Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume II Part 27

* Paus., li. 86.

** Callaway, Izinyanga Zokvbula, p. 362

*** For a collection of pa.s.sages see Aglaophamus, 251-254.

The Black Demeter of the Phigalians in Arcadia was another most archaic form of the G.o.ddess. In Phigalia the myth of the wrath and reconciliation of the G.o.ddess a.s.sumed a brutal and unfamiliar aspect.

The common legend, universally known, declares that Demeter sorrowed for the _enlevement_ of her daughter, Persephone, by Hades. The Phigalians added another cause; the wandering Demeter had a.s.sumed the form of a mare, and was violently wooed by Poseidon in the guise of a stallion.*

* The same story was told of Cronus and Philyra, of Agni and a cow in the _Satapatha Brahmana_ (English translation, i.

326), of Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, who "fled in the form of a mare". Visvasvat, in like manner, a.s.sumed the shape of a horse, and followed her. From their intercourse sprang the two Asvins. See Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 227, or _Rig- Veda_, x. 17, 1. Here we touch a very curious point.

Erinnys was au Arcadian cognomen of the Demeter who was wedded as a mare (Paus., viii. 25). Now, Mr. Max Muller says that "Erinnys is the Vedic Saranyu, the Dawn," and we have seen that both Demeter Erinnys and Saranyu were wooed and won in the form of mares (Select Essays, i. 401, 492-622).

The curious thing is that, having so valuable a proof in his hand as the common b.e.s.t.i.a.l amours of both Saranyu and Erinnys Demeter, Mr. Max Muller does not produce it. The Scandinavian horse-loves of Loki also recur to the memory.

Praj.a.pati's loves in the shape of a deer are familiar in the Brahmanas. If Saranyu=Erinnys, and both=Dawn, then a dawn- myth has been imported into the legend of Demeter, whom n.o.body, perhaps, will call a dawn-G.o.ddess. Schwartz, as usual, makes the myth a storm-myth, and Demeter a G.o.ddess of storms (Ursprwig der Myth., p. 164).

The G.o.ddess, in wrath at this outrage, attired herself in black mourning raiment, and withdrew into a cave, according to the Phigalians, and the fruits of the earth perished. Zeus learned from Pan the place of Demeter's retreat, and sent to her the Moerae or Fates, who persuaded her to abate her anger. The cave became her holy place, and there was set an early wooden _xoanon_, or idol, representing the G.o.ddess in the shape of a woman with the head and mane of a mare, in memory of her involuntary intrigue in that shape. Serpents and other creatures were twined about her head, and in one hand, for a mystic reason undivulged, she held a dolphin, in the other a dove. The wooden image was destroyed by fire, and disasters fell on the Phigalians. Onatas was then employed to make a bronze statue like the old idol, wherof the fashion was revealed to him in a dream. This restoration was made about the time of the Persian war.

The sacrifices offered to this Demeter were fruits, grapes, honey and uncarded wool; whence it is clear that the black G.o.ddess was a true earth-mother, and received the fruits of the earth and the flock. The image by Onatas had somewhat mysteriously disappeared before the days of Pausanias.*

* Paus., viii. 42. Compare viii. 25, 4, for the horse Arion, whom Demeter bore to Poseidon.

Even in her rude Arcadian shape Demeter is a G.o.ddess of the fruits of earth. It is probable that her most archaic form survived from the "Pelasgian" clays in remote mountainous regions. Indeed Herodotus, observing the resemblance between the Osirian mysteries in Egypt and the Thesmophoria of Demeter in Greece, boldly a.s.serts that the Thesmophoria were Egyptian, and were brought to the Pelasgians from Egypt (ii. 171).

