of the performers. He publishes an extract to this effect from his diary. The performers, I believe, were Klings. Nothing is said to indicate any condition of trance, or other abnormal state, in the fire-walkers.

The Fire-walk in Trinidad.

Mr. Henry E. St. Clair, writing on September 14. 1896, says: 'In Trinidad, British West Indies, the rite is performed annually about this time of the year among the Indian coolie immigrants resident in the small village of Peru, a mile or so from Port of Spain. I have personally witnessed the passing, and the description given by Mr. Ponder tallies with what I saw, except that, so far as I can remember, the number of those who took part in the rite was greater than six. In addition, there is this circumstance, which was not mentioned by that gentleman: each of the "passers" carried one or two lemons, which they dropped into the fire as they went along. These lemons were afterwards eagerly scrambled for by the bystanders, who, so far as I can recollect, attributed a healing influence to them.'

Bulgarian Fire-walk

As to the Bulgarian rite, Dr. Schischmanof writes to me:

'I am sure the observance will surprise you; I am even afraid that you will think it rather fantastic, but you may rely on my information. The danse de feu was described long ago in a Bulgarian periodical by one of our best known writers. What you are about to read only confirms his account. What I send you is from the Recueil de Folk Lore, de Litterature et de Science (vol. vi. p. 224), edited, with my aid and that of my colleague, Mastov, by the Minister of Public Instruction. How will you explain these hauts faits de l'extase religieuse? I cannot imagine! For my part, I think of the self-mutilations and tortures of Dervishes and Fakirs, and wonder if we have not here something analogous.'

The article in the Bulgarian serial is called 'The Nistinares.' The word is not Bulgarian; possibly it is Romaic.

The scene is in certain villages in Turkey, on the Bulgarian frontier, and not far from the town of Bourgas, on the Euxine, in the department of Lozen Grad. The ministrants (Nistinares) have the gift of fire-walking as a hereditary talent; they are specially _just_, and the gift is attributed as to a god in Fiji, in Bulgaria to St. Constantine and St. Helena.

'These _just ones_ feel a desire to dance in the flames during the month of May; they are filled at the same time with some unknown force, which enables them to predict the future. The best Nistinare is he who can dance longest in the live flame, and utter the most truthful prophecies.'

The Nistinares may be of either sex.

On May 1 the Nistinares hold a kind of religious festival at the house of one of their number. Salutations are exchanged, and presents of food and raki are made to the chief Nistinare. The holy icones of saints are wreathed with flowers, and perfumed with incense. Arrangements are made for purifying the holy wells and springs.

On May 21, the day of St. Helena and St. Constantine, the parish priest says Mass in the grey of dawn. At sunrise all the village meets in festal array; the youngest Nistinare brings from the church the icones of the two saints, and drums are carried behind them in procession. They reach the sacred well in the wood, which the priest blesses. This is parallel to the priestly benediction on 'Fountain Sunday' of the well beneath the Fairy Tree at Domremy, where Jeanne d'Arc was accused of meeting the Good Ladies. {169} Everyone drinks of the water, and there is a sacrifice of rams, ewes, and oxen. A festival follows, as was the use of Domremy in the days of the Maid; then all return to the village. The holy drum, which hangs all the year before St. Helena in the church, is played upon. A mock combat between the icones which have visited the various holy wells is held.

Meanwhile, in each village, pyres of dry wood, amounting to thirty, fifty, or even a hundred cartloads, have been piled up. The wood is set on fire before the procession goes forth to the hallowing of the fountains. On returning, the crowd dances a horo (round dance) about the glowing logs. Heaps of embers (Pineus acervus) are made, and water is thrown on the ground. The musicians play the tune called 'L'Air Nistinar.' A Nistinare breaks through the dance, _turns blue_, trembles like a leaf, and glares wildly with his eyes. The dance ends, and everybody goes to the best point of view. Then the wildest Nistinare seizes the icon, turns it to the crowd, and with naked feet climbs the pyre of glowing embers. The music plays, and the Nistinare dances to the tune in the fire. If he is so disposed he utters prophecies. He dances till his face resumes its ordinary expression; then he begins to feel the burning; he leaves the pyre, and places his feet in the mud made by the libations of water already described. The second Nistinare then dances in the fire, and so on. The predictions apply to villages and persons; sometimes sinners are denounced, or repairs of the church are demanded in this queer parish council. All through the month of May the Nistinares call out for fire when they hear the Nistinare music playing. They are very temperate men and women. Except in May they do not clamour for fire, and cannot dance in it.

In this remarkable case the alleged gift is hereditary, is of saintly origin, and is only exercised when the Nistinare is excited, and (apparently) entranced by music and the dance, as is the manner also of medicine-men among savages. The rite, with its sacrifices of sheep and oxen, is manifestly of heathen origin. They 'pass through the fire' to St. Constantine, but the observance must be far older than Bulgarian Christianity. The report says nothing as to the state of the feet of the Nistinares after the fire-dance. Medical inspection is desirable, and the photographic camera should be used to catch a picture of the wild scene. My account is abridged from the French version of the Bulgarian report sent by Dr. Schischmanof.

Indian Fire-walk

Since these lines were written the kindness of Mr. Tawney, librarian at the India Office, has added to my stock of examples. Thus, Mr. Stokes printed in the Indian Antiquary (ii. p. 190) notes of evidence taken at an inquest on a boy of fourteen, who fell during the fire-walk, was burned, and died on that day. The rite had been forbidden, but was secretly practised in the village of Periyangridi. The fire-pit was 27 feet long by 7.5 feet broad and a span in depth. Thirteen persons walked through the hot wood embers, which, in Mr. Stokes's opinion (who did not see the performance), 'would hardly injure the tough skin of the sole of a labourer's foot,' yet killed a boy. The treading was usually done by men under vows, perhaps vows made during illness. One, at least, walked 'because it is my duty as Pujari.' Another says, 'I got down into the fire at the east end, meditating on Draupati, walked through to the west, and up the bank.' Draupati is a goddess, wife of the Pandavas. Mr. Stokes reports that, according to the incredulous, experienced fire-walkers smear their feet with oil of the green frog. No report is made as to the condition of their feet when they emerge from the fire.

Another case occurs in Oppert's work, The Original Inhabitants of India (p. 480). As usual, a pit is dug, filled with faggots. When these have burned down 'a little,' and 'while the heat is still unbearable in the neighbourhood of the ditch, those persons who have made the vow . . . walk . . . on the embers in the pit, without doing themselves as a rule much harm.'

Again, in a case where butter is poured over the embers to make a blaze, 'one of the tribal priests, in a state of religious afflatus, walks through the fire. It is said that the sacred fire is harmless, but some admit that a certain preservative ointment is used by the performers.' A chant used at Mirzapur (as in Fiji) is cited. {171}

In these examples the statements are rather vague. No evidence is adduced as to the actual effect of the fire on the feet of the ministrants. We hear casually of ointments which protect the feet, and of the thickness of the skins of the fire-walkers, and of the unapproachable heat, but we have nothing exact, no trace of scientific precision. The Government 'puts down,' but does not really investigate the rite.

