Myths and myth-makers Part 10

[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'a.s.surer 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. c.o.x, whose scepticism on obscure points in history rather surpa.s.ses 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 p.r.o.nouncing an opinion on this point, but Mr. c.o.x's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions are not such as to make one feel obliged to accept his bare a.s.sertion, 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, Superst.i.tions 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 Ha.s.ssn 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds 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." Ta.s.so, 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 G.o.d. 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 circ.u.mlocution,--'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 G.o.ddess 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-G.o.ddess 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 c.o.x, 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: c.o.x, 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 ma.s.s of household legends to about fifty story-roots; and his list, though both redundant and defective, is nevertheless, as an empirical cla.s.sification, 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 aufgefa.s.st 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. lx.x.xvi; 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, ent.i.tled "Aryana Vaedjo," I hope to examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the garden of Eden.]

[Footnote 117: For further particulars see c.o.x, 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 pa.s.sages 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.]