Chapter 19

[Footnote 61: "Our country maidens are well aware that triple leaves plucked at hazard from the common ash are worn in the breast, for the purpose of causing prophetic dreams respecting a dilatory lover. The leaves of the yellow trefoil are supposed to possess similar virtues."--Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 20.]

[Footnote 62: In Peru, a mighty and far-worshipped deity was Catequil, the thunder-god,.... "he who in thunder-flash and clap hurls from his sling the small, round, smooth thunder-stones, treasured in the villages as fire-fetishes and charms to kindle the flames of love."--Tylor, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 239]

[Footnote 63: In Polynesia, "the great deity Maui adds a new complication to his enigmatic solar-celestial character by appearing as a wind-god."--Tylor, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 242.]

[Footnote 64: Compare Plato, Republic, VIII. 15.]

[Footnote 65: Were-wolf = man-wolf, wer meaning "man." Garou is a Gallic corruption of werewolf, so that loup-garou is a tautological expression.]

[Footnote 66: Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, Vol. I. p. 151.]

[Footnote 67: Aimoin, De Gestis Francorum, II. 5.]

[Footnote 68: Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393.]

[Footnote 69: Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon which is based the myth of the "confusion of tongues" in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really Bab-Il, or "the gate of God"; but the Hebrew writer erroneously derives the word from the root balal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical explanation,--that Babel was a place where human speech became confused. See Rawlinson, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I. p. 149; Renan, Histoire des Langues Semitiques, Vol. I. p. 32; Donaldson, New Cratylus, p. 74, note; Colenso on the Pentateuch, Vol. IV. p. 268.]

[Footnote 70: Vilg. AEn. VIII. 322. With Latium compare plat?s, Skr. prath (to spread out), Eng. flat. Ferrar, Comparative Grammar of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, Vol. I. p. 31.]

[Footnote 71: M`Lennan, "The Worship of Animals and Plants," Fortnightly Review, N. S. Vol. VI. pp. 407-427, 562-582, Vol. VII. pp 194-216; Spencer, "The Origin of Animal Worship," Id. Vol. VII. pp. 535-550, reprinted in his Recent Discussions in Science, etc., pp. 31-56.]

[Footnote 72: Thus is explained the singular conduct of the Hindu, who slays himself before his enemy's door, in order to acquire greater power of injuring him. "A certain Brahman, on whose lands a Kshatriya raja had built a house, ripped himself up in revenge, and became a demon of the kind called Brahmadasyu, who has been ever since the terror of the whole country, and is the most common village-deity in Kharakpur. Toward the close of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of whose house a man had wrongfully, as they thought, taken forty rupees; whereupon one of the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his own mother's head, with the professed view, entertained by both mother and son, that her spirit, excited by the beating of a large drum during forty days might haunt, torment, and pursue to death the taker of their money and those concerned with him." Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 103.]

[Footnote 73: Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still customary to open the windows when a person dies, in order that the soul may not be hindered in joining the mystic cavalcade.]

[Footnote 74: The story of little Red Riding-Hood is "mutilated in the English version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who can tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was swallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, till they both came out safe and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast." Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of Vasilissa the Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb, who "was swallowed by the cow and came out unhurt"; the story of Saktideva swallowed by the fish and cut out again, in Somadeva Bhatta, II. 118-184; and the story of Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old Testament. All these are different versions of the same myth, and refer to the alternate swallowing up and casting forth of Day by Night, which is commonly personified as a wolf, and now and then as a great fish. Compare Grimm's story of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. cit., and see Early History of Mankind, p. 337; Hardy, Manual of Budhism, p. 501.]

[Footnote 75: Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, II. 435.]

[Footnote 76: In those days even an after-dinner nap seems to have been thought uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, I. xxi.]

[Footnote 77: See Dasent, Burnt Njai, Vol. I. p. xxii.; Grettis Saga, by Magnusson and Morris, chap. xix.; Viga Glum's Saga, by Sir Edmund Head, p. 13, note, where the Berserkers are said to have maddened themselves with drugs. Dasent compares them with the Malays, who work themselves into a frenzy by means of arrack, or hasheesh, and run amuck.]

[Footnote 78: Baring-Gould, Werewolves, p. 81.]

[Footnote 79: Baring-Gould, op. cit. chap. xiv.]

[Footnote 80: Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 82.]

[Footnote 81: Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 90.]