Psychical Parallels

I now very briefly, and 'under all reserves,' allude to the only modern parallel in our country with which I am acquainted. We have seen that Iamblichus includes insensibility to fire among the privileges of Graeco- Egyptian 'mediums.' {172} The same gift was claimed by Daniel Dunglas Home, the notorious American spiritualist. I am well aware that as Eusapia Paladino was detected in giving a false impression that her hands were held by her neighbours in the dark, therefore, when Mr. Crookes asserts that he saw Home handle fire in the light, his testimony on this point can have no weight with a logical public. Consequently it is not as evidence to the _fact_ that I cite Mr. Crookes, but for another purpose. Mr. Crookes's remarks I heard, and I can produce plenty of living witnesses to the same experiences with D. D. Home:

'I several times saw the fire test, both at my own and at other houses. On one occasion he called me to him when he went to the fire, and told me to watch carefully. He certainly put his hand in the grate and handled the red-hot coals in a manner which would have been impossible for me to have imitated without being severely burnt. I once saw him go to a bright wood fire, and, taking a large piece of red-hot charcoal, put it in the hollow of one hand, and, covering it with the other, blow into the extempore furnace till the coal was white hot, and the flames licked round his fingers. No sign of burning could be seen then or afterwards on his hands.'

On these occasions Home was, or was understood to be, 'entranced,' like the Bulgarian Nistinares. Among other phenomena, the white handkerchief on which Home laid a red-hot coal was not scorched, nor, on analysis, did it show any signs of chemical preparation. Home could also (like the Fijians) communicate his alleged immunity to others present; for example, to Mr. S. C. Hall. But it burned and marked a man I know. Home, entranced, and handling a red-hot coal, passed it to a gentleman of my acquaintance, whose hand still bears the scar of the scorching endured in 1867. Immunity was not _always_ secured by experimenters.

I only mention these circumstances because Mr. Crookes has stated that he knows no chemical preparation which would avert the ordinary action of heat. Mr. Clodd (on the authority of Sir B. W. Richardson) has suggested diluted sulphuric acid (so familiar to Klings, Hirpi, Tongans, and Fijians). But Mr. Clodd produced no examples of successful or unsuccessful experiment. {173} The nescience of Mr. Crookes may be taken to cover these valuable properties of diluted sulphuric acid, unless Mr. Clodd succeeds in an experiment which, if made on his own person, I would very willingly witness.

Merely for completeness, I mention Dr. Dozous's statement, {174} that he timed by his watch Bernadette, the seer of Lourdes, while, for fifteen minutes, she, in an ecstatic condition, held her hands in the flame of a candle. He then examined her hands, which were not scorched or in any way affected by the fire. This is called, at Lourdes, the Miracle du Cierge.

Here ends my list of examples, in modern and ancient times, of a rite which deserves, though it probably will not receive, the attention of science. The widely diffused religious character of the performance will, perhaps, be admitted as demonstrated. As to the method by which the results are attained, whether by a chemical preparation, or by the influence of a certain mental condition, or by thickness of skin, or whether all the witnesses fable with a singular unanimity (shared by photographic cameras), I am unable even to guess. On May 21, in Bulgaria, a scientific observer might come to a conclusion. At present I think it possible that the Jewish 'Passing through the Fire' may have been a harmless rite.

Conclusion as to Fire-walk

In all these cases, and others as to which I have first-hand evidence, there are decided parallels to the Rite of the Hirpi, and to Biblical and ecclesiastical miracles. The savage examples are _rites_, and appear intended to secure good results in food supplies (Fiji), or general well- being, perhaps by expiation for sins, as in the Attic Thargelia. The Bulgarian rite also aims at propitiating general good luck.

Psychical Research

But how is the Fire-walk done? That remains a mystery, and perhaps no philologist, folk-lorist, anthropologist, or physiologist, has seriously asked the question. The medicamentum of Varro, the green frog fat of India, the diluted sulphuric acid of Mr. Clodd, are guesses in the air, and Mr. Clodd has made no experiment. The possibility of plunging the hand, unhurt, in molten metal, is easily accounted for, and is not to the point. In this difficulty Psychical Research registers, and no more, the well-attested performances of D. D. Home (entranced, like the Nistinares); the well observed and timed Miracle du Cierge at Lourdes--Bernadette being in an ecstatic condition; the Biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace; the researches of Iamblichus; the case of Madame Shchapoff, carefully reported, {175} and other examples. There is no harm in collecting examples, and the question remains, are all those rites, from those of Virgil's Hirpi to Bulgaria of to-day, based on some actual but obscure and scientifically neglected fact in nature? At all events, for the Soranus-Feronia rite philology only supplies her competing etymologies, folk-lore her modern rural parallels, anthropology her savage examples, psychical research her 'cases' at first-hand. Anthropology had neglected the collection of these, perhaps because the Fire-walk is 'impossible.'

THE ORIGIN OF DEATH

Yama

This excursus on 'The Fire-walk' has been introduced, as an occasion arose, less because of controversy about a neglected theme than for the purpose of giving something positive in a controversial treatise. For the same reason I take advantage of Mr. Max Muller's remarks on Yama, 'the first who died,' to offer a set of notes on myths of the Origin of Death. Yama, in our author's opinion, is 'the setting sun' (i. 45; ii. 563). Agni (Fire) is 'the first who was born;' as the other twin, Yama, he was also the first who died (ii. 568). As 'the setting sun he was the first instance of death.' Kuhn and others, judging from a passage in the Atharva Veda (xviii. 3, 13), have, however, inferred that Yama 'was really a human being and the first of mortals.' He is described in the Atharva as 'the gatherer of men, who died the first of mortals, who went forward the first to that world.' In the Atharva we read of 'reverence to Yama, to Death, who first approached the precipice, finding out the path for many.' 'The myth of Yama is perfectly intelligible, if we trace its roots back to the sun of evening' (ii. 573). Mr. Max Muller then proposes on this head 'to consult the traditions of real Naturvolker' (savages). The Harvey Islanders speak of dying as 'following the sun's track.' The Maoris talk of 'going down with the sun' (ii. 574). No more is said here about savage myths of 'the first who died.' I therefore offer some additions to the two instances in which savages use a poetical phrase connecting the sun's decline with man's death.

The Origin of Death

Civilised man in a scientific age would never invent a myth to account for 'God's great ordinance of death.' He regards it as a fact, obvious and necessarily universal; but his own children have not attained to his belief in death. The certainty and universality of death do not enter into the thoughts of our little ones.

For in the thought of immortality Do children play about the flowery meads.

Now, there are still many childlike tribes of men who practically disbelieve in death. To them death is always a surprise and an accident--an unnecessary, irrelevant intrusion on the living world. 'Natural deaths are by many tribes regarded as supernatural,' says Dr. Tylor. These tribes have no conception of death as the inevitable, eventual obstruction and cessation of the powers of the bodily machine; the stopping of the pulses and processes of life by violence or decay or disease. To persons who regard Death thus, _his_ intrusion into the world (for Death, of course, is thought to be a person) stands in great need of explanation. That explanation, as usual, is given in myths.

