Myths and myth-makers Part 9

[Footnote 32: Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks.

Berlin, 1859.]

[Footnote 33: "Saga me forwhan byth seo sunne read on aefen? Ic the secge, forthon heo locath on h.e.l.le.--Tell me, why is the sun red at even? I tell thee, because she looketh on h.e.l.l." Thorpe, a.n.a.lecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 115, apud Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 63.

Barbaric thought had partly antic.i.p.ated my childish theory.]

[Footnote 34: "Still in North Germany does the peasant say of thunder, that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and of the snow, that they are shaking up the feather beds in heaven."--Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 172.]

[Footnote 35: "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners papalangi, or 'heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from another world outside."--Max Muller, Chips, II. 268.]

[Footnote 36: "--And said the G.o.ds, let there be a hammered plate in the midst of the waters, and let it be dividing between waters and waters."

Genesis i. 6.]

[Footnote 37: Genesis vii. 11.]

[Footnote 38: See Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p 120; who states also that in Bengal the Garrows burn their dead in a small boat, placed on top of the funeral-pile. In their character of cows, also, the clouds were regarded as psychopomps; and hence it is still a popular superst.i.tion that a cow breaking into the yard foretokens a death in the family.]

[Footnote 39: The sun-G.o.d Freyr had a cloud-ship called Skithblathnir, which is thus described in Dasent's Prose Edda: "She is so great, that all the AEsir, with their weapons and war-gear, may find room on board her"; but "when there is no need of faring on the sea in her, she is made.... with so much craft that Freyr may fold her together like a cloth, and keep her in his bag." This same virtue was possessed by the fairy pavilion which the Peri Banou gave to Ahmed; the cloud which is no bigger than a man's hand may soon overspread the whole heaven, and shade the Sultan's army from the solar rays.]

[Footnote 40: Euhemerism has done its best with this bird, representing it as an immense vulture or condor or as a reminiscence of the extinct dodo. But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaproth, well preserves its true character when it describes it as "a bird which in flying obscures the sun, and of whose quills are made water-tuns." See Nouveau Journal Asiatique, Tom. XII. p. 235. The big bird in the Norse tale of the "Blue Belt" belongs to the same species.]

[Footnote 41: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 146. Compare Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 237, seq.]

[Footnote 42: "If Polyphemos's eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the solar hero, extinguishes himself, a very primitive instance of suicide."

Mahaffy, Prolegomena, p. 57. See also Brown, Poseidon, pp. 39, 40.

This objection would be relevant only in case Homer were supposed to be constructing an allegory with entire knowledge of its meaning. It has no validity whatever when we recollect that Homer could have known nothing of the incongruity.]

[Footnote 43: The Sanskrit myth-teller indeed mixes up his materials in a way which seems ludicrous to a Western reader. He describes Indra (the sun-G.o.d) as not only cleaving the cloud-mountains with his sword, but also cutting off their wings and hurling them from the sky. See Burnouf, Bhagavata Purana, VI. 12, 26.]

[Footnote 44: Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better, explanation of the Symplegades as the gates of Night through which the solar ship, having pa.s.sed successfully once, may henceforth pa.s.s forever. See the details of the evidence in his Primitive Culture, I.

315.]

[Footnote 45: The Sanskrit parvata, a bulging or inflated body, means both "cloud" and "mountain." "In the Edda, too, the rocks, said to have been fashioned out of Ymir's bones, are supposed to be intended for clouds. In Old Norse Klakkr means both cloud and rock; nay, the English word CLOUD itself has been identified with the Anglo-Saxon clud, rock.

See Justi, Orient und Occident, Vol. II. p. 62." Max Muller, Rig-Veda, Vol. 1. p. 44.]

[Footnote 46: In accordance with the mediaeval "doctrine of signatures,"

it was maintained "that the hard, stony seeds of the Gromwell must be good for gravel, and the knotty tubers of scrophularia for scrofulous glands; while the scaly pappus of scaliosa showed it to be a specific in leprous diseases, the spotted leaves of pulmonaria that it was a sovereign remedy for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage in the fissures of rocks that it would disintegrate stone in the bladder."

Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, Introd., p. xiv. See also Chapiel, La Doctrine des Signatures. Paris, 1866.]

[Footnote 47: Indeed, the wish-bone, or forked clavicle of a fowl, itself belongs to the same family of talismans as the divining-rod.]

[Footnote 48: The ash, on the other hand, has been from time immemorial used for spears in many parts of the Aryan domain. The word oesc meant, in Anglo-Saxon, indifferently "ash-tree," or "spear"; and the same is, or has been, true of the French fresne and the Greek melia. The root of oesc appears in the Sanskrit as, "to throw" or "lance," whence asa, "a bow," and asana, "an arrow." See Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeennes, I.

222.]

[Footnote 49: Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, in the "Faery Queen," where, however, the knight fares better than this poor priest.

Usually these lightning-caverns were like Ixion's treasure-house, into which none might look and live. This conception is the foundation of part of the story of Blue-Beard and of the Arabian tale of the third one-eyed Calender]

[Footnote 50: c.o.x, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. 1. p. 161.]

[Footnote 51: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, pp. 147, 183, 186, 193.]

[Footnote 52: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151.]

[Footnote 53: Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 173, Note 12.]

[Footnote 54: Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 238; Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 254; Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage, p. 409.]

[Footnote 55: The production of fire by the drill is often called churning, e. g. "He took the uvati [chark], and sat down and churned it, and kindled a fire." Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 174.]

[Footnote 56: Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 39. Burnouf, Bhagavata Purana, VIII. 6, 32.]

[Footnote 57: Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 149.]

[Footnote 58: It is also the regenerating water of baptism, and the "holy water" of the Roman Catholic.]

[Footnote 59: In the Vedas the rain-G.o.d Soma, originally the personification of the sacrificial ambrosia, is the deity who imparts to men life, knowledge, and happiness. See Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 85.

Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 277.]

[Footnote 60: We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the Greek fire-G.o.d Hephaistos the husband of Aphrodite.]

[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-G.o.d,.... "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-G.o.d."--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 G.o.d"; 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.]