The Pelasgians were driven out of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, and the Arcadians, who were not expelled, retained the rites. As Pelasgians also lingered long in Attica, Herodotus recognised the Thesmophoria as in origin Egyptian. In modern language this theory means that the Thesmophoria were thought to be a rite of prehistoric antiquity older than the Dorian invasion. Herodotus naturally explained resemblances in the myth and ritual of distant peoples as the result of borrowing, usually from Egypt, an idea revived by M. Foucart. These a.n.a.logies, however, are more frequently produced by the working out of similar thoughts, presenting themselves to minds similarly situated in a similar way. The mysteries of Demeter offer an excellent specimen of the process. While the Greeks, not yet collected into cities, lived in village settlements, each village would possess its own feasts, mysteries and "medicine-dances," as the Red Indians say, appropriate to seedtime and harvest. For various reasons, certain of these local rites attained high importance in the development of Greek civilisation The Eleusinian performances, for instance, were adopted into the state ritual of a famous city, Athens, and finally acquired a national status, being open to all not disqualified h.e.l.lenes. In this development the old local ritual for the propitiation of Demeter, for the fertility of the seed sown, and for the gratification of the dead ancestors, was caught up into the religion of the state, and was modified by advancing ideas of religion and morality. But the local Athenian mystery of the Thesmophoria probably retained more of its primitive shape and purpose.

The Thesmophoria was the feast of seed-time, and Demeter was adored by the women as the patroness of human as well as of universal fertility.

Thus a certain jocund and licentious element was imparted to the rites, which were not to be witnessed by men.

The Demeter of the Thesmophoria was she who introduced and patronised the (------) of marriage, as Homer says of Odysseus and Penelope.* What was done at the Thesmophoria Herodotus did not think fit to tell. A scholiast on Lucian's _Dialogues of Courtesans_ let out the secret in a much later age. He repeats the story of the swineherd Eubuleus, whose pigs were swallowed up by the earth when it opened to receive Hades and Persephone. In honour and in memory of Eubuleus, pigs were thrown into the cavernof Demeter. Then certain women brought up the decaying flesh of the dead pigs, and placed it on the altar. It was believed that to mix this flesh with the seed-corn secured abundance of harvest. Though the rite is magical in character, perhaps the decaying flesh might act as manure, and be of real service to the farmer. Afterwards images of pigs, such as Mr. Newton found in a hole in the holy plot of Demeter at Cnidos, were restored to the place whence the flesh had been taken. The practice was believed to make marriage fruitful; its virtues were for the husband as well as for the husbandman.** However the Athenians got the rite, whether they evolved it or adapted it from some "Pelasgian"

or other prehistoric people, similar practices occur among the Khonds in India and the p.a.w.nees in America. The Khonds sacrifice a pig and a human victim, the p.a.w.nees a girl of a foreign tribe.

* Odyssey, xxiii. 295.

** Newton, Hulicarn., plate iv. pp. 331, 371-391.

The fragments of flesh are not mixed with the seed-corn, but buried on the borders of the fields.* The ancient, perhaps "Pelasgian," ritual of Demeter had thus its savage features and its savage a.n.a.logues.

More remarkable still is the p.a.w.nee version, as we may call it, of the Eleusinia. Curiously, the Red Indian myth which resembles that of Demeter and Persephone is _not_ told about Me-suk-k.u.m-mik-o-kwi, the Red Indian Mother Earth, to whom offerings are made, valuable objects being buried for her in bra.s.s kettles.** The American tale is attached to the legend of Manabozho and his brother Chibiabos, not to that of the Earth Mother and her daughter, if in America she had a daughter.

The account of the p.a.w.nee mysteries and their origin is worth quoting in full, as it is among the most remarkable of mythical coincidences. If we decline to believe that Pere De Smet invented the tale for the mere purpose of mystifying mythologists, we must, apparently, suppose that the coincidences are due to the similar workings of the human mind in the Prairies as at Eleusis. We shall first give the Red Indian version.

It was confided to De Smet, as part of the general tradition of the p.a.w.nees, by an old chief, and was first published by De Smet in his _Oregon Mission_*** Tanner speaks of the legend as one that the Indians chant in their "medicine-songs," which record the sacred beliefs of the race.****

* De Smet, Oregon Missions, p. 359; Mr. Russell's, "Report"

in Major Campbell's Personal Narrative, 1864, pp. 55, 113.