Death, regarded as Unnatural

But before studying these widely different myths, let us first establish the fact that death really is regarded as something non-natural and intrusive. The modern savage readily believes in and accounts in a scientific way for _violent_ deaths. The spear or club breaks or crushes a hole in a man, and his soul flies out. But the deaths he disbelieves in are _natural_ deaths. These he is obliged to explain as produced by some supernatural cause, generally the action of malevolent spirits impelled by witches. Thus the savage holds that, violence apart and the action of witches apart, man would even now be immortal. 'There are rude races of Australia and South America,' writes Dr. Tylor, {178} 'whose intense belief in witchcraft has led them to declare that if men were never bewitched, and never killed by violence, _they would never die at all_. Like the Australians, the Africans will inquire of their dead "what sorcerer slew them by his wicked arts."' 'The natives,' says Sir George Grey, speaking of the Australians, 'do not believe that there is such a thing as death from natural causes.' On the death of an Australian native from disease, a kind of magical coroner's inquest is held by the conjurers of the tribe, and the direction in which the wizard lives who slew the dead man is ascertained by the movements of worms and insects. The process is described at full length by Mr. Brough Smyth in his Aborigines of Victoria (i. 98-102). Turning from Australia to Hindustan, we find that the Puwarrees (according to Heber's narrative) attribute all natural deaths to a supernatural cause--namely, witchcraft. That is, the Puwarrees do not yet believe in the universality and necessity of Death. He is an intruder brought by magic arts into our living world. Again, in his Ethnology of Bengal (pp. 199, 200), Dalton tells us that the Hos (an aboriginal non-Aryan race) are of the same opinion as the Puwarrees. 'They hold that all disease in men or animals is attributable to one of two causes: the wrath of some evil spirit or the spell of some witch or sorcerer. These superstitions are common to all classes of the population of this province.' In the New Hebrides disease and death are caused, as Mr. Codrington found, by tamates, or ghosts. {179} In New Caledonia, according to Erskine, death is the result of witchcraft practised by members of a hostile tribe, for who would be so wicked as to bewitch his fellow-tribesman? The Andaman Islanders attribute all natural deaths to the supernatural influence of e rem chaugala, or to jurn-win, two spirits of the jungle and the sea. The death is avenged by the nearest relation of the deceased, who shoots arrows at the invisible enemy. The negroes of Central Africa entertain precisely similar ideas about the non-naturalness of death. Mr. Duff Macdonald, in Africana, writes: 'Every man who dies what we call a natural death is really killed by witches.' It is a far cry from the Blantyre Mission in Africa to the Eskimo of the frozen North; but so uniform is human nature in the lower races that the Eskimo precisely agree, as far as theories of death go, with the Africans, the aborigines of India, the Andaman Islanders, the Australians, and the rest. Dr. Rink {180a} found that 'sickness or death coming about in an accidental manner was always attributed to witchcraft, and it remains a question whether death on the whole was not originally accounted for as resulting from magic.' Pere Paul le Jeune, writing from Quebec in 1637, says of the Red Men: 'Je n'en voy mourir quasi aucun, qui ne pense estre ensorcele.' {180b} It is needless to show how these ideas survived into civilisation. Bishop Jewell, denouncing witches before Queen Elizabeth, was, so far, mentally on a level with the Eskimo and the Australian. The familiar and voluminous records of trials for witchcraft, whether at Salem or at Edinburgh, prove that all abnormal and unwonted deaths and diseases, in animals or in men, were explained by our ancestors as the results of supernatural mischief.

It has been made plain (and the proof might be enlarged to any extent) that the savage does not regard death as 'God's great ordinance,' universal and inevitable and natural. But, being curious and inquisitive, he cannot help asking himself, 'How did this terrible invader first enter a world where he now appears so often?' This is, properly speaking, a scientific question; but the savage answers it, not by collecting facts and generalising from them, but by inventing a myth. That is his invariable habit. Does he want to know why this tree has red berries, why that animal has brown stripes, why this bird utters its peculiar cry, where fire came from, why a constellation is grouped in one way or another, why his race of men differs from the whites--in all these, and in all other intellectual perplexities, the savage invents a story to solve the problem. Stories about the Origin of Death are, therefore, among the commonest fruits of the savage imagination. As those legends have been produced to meet the same want by persons in a very similar mental condition, it inevitably follows that they all resemble each other with considerable closeness. We need not conclude that all the myths we are about to examine came from a single original source, or were handed about--with flint arrow-heads, seeds, shells, beads, and weapons--in the course of savage commerce. Borrowing of this sort may--or, rather, must--explain many difficulties as to the diffusion of some myths. But the myths with which we are concerned now, the myths of the Origin of Death, might easily have been separately developed by simple and ignorant men seeking to discover an answer to the same problem.

Why Men are Mortal

The myths of the Origin of Death fall into a few categories. In many legends of the lower races men are said to have become subject to mortality because they infringed some mystic prohibition or taboo of the sort which is common among untutored peoples. The apparently untrammelled Polynesian, or Australian, or African, is really the slave of countless traditions, which forbid him to eat this object or to touch that, or to speak to such and such a person, or to utter this or that word. Races in this curious state of ceremonial subjection often account for death as the punishment imposed for breaking some taboo. In other cases, death is said to have been caused by a sin of omission, not of commission. People who have a complicated and minute ritual (like so many of the lower races) persuade themselves that Death burst on the world when some passage of the ritual was first omitted, or when some custom was first infringed. Yet again, Death is fabled to have first claimed us for his victims in consequence of the erroneous delivery of a favourable message from some powerful supernatural being, or because of the failure of some enterprise which would have resulted in the overthrow of Death, or by virtue of a pact or covenant between Death and the gods. Thus it will be seen that death is often (though by no means invariably) the penalty of infringing a command, or of indulging in a culpable curiosity. But there are cases, as we shall see, in which death, as a tolerably general law, follows on a mere accident. Some one is accidentally killed, and this 'gives Death a lead' (as they say in the hunting-field) over the fence which had hitherto severed him from the world of living men. It is to be observed in this connection that the first of men who died is usually regarded as the discoverer of a hitherto 'unknown country,' the land beyond the grave, to which all future men must follow him. Bin dir Woor, among the Australians, was the first man who suffered death, and he (like Yama in the Vedic myth) became the Columbus of the new world of the dead.