[Footnote 82: "En 1541, a Padoue, dit Wier, un homme qui se croyait change en loup courait la campagne, attaquant et mettant a mort ceux qu'il rencontrait. Apres bien des difficultes, on parvint s'emparer de lui. Il dit en confidence a ceux qui l'arreterent: Je suis vraiment un loup, et si ma peau ne parait pas etre celle d'un loup, c'est parce qu'elle est retournee et que les poils sont en dedans.--Pour s'assurer du fait, on coupa le malheureux aux differentes parties du corps, on lui emporta les bras et les jambes."--Taine, De l'Intelligence, Tom. II. p. 203. See the account of Slavonic werewolves in Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp. 404-418.]

[Footnote 83: Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in history rather surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a sneer the subject of the Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimous testimony of the Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the convictions of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft." I have not the special knowledge requisite for pronouncing an opinion on this point, but Mr. Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions are not such as to make one feel obliged to accept his bare assertion, unaccompanied by critical arguments. The madness of the bearsarks may, no doubt, be the same thing us the frenzy of Herakles; but something more than mere dogmatism is needed to prove it.]

[Footnote 84: Williams, Superstitions of Witchcraft, p. 179. See a parallel case of a cat-woman, in Thorpe's Northern Mythology, II. 26. "Certain witches at Thurso for a long time tormented an honest fellow under the usual form of cats, till one night he put them to flight with his broadsword, and cut off the leg of one less nimble than the rest; taking it up, to his amazement he found it to be a woman's leg, and next morning he discovered the old hag its owner with but one leg left."--Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 283.]

[Footnote 85: "The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph; compare Anglo-Saxon wudurmaere (wood-mare) = echo."--Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 173.]

[Footnote 86: See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 91; Weber, Indische Studien. I. 197; Wolf, Beitrage zur deutschen Mythologie, II. 233-281 Muller, Chips, II. 114-128.]

[Footnote 87: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 207.]

[Footnote 88: The word nymph itself means "cloud-maiden," as is illustrated by the kinship between the Greek numph and the Latin nubes.]

[Footnote 89: This is substantially identical with the stories of Beauty and the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba Sena, etc.]

[Footnote 90: The feather-dress reappears in the Arabian story of Hasssn of El-Basrah, who by stealing it secures possession of the Jinniya. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 380. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 179.]

[Footnote 91: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, III. 173; Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 123.]

[Footnote 92: Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 168.]

[Footnote 93: Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 133.]

[Footnote 94: Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. IV. p. 12; Muller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, Vol. I. pp. 230-251; Fick, Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen Grundsprache, p. 124, s v. Bhaga.]

[Footnote 95: In the North American Review, October, 1869, p. 354, I have collected a number of facts which seem to me to prove beyond question that the name God is derived from Guodan, the original form of Odin, the supreme deity of our Pagan forefathers. The case is exactly parallel to that of the French Dieu, which is descended from the Deus of the pagan Roman.]

[Footnote 96: See Pott, Die Zigeuner, II. 311; Kuhn, Beitrage, I. 147. Yet in the worship of dewel by the Gypsies is to be found the element of diabolism invariably present in barbaric worship. "Dewel, the great god in heaven (dewa, deus), is rather feared than loved by these weather-beaten outcasts, for he harms them on their wanderings with his thunder and lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere with their dark doings. Therefore they curse him foully when misfortune falls on them; and when a child dies, they say that Dewel has eaten it." Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 248.]

[Footnote 97: See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939.]

[Footnote 98: The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformation degraded the Vedic gods into demons. "In Buddhism we find these ancient devas, Indra and the rest, carried about at shows, as servants of Buddha, as goblins, or fabulous heroes." Max Muller, Chips, I. 25. This is like the Christian change of Odin into an ogre, and of Thor into the Devil.]

[Footnote 99: Zeus--Dia--Zhna--di on............ Plato Kratylos, p. 396, A., with Stallbaum's note. See also Proklos, Comm. ad Timaeum, II. p. 226, Schneider; and compare Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, p. 401, a, 15, who adopts the etymology. See also Diogenes Laertius, VII. 147.]

[Footnote 100: Marcus Aurelius, v. 7; Hom. Iliad, xii. 25, cf. Petronius Arbiter, Sat. xliv.]

[Footnote 101: "Il Sol, dell aurea luce eterno forte." Tasso, Gerusalemme, XV. 47; ef. Dante, Paradiso, X. 28.]

[Footnote 102: The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than the tribes of North America. "In no Indian language could the early missionaries find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and Oki meant anything endowed with supernatural powers, from a snake-skin or a greasy Indian conjurer up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to use a circumlocution,--`the great chief of men,' or 'he who lives in the sky.'" Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. "The Algonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied none; doubtless because their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to swear by." Ibid, p. 31.]

[Footnote 103: Muller, Rig-Veda-Sanhita, I. 230.]

[Footnote 104: Compare the remarks of Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 13.]