** Tanner's Narrative, 1830, p. 115.

*** New York, 1847.

**** Ibid., New York, 1830, pp. 192, 193.

He adds that many of these songs are noted down, by a method probably peculiar to the Indians, on birch-bark or small flat pieces of wood, the ideas being conveyed by emblematical figures. When it is remembered that the _luck_ of the tribe depends on these songs and rites, it will be admitted that they are probably of considerable antiquity, and that the Indians probably did not borrow the story about the origin of their ritual from some European conversant with the Homeric hymn to Demeter.

Here follows the myth, as borrowed (without acknowledgment) by Schoolcraft from De Smet:--*

"The Manitos (powers or spirits) were jealous of Manabozho and Chibiabos. Manabozho warned his brother never to be alone, but one day he ventured on the frozen lake and was drowned by the Manitos. Manabozho wailed along the sh.o.r.es. He waged a war against all the Manitos....

He called on the dead body of his brother. He put the whole country in dread by his lamentations. He then besmeared his face with black, and sat down six years to lament, uttering the name of Chibiabos. The Manitos consulted what to do to a.s.suage his melancholy and his wrath.

The oldest and wisest of them, who had had no hand in the death of Chibiabos, offered to undertake the task of reconciliation. They built a sacred lodge close to that of Manabozho, and prepared a sumptuous feast.

They then a.s.sembled in order, one behind the other, each carrying under his arm a sack of the skin of some favourite animal, as a beaver, an otter, or a lynx, and filled with precious and curious medicines culled from all plants. These they exhibited, and invited him to the feast with pleasing words and ceremonies. He immediately raised his head, uncovered it, and washed off his besmearments and mourning colours, and then followed them. They offered him a cup of liquor prepared from the choicest medicines, at once as a propitiation and an initiatory rite.

He drank it at a single draught, and found his melancholy departed. They then commenced their dances and songs, united with various ceremonies.

All danced, all sang, all acted with the utmost gravity, with exactness of time, motion and voice. Manabozho was cured; he ate, danced, sang and smoked the sacred pipe.

* Schoolcraft, L 318.

"In this manner the mysteries of the great medicine-dance were introduced.

"The Manitos now united their powers to bring Chibiabos to life. They did so, and brought him to life, but it was forbidden to enter the lodge. They gave him, through a c.h.i.n.k, a burning coal, and told him to go and preside over the country of souls and reign over the land of the dead.

"Manabozho, now retired from men, commits the care of medicinal plants to Misuk.u.migakwa, or the Mother of the Earth, to whom he makes offerings."

In all this the resemblance to the legend of the Homeric hymn to Demeter is undeniable. The hymn is too familiar to require a long a.n.a.lysis. We read how Demeter had a fair daughter, Persephone; how the Lord of the Dead carried her off as she was gathering flowers; how Demeter sought her with burning torches; and how the G.o.ddess came to Eleusis and the house of Celeus in the guise of an old wife. There she dwelt in sorrow, neither eating nor drinking, till she tasted of a mixture of barley and water (_cyceon_), and was moved to smile by the mirth of Iambe. Yet she still held apart in wrath from the society of the G.o.ds, and still the earth bore not her fruits, till the G.o.ds bade Hermes restore Persephone. But Persephone had tasted one pomegranate-seed in Hades, and therefore, according to a world-wide belief, she was under bonds to Hades. For only half the year does she return to earth; yet by this Demeter was comforted; the soil bore fruits again, and Demeter showed forth to the chiefs of Eleusis her sacred mysteries and the ritual of their performance.*

The Persephone myth is not in Homer, though in Homer Persephone is Lady of the Dead. Hesiod alludes to it in the _Theogony_ (912-914); but the chief authority is the Homeric hymn, which Matthaeus found (1777) in a farmyard at Moscow. "Inter pullos et porcos latuerat"--the pigs of Demeter had guarded the poem of her mysteries.** As to the date and authorship of the hymn, the learned differ in opinion. Probably most readers will regard it as a piece of poetry, like the hymn to Aphrodite, rather than as a "mystic chain of verse" meant solely for hieratic purposes. It is impossible to argue with safety that the Eleusinian mysteries and legend were later than Homer, because Homer does not allude to them.