Savage Death-Myths

Let us now examine in detail a few of the savage stories of the Origin of Death. That told by the Australians may be regarded with suspicion, as a refraction from a careless hearing of the narrative in Genesis. The legend printed by Mr. Brough Smyth {183a} was told to Mr. Bulwer by 'a black fellow far from sharp,' and this black fellow may conceivably have distorted what his tribe had heard from a missionary. This sort of refraction is not uncommon, and we must always guard ourselves against being deceived by a savage corruption of a Biblical narrative. Here is the myth, such as it is:--'The first created man and woman were told' (by whom we do not learn) 'not to go near a certain tree in which a bat lived. The bat was not to be disturbed. One day, however, the woman was gathering firewood, and she went near the tree. The bat flew away, and after that came Death.' More evidently genuine is the following legend of how Death 'got a lead' into the Australian world. 'The child of the first man was wounded. If his parents could heal him, Death would never enter the world. They failed. Death came.' The wound in this legend was inflicted by a supernatural being. Here Death acts on the principle ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute, and the premier pas was made easy for him. We may continue to examine the stories which account for death as the result of breaking a taboo. The Ningphos of Bengal say they were originally immortal. {183b} They were forbidden to bathe in a certain pool of water. Some one, greatly daring, bathed, and ever since Ningphos have been subject to death. The infringement, not of a taboo, but of a custom, caused death in one of the many Melanesian myths on this subject. Men and women had been practically deathless because they cast their old skins at certain intervals; but a grandmother had a favourite grandchild who failed to recognise her when she appeared as a young woman in her new skin. With fatal good-nature the grandmother put on her old skin again, and instantly men lost the art of skin-shifting, and Death finally seized them. {184}

The Greek Myth

The Greek myth of the Origin of Death is the most important of those which turn on the breaking of a prohibition. The story has unfortunately become greatly confused in the various poetical forms which have reached us. As far as can be ascertained, death was regarded in one early Greek myth as the punishment of indulgence in forbidden curiosity. Men appear to have been free from death before the quarrel between Zeus and Prometheus. In consequence of this quarrel Hephaestus fashioned a woman out of earth and water, and gave her to Epimetheus, the brother of the Titan. Prometheus had forbidden his brother to accept any gift from the gods, but the bride was welcomed nevertheless. She brought her tabooed coffer: this was opened; and men--who, according to Hesiod, had hitherto lived exempt from 'maladies that bring down Fate'--were overwhelmed with the 'diseases that stalk abroad by night and day.' Now, in Hesiod (Works and Days, 70-100) there is nothing said about unholy curiosity. Pandora simply opened her casket and scattered its fatal contents. But Philodemus assures us that, according to a variant of the myth, it was Epimetheus who opened the forbidden coffer, whence came Death.

Leaving the myths which turn on the breaking of a taboo, and reserving for consideration the New Zealand story, in which the Origin of Death is the neglect of a ritual process, let us look at some African myths of the Origin of Death. It is to be observed that in these (as in all the myths of the most backward races) many of the characters are not gods, but animals.

The Bushman story lacks the beginning. The mother of the little Hare was lying dead, but we do not know how she came to die. The Moon then struck the little Hare on the lip, cutting it open, and saying, 'Cry loudly, for your mother will not return, as _I_ do, but is quite dead.' In another version the Moon promises that the old Hare shall return to life, but the little Hare is sceptical, and is hit in the mouth as before. The Hottentot myth makes the Moon send the Hare to men with the message that they will revive as he (the Moon) does. But the Hare 'loses his memory as he runs' (to quote the French proverb, which may be based on a form of this very tale), and the messenger brings the tidings that men shall surely die and never revive. The angry Moon then burns a hole in the Hare's mouth. In yet another Hottentot version the Hare's failure to deliver the message correctly caused the death of the Moon's mother (Bleek, Bushman Folklore). {185} Compare Sir James Alexander's Expedition, ii. 250, where the Namaquas tell this tale. The Fijians say that the Moon wished men to die and be born again, like herself. The Rat said, 'No, let them die, like rats;' and they do. {186}

The Serpent

In this last variant we have death as the result of a failure or transgression. Among the more backward natives of South India (Lewin's Wild Races of South India) the serpent is concerned, in a suspicious way, with the Origin of Death. The following legend might so easily arise from a confused understanding of the Mohammedan or Biblical narrative that it is of little value for our purpose. At the same time, even if it is only an adaptation, it shows the characteristics of the adapting mind:--God had made the world, trees, and reptiles, and then set to work to make man out of clay. A serpent came and devoured the still inanimate clay images while God slept. The serpent still comes and bites us all, and the end is death. If God never slept, there would be no death. The snake carries us off while God is asleep. But the oddest part of this myth remains. Not being able always to keep awake, God made a dog to drive away the snake by barking. And that is why dogs always howl when men are at the point of death. Here we have our own rural superstition about howling dogs twisted into a South Indian myth of the Origin of Death. The introduction of Death by a pure accident recurs in a myth of Central Africa reported by Mr. Duff Macdonald. There was a time when the man blessed by Sancho Panza had not yet 'invented sleep.' A woman it was who came and offered to instruct two men in the still novel art of sleeping. 'She held the nostrils of one, and he never awoke at all,' and since then the art of dying has been facile.

Dualistic Myths

A not unnatural theory of the Origin of Death is illustrated by a myth from Pentecost Island and a Red Indian myth. In the legends of very many races we find the attempt to account for the Origin of Death and Evil by a simple dualistic myth. There were two brothers who made things; one made things well, the other made them ill. In Pentecost Island it was Tagar who made things well, and he appointed that men should die for five days only, and live again. But the malevolent Suque caused men 'to die right out.' {187} The Red Indian legend of the same character is printed in the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (1879-80), p. 45. The younger of the Cin-au-av brothers, who were wolves, said, 'When a man dies, send him back in the morning and let all his friends rejoice.' 'Not so,' said the elder; 'the dead shall return no more.' So the younger brother slew the child of the elder, and this was the beginning of death.

Economic Myth

There is another and a very quaint myth of the Origin of Death in Banks Island. At first, in Banks Island, as elsewhere, men were immortal. The economical results were just what might have been expected. Property became concentrated in the hands of the few--that is, of the first generations--while all the younger people were practically paupers. To heal the disastrous social malady, Qat (the maker of things, who was more or less a spider) sent for Mate--that is, Death. Death lived near a volcanic crater of a mountain, where there is now a by-way into Hades--or Panoi, as the Melanesians call it. Death came, and went through the empty forms of a funeral feast for himself. Tangaro the Fool was sent to watch Mate, and to see by what way he returned to Hades, that men might avoid that path in future. Now when Mate fled to his own place, this great fool Tangaro noticed the path, but forgot which it was, and pointed it out to men under the impression that it was the road to the _upper_, not to the _under_, world. Ever since that day men have been constrained to follow Mate's path to Panoi and the dead. {188} Another myth is somewhat different, but, like this one, attributes death to the imbecility of Tangaro the Fool.

