Custom and Myth Part 2

To end our examination of the Myth of Cronus, we may compare the solutions offered by scholars. As a rule, these solutions are based on the philological a.n.a.lysis of the names in the story. It will be seen that very various and absolutely inconsistent etymologies and meanings of Cronus are suggested by philologists of the highest authority. These contradictions are, unfortunately, rather the rule than the exception in the etymological interpretation of myths.

The opinion of Mr. Max Muller has always a right to the first hearing from English inquirers. Mr. Muller, naturally, examines first the name of the G.o.d whose legend he is investigating. He writes: 'There is no such being as Kronos in Sanskrit. Kronos did not exist till long after Zeus in Greece. Zeus was called by the Greeks the son of Time (??????). This is a very simple and very common form of mythological expression. It meant originally, not that time was the origin or source of Zeus, but ??????? or ?????d?? was used in the sense of "connected with time, representing time, existing through all time." Derivatives in -??? and -?d?? took, in later times, the more exclusive meaning of patronymics... . When this (the meaning of ?????d?? as equivalent to Ancient of Days) ceased to be understood, ... people asked themselves the question, Why is ?e?? called ?????d??? And the natural and almost inevitable answer was, Because he is the son, the offspring of a more ancient G.o.d, ??????. This may be a very old myth in Greece; but the misunderstanding which gave rise to it could have happened in Greece only. We cannot expect, therefore, a G.o.d ?????? in the Veda.' To expect Greek in the Veda would certainly be sanguine. 'When this myth of ?????? had once been started, it would roll on irresistibly. If ?e?? had once a father called ??????, ?????? must have a wife.' It is added, as confirmation, that 'the name of ?????d?? belongs originally to Zeus only, and not to his later' (in Hesiod elder) 'brothers, Poseidon and Hades.' {58a}

Mr. Muller says, in his famous essay on 'Comparative Mythology' {58b}: 'How can we imagine that a few generations before that time' (the age of Solon) 'the highest notions of the G.o.dhead among the Greeks were adequately expressed by the story of Uranos maimed by Kronos,-of Kronos eating his children, swallowing a stone, and vomiting out alive his whole progeny. Among the lowest tribes of Africa and America, we hardly find anything more hideous and revolting.' We have found a good deal of the sort in Africa and America, where it seems not out of place.

One objection to Mr. Muller's theory is, that it makes the mystery no clearer. When Greeks were so advanced in h.e.l.lenism that their own early language had become obsolete and obscure, they invented the G.o.d ??????, to account for the patronymic (as they deemed it) ?????d??, son of ??????. But why did they tell such savage and revolting stories about the G.o.d they had invented? Mr. Muller only says the myth 'would roll on irresistibly.' But why did the rolling myth gather such very strange moss? That is the problem; and, while Mr. Muller's hypothesis accounts for the existence of a G.o.d called ??????, it does not even attempt to show how full-blown Greeks came to believe such hideous stories about the G.o.d.

This theory, therefore, is of no practical service. The theory of Adalbert Kuhn, one of the most famous of Sanskrit scholars, and author of 'Die Herabkunft des Feuers,' is directly opposed to the ideas of Mr. Muller. In Cronus, Mr. Muller recognises a G.o.d who could only have come into being among Greeks, when the Greeks had begun to forget the original meaning of 'derivatives in -??? and -?d??.' Kuhn, on the other hand, derives ?????? from the same root as the Sanskrit Krana. {59} Krana means, it appears, der fur sich schaffende, he who creates for himself, and Cronus is compared to the Indian Pragapati, about whom even more abominable stories are told than the myths which circulate to the prejudice of Cronus. According to Kuhn, the 'swallow-myth' means that Cronus, the lord of light and dark powers, swallows the divinities of light. But in place of Zeus (that is, according to Kuhn, of the daylight sky) he swallows a stone, that is, the sun. When he disgorges the stone (the sun), he also disgorges the G.o.ds of light whom he had swallowed.

I confess that I cannot understand these distinctions between the father and lord of light and dark (Cronus) and the beings he swallowed. Nor do I find it easy to believe that myth-making man took all those distinctions, or held those views of the Creator. However, the chief thing to note is that Mr. Muller's etymology and Kuhn's etymology of Cronus can hardly both be true, which, as their systems both depend on etymological a.n.a.lysis, is somewhat discomfiting.