[Footnote 105: It should be borne in mind, however, that one of the women who tempt Odysseus is not a dawn-maiden, but a goddess of darkness; Kalypso answers to Venus-Ursula in the myth of Tannhauser. Kirke, on the other hand, seems to be a dawn-maiden, like Medeia, whom she resembles. In her the wisdom of the dawn-goddess Athene, the loftiest of Greek divinities, becomes degraded into the art of an enchantress. She reappears, in the Arabian Nights, as the wicked Queen Labe, whose sorcery none of her lovers can baffle, save Beder, king of Persia.]

[Footnote 106: The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage; but the story of his perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as much as the stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. His grandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name being identical with that of the night-demon, Azidahaka, who appears in the Shah-Nameh as the biting serpent Zohak. See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, II. 358.]

[Footnote 107: In mediaeval legend this resistless Moira is transformed into the curse which prevents the Wandering Jew from resting until the day of judgment.]

[Footnote 108: Cox, Manual of Mythology, p. 134.]

[Footnote 109: In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has made an ingenious and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire existing mass of household legends to about fifty story-roots; and his list, though both redundant and defective, is nevertheless, as an empirical classification, very instructive.]

[Footnote 110: There is nothing in common between the names Hercules and Herakles. The latter is a compound, formed like Themistokles; the former is a simple derivative from the root of hercere, "to enclose." If Herakles had any equivalent in Latin, it would necessarily begin with S, and not with H, as septa corresponds to epta, sequor to epomai, etc. It should be noted, however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition of his History, abandons this view, and observes: "Auch der griechische Herakles ist fruh als Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in Italien einheimisch und dort in eigenthumlicher Weise aufgefasst worden, wie es scheint zunachst als Gott des gewagten Gewinns und der ausserordentlichen Vermogensvermehrung." Romische Geschichte, I. 181. One would gladly learn Mommsen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less defensible opinion.]

[Footnote 111: For the relations between Sancus and Herakles, see Preller, Romische Mythologie, p. 635; Vollmer, Mythologie, p. 970.]

[Footnote 112: Burnouf, Bhagavata-Purana, III. p. lxxxvi; Breal, op. cit. p. 98.]

[Footnote 113: Max Muller, Science of Language, II 484.]

[Footnote 114: As Max Muller observes, "apart from all mythological considerations, Sarama in Sanskrit is the same word as Helena in Greek." Op. cit. p. 490. The names correspond phonetically letter for letter, as, Surya corresponds to Helios, Sarameyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu to Achilleus. Muller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answers to the Panis.]

[Footnote 115: "I create evil," Isaiah xiv. 7; "Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it?" Amos iii. 6; cf. Iliad, xxiv. 527, and contrast 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 with 1 Chronicles xxi. 1.]

[Footnote 116: Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent in the Eden myth is intended for Satan. The identification is entirely the work of modern dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to the habit, so common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning about the Bible as if it were a single book, and not a collection of writings of different ages and of very different degrees of historic authenticity. In a future work, entitled "Aryana Vaedjo," I hope to examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the garden of Eden.]

[Footnote 117: For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. II. pp 358, 366; to which I am indebted for several of the details here given. Compare Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, I. 661, seq.]

[Footnote 118: Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are cited in Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. II. p. 368. The same belief is implied in the quaint monkish tale of "Celestinus and the Miller's Horse." See Tales from the Gesta Romanorum, p. 134.]

[Footnote 119: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. 11. p. 258.]

[Footnote 120: Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. p. 259. In the Norse story of "Not a Pin to choose between them," the old woman is in doubt as to her own identity, on waking up after the butcher has dipped her in a tar-barrel and rolled her on a heap of feathers; and when Tray barks at her, her perplexity is as great as the Devil's when fooled by the Frenschutz. See Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199.]

[Footnote 121: See Deulin, Contes d'un Buveur de Biere, pp. 3-29.]

[Footnote 122: Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. and No. XLII.]

[Footnote 123: See Dasent's Introduction, p. cxxxix; Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, Vol. IV. p. 344; and Williams, Indian Epic Poetry, p. 10.]

[Footnote 124: "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one occasion, when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now the Leopard had never seen a Ram before, and accordingly, approaching submissively, he said, 'Good day, friend! what may your name be?' The other, in his gruff voice, and striking his breast with his forefoot, said, 'I am a Ram; who are you?' 'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead than alive; and then, taking leave of the Ram, he ran home as fast as he could." Bleek, Hottentot Fables, p. 24.]

[Footnote 125: I agree, most heartily, with Mr. Mahaffy's remarks, Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 69.]