Maui and Yama

The New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, as Dr. Tylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given it a 'solar' explanation. It is an audacious thing to differ from so cautious and learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, but I venture to give my reasons for dissenting in this case from the view of the author of Primitive Culture (i. 335). Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology. He was not precisely a god, still less was he one of the early elemental gods, yet we can scarcely regard him as a man. He rather answers to one of the race of Titans, and especially to Prometheus, the son of a Titan. Maui was prematurely born, and his mother thought the child would be no credit to her already numerous and promising family. She therefore (as native women too often did in the South-Sea Islands) tied him up in her long tresses and tossed him out to sea. The gales brought him back to shore: one of his grandparents carried him home, and he became much the most illustrious and successful of his household. So far Maui had the luck which so commonly attends the youngest and least-considered child in folklore and mythology. This feature in his myth may be a result of the very widespread custom of jungsten Recht (Borough English), by which the youngest child is heir at least of the family hearth. Now, unluckily, at the baptism of Maui (for a pagan form of baptism is a Maori ceremony) his father omitted some of the Karakias, or ritual utterances proper to be used on such occasions. This was the fatal original mistake whence came man's liability to death, for hitherto men had been immortal. So far, what is there 'solar' about Maui? Who are the sun's brethren?--and Maui had many. How could the sun catch the sun in a snare, and beat him so as to make him lame? This was one of Maui's feats, for he meant to prevent the sun from running too fast through the sky. Maui brought fire, indeed, from the under-world, as Prometheus stole it from the upper-world; but many men and many beasts do as much as the myths of the world, and it is hard to see how the exploit gives Maui 'a solar character.' Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of early civilisation, with which the sun has no more to do than with patent safety-matches. His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality for ever. There are various legends on this subject.

Maui Myths

Some say Maui noticed that the sun and moon rose again from their daily death, by virtue of a fountain in Hades (Hine-nui-te-po) where they bathed. Others say he wished to kill Hine-nui-te-po (conceived of as a woman) and to carry off her heart. Whatever the reason, Maui was to be swallowed up in the giant frame of Hades, or Night, and, if he escaped alive, Death would never have power over men. He made the desperate adventure, and would have succeeded but for the folly of one of the birds which accompanied him. This little bird, which sings at sunset, burst out laughing inopportunely, wakened Hine-nui-te-po, and she crushed to death Maui and all hopes of earthly immortality. Had he only come forth alive, men would have been deathless. Now, except that the bird which laughed sings at sunset, what is there 'solar' in all this? _The sun does daily what Maui failed to do_, {190a} passes through darkness and death back into light and life. Not only does the sun daily succeed where Maui failed, but it was his observation of this fact which encouraged Maui to risk the adventure. If Maui were the sun, we should all be immortal, for Maui's ordeal is daily achieved by the sun. But Dr. Tylor says: {190b} 'It is seldom that solar characteristics are more distinctly marked in the several details of a myth than they are here.' To us the characteristics seem to be precisely the reverse of solar. Throughout the cycle of Maui he is constantly set in direct opposition to the sun, and the very point of the final legend is that what the sun could do Maui could not. Literally the one common point between Maui and the sun is that the little bird, the tiwakawaka, which sings at the daily death of day, sang at the eternal death of Maui.

Without pausing to consider the Tongan myth of the Origin of Death, we may go on to investigate the legends of the Aryan races. According to the Satapatha Brahmana, Death was made, like the gods and other creatures, by a being named Prajapati. Now of Prajapati, half was mortal, half was immortal. With his mortal half he feared Death, and concealed himself from Death in earth and water. Death said to the gods, 'What hath become of him who created us?' They answered, 'Fearing thee, hath he entered the earth.' The gods and Prajapati now freed themselves from the dominion of Death by celebrating an enormous number of sacrifices. Death was chagrined by their escape from the 'nets and clubs' which he carries in the Aitareya Brahmana. 'As you have escaped me, so will men also escape,' he grumbled. The gods appeased him by the promise that, _in the body_, no man henceforth for ever should evade Death. 'Every one who is to become immortal shall do so by first parting with his body.'

Yama

Among the Aryans of India, as we have already seen, Death has a protomartyr, Tama, 'the first of men who reached the river, spying out a path for many.' In spying the path Yama corresponds to Tangaro the Fool, in the myth of the Solomon Islands. But Yama is not regarded as a maleficent being, like Tangaro. The Rig Veda (x. 14) speaks of him as 'King Yama, who departed to the mighty streams and sought out a road for many;' and again, the Atharva Veda names him 'the first of men who died, and the first who departed to the celestial world.' With him the Blessed Fathers dwell for ever in happiness. Mr. Max Muller, as we said, takes Yama to be 'a character suggested by the setting sun'--a claim which is also put forward, as we have seen, for the Maori hero Maui. It is Yama, according to the Rig Veda, who sends the birds--a pigeon is one of his messengers (compare the White Bird of the Oxenhams)--as warnings of approaching death. Among the Iranian race, Yima appears to have been the counterpart of the Vedic Yama. He is now King of the Blessed; originally he was the first of men over whom Death won his earliest victory.

Inferences

That Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the Rig Veda, seems certain enough. Most phenomena, most gods, shade into each other in the Vedic hymns. But it is plain that the conception of a 'first man who died' is as common to many races as it is natural. Death was regarded as unnatural, yet here it is among us. How did it come? By somebody dying first, and establishing a bad precedent. But need that somebody have been originally the sun, as Mr. Max Muller and Dr. Tylor think in the cases of Yama and Maui? This is a point on which we may remain in doubt, for death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among savage philosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a solar myth. Human, too, rather than a result of 'disease of language' is, probably, the myth of the Fire-stealer.

The Stealing of Fire

The world-wide myth explaining how man first became possessed of fire--namely, by _stealing_ it--might well serve as a touchstone of the philological and anthropological methods. To Mr. Max Muller the interest of the story will certainly consist in discovering connections between Greek and Sanskrit names of fire-gods and of fire bringing heroes. He will not compare the fire-myths of other races all over the world, nor will he even try to explain why--in almost all of these myths we find a thief of fire, a Fire-stealer. This does not seem satisfactory to the anthropologist, whose first curiosity is to know why fire is everywhere said to have been obtained for men by sly theft or 'flat burglary.' Of course it is obvious that a myth found in Australia and America cannot possibly be the result of disease of Aryan languages not spoken in those two continents. The myth of fire-stealing must necessarily have some other origin.

'Fire Totems'

Mr. Max Muller, after a treatise on Agni and other fire-gods, consecrates two pages to 'Fire Totems.' 'If we are assured that there are some dark points left, and that these might be illustrated and rendered more intelligible by what are called fire totems among the Red Indians of North America, let us have as much light as we can get' (ii. 804). Alas! I never heard of fire totems before. Probably some one has been writing about them, somewhere, unless we owe them to Mr. Max Muller's own researches. Of course, he cites no authority for his fire totems. 'The fire totem, we are told, would thus naturally have become the god of the Indians.' 'We are told'--where, and by whom? Not a hint is given on the subject, so we must leave the doctrine of fire totems to its mysterious discoverer. 'If others prefer to call Prometheus a fire totem, no one would object, if only it would help us to a better understanding of Prometheus' (ii. 810). Who are the 'others' who speak of a Greek 'culture-hero' by the impossibly fantastic name of 'a fire totem'?