The next etymological theory is the daring speculation of Mr. Brown. In 'The Great Dionysiak Myth' {60a} Mr. Brown writes: 'I regard Kronos as the equivalent of Karnos, Karnaios, Karnaivis, the Horned G.o.d; a.s.syrian, KaRNu; Hebrew, KeReN, horn; h.e.l.lenic, KRoNos, or KaRNos.' Mr. Brown seems to think that Cronus is 'the ripening power of harvest,' and also 'a wily savage G.o.d,' in which opinion one quite agrees with him. Why the name of Cronus should mean 'horned,' when he is never represented with horns, it is hard to say. But among the various foreign G.o.ds in whom the Greeks recognised their own Cronus, one Hea, 'regarded by Berosos as Kronos,' seems to have been 'horn-wearing.' {60b} Horns are lacking in Seb and Il, if not in Baal Hamon, though Mr. Brown would like to behorn them.

Let us now turn to Preller. {61a} According to Preller, ?????? is connected with ??a???, to fulfil, to bring to completion. The harvest month, the month of ripening and fulfilment, was called ??????? in some parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with its memory of Saturn's golden days, was named ?????a. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of harvest-time, works in well with this explanation, and we have a kind of pun in Homer which points in the direction of Preller's derivation from ??a???:-

??d a?a p? ?? epe??a?a??e ???????

and in Sophocles ('Tr.' 126)-

? pa?ta ??a???? as??e?? ?????da?.

Preller ill.u.s.trates the mutilation of Ura.n.u.s by the Maori tale of Tutenganahau. The child-swallowing he connects with Punic and Phnician influence, and Semitic sacrifices of men and children. Porphyry {61b} speaks of human sacrifices to Cronus in Rhodes, and the Greeks recognised Cronus in the Carthaginian G.o.d to whom children were offered up.

Hartung {61c} takes Cronus, when he mutilates Ura.n.u.s, to be the fire of the sun, scorching the sky of spring. This, again, is somewhat out of accord with Schwartz's idea, that Cronus is the storm-G.o.d, the cloud-swallowing deity, his sickle the rainbow, and the blood of Ura.n.u.s the lightning. {61d} According to Prof. Sayce, again, {62a} the blood-drops of Ura.n.u.s are rain-drops. Cronus is the sun-G.o.d, piercing the dark cloud, which is just the reverse of Schwartz's idea. Prof. Sayce sees points in common between the legend of Moloch, or of Baal under the name of Moloch, and the myth of Cronus. But Moloch, he thinks, is not a G.o.d of Phnician origin, but a deity borrowed from 'the primitive Accadian population of Babylonia.' Mr. Isaac Taylor, again, explains Cronus as the sky which swallows and reproduces the stars. The story of the sickle may be derived from the crescent moon, the 'silver sickle,' or from a crescent-shaped piece of meteoric iron-for, in this theory, the fetich-stone of Delphi is a piece of that substance.

It will be observed that any one of these theories, if accepted, is much more 'minute in detail' than our humble suggestion. He who adopts any one of them, knows all about it. He knows that Cronus is a purely Greek G.o.d, or that he is connected with the Sanskrit Krana, which Tiele, {62b} unhappily, says is 'a very dubious word.' Or the mythologist may be quite confident that Cronus is neither Greek nor, in any sense, Sanskrit, but Phnician. A not less adequate interpretation a.s.signs him ultimately to Accadia. While the inquirer who can choose a system and stick to it knows the exact nationality of Cronus, he is also well acquainted with his character as a nature-G.o.d. He may be Time, or perhaps he is the Summer Heat, and a horned G.o.d; or he is the harvest-G.o.d, or the G.o.d of storm and darkness, or the midnight sky,-the choice is wide; or he is the lord of dark and light, and his children are the stars, the clouds, the summer months, the light-powers, or what you will. The mythologist has only to make his selection.