[Footnote 126: Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives about the countries within the arctic circle where during part of the year the sun never sets. "Their astonishment now knew no bounds. 'Ah! that must be another sun, not the same as the one we see here,' said an old man; and in spite of all my arguments to the contrary, the others adopted this opinion." Grey's Journals, I. 293, cited in Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 301.]

[Footnote 127: Max Muller, Chips, II. 96.]

[Footnote 128: Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270.]

[Footnote 129: A corruption of Gaelic bhan a teaigh, "lady of the house."]

[Footnote 130: For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on "The Genesis of Language," North American Review, October 1869, p. 320.]

[Footnote 131: Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II. p. 246.]

[Footnote 132: For various legends of a deluge, see Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 85-106.]

[Footnote 133: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 160.]

[Footnote 134: Brinton, op. cit. p. 163.]

[Footnote 135: Brinton, op. cit. p. 167.]

[Footnote 136: Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the Dioskouroi, and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse mythology.]

[Footnote 137: See Humboldt's Kosmos, Tom. III. pp. 469-476. A fetichistic regard for the cardinal points has not always been absent from the minds of persons instructed in a higher theology as witness a well-known passage in Irenaeus, and also the custom, well-nigh universal in Europe, of building Christian churches in a line east and west.]

[Footnote 138: Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 72. Compare the Fiji story of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo, the Rat, in Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 321.]

[Footnote 139: Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 327.]

[Footnote 140: Tylor, op. cit., p. 346.]

[Footnote 141: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 299-302.]

[Footnote 142: Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wallace says: "It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have the power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake of devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such transformations." Wallace, Malay Archipelago, Vol. I. p. 251.]

[Footnote 143: Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.]

[Footnote 144: Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30.]

[Footnote 145: Callaway, op. cit. pp. 142-152; cf. a similar story in which the lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op. cit. p. 7. I omit the sequel of the tale.]

[Footnote 146: Brinton, op. cit. p. 104.]

[Footnote 147: Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.]

[Footnote 148: Tylor, op. cit. pp. 338-343.]

[Footnote 149: Tylor, op. cit. p. 336. November, 1870]

[Footnote 150: Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. By the Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1869.]

[Footnote 151: Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 208.]

[Footnote 152: Grote, Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 198.]

[Footnote 153: For the precise extent to which I would indorse the theory that the Iliad-myth is an account of the victory of light over darkness, let me refer to what I have said above on p. 134. I do not suppose that the struggle between light and darkness was Homer's subject in the Iliad any more than it was Shakespeare's subject in "Hamlet." Homer's subject was the wrath of the Greek hero, as Shakespeare's subject was the vengeance of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the story of Hamlet, when traced back to its Norse original, is unmistakably the story of the quarrel between summer and winter; and the moody prince is as much a solar hero as Odin himself. See Simrock, Die Quellen des Shakespeare, I. 127-133. Of course Shakespeare knew nothing of this, as Homer knew nothing of the origin of his Achilleus. The two stories, therefore, are not to be taken as sun-myths in their present form. They are the offspring of other stories which were sun-myths; they are stories which conform to the sun-myth type after the manner above illustrated in the paper on Light and Darkness. [Hence there is nothing unintelligible in the inconsistency--which seems to puzzle Max Muller (Science of Language, 6th ed. Vol. II. p. 516, note 20)--of investing Paris with many of the characteristics of the children of light. Supposing, as we must, that the primitive sense of the Iliad-myth had as entirely disappeared in the Homeric age, as the primitive sense of the Hamlet-myth had disappeared in the times of Elizabeth, the fit ground for wonder is that such inconsistencies are not more numerous.] The physical theory of myths will be properly presented and comprehended, only when it is understood that we accept the physical derivation of such stories as the Iliad-myth in much the same way that we are bound to accept the physical etymologies of such words as soul, consider, truth, convince, deliberate, and the like. The late Dr. Gibbs of Yale College, in his "Philological Studies,"--a little book which I used to read with delight when a boy,--describes such etymologies as "faded metaphors." In similar wise, while refraining from characterizing the Iliad or the tragedy of Hamlet--any more than I would characterize Le Juif Errant by Sue, or La Maison Forestiere by Erckmann-Chatrian--as nature-myths, I would at the same time consider these poems well described as embodying "faded nature-myths."]

[Footnote 154: I have no opinion as to the nationality of the Earth-shaker, and, regarding the etymology of his name, I believe we can hardly do better than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox, that it is unknown. It may well be doubted, however, whether much good is likely to come of comparisons between Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or of distinctions between the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See Brown's Poseidon; a Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London, 1872,--a book which is open to several of the criticisms here directed against Mr. Gladstone's manner of theorizing.]