Prometheus

Mr. Max Muller 'follows Kuhn' in his explanation of Prometheus, the Fire- stealer, but he does not follow him all the way. Kuhn tried to account for the myth that Prometheus _stole_ fire, and Mr. Max Muller does not try. {194} Kuhn connects Prometheus with the Sanskrit pramantha, the stick used in producing fire by drilling a pointed into a flat piece of wood. The Greeks, of course, made Prometheus mean 'foresighted,' providens; but let it be granted that the Germans know better. Pramantha next is associated with the verb mathnami, 'to rub _or_ grind;' and that, again, with Greek [Greek], 'to learn.' We too talk of a student as a 'grinder,' by a coincidence. The root manth likewise means 'to rob;' and we can see in English how a fire-stick, a 'fire-rubber,' might become a 'fire-robber,' a stealer of fire. A somewhat similar confusion in old Aryan languages converted the fire-stick into a person, the thief of fire, Prometheus; while a Greek misunderstanding gave to Prometheus (pramantha, 'fire-stick') the meaning of 'foresighted,' with the word for prudent foresight, [Greek]. This, roughly stated, is the view of Kuhn. {195a} Mr. Max Muller concludes that Prometheus, the producer of fire, is also the fire-god, a representative of Agni, and necessarily 'of the inevitable Dawn'--'of Agni as the deus matutinus, a frequent character of the Vedic Agni, the Agni aushasa, or the daybreak' (ii. 813).

But Mr. Max Muller does not say one word about Prometheus as the Fire- stealer. Now, that he _stole_ fire is of the essence of his myth; and this myth of the original procuring of fire by theft occurs all over the world. As Australian and American savages cannot conceivably have derived the myth of fire-stealing from the root manth and its double sense of stealing and rubbing, there must be some other explanation. But this fact could not occur to comparative mythologists who did not compare, probably did not even know, similar myths wherever found.

Savage Myths of Fire-stealing

In La Mythologie (pp. 185-195) I have put together a small collection of savage myths of the theft of fire. {195b} Our text is the line of Hesiod (Theogony, 566), 'Prometheus _stole_ the far-seen ray of unwearied fire in a hollow stalk of fennel.' The same stalk is still used in the Greek isles for carrying fire, as it was of old--whence no doubt this feature of the myth. {195c} How did Prometheus steal fire? Some say from the altar of Zeus, others that he lit his rod at the sun. {196a} The Australians have the same fable; fire was obtained by a black fellow who climbed by a rope to the sun. Again, in Australia fire was the possession of two women alone. A man induced them to turn their backs, and stole fire. A very curious version of the myth occurs in an excellent book by Mrs. Langloh Parker. {196b} There was no fire when Rootoolgar, the crane, married Gooner, the kangaroo rat. Rootoolgar, idly rubbing two sticks together, discovered the art of fire-making. 'This we will keep secret,' they said, 'from all the tribes.' A fire- stick they carried about in their comebee. The tribes of the Bush discovered the secret, and the fire-stick was stolen by Reeargar, the hawk. We shall be told, of course, that the hawk is the lightning, or the Dawn. But in this savage Jungle Book all the characters are animals, and Reeargar is no more the Dawn than is the kangaroo rat. In savage myths animals, not men, play the leading roles, and the fire-stealing bird or beast is found among many widely scattered races. In Normandy the wren is the fire-bringer. {196c} A bird brings fire in the Andaman Isles. {196d} Among the Ahts a fish owned fire; other beasts stole it. The raven hero of the Thlinkeets, Yehl, stole fire. Among the Cahrocs two old women possessed it, and it was stolen by the coyote. Are these theftuous birds and beasts to be explained as Fire-gods? Probably not. Will any philologist aver that in Cahroc, Thlinkeet. Australian, Andaman, and so forth, the word for 'rub' resembled the word for 'rob,' and so produced by 'a disease of language' the myth of the Fire-stealer?

Origin of the Myth of Fire-stealing

The myth arose from the nature of savage ideas, not from unconscious puns. Even in a race so civilised as the Homeric Greeks, to make fire was no easy task. Homer speaks of a man, in a lonely upland hut, who carefully keeps the embers alive, that he may not have to go far afield in search of the seed of fire. {197} Obviously he had no ready means of striking a light. Suppose, then, that an early savage loses his seed of fire. His nearest neighbours, far enough off, may be hostile. If he wants fire, as they will not give it, he must _steal_ it, just as he must steal a wife. People in this condition would readily believe, like the Australian blacks, that the original discoverers or possessors of a secret so valuable as fire would not give it away, that others who wanted it would be obliged to get it by theft. In Greece, in a civilised race, this very natural old idea survives, though fire is not the possession of a crane, or of an old woman, but of the gods, and is stolen, not by a hawk or a coyote, but by Prometheus, the culture-hero and demiurge. Whether his name 'Foresighted' is a mistaken folk-etymology from the root manth, or not, we have, in the ancient inevitable idea, that the original patentees of fire would not willingly part with their treasure, the obvious origin of the myth of the Fire-stealer. And this theory does not leave the analogous savage myths of fire-stealing unexplained and out in the cold, as does the philological hypothesis. {198} In this last instance, as in others, the origin of a world-wide myth is found, not in a 'disease of language,' but in a form of thought still natural. If a foreign power wants what answers among us to the exclusive possession of fire, or wants the secret of its rival's new explosive, it has to _steal_ it.

CONCLUSION

Here ends this 'Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms.' I showed, first, why anthropological students of mythology, finding the philological school occupying the ground, were obliged in England to challenge Mr. Max Muller. I then discoursed of some inconveniences attending his method in controversy. Next, I gave a practical example, the affair of Tuna and Daphne. This led to a comparison of the philological and the anthropological ways of treating the Daphne myth. The question of our allies then coming up, I stated my reasons for regarding Prof. Tiele 'rather as an ally than an adversary,' the reason being his own statement. Presently, I replied to Prof. Tiele's criticism of my treatment of the myth of Cronos. After a skirmish on Italian fields, I gave my reasons for disagreeing with Mr. Max Muller's view of Mannhardt's position. His theory of Demeter Erinnys was contrasted with that of Mr. Max Muller. Totemism occupied us next, and the views of Mr. Max Muller and Mr. J. G. Frazer were criticised. Then I defended anthropological and criticised philological evidence. Our method of universal comparison was next justified in the matter of Fetishism. The Riddle Theory of Mr. Max Muller was presently discussed. Then followed a review of our contending methods in the explanation of Artemis, of the Fire-walk, of Death Myths, and of the Fire-stealer. Thus a number of points in mythological interpretation have been tested on typical examples.