* The superst.i.tion about the food of the dead is found in New Zealand, Melanesia, Scotland, Finland and among the Ojibbeways. Compare "Wandering Willie's" tale in _Redgaunttet_.

** Ruhnken, ap. Hignard, _Les Hymnes Homeriques_, p. 292, Paris, 1864.

He has no occasion to speak of them. Possibly the mysteries were, in his time, but the rites of a village or little town; they attained celebrity owing to their adoption by Athens, and they ended by becoming the most famous national festival. The meaning of the legend, in its origin, was probably no more than a propitiation of earth, and a ceremony that imitated, and so secured, the return of spring and vegetation. This early conception, which we have found in America, was easily combined with doctrines of the death and revival, not of the year, not of the seed sown, but of the human soul. These ideas were capable of endless ill.u.s.tration and amplification by priests; and the mysteries, by Plato's time, and even by Pindar's, were certainly understood to have a purifying influence on conduct and a favourable effect on the fortunes of the soul in the next world.

"Happy whosoever of mortal men has looked on these things; but whoso hath had no part nor lot in this sacrament hath no equal fate when once he hath perished and pa.s.sed within the pall of darkness."* Of such rites we may believe that Plato was thinking when he spoke of "beholding apparitions innocent and simple, and calm and happy, _as in a mystery_"** Nor is it strange that, when Greeks were seeking for a sign, and especially for some creed that might resist the new worship of Christ, Plutarch and the Neo-Platonic philosophers tried to cling to the promise of the mysteries of Demeter.

* Homeric Hymn, 480-482.

** Phaedrus, 260.

They regarded her secret things as "a dreamy shadow of that spectacle and that rite," the spectacle and rite of the harmonious order of the universe, some time to be revealed to the souls of the blessed.* It may not have been a drawback to the consolations of the hidden services that they made no appeal to the weary and wandering reason of the later heathens. Tired out with endless discourse on fate and free will, G.o.ds and demons, allegory and explanation, they could repose on mere spectacles and ceremonies and pious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, "without any evidence or proof offered for the statements ". Indeed, writers like Plutarch show almost the temper of Pascal, trying to secure rest for their souls by a wise pa.s.siveness and pious contemplation, and partic.i.p.ation in sacraments not understood.

As to the origin of these sacraments, we may believe, with Lobeck, that it was no priestly system of mystic and esoteric teaching, moral or physical. It was but the "medicine-dance" of a very old Greek tribal settlement, perhaps from the first with an ethical element. But from this, thanks to the genius of h.e.l.las, sprang all the beauty of the Eleusinian ritual, and all the consolation it offered the bereaved, all the comfort it yielded to the weary and heavy laden.** That the popular religious excitement caused by the mysteries and favoured by the darkness often produced scenes of l.u.s.tful revelry, may be probable enough. "Revivals" everywhere have this among other consequences. But we may share Lobeck's scepticism as to the wholesale charges of iniquity brought by the Fathers.

* Plutarch, De Def. Orac. xxii

** Lobeck, Aglaoph., 133.

In spite of survivals and slanders, the religion of Demeter was among the most natural, beautiful and touching of Greek beliefs. The wild element was not lacking; but a pious contemporary of Plato, when he bathed in the sea with his pig before beholding the mystery-play, probably made up his mind to blink the barbaric and licentious part of the performances.

CONCLUSION.

This brief review of Greek divine myths does not of course aim at exhausting the subject. We do not pretend to examine the legends of all the Olympians. But enough has been said to ill.u.s.trate the method of interpretation, and to give specimens of the method at work. It has been seen that there is only agreement among philologists as to the origin and meaning of two out of nearly a dozen divine names. Zeus is admitted to be connected with _Dyaus_, and to have originally meant "sky".