The system according to which we tried to interpret the myth is less ondoyant et divers. We do not even pretend to explain everything. We do not guess at the meaning and root of the word Cronus. We only find parallels to the myth among savages, whose mental condition is fertile in such legends. And we only infer that the myth of Cronus was originally evolved by persons also in the savage intellectual condition. The survival we explain as, in a previous essay, we explained the survival of the bull-roarer by the conservatism of the religious instinct.

CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE 'SUN-FROG.'

'Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen,' says the old woman in Apuleius, beginning the tale of Cupid and Psyche with that ancient formula which has been dear to so many generations of children. In one shape or other the tale of Cupid and Psyche, of the woman who is forbidden to see or to name her husband, of the man with the vanished fairy bride, is known in most lands, 'even among barbarians.' According to the story the mystic prohibition is always broken: the hidden face is beheld; light is brought into the darkness; the forbidden name is uttered; the bride is touched with the tabooed metal, iron, and the union is ended. Sometimes the pair are re-united, after long searchings and wanderings; sometimes they are severed for ever. Such are the central situations in tales like that of Cupid and Psyche.

In the attempt to discover how the ideas on which this myth is based came into existence, we may choose one of two methods. We may confine our investigations to the Aryan peoples, among whom the story occurs both in the form of myth and of household tale. Again, we may look for the shapes of the legend which hide, like Peau d'Ane in disguise, among the rude kraals and wigwams, and in the strange and scanty garb of savages. If among savages we find both narratives like Cupid and Psyche, and also customs and laws out of which the myth might have arisen, we may provisionally conclude that similar customs once existed among the civilised races who possess the tale, and that from these sprang the early forms of the myth.

In accordance with the method hitherto adopted, we shall prefer the second plan, and pursue our quest beyond the limits of the Aryan peoples.

The oldest literary shape of the tale of Psyche and her lover is found in the Rig Veda (x. 95). The characters of a singular and cynical dialogue in that poem are named Urvasi and Pururavas. The former is an Apsaras, a kind of fairy or sylph, the mistress (and a folle maitresse, too) of Pururavas, a mortal man. {65} In the poem Urvasi remarks that when she dwelt among men she 'ate once a day a small piece of b.u.t.ter, and therewith well satisfied went away.' This slightly reminds one of the common idea that the living may not eat in the land of the dead, and of Persephone's tasting the pomegranate in Hades.

Of the dialogue in the Rig Veda it may be said, in the words of Mr. Toots, that 'the language is coa.r.s.e and the meaning is obscure.' We only gather that Urvasi, though she admits her sensual content in the society of Pururavas, is leaving him 'like the first of the dawns'; that she 'goes home again, hard to be caught, like the winds.' She gives her lover some hope, however-that the G.o.ds promise immortality even to him, 'the kinsman of Death' as he is. 'Let thine offspring worship the G.o.ds with an oblation; in Heaven shalt thou too have joy of the festival.'

In the Rig Veda, then, we dimly discern a parting between a mortal man and an immortal bride, and a promise of reconciliation.

The story, of which this Vedic poem is a partial dramatisation, is given in the Brahmana of the Yajur Veda. Mr. Max Muller has translated the pa.s.sage. {66a} According to the Brahmana, 'Urvasi, a kind of fairy, fell in love with Pururavas, and when she met him she said: Embrace me three times a day, but never against my will, and let me never see you without your royal garments, for this is the manner of women.' {66b} The Gandharvas, a spiritual race, kinsmen of Urvasi, thought she had lingered too long among men. They therefore plotted some way of parting her from Pururavas. Her covenant with her lord declared that she was never to see him naked. If that compact were broken she would be compelled to leave him. To make Pururavas break this compact the Gandharvas stole a lamb from beside Urvasi's bed: Pururavas sprang up to rescue the lamb, and, in a flash of lightning, Urvasi saw him naked, contrary to the manner of women. She vanished. He sought her long, and at last came to a lake where she and her fairy friends were playing in the shape of birds. Urvasi saw Pururavas, revealed herself to him, and, according to the Brahmana, part of the strange Vedic dialogue was now spoken. Urvasi promised to meet him on the last night of the year: a son was to be the result of the interview. Next day, her kinsfolk, the Gandharvas, offered Pururavas the wish of his heart. He wished to be one of them. They then initiated him into the mode of kindling a certain sacred fire, after which he became immortal and dwelt among the Gandharvas.