Much more might be said on a book of nearly 900 pages. Many points might be taken, much praise (were mine worth anything) might be given; but I have had but one object, to defend the method of anthropology from a running or dropping fire of criticism which breaks out in many points all along the line, through Contributions to the Science of Mythology. If my answer be desultory and wandering, remember the sporadic sharpshooting of the adversary! For adversary we must consider Mr. Max Muller, so long as we use different theories to different results. If I am right, if he is wrong, in our attempts to untie this old Gordian knot, he loses little indeed. That fame of his, the most steady and brilliant light of all which crown the brows of contemporary scholars, is the well-earned reward, not of mythological lore nor of cunning fence in controversy, but of wide learning and exquisitely luminous style.

I trust that I have imputed no unfairness, made no charge of conscious misrepresentation (to accidents of exposition we are all liable), have struck no foul blow, hazarded no discourteous phrase. If I have done so, I am thereby, even more than in my smattering of unscholarly learning, an opponent more absolutely unworthy of the Right Hon. Professor than I would fain believe myself.

APPENDIX A: The Fire-walk in Spain

One study occasionally illustrates another. In examining the history of the Earl Marischal, who was exiled after the rising of 1715, I found, in a letter of a correspondent of d'Alembert, that the Earl met a form of the fire-walk in Spain. There then existed in the Peninsula a hereditary class of men who, by dint of 'charms' permitted by the Inquisition, could enter fire unharmed. The Earl Marischal said that he would believe in their powers if he were allowed first to light the fire, and then to look on. But the fire-walkers would not gratify him, as not knowing what kind of fire a heretic might kindle.

APPENDIX B: Mr. Macdonell on Vedic Mythology

Too late for use here came Vedic Mythology, from Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie, {201} by Mr. A. Macdonell, the representative of the historic house of Lochgarry. This even a non-scholar can perceive to be a most careful and learned work. As to philological 'equations' between names of Greek and Vedic gods, Mr. Macdonell writes: 'Dyaus=[Greek] is the only one which can be said to be beyond the range of doubt.' As to the connection of Prometheus with Sanskrit Pramantha, he says: '[Greek] has every appearance of being a purely Greek formation, while the Indian verb math, to twirl, is found compounded only with nis, never with pra, to express the art of producing fire by friction.' (See above, p. 194.) If Mr. Macdonell is right here, the Greek myth of the fire-stealer cannot have arisen from 'a disease of language.' But scholars must be left to reconcile this last typical example of their ceaseless differences in the matter of etymology of names.

FOOTNOTES

{0a} Chips, iv. 62.

{0b} Chips, iv. p. xxxv.

{0c} Chips, iv. pp. vi. vii.

{0d} Ibid. iv. p. xv.

{0e} Cults of the Greek States, ii. 435-440.

{0f} Chips, iv. p. xiv.

{0g} Chips, iv. p. xiii.

{5} Suidas, s.v. [Greek]; he cites Dionysius of Chalcis, B.C. 200.

{6a} See Goguet, and Millar of Glasgow, and Voltaire.

{6b} Translated by M. Parmentier.

{7} See 'Totemism,' infra.

{8} Longmans.

{10a} M. R. R. i. 155-160.

{10b} Tylor's Prim. Cult. i. 145.

{10c} Turner's Samoa, p. 219.

{10d} Gill's Myths and Songs, p. 79.

{11} M. R. R. ii. 160.

{14} Metam. i. 567.

{15a} Grimm, cited by Liebrecht in Zur Volkskunde, p. 17.

{15b} Primitive Culture, i. 285.

{15c} Op. cit. i. 46-81.

{16} M. R. R. i. 160.

{17} Erratum: This is erroneous. See Contributions, &c., vol. i. p. 6, where Mr. Max Muller writes, 'Tuna means eel.' This shows why Tuna, i.e. Eel, is the hero. His connection, as an admirer, with the Moon, perhaps remains obscure.

{18} Phonetically there may be 'no possible objection to the derivation of [Greek] from a Sanskrit form, *Apa-var-yan, or *Apa-val-yan' (ii. 692); but, historically, Greek is not derived from Sanskrit surely!

{20a} Mythologische Forschungen, p. 275.

{20b} Baumkultus, p. 297. Berlin: 1875.

{21a} Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 257. Referring to Baumkultus, p. 297.

{21b} Oriental and Linguistic Studies, second series, p. 160. La Religion Vedique, iii. 293.

{22} 1, viii. cf. i. 27.

{23} Riv. Crit. Mensile. Geneva, iii. xiv. p. 2.

{25a} Custom and Myth, p. 3, citing Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, ii. 136.

{25b} M. R. R. i. 24.

{25c} Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, xii. 256.

{26} Op. cit. p. 253.

{27} Op. cit. xii. 250.

{28a} P. 104, infra.

{28b} Revue de l'Hist. des Religions, xii. 259.

{29a} M. R. R. i. 25.

{29b} Rev. xii. 247.

{30} M. R. R. i. 24.

{31a} Rev. xii. 277.

{31b} Rev. xii. 264.

{31c} M. R. R. i. 44, 45.

{32a} Custom and Myth, p. 51.

{32b} Rev. xii. 262.

{34} Odyssey, book ix.

{37} C. and M. p. 56.

{42a} W. u. F. K. xxiii.

{42b} M. R. R. i. 23.

{42c} W. u. F. K. xvii.

{46} Golden Bough, 1. ix.

{48} [Greek]. Dionys. i. 80.

{51a} Pausanias, viii. 25.

{51b} Myth. Forsch. p. 244.

{51c} Iliad, xx. 226.

{52} Myth. Forsch, p. 265

{54} September 19, 1875. Myth. Forsch. xiv.

{55} For undeniable solar myths see M. R. R. i. 124-135.

{56} Op. cit. p. xx.

{60} Folk Lore Society.

{61a} Von einem der vorzuglichsten Schiriftgelehrten, Annana, in klassischer Darstellung aufgezeichneten Marchens, p. 240.

{61b} Custom and Myth.

{62a} See Preface to Mrs. Hunt's translation of Grimm's Marchen.

{62b} P. 309.

{65} x. 17. Cf. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 277.

{66} As the Sun's wife is Dawn, and leaves him at dawn, she is not much of a bedfellow. As _Night_, however, she _is_ a bedfellow of the nocturnal Sun.

{71} M. R. R. i. 58-81.

{72a} See Robertson Smith on 'Semitic Religion.'

{72b} See Sayce's Herodotus, p. 344.

{72c} See Rhys' Rhind Lectures; I am not convinced by the evidence.

{73} Academy, September 27, 1884.

{74a} Anth. Rel. p. 405.

{74b} Plantagenet, Planta genista.--A. L.

{74c} See M. R. R. ii. 56, for a criticism of this theory.

{76} Religion of the Semites, pp. 208, 209.

{78} Die Religionen, p. 12.

{79} Anth. Rel. p. 122.

{80} Dalton.

{81a} Strabo, xiii. 613. Pausanias, i. 24, 8.

{81b} Crooke, Introduction to Popular Religion of North India, p. 380.

{82a} C. and M. p. 115.

{82b} Contributions, ii. 687.

{83a} Evidence in G. B. i. 325, 326.

{83b} Compare Liebrecht, 'The Eaten God,' in Zur Volkskunde, p. 436.

