Myths and Myth-makers - Chapter 1


   
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                           MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.

                                     I.

                         THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE.
 
      FEW mediæval heroes are so widely known as William Tell. His
   exploits have been celebrated by one of the greatest poets and one of
   the most popular musicians of modern times. They are doubtless
   familiar to many who have never heard of Stauffacher or Winkelried,
   who are quite ignorant of the prowess of Roland, and to whom Arthur
   and Lancelot, nay, even Charlemagne, are but empty names.
   
      Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation, it is very likely
   that no such person as William Tell ever existed, and it is certain
   that the story of his shooting the apple from his son's head has no
   historical value whatever. In spite of the wrath of unlearned but
   patriotic Swiss, especially of those of the cicerone class, this
   conclusion is forced upon us as soon as we begin to study the legend
   in accordance with the canons of modern historical criticism. It is
   useless to point to Tell's lime-tree, standing to-day in the centre
   of the market-place at Altdorf, or to quote for our confusion his
   crossbow preserved in the arsenal at Zurich, as unimpeachable
   witnesses to the truth of the story. It is in vain that we are told,
   "The bricks are alive to this day to testify to it;
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   therefore, deny it not." These proofs are not more valid than the
   handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments of the true cross. For
   if relics are to be received as evidence, we must needs admit the
   truth of every miracle narrated by the Bollandists.
   
      The earliest work which makes any allusion to the adventures of
   William Tell is the chronicle of the younger Melchior Russ, written in
   1482. As the shooting of the apple was supposed to have taken place in
   1296, this leaves an interval of one hundred and eighty-six years,
   during which neither a Tell, nor a William, nor the apple, nor the
   cruelty of Gessler, received any mention. It may also be observed,
   parenthetically, that the charters of Küssenach, when examined, show
   that no man by the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers
   of the fifteenth century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe
   the tyrannical acts by which the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to
   rebellion, do not once mention Tell's name, or betray the slightest
   acquaintance with his exploits or with his existence. In the Zurich
   chronicle of 1479 he is not alluded to. But we have still better
   negative evidence. John of Winterthür, one of the best chroniclers of
   the Middle Ages, was living at the time of the battle of Morgarten
   (1315), at which his father was present. He tells us how, on the
   evening of that dreadful day, he saw Duke Leopold himself in his
   flight from the fatal field, half dead with fear. He describes, with
   the loving minuteness of a contemporary, all the incidents of the
   Swiss revolution, but nowhere does he say a word about William Tell.
   This is sufficiently conclusive. These mediæval chroniclers, who never
   failed to go out of their way after a bit of the epigrammatic and
   marvellous, who thought far more of a pointed story than of historical
   credibility, would never
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   have kept silent about the adventures of Tell, if they had known
   anything about them.
   
      After this, it is not surprising to find that no two authors who
   describe the deeds of William Tell agree in the details of topography
   and chronology. Such discrepancies never fail to confront us when we
   leave the solid ground of history and begin to deal with floating
   legends. Yet, if the story be not historical, what could have been its
   origin? To answer this question we must considerably expand the
   discussion.
   
      The first author of any celebrity who doubted the story of William
   Tell was Guillimann, in his work on Swiss Antiquities, published in
   1598. He calls the story a pure fable, but, nevertheless, eating his
   words, concludes by proclaiming his belief in it, because the tale is
   so popular! Undoubtedly he acted a wise part; for, in 1760, as we are
   told, Uriel Freudenberger was condemned by the canton of Uri to be
   burnt alive, for publishing his opinion that the legend of Tell had a
   Danish origin. 1
   
      The bold heretic was substantially right, however, like so many
   other heretics, earlier and later. The Danish account of Tell is given
   as follows, by Saxo Grammaticus: --
   
      "A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harold's body-guard,
   had made his bravery odious to very many of his fellow-soldiers by the
   zeal with which he surpassed them in the discharge of his duty. This
   man once, when talking tipsily over his cups, had boasted that he was
   so skilled an archer that he could hit the smallest apple placed a
   long way off on a wand at the first shot; which talk, caught up at
   first by the ears of backbiters, soon came to the hearing of the king.
   Now, mark how the wickedness of the king turned the confidence of the
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   sire to the peril of the son, by commanding that this dearest pledge
   of his life should be placed instead of the wand, with a threat that,
   unless the author of this promise could strike off the apple at the
   first flight of the arrow, he should pay the penalty of his empty
   boasting by the loss of his head. The king's command forced the
   soldier to perform more than he had promised, and what he had said,
   reported, by the tongues of slanderers, bound him to accomplish what
   he had not said. Yet did not his sterling courage, though caught in
   the snare of slander, suffer him to lay aside his firmness of heart;
   nay, he accepted the trial the more readily because it was hard. So
   Palnatoki warned the boy urgently when he took his stand to await the
   coming of the hurtling arrow with calm ears and unbent head, lest, by
   a slight turn of his body, he should defeat the practised skill of the
   bowman; and, taking further counsel to prevent his fear, he turned
   away his face, lest he should be scared at the sight of the weapon.
   Then, taking three arrows from the quiver, he struck the mark given
   him with the first he fitted to the string.....But Palnatoki, when
   asked by the king why he had taken more arrows from the quiver, when
   it had been settled that he should only try the fortune of the bow
   once, made answer, 'That I might avenge on thee the swerving of the
   first by the points of the rest, lest perchance my innocence might
   have been punished, while your violence escaped scot-free.'"2
   
      This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold Blue-tooth,
   and the occurrence is placed by Saxo in the year 950. But the story
   appears not only in Denmark, but in Fingland, in Norway, in Finland
   and Russia, and in Persia, and there is some reason for supposing that
   it was known in India. In Norway we have the adventures
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   of Pansa the Splay-footed, and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold
   Hardrada, who invaded England in 1066. In Iceland there is the kindred
   legend of Egil brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England
   there is the ballad of William of Cloudeslee, which supplied Scott
   with many details of the archery scene in "Ivanhoe." Here, says the
   dauntless bowman,
   "I have a sonne seven years old;
         Hee is to me full deere;
   I will tye him to a stake --
         All shall see him that bee here --
   And lay an apple upon his head,
         And goe six paces him froe,
   And I myself with a broad arrowe
         Shall cleave the apple in towe."
   
      In the Malleus Maleficarum a similar story is told Puncher, a famous
   magician on the Upper Rhine. The great ethnologist Castrén dug up the
   same legend in Finland. It is common, as Dr. Dasent observes, to the
   Turks and Mongolians; "and a legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never
   heard of Tell or saw a book in their lives relates it, chapter and
   verse, of one of their marksmen." Finally, in the Persian poem of
   Farid-Uddin Attar, born in 1119, we read a story of a prince who
   shoots an apple from the head of a beloved page. In all these stories,
   names and motives of course differ; but all contain the same essential
   incidents. It is always an unerring archer who, at the capricious
   command of a tyrant, shoots from the head of some one dear to him a
   small object, be it an apple, a nut, or a piece of coin. The archer
   always provides himself with a second arrow, and, when questioned as
   to the use he intended to make of his extra weapon, the invariable
   reply is, "To kill thee, tyrant, had I slain my son." Now, when a
   marvellous occurrence is said to have happened everywhere, we may
   feel sure that it
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   never happened anywhere. Popular fancies propagate themselves
   indefinitely, but historical events, especially the striking and
   dramatic ones, are rarely repeated. The facts here collected lead
   inevitably to the conclusion that the Tell myth was known, in its
   general features, to our Aryan ancestors, before ever they left their
   primitive dwelling-place in Central Asia.
   
      It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these wonderful marksmen
   may really have existed and have performed the feat recorded in the
   legend; and that his true story, carried about by hearsay tradition
   from one country to another and from age to age, may have formed the
   theme for all the variations above mentioned, just as the fables of La
   Fontaine were patterned after those of Æsop and Phædrus, and just as
   many of Chaucer's tales were consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No
   doubt there has been a good deal of borrowing and lending among the
   legends of different peoples, as well as among the words of different
   languages; and possibly even some picturesque fragment of early
   history may have now and then been carried about the world in this
   manner. But as the philologist can with almost unerring certainty
   distinguish between the native and the imported words in any Aryan
   language, by examining their phonetic peculiarities, so the student of
   popular traditions, though working with far less perfect instruments,
   can safely assert, with reference to a vast number of legends, that
   they cannot have been obtained by any process of conscious borrowing.
   The difficulties inseparable from any such hypothesis will become more
   and more apparent as we proceed to examine a few other stories current
   in different portions of the Aryan domain.
   
      As the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must the Welshman be
   deprived of his brave dog Gellert, over whose
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   cruel fate I confess to having shed more tears than I should regard as
   well bestowed upon the misfortunes of many a human hero of romance.
   Every one knows how the dear old brute killed the wolf which had come
   to devour Llewellyn's child, and how the prince, returning home and
   finding the cradle upset and the dog's mouth dripping blood, hastily
   slew his benefactor, before the cry of the child from behind the
   cradle and the sight of the wolf's body had rectified his error. To
   this day the visitor to Snowdon is told the touching story, and shown
   the place, called Beth-Gellert,3 where the dog's grave is still to be
   seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in the fireside lore of nearly
   every Aryan people. Under the Gellert-form it started in the
   Panchatantra, a collection of Sanskrit fables; and it has even been
   discovered in a Chinese work which dates from A. D. 668. Usually the
   hero is a dog, but sometimes a falcon, an ichneumon, an insect, or
   even a man. In Egypt it takes the following comical shape: "A Wali
   once smashed a pot full of herbs which a cook had prepared. The
   exasperated cook thrashed the well-intentioned but unfortunate Wali
   within an inch of his life, and when he returned, exhausted with his
   efforts at belabouring the man, to examine the broken pot, he
   discovered amongst the herbs a poisonous snake."4 Now this story of
   the Wali is as manifestly identical with the legend of Gellert as the
   English word father is with the Latin pater; but as no one would
   maintain
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   that the word father is in any sense derived from pater, so it would
   be impossible to represent either the Welsh or the Egyptian legend as
   a copy of the other. Obviously the conclusion is forced upon us that
   the stories, like the words, are related collaterally, having
   descended from a common ancestral legend, or having been suggested by
   one and the same primeval idea.
   
      Closely connected with the Gellert myth are the stories of Faithful
   John and of Rama and Luxman. In the German story, Faithful John
   accompanies the prince, his master, on a journey in quest of a
   beautiful maiden, whom he wishes to make his bride. As they are
   carrying her home across the seas, Faithful John hears some crows,
   whose language he understands, foretelling three dangers impending
   over the prince, from which his friend can save him only by
   sacrificing his own life. As soon as they land, a horse will spring
   toward the king, which, if he mounts it, will bear him away from his
   bride forever; but whoever shoots the horse, and tells the king the
   reason, will be turned into stone from toe to knee. Then, before the
   wedding a bridal garment will lie before the king, which, if he puts
   it on, will burn him like the Nessos-shirt of Herakles; but whoever
   throws the shirt into the fire and tells the king the reason, will be
   turned into stone from knee to heart. Finally, during the
   wedding-festivities, the queen will suddenly fall in a swoon, and
   "unless some one takes three drops of blood from her right breast she
   will die"; but whoever does so, and tells the king the reason, will be
   turned into stone from head to foot. Thus forewarned, Faithful John
   saves his master from all these dangers; but the king misinterprets
   his motive in bleeding his wife, and orders him to be hanged. On the
   scaffold he tells his story, and while the king humbles himself in an
   agony of remorse, his noble friend is turned into stone.
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      In the South Indian tale Luxman accompanies Rama, who is carrying
   home his bride. Luxman overhears two owls talking about the perils
   that await his master and mistress. First he saves them from being
   crushed by the falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them
   away from an arch which immediately after gives way. By and by, as
   they rest under a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to
   the queen, and Luxman kills it with his sword; but, as the owls had
   foretold, a drop of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's forehead.
   As Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts up, and, thinking that
   his vizier is kissing his wife, upbraids him with his ingratitude,
   whereupon Luxman, through grief at this unkind interpretation of his
   conduct, is turned into stone.5
   
      For further illustration we may refer to the Norse tale of the
   "Giant who had no Heart in his Body," as related by Dr. Dasent. This
   burly magician having turned six brothers with their wives into stone,
   the seventh brother -- the crafty Boots or many-witted Odysseus of
   European folk-lore -- sets out to obtain vengeance if not reparation
   for the evil done to his kith and kin. On the way he shows the
   kindness of his nature by rescuing from destruction a raven, a salmon,
   and a wolf. The grateful wolf carries him on his back to the giant's
   castle, where the lovely princess whom the monster keeps in irksome
   bondage promises to act, in behalf of Boots, the part of Delilah, and
   to find out, if possible, where her lord keeps his heart. The giant,
   like the Jewish hero, finally succumbs to feminine blandishments.
   "Far, far away in a lake lies an island; on that island stands a
   church; in that church is a well; in that well swims a duck; in that
   duck there is an egg; and in that egg there lies my
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   heart, you darling." Boots, thus instructed, rides on the wolf's back
   to the island; the raven flies to the top of the steeple and gets the
   church-keys; the salmon dives to the bottom of the well, and brings up
   the egg from the place where the duck had dropped it; and so Boots
   becomes master of the situation. As he squeezes the egg, the giant, in
   mortal terror, begs and prays for his life, which Boots promises to
   spare on condition that his brothers and their brides should be
   released from their enchantment. But when all has been duly effected,
   the treacherous youth squeezes the egg in two, and the giant instantly
   bursts.
   
      The same story has lately been found in Southern India, and is
   published in Miss Frere's remarkable collection of tales entitled "Old
   Deccan Days." In the Hindu version the seven daughters of a rajah,
   with their husbands, are transformed into stone by the great magician
   Punchkin, -- all save the youngest daughter, whom Punchkin keeps shut
   up in a tower until by threats or coaxing he may prevail upon her to
   marry him. But the captive princess leaves a son at home in the
   cradle, who grows up to manhood unmolested, and finally undertakes the
   rescue of his family. After long and weary wanderings he finds his
   mother shut up in Punchkin's tower, and persuades her to play the part
   of the princess in the Norse legend. The trick is equally successful.
   "Hundreds of thousands of miles away there lies a desolate country
   covered with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle
   of palm-trees, and in the centre of the circle stand six jars full of
   water, piled one above another; below the sixth jar is a small cage
   which contains a little green parrot; on the life of the parrot
   depends my life, and if the parrot is killed I must die."6
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   The young prince finds the place guarded by a host of dragons, but
   some eaglets whom he has saved from a devouring serpent in the course
   of his journey take him on their crossed wings and carry him to the
   place where the jars are standing. He instantly overturns the jars,
   and seizing the parrot, obtains from the terrified magician full
   reparation. As soon as his own friends and a stately procession of
   other royal or noble victims have been set at liberty, he proceeds to
   pull the parrot to pieces. As the wings and legs come away, so tumble
   off the arms and legs of the magician; and finally as the prince
   wrings the bird's neck, Punchkin twists his own head round and dies.
   
      The story is also told in the highlands of Scotland, and some
   portions of it will be recognized by the reader as incidents in the
   Arabian tale of the Princess Parizade. The union of close
   correspondence in conception with manifest independence in the
   management of the details of these stories is striking enough, but it
   is a phenomenon with which we become quite familiar as we proceed in
   the study of Aryan popular literature. The legend of the Master Thief
   is no less remarkable than that of Punchkin. In the Scandinavian tale
   the Thief, wishing to get possession of a farmer's ox, carefully hangs
   himself to a tree by the roadside. The farmer, passing by with his ox,
   is indeed struck by the sight of the dangling
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   body, but thinks it none of his business, and does not stop to
   interfere. No sooner has he passed than the Thief lets himself down,
   and running swiftly along a by-path, hangs himself with equal
   precaution to a second tree. This time the farmer is astonished and
   puzzled; but when for the third time he meets the same unwonted
   spectacle, thinking that three suicides in one morning are too much
   for easy credence, he leaves his ox and runs back to see whether the
   other two bodies are really where he thought he saw them. While he is
   framing hypotheses of witchcraft by which to explain the phenomenon,
   the Thief gets away with the ox. In the Hitopadesa the story receives
   a finer point. "A Brahman, who had vowed a sacrifice, went to the
   market to buy a goat. Three thieves saw him, and wanted to get hold of
   the goat. They stationed themselves at intervals on the high road.
   When the Brahman, who carried the goat on his back, approached the
   first thief, the thief said, 'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your
   back?' The Brahman replied, 'It is not a dog, it is a goat.' A little
   while after he was accosted by the second thief, who said, 'Brahman,
   why do you carry a dog on your back?' The Brahman felt perplexed, put
   the goat down, examined it, took it up again, and walked on. Soon
   after he was stopped by the third thief, who said, 'Brahman, why do
   you carry a dog on your back?' Then the Brahman was frightened, threw
   down the goat, and walked home to perform his ablutions for having
   touched an unclean animal. The thieves took the goat and ate it." The
   adroitness of the Norse King in "The Three Princesses of Whiteland"
   shows but poorly in comparison with the keen psychological insight and
   cynical sarcasm of these Hindu sharpers. In the course of his travels
   this prince met three brothers fighting on a lonely moor. They had
   been fighting for a hundred
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   years about the possession of a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots,
   which would make the wearer invisible, and convey him instantly
   whithersoever he might wish to go. The King consents to act as umpire,
   provided he may once try the virtue of the magic garments; but once
   clothed in them, of course he disappears, leaving the combatants to
   sit down and suck their thumbs. Now in the "Sea of Streams of Story,"
   written in the twelfth century by Somadeva of Cashmere, the Indian
   King Putraka, wandering in the Vindhya Mountains, similarly discomfits
   two brothers who are quarrelling over a pair of shoes, which are like
   the sandals of Hermes, and a bowl which has the same virtue as
   Aladdin's lamp. "Why don't you run a race for them?" suggests Putraka;
   and, as the two blockheads start furiously off, he quietly picks up
   the bowl, ties on the shoes, and flies away!7
   
      It is unnecessary to cite further illustrations. The tales here
   quoted are fair samples of the remarkable correspondence which holds
   good through all the various sections of Aryan folk-lore. The
   hypothesis of lateral diffusion, as we may call it, manifestly fails
   to explain coincidences which are maintained on such an immense scale.
   It is quite credible that one nation may have borrowed from another a
   solitary legend of an archer who performs the feats of Tell and
   Palnatoki; but it is utterly incredible that ten thousand stories,
   constituting the entire mass of household mythology throughout a dozen
   separate nations, should have been handed from one to another in this
   way. No one would venture to suggest that the old grannies of Iceland
   and Norway, to whom we owe such stories as the Master Thief and the
   Princesses of Whiteland, had ever read Somadeva or heard of the
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   treasures of Rhampsinitos. A large proportion of the tales with which
   we are dealing were utterly unknown to literature until they were
   taken down by Grimm and Frere and Castrén and Campbell, from the lips
   of ignorant peasants, nurses, or house-servants, in Germany and
   Hindustan, in Siberia and Scotland. Yet, as Mr. Cox observes, these
   old men and women, sitting by the chimney-corner and somewhat timidly
   recounting to the literary explorer the stories which they had learned
   in childhood from their own nurses and grandmas, "reproduce the most
   subtle turns of thought and expression, and an endless series of
   complicated narratives, in which the order of incidents and the words
   of the speakers are preserved with a fidelity nowhere paralleled in
   the oral tradition of historical events. It may safely be said that no
   series of stories introduced in the form of translations from other
   languages could ever thus have filtered down into the lowest strata of
   society, and thence have sprung up again, like Antaios, with greater
   energy and heightened beauty." There is indeed no alternative for us
   but to admit that these fireside tales have been handed down from
   parent to child for more than a hundred generations; that the
   primitive Aryan cottager, as he took his evening meal of yava and
   sipped his fermented mead, listened with his children to the stories
   of Boots and Cinderella and the Master Thief, in the days when the
   squat Laplander was master of Europe and the dark-skinned Sudra was as
   yet unmolested in the Punjab. Only such community of origin can
   explain the community in character between the stories told by the
   Aryan's descendants, from the jungles of Ceylon to the highlands of
   Scotland.
   
      This conclusion essentially modifies our view of the origin and
   growth of a legend like that of William Tell.
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   The case of the Tell legend is radically different from the case of
   the blindness of Belisarius or the burning of the Alexandrian library
   by order of Omar. The latter are isolated stories or beliefs; the
   former is one of a family of stories or beliefs. The latter are
   untrustworthy traditions of doubtful events; but in dealing with the
   former, we are face to face with a myth.
   
      What, then, is a myth? The theory of Euhemeros, which was so
   fashionable a century ago, in the days of the Abbé Banier, has long
   since been so utterly abandoned that to refute it now is but to slay
   the slain. The peculiarity of this theory was that it cut away all the
   extraordinary features of a given myth, wherein dwelt its inmost
   significance, and to the dull and useless residuum accorded the
   dignity of primeval history. In this way the myth was lost without
   compensation, and the student, in seeking good digestible bread, found
   but the hardest of pebbles. Considered merely as a pretty story, the
   legend of the golden fruit watched by the dragon in the garden of the
   Hesperides is not without its value. But what merit can there be in
   the gratuitous statement which, degrading the grand Doric hero to a
   level with any vulgar fruit-stealer, makes Herakles break a close with
   force and arms, and carry off a crop of oranges which had been guarded
   by mastiffs? It is still worse when we come to the more homely
   folk-lore with which the student of mythology now has to deal. The
   theories of Banier, which limped and stumbled awkwardly enough when it
   was only a question of Hermes and Minos and Odin, have fallen never to
   rise again since the problems of Punchkin and Cinderella and the Blue
   Belt have begun to demand solution. The conclusion has been gradually
   forced upon the student, that the marvellous portion of these old
   stories is no illegitimate extrescence,
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   but was rather the pith and centre of the whole,8 in days when there
   was no supernatural, because it had not yet been discovered that there
   was such a thing as nature. The religious myths of antiquity and the
   fireside legends of ancient and modern times have their common root in
   the mental habits of primeval humanity. They are the earliest recorded
   utterances of men concerning the visible phenomena of the world into
   which they were born.
   
      That prosaic and coldly rational temper with which modern men are
   wont to regard natural phenomena was in early times unknown. We have
   come to regard all events as taking place regularly, in strict
   conformity to law: whatever our official theories may be, we
   instinctively take this view of things. But our primitive ancestors
   knew nothing about laws of nature, nothing about physical forces,
   nothing about the relations of cause and effect, nothing about the
   necessary regularity of things. There was a time in the history of
   mankind when these things had never been inquired into, and when no
   generalizations about them had been framed, tested, or established.
   There was no conception of an order of nature, and therefore no
   distinct conception of a supernatural order of things. There was no
   belief in miracles as infractions of natural laws, but there was a
   belief in the occurrence of wonderful events too mighty to have been
   brought about by ordinary means. There was an unlimited capacity for
   believing and fancying, because fancy and belief had not yet been
   checked and headed off in various directions by established rules of
   experience. Physical science is a very late acquisition of the human
   mind, but we are already sufficiently imbued with it to
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   be almost completely disabled from comprehending the thoughts of our
   ancestors. "How Finn cosmogonists could have believed the earth and
   heaven to be made out of a severed egg, the upper concave shell
   representing heaven, the yolk being earth, and the crystal surrounding
   fluid the circurmambient ocean, is to us incomprehensible; and yet it
   remains a fact that they did so regard them. How the Scandinavians
   could have supposed the mountains to be the mouldering bones of a
   mighty Jötun, and the earth to be his festering flesh, we cannot
   conceive; yet such a theory was solemnly taught and accepted. How the
   ancient Indians could regard the rain-clouds as cows with full udders
   milked by the winds of heaven is beyond our comprehension, and yet
   their Veda contains indisputable testimony to the fact that they were
   so regarded." We have only to read Mr. Baring-Gould's book of "Curious
   Myths," from which I have just quoted, or to dip into Mr. Thorpe's
   treatise on "Northern Mythology," to realize how vast is the
   difference between our stand-point and that from which, in the later
   Middle Ages, our immediate forefathers regarded things. The frightful
   superstition of werewolves is a good instance. In those days it was
   firmly believed that men could be, and were in the habit of being,
   transformed into wolves. It was believed that women might bring forth
   snakes or poodle-dogs. It was believed that if a man had his side
   pierced in battle, you could cure him by nursing the sword which
   inflicted the wound. "As late as 1600 a German writer would illustrate
   a thunder-storm destroying a crop of corn by a picture of a dragon
   devouring the produce of the field with his flaming tongue and iron
   teeth."
   
      Now if such was the condition of the human intellect only three or
   four centuries ago, what must it have been
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -18-
 
   in that dark antiquity when not even the crudest generalizations of
   Greek or of Oriental science had been reached? The same mighty power
   of imagination which now, restrained and guided by scientific
   principles, leads us to discoveries and inventions, must then have
   wildly run riot in mythologic fictions whereby to explain the
   phenomena of nature. Knowing nothing whatever of physical forces, of
   the blind steadiness with which a given effect invariably follows its
   cause, the men of primeval antiquity could interpret the actions of
   nature only after the analogy of their own actions. The only force
   they knew was the force of which they were directly conscious, -- the
   force of will. Accordingly, they imagined all the outward world to be
   endowed with volition, and to be directed by it. They personified
   everything, -- sky, clouds, thunder, sun, moon, ocean, earthquake,
   whirlwind.9 The comparatively enlightened Athenians of the age of
   Perikles addressed the sky as a person, and prayed to it to rain upon
   their gardens.10 And for calling the moon a mass of dead matter,
   Anaxagoras came near losing his life. To the ancients the moon was not
   a lifeless ball of stones and clods: it was the horned huntress,
   Artemis, coursing through the upper ether, or bathing herself in the
   clear lake; or it was Aphrodite, protectress of lovers, born of the
   sea-foam in the East near Cyprus. The clouds were no bodies of
   vaporized water: they were
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -19-
 
   cows with swelling udders, driven to the milking by Hermes, the summer
   wind; or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain by the unerring arrows
   of Bellerophon, the sun; or swan-maidens, flitting across the
   firmament, Valkyries hovering over the battle-field to receive the
   souls of falling heroes; or, again, they were mighty mountains piled
   one above another, in whose cavernous recesses the divining-wand of
   the storm-god Thor revealed hidden treasures. The yellow-haired sun,
   Phoibos, drove westerly all day in his flaming chariot; or perhaps, as
   Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from the sight of men;
   wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone, Iole), which he had
   forsaken in the morning; sank, as Herakles, upon a blazing
   funeral-pyre, or, like Agamemnon, perished in a blood-stained bath;
   or, as the fish-god, Dagon, swam nightly through the subterranean
   waters, to appear eastward again at daybreak. Sometimes Phaëthon, his
   rash, inexperienced son, would take the reins and drive the solar
   chariot too near the earth, causing the fruits to perish, and the
   grass to wither, and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too, the great
   all-seeing divinity, in his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot
   down his scorching arrows, causing pestilence to spread over the land.
   Still other conceptions clustered around the sun. Now it was the
   wonderful treasure-house, into which no one could look and live; and
   again it was Ixion himself, bound on the fiery wheel in punishment for
   violence offered to Here, the queen of the blue air.
   
      This theory of ancient mythology is not only beautiful and
   plausible, it is, in its essential points, demonstrated. It stands on
   as firm a foundation as Grimm's law in philology, or the undulatory
   theory in molecular physics. It is philology which has here enabled us
   to read the primitive thoughts of mankind. A large number of the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -20-
 
   names of Greek gods and heroes have no meaning in the Greek language;
   but these names occur also in Sanskrit, with plain physical meanings.
   In the Veda we find Zeus or Jupiter (Dyaus-pitar) meaning the sky, and
   Sarameias or Hermes, meaning the breeze of a summer morning. We find
   Athene (Ahana), meaning the light of daybreak; and we are thus enabled
   to understand why the Greek described her as sprung from the forehead
   of Zeus. There too we find Helena (Sarama), the fickle twilight, whom
   the Panis, or night-demons, who serve as the prototypes of the
   Hellenic Paris, strive to seduce from her allegiance to the solar
   monarch. Even Achilleus (Aharyu) again confronts us, with his captive
   Briseis (Brisaya's offspring); and the fierce Kerberos (Çarvara) barks
   on Vedic ground in strict conformity to the laws of phonetics.11 Now,
   when the Hindu talked about Father Dyaus, or the sleek kine of Siva,
   he thought of the personified sky and clouds; he had not outgrown the
   primitive mental habits of the race. But the Greek, in whose language
   these physical meanings were lost, had long before the Homeric epoch
   come to regard Zeus and Hermes, Athene, Helena, Paris, and Achilleus,
   as mere persons, and in most cases the originals of his myths were
   completely forgotten. In the Vedas the Trojan War is carried on in the
   sky, between the bright deities and the demons of night; but the Greek
   poet, influenced perhaps by some dim historical tradition, has located
   the contest on the shore of the Hellespont, and in his mind the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -21-
 
   actors, though superhuman, are still completely anthropomorphic. Of
   the true origin of his epic story he knew as little as Euhemeros, or
   Lord Bacon, or the Abbé Banier.
   
      After these illustrations, we shall run no risk of being
   misunderstood when we define a myth as, in its origin, an explanation,
   by the uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory,
   not an esoteric symbol, -- for the ingenuity is wasted which strives to
   detect in myths the remnants of a refined primeval science, -- but an
   explanation. Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by
   means of allegory, nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in
   riddles when plain language would serve their purpose. Their minds, we
   may be sure, worked like our own, and when they spoke of the far-darting
   sun-god, they meant just what they said, save that where we propound a scientific theorem,
   they constructed a myth.12 A thing is said to be explained when it is
   classified with other things with which we are already acquainted. That
   is the only kind of explanation of which the highest science is capable.
   We explain the origin, progress, and ending of a thunder-storm, when we
   classify the phenomena presented by it along with other more familiar
   phenomena of vaporization and condensation. But the primitive man
   explained the same thing to his own satisfaction when he had classified
   it along with the well-known phenomena of human volition, by
   constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -22-
 
   the unerring arrows of a heavenly archer. We consider the nature of
   the stars to a certain extent explained when they are classified as
   suns; but the Mohammedan compiler of the "Mishkat-ul-Ma'sábih" was
   content to explain them as missiles useful for stoning the Devil! Now,
   as soon as the old Greek, forgetting the source of his conception,
   began to talk of a human Oidipous slaying a leonine Sphinx, and as
   soon as the Mussulman began, if he ever did, to tell his children how
   the Devil once got a good pelting with golden bullets, then both the
   one and the other were talking pure mythology.
   
      We are justified, accordingly, in distinguishing between a myth and
   a legend. Though the words are etymologically parallel, and though in
   ordinary discourse we may use them interchangeably, yet when strict
   accuracy is required, it is well to keep them separate. And it is
   perhaps needless, save for the sake of completeness, to say that both
   are to be distinguished from stories which have been designedly
   fabricated. The distinction may occasionally be subtle, but is usually
   broad enough. Thus, the story that Philip II. murdered his wife
   Elizabeth, is a misrepresentation; but the story that the same
   Elizabeth was culpably enamoured of her step-son Don Carlos, is a
   legend. The story that Queen Eleanor saved the life of her husband,
   Edward I., by sucking a wound made in his arm by a poisoned arrow, is
   a legend; but the story that Hercules killed a great robber, Cacus,
   who had stolen his cattle, conceals a physical meaning, and is a myth.
   While a legend is usually confined to one or two localities, and is
   told of not more than one or two persons, it is characteristic of a
   myth that it is spread, in one form or another, over a large part of
   the earth, the leading incidents remaining constant, while the names
   and often the motives vary with each locality. This is
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -23-
 
   partly due to the immense antiquity of myths, dating as they do from a
   period when many nations, now widely separated, had not yet ceased to
   form one people. Thus many elements of the myth of the Trojan War are
   to be found in the Rig-Veda; and the myth of St. George and the Dragon
   is found in all the Aryan nations. But we must not always infer that
   myths have a common descent, merely because they resemble each other.
   We must remember that the proceedings of the uncultivated mind are
   more or less alike in all latitudes, and that the same phenomenon
   might in various places independently give rise to similar stories.13
   The myth of Jack and the Bean-Stalk is found not only among people of
   Aryan descent, but also among the Zulus of South Africa, and again
   among the American Indians. Whenever we can trace a story in this way
   from one end of the world to the other, or through a whole family of
   kindred nations, we are pretty safe in assuming that we are dealing
   with a true myth, and not with a mere legend.
   
      Applying these considerations to the Tell myth, we at once obtain a
   valid explanation of its origin. The conception of infallible skill in
   archery, which underlies such a great variety of myths and popular
   fairy-tales, is originally derived from the inevitable victory of the
   sun over his enemies, the demons of night, winter, and tempest. Arrows
   and spears which never miss their mark, swords from whose blow no
   armour can protect, are invariably the weapons of solar divinities or
   heroes. The shafts of Bellerophon never fail to slay the black demon
   of the rain-cloud, and the bolt of Phoibos Chrysaor deals sure
   destruction to the serpent of winter. Odysseus, warring against the
   impious night-heroes, who have endeavoured
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -24-
 
   throughout ten long years or hours of darkness to seduce from her
   allegiance his twilight-bride, the weaver of the never-finished web of
   violet clouds, -- Odysseus, stripped of his beggar's raiment and
   endowed with fresh youth and beauty by the dawn-goddess, Athene,
   engages in no doubtful conflict as he raises the bow which none but
   himself can bend. Nor is there less virtue in the spear of Achilleus,
   in the swords of Perseus and Sigurd, in Roland's stout blade Durandal,
   or in the brand Excalibur, with which Sir Bedivere was so loath to
   part. All these are solar weapons, and so, too, are the arrows of Tell
   and Palnatoki, Egil and Hemingr, and William of Cloudeslee, whose
   surname proclaims him an inhabitant of the Phaiakian land. William
   Tell, whether of Cloudland or of Altdorf, is the last reflection of
   the beneficent divinity of daytime and summer, constrained for a while
   to obey the caprice of the powers of cold and darkness, as Apollo
   served Laomedon, and Herakles did the bidding of Eurystheus. His solar
   character is well preserved, even in the sequel of the Swiss legend,
   in which he appears no less skilful as a steersman than as an archer,
   and in which, after traversing, like Dagon, the tempestuous sea of
   night, he leaps at daybreak in regained freedom upon the land, and
   strikes down the oppressor who has held him in bondage.
   
      But the sun, though ever victorious in open contest with his
   enemies, is nevertheless not invulnerable. At times he succumbs to
   treachery, is bound by the frost-giants, or slain by the demons of
   darkness. The poisoned shirt of the cloud-fiend Nessos is fatal even
   to the mighty Herakles, and the prowess of Siegfried at last fails to
   save him from the craft of Hagen. In Achilleus and Meleagros we see
   the unhappy solar hero doomed to toil for the profit of others, and to
   be cut off by an untimely
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -25-
 
   death. The more fortunate Odysseus, who lives to a ripe old age, and
   triumphs again and again over all the powers of darkness, must
   nevertheless yield to the craving desire to visit new cities and look
   upon new works of strange men, until at last he is swallowed up in the
   western sea. That the unrivalled navigator of the celestial ocean
   should disappear beneath the western waves is as intelligible as it is
   that the horned Venus or Astarte should rise from the sea in the far
   east. It is perhaps less obvious that winter should be so frequently
   symbolized as a thorn or sharp instrument. Achilleus dies by an
   arrow-wound in the heel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's
   tusk, while Odysseus escapes with an ugly scar, which afterwards
   secures his recognition by his old servant, the dawn-nymph Eurykleia;
   Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe;
   and in the myth of the Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into
   her long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the spindle. In her
   cosmic palace, all is locked in icy repose, naught thriving save the
   ivy which defies the cold, until the kiss of the golden-haired sun-god
   reawakens life and activity.
   
      The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in innumerable stories of
   spell-bound maidens and fair-featured youths, saints, martyrs, and
   heroes. Sometimes it is the sun, sometimes the earth, that is supposed
   to slumber. Among the American Indians the sun-god Michabo is said to
   sleep through the winter months; and at the time of the falling
   leaves, by way of composing himself for his nap, he fills his great
   pipe and divinely smokes; the blue clouds, gently floating over the
   landscape, fill the air with the haze of Indian summer. In the Greek
   myth the shepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in a perennial
   slumber. The German Siegfried, pierced by
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -26-
 
   the thorn of winter, is sleeping until he shall be again called forth
   to fight. In Switzerland, by the Vierwaldstättersee, three Tells are
   awaiting the hour when their country shall again need to be delivered
   from the oppressor. Charlemagne is reposing in the Untersberg, sword
   in hand, waiting for the coming of Antichrist; Olger Danske similarly
   dreams away his time in Avallon; and in a lofty mountain in Thuringia,
   the great Emperor Yrederic Barbarossa slumbers with his knights around
   him, until the time comes for him to sally forth and raise Germany to
   the first rank among the kingdoms of the world. The same story is told
   of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastian of Portugal, and of the Moorish
   King Boabdil. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, having taken refuge in a
   cave from the persecutions of the heathen Decius, slept one hundred
   and sixty-four years, and awoke to find a Christian emperor on the
   throne. The monk of Hildesheim, in the legend so beautifully rendered
   by Longfellow, doubting how with God a thousand years ago could be as
   yesterday, listened three minutes entranced by the singing of a bird
   in the forest, and found, on waking from his revery, that a thousand
   years had flown. To the same family of legends belong the notion that
   St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until the last days of the world; the
   myth of the enchanter Merlin, spell-bound by Vivien; the story of the
   Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed away fifty-seven years in a
   cave; and Rip Van Winkle's nap in the Catskills.14
   
      We might go on almost indefinitely citing household tales of
   wonderful sleepers; but, on the principle of the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -27-
 
   association of opposites, we are here reminded of sundry cases of
   marvellous life and wakefulness, illustrated in the Wandering Jew; the
   dancers of Kolbeck; Joseph of Arimathæa with the Holy Grail; the Wild
   Huntsman who to all eternity chases the red deer; the Captain of the
   Phantom Ship; the classic Tithonos; and the Man in the Moon.
   
      The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject for the play of human
   fancy. Plutarch wrote a treatise on them, but the myth-makers had been
   before him. "Every one," says Mr. Baring-Gould, "knows that the moon
   is inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has
   been exiled thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he
   is beyond the reach of death. He has once visited this earth, if the
   nursery rhyme is to be credited when it asserts that
   'The Man in the Moon
   Came down too soon
   And asked his way to Norwich';
   
      but whether he ever reached that city the same authority does not
   state." Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer has him put up there as a
   punishment for theft, and gives him a thorn-bush to carry; Shakespeare
   also loads him with the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a
   dog for a companion. Ordinarily, however, his offence is stated to
   have been, not stealing, but Sabbath-breaking, -- an idea derived from
   the Old Testament. Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers, he
   is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an example to
   mankind, he is condemned to stand forever in the moon, with his bundle
   on his back. Instead of a dog, one German version places with him a
   woman, whose crime was churning butter on Sunday. She carries her
   butter-tub; and this brings us to Mother Goose again: --
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -28-
 
   "Jack and Jill went up the hill
         To get a pail of water.
   Jack fell down and broke his crown,
        And Jill came tumbling after."
   
      This may read like mere nonsense; but there is a point of view from
   which it may be safely said that there is very little absolute
   nonsense in the world. The story of Jack and Jill is a venerable one.
   In Icelandic mythology we read that Jack and Jill were two children
   whom the moon once kidnapped and carried up to heaven. They had been
   drawing water in a bucket, which they were carrying by means of a pole
   placed across their shoulders; and in this attitude they have stood to
   the present day in the moon. Even now this explanation of the
   moon-spots is to be heard from the mouths of Swedish peasants. They
   fall away one after the other, as the moon wanes, and their water-pail
   symbolizes the supposed connection of the moon with rain-storms. Other
   forms of the myth occur in Sanskrit.
   
      The moon-goddess, or Aphrodite, of the ancient Germans, was called
   Hörsel, or Ursula, who figures in Christian mediæval mythology as a
   persecuted saint, attended by a troop of eleven thousand virgins, who
   all suffer martyrdom as they journey from England to Cologne. The
   meaning of the myth is obvious. In German mythology, England is the
   Phaiakian land of clouds and phantoms; the succubus, leaving her lover
   before day-break, excuses herself on the plea that "her mother is
   calling her in England."15 The companions of Ursula are the pure stars,
   who leave the cloudland and suffer martyrdom as they approach the
   regions of day. In the Christian tradition, Ursula is the pure
   Artemis; but, in
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -29-
 
   accordance with her ancient character, she is likewise the sensual
   Aphrodite, who haunts the Venusberg; and this brings us to the story
   of Tannhäuser.
   
      The Hörselberg, or mountain of Venus