It is highly characteristic of the Indian mind that the story should be thus worked into connection with ritual. In the same way the Bhagavata Purana has a long, silly, and rather obscene narrative about the sacrifice offered by Pururavas, and the new kind of sacred fire. Much the same ritual tale is found in the Vishnu Purana (iv. 6, 19).

Before attempting to offer our own theory of the legend, we must examine the explanations presented by scholars. The philological method of dealing with myths is well known. The hypothesis is that the names in a myth are 'stubborn things,' and that, as the whole narrative has probably arisen from forgetfulness of the meaning of language, the secret of a myth must be sought in a.n.a.lysis of the proper names of the persons. On this principle Mr. Max Muller interprets the myth of Urvasi and Pururavas, their loves, separation, and reunion. Mr. Muller says that the story 'expresses the ident.i.ty of the morning dawn and the evening twilight.' {68} To prove this, the names are a.n.a.lysed. It is Mr. Muller's object to show that though, even in the Veda, Urvasi and Pururavas are names of persons, they were originally 'appellations'; and that Urvasi meant 'dawn,' and Pururavas 'sun.' Mr. Muller's opinion as to the etymological sense of the names would be thought decisive, naturally, by lay readers, if an opposite opinion were not held by that other great philologist and comparative mythologist, Adalbert Kuhn. Admitting that 'the etymology of Urvasi is difficult,' Mr. Muller derives it from 'uru, wide (e???), and a root as = to pervade.' Now the dawn is 'widely pervading,' and has, in Sanskrit, the epithet urki, 'far-going.' Mr. Muller next a.s.sumes that 'Eurykyde,' 'Eurynome,' 'Eurydike,' and other heroic Greek female names, are 'names of the dawn'; but this, it must be said, is merely an a.s.sumption of his school. The main point of the argument is that Urvasi means 'far-going,' and that 'the far and wide splendour of dawn' is often spoken of in the Veda. 'However, the best proof that Urvasi was the dawn is the legend told of her and of her love to Pururavas, a story that is true only of the sun and the dawn' (i. 407).

We shall presently see that a similar story is told of persons in whom the dawn can scarcely be recognised, so that 'the best proof' is not very good.

The name of Pururavas, again, is 'an appropriate name for a solar hero.' ... Pururavas meant the same as ????de????, 'endowed with much light,' for, though rava is generally used of sound, yet the root ru, which means originally 'to cry,' is also applied to colour, in the sense of a loud or crying colour, that is, red. {69a} Violet also, according to Sir G. W. c.o.x, {69b} is a loud or crying colour. 'The word (???), as applied to colour, is traced by Professor Max Muller to the root i, as denoting a "crying hue," that is, a loud colour.' It is interesting to learn that our Aryan fathers spoke of 'loud colours,' and were so sensitive as to think violet 'loud.' Besides, Pururavas calls himself Vasistha, which, as we know, is a name of the sun; and if he is called Aido, the son of Ida, the same name is elsewhere given {69c} to Agni, the fire. 'The conclusion of the argument is that antiquity spoke of the naked sun, and of the chaste dawn hiding her face when she had seen her husband. Yet she says she will come again. And after the sun has travelled through the world in search of his beloved, when he comes to the threshold of Death and is going to end his solitary life, she appears again, in the gloaming, the same as the dawn, as Eos in Homer, begins and ends the day, and she carries him away to the golden seats of the Immortals.' {69d}

Kuhn objects to all this explanation, partly on what we think the inadequate ground that there is no necessary connection between the story of Urvasi (thus interpreted) and the ritual of sacred fire-lighting. Connections of that sort were easily invented at random by the compilers of the Brahmanas in their existing form. Coming to the a.n.a.lysis of names, Kuhn finds in Urvasi 'a weakening of Urvanki (uru + anc), like yuvaca from yuvanka, Latin juvencus ... the accent is of no decisive weight.' Kuhn will not be convinced that Pururavas is the sun, and is unmoved by the ingenious theory of 'a crying colour,' denoted by his name, and the inference, supported by such words as rufus, that crying colours are red, and therefore appropriate names of the red sun. The connection between Pururavas and Agni, fire, is what appeals to Kuhn-and, in short, where Mr. Muller sees a myth of sun and dawn, Kuhn recognises a fire-myth. Roth, again (whose own name means red), far from thinking that Urvasi is 'the chaste dawn,' interprets her name as die geile, that is, 'lecherous, lascivious, lewd, wanton, obscene'; while Pururavas, as 'the Roarer,' suggests 'the Bull in rut.' In accordance with these views Roth explains the myth in a fashion of his own. {70a}

Here, then, as Kuhn says, 'we have three essentially different modes of interpreting the myth,' {70b} all three founded on philological a.n.a.lysis of the names in the story. No better example could be given to ill.u.s.trate the weakness of the philological method. In the first place, that method relies on names as the primitive relics and germs of the tale, although the tale may occur where the names have never been heard, and though the names are, presumably, late additions to a story in which the characters were originally anonymous. Again, the most ill.u.s.trious etymologists differ absolutely about the true sense of the names. Kuhn sees fire everywhere, and fire-myths; Mr. Muller sees dawn and dawn-myths; Schwartz sees storm and storm-myths, and so on. As the orthodox teachers are thus at variance, so that there is no safety in orthodoxy, we may attempt to use our heterodox method.

None of the three scholars whose views we have glanced at-neither Roth, Kuhn, nor Mr. Muller-lays stress on the saying of Urvasi, 'never let me see you without your royal garments, for this is the custom of women.' {71} To our mind, these words contain the gist of the myth. There must have been, at some time, a custom which forbade women to see their husbands without their garments, or the words have no meaning. If any custom of this kind existed, a story might well be evolved to give a sanction to the law. 'You must never see your husband naked: think what happened to Urvasi-she vanished clean away!' This is the kind of warning which might be given. If the customary prohibition had grown obsolete, the punishment might well be a.s.signed to a being of another, a spiritual, race, in which old human ideas lingered, as the neolithic dread of iron lingers in the Welsh fairies.

Our method will be, to prove the existence of singular rules of etiquette, corresponding to the etiquette accidentally infringed by Pururavas. We shall then investigate stories of the same character as that of Urvasi and Pururavas, in which the infringement of the etiquette is chastised. It will be seen that, in most cases, the bride is of a peculiar and perhaps supernatural race. Finally, the tale of Urvasi will be taken up again, will be shown to conform in character to the other stories examined, and will be explained as a myth told to ill.u.s.trate, or sanction, a nuptial etiquette.

The lives of savages are bound by the most closely-woven fetters of custom. The simplest acts are 'tabooed,' a strict code regulates all intercourse. Married life, especially, moves in the strangest fetters. There will be nothing remarkable in the wide distribution of a myth turning on nuptial etiquette, if this law of nuptial etiquette proves to be also widely distributed. That it is widely distributed we now propose to demonstrate by examples.

The custom of the African people of the kingdom of Futa is, or was, even stricter than the Vedic custom of women-'wives never permit their husbands to see them unveiled for three years after their marriage.' {72}

In his 'Travels to Timbuctoo' (i. 94), Caillie says that the bridegroom 'is not allowed to see his intended during the day.' He has a tabooed hut apart, and 'if he is obliged to come out he covers his face.' He 'remains with his wife only till daybreak'-like Cupid-and flees, like Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo. {73a}

Among the Yorubas 'conventional modesty forbids a woman to speak to her husband, or even to see him, if it can be avoided.' {73b} Of the Iroquois Lafitau says: 'Ils n'osent aller dans les cabanes particulieres ou habitent leurs epouses que durant l'obscurite de la nuit.' {73c} The Circa.s.sian women live on distant terms with their lords till they become mothers. {73d} Similar examples of reserve are reported to be customary among the Fijians.

In backward parts of Europe a strange custom forbids the bride to speak to her lord, as if in memory of a time when husband and wife were always of alien tribes, and, as among the Caribs, spoke different languages.

In the Bulgarian 'Volkslied,' the Sun marries Grozdanka, a mortal girl. Her mother addresses her thus:-

Grozdanka, mother's treasure mine, For nine long years I nourished thee, For nine months see thou do not speak To thy first love that marries thee.

M. Dozon, who has collected the Bulgarian songs, says that this custom of prolonged silence on the part of the bride is very common in Bulgaria, though it is beginning to yield to a sense of the ludicrous. {74a} In Sparta and in Crete, as is well known, the bridegroom was long the victim of a somewhat similar taboo, and was only permitted to seek the company of his wife secretly, and in the dark, like the Iroquois described by Lafitau.

Herodotus tells us (i. 146) that some of the old Ionian colonists 'brought no women with them, but took wives of the women of the Carians, whose fathers they had slain. Therefore the women made a law for themselves, and handed it down to their daughters, that they should never sit at meat with their husbands, and that none should ever call her husband by his name.' In precisely the same way, in Zululand the wife may not mention her husband's name, just as in the Welsh fairy tale the husband may not even know the name of his fairy bride, on pain of losing her for ever. These ideas about names, and freakish ways of avoiding the use of names, mark the childhood of languages, according to Mr. Max Muller, {74b} and, therefore, the childhood of Society. The Kaffirs call this etiquette 'Hlonipa.' It applies to women as well as men. A Kaffir bride is not called by her own name in her husband's village, but is spoken of as 'mother of so and so,' even before she has borne a child. The universal superst.i.tion about names is at the bottom of this custom. The Aleutian Islanders, according to Dall, are quite distressed when obliged to speak to their wives in the presence of others. The Fijians did not know where to look when missionaries hinted that a man might live under the same roof as his wife. {75a} Among the Turkomans, for six months, a year, or two years, a husband is only allowed to visit his wife by stealth.

The number of these instances could probably be increased by a little research. Our argument is that the widely distributed myths in which a husband or a wife transgresses some 'custom'-sees the other's face or body, or utters the forbidden name-might well have arisen as tales ill.u.s.trating the punishment of breaking the rule. By a very curious coincidence, a Breton sailor's tale of the 'Cupid and Psyche' cla.s.s is confessedly founded on the existence of the rule of nuptial etiquette. {75b}

In this story the son of a Boulogne pilot marries the daughter of the King of Naz-wherever that may be. In Naz a man is never allowed to see the face of his wife till she has borne him a child-a modification of the Futa rule. The inquisitive French husband unveils his wife, and, like Psyche in Apuleius, drops wax from a candle on her cheek. When the pair return to Naz, the king of that country discovers the offence of the husband, and, by the aid of his magicians, transforms the Frenchman into a monster. Here we have the old formula-the infringement of a 'taboo,' and the magical punishment-adapted to the ideas of Breton peasantry. The essential point of the story, for our purpose, is that the veiling of the bride is 'the custom of women,' in the mysterious land of Naz. 'C'est l'usage du pays: les maris ne voient leurs femmes sans voile que lorsqu'elles sont devenues meres.' Now our theory of the myth of Urvasi is simply this: 'the custom of women,' which Pururavas transgresses, is probably a traditional Aryan law of nuptial etiquette, l'usage du pays, once prevalent among the people of India.

If our view be correct, then several rules of etiquette, and not one alone, will be ill.u.s.trated in the stories which we suppose the rules to have suggested. In the case of Urvasi and Pururavas, the rule was, not to see the husband naked. In 'Cupid and Psyche,' the husband was not to be looked upon at all. In the well-known myth of Melusine, the bride is not to be seen naked. Melusine tells her lover that she will only abide with him dum ipsam nudam non viderit. {76a} The same taboo occurs in a Dutch Marchen. {76b}

We have now to examine a singular form of the myth, in which the strange bride is not a fairy, or spiritual being, but an animal. In this cla.s.s of story the husband is usually forbidden to perform some act which will recall to the bride the a.s.sociations of her old animal existence. The converse of the tale is the well-known legend of the Forsaken Merman. The king of the sea permits his human wife to go to church. The ancient sacred a.s.sociations are revived, and the woman returns no more.

She will not come though you call all day Come away, come away.

Now, in the tales of the animal bride, it is her a.s.sociations with her former life among the beasts that are not to be revived, and when they are reawakened by the commission of some act which she has forbidden, or the neglect of some precaution which she has enjoined, she, like Urvasi, disappears.