{84a} Cf. G. B. ii. 17, for evidence.

{84b} M. R. R. ii. 232.

{84c} G. B. ii. 90-113.

{84d} In Encyclop. Brit. he thinks it 'very probable.'

{85a} i. 200.

{85b} M. R. R. ii. 142, 148-149.

{85c} R. V. iv. 18, 10.

{86} G. B. ii. 44-49.

{87} G. B. ii. 33.

{88a} Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. vi. McLennan, The Patriarchal Theory, p. 207, note 2.

{88b} G. B. ii. 337.

{89a} See G. B. ii. 332-334.

{89b} Religion of the Semites, p. 118.

{90} G. B. ii. 337, 338.

{93a} Custom and Myth, p. 235.

{93b} M. R. R. ii. 327.

{93c} Op. cit. ii. 329.

{94} Lectures on Science of Language, Second Series, p. 41.

{95} M. R. R. ii. 336.

{96} Anthropological Religion.

{97a} M. R. R. i. 171-173.

{97b} Ibid. i. 172.

{97c} Anth. Rel. p. 180.

{100} 'Totemism,' Encyclop. Brit.

{101a} M. R. R. ii. 333.

{101b} Ibid. ii. 335.

{103} M. R.. R.. i. 96, 127; ii. 22, 336.

{106a} Greek Etym. Engl. transl. i. 147.

{106b} Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, p. 431.

{109} Gr. Etym. i. 150.

{110} M. R. R. ii. 142.

{111a} ii. 210. Cf. Oldenberg in Deutsche Rundschau, 1895, p. 205.

{111b} R. V. iv. 18, 10.

{114} Aglaophamus, i. 700.

{115} Custom and Myth, i. 29-44. M. R. R. ii. 260-273.

{116} Custom and Myth, pp. 212-242.

{117a} Culte des Fetiches, 1760.

{117b} Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb. 1881.

{118a} C. and M. p. 230, note.

{118b} Rochas, Les Forces non definies, 1888, pp. 340-357, 411, 626.

{118c} Revue Bleue, 1890, p. 367.

{118d} De Brosses, p. 16.

{120a} C. and M. p. 214.

{120b} M. R. R. i. 327.

{120c} Lectures on the Science of Language, 2nd series, p. 41.

{121} M. R. R. ii. 327 and 329.

{124} M. R. R. ii. 324.

{125a} Paris: OEuvres, 1758, iii. 270.

{125b} M. R. R. ii. 324.

{126} I have no concern with his criticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer (p. 203), as I entirely disagree with that philosopher's theory. The defence of 'Animism' I leave to Dr. Tylor.

{135} Meyer, 1846, apud Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 432.

{138} My italics.

{139a} M. R. R. ii. 208-221.

{139b} Ibid. ii. 209.

{140} M. R. R. ii. 218.

{141a} De Dianae Antiquissima apud Graecos Natura, p. 76. Vratislaw, 1881.

{141b} De Diane Brauron, p. 33. Compare, for all the learning, Mr. Farnell, in Cults of the Greek States.

{142a} M. R. R. i. x.

{142b} Life in California, pp. 241, 303.

{142c} Religion of the Semites, p. 274.

{142d} See also Mr. Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 90-94; and Robertson Smith, op. cit. pp. 416-418.

{142e} Apostolius, viii. 19; vii. 10.

{143a} Melanesians, p. 32.

{143b} Samoa, p. 17.

{143c} M. R. R. ii. 33.

{143d} See also Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 92.

{143e} M. R. R. ii. 208.

{144a} M. R. R. ii. 209.

{144b} Custom and Myth, 'Star Myths.'

{148a} L. Preller, Rom. Myth. p. 239, gives etymologies.

{148b} AEn. xi. 785.

{149a} A. W. F. p. 328.

{149b} Dionys. Halic. iii. 32.

{149c} Hist. Nat. vii. 2.

{149d} AEn. xi. 784.

{149e} AEn. xi. 787.

{150a} Serv. AEn. vii. 800.

{150b} Authorities in A. F. W. K. p. 325.

{151a} Herabkunft, p. 30.

{151b} Pausanias, viii. 385.

{151c} A. W. F. K. xxii. xxiii.

{153} Janus, pp. 44-49.

{161} Home, the medium, was, or affected to be, entranced in his fire tricks, as was Bernadette, at Lourdes, in the Miracle du Cierge.

{163} The photograph referred to is evidently taken from a sketch by hand, and is not therefore a photograph from life.--EDITOR. The original photograph was hereon sent to the editor and acknowledged by him.--A. L.

{169} Proces, Quicherat, ii. 396, 397

{171} Introduction to Popular Religion and Folk-Lore in Northern India, by W. Crookes, B.A., p. 10.

{172} Iamblichus, De Myst. iii. 4.

{173} Folk-Lore, September 1895.

{174} Quoted by Dr. Boissarie in his book, Lourdes, p. 49, from a book by Dr. Dozous, now rare. Thanks to information from Dr. Boissarie, I have procured the book by Dr. Dozous, an eye-witness of the miracle, and have verified the quotation.

{175} Predvestniki spiritizma za posleanie 250 lyet. A. M. Aksakoff, St. Petersburg, 1895. See Mr. Leaf's review, Proceedings S. P. R. xii. 329.

{178} Prim. Cult. i. 138.

{179} Journal of Anthrop. Institute, x. iii.

{180a} Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 42.

{180b} Relations, 1637, p. 49.

{183a} Abor. of Victoria, i. 429.

{183b} Dalton, op. cit.

{184} Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Institute, x. iii. For America, compare Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1674, p. 13.

{185} The connection between the Moon and the Hare is also found in Sanskrit, in Mexican, in some of the South Sea Islands, and in German and Buddhist folklore. Probably what we call 'the Man in the Moon' seemed very like a hare to various races, roused their curiosity, and provoked explanations in the shape of myths.

{186} Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, p. 150.

{187} Codrington, op. cit, p. 304.

{188} Codrington, op. cit.

{190a} Bastian, Heilige Sage.

{190b} Primitive Culture, i. 336.

{194} Kuhn, Die Herabkunft der Feuers und der Gottertranks. Berlin, 1859.

{195a} Herabkunft, pp. 16, 24.

{195b} Dupret, Paris, 1886. Translation by M. Parmentier.

{195c} Pliny, Hist. Nat. xiii. 22. Bent. Cyclades.

{196a} Servius ad Virg., Eclogue vi. 42.

{196b} Australian Legendary Tales. Nutt: London, 1897. Mrs. Parker knows Australian dialects, and gives one story in the original. Her tribes live on the Narran River, in New South Wales.

{196c} Bosquet, La Normandie Merveilleuse. Paris, 1845.

{196d} Journal Anthrop. Institute, November, 1884.

{197} Odyssey, v. 488-493.

{198} References for savage myths of the Fire-stealer will be found--for the Ahts, in Sproat; for the tribes of the Pacific coast, in Bancroft; for Australians in Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria.

{201} Trubner, Strasburg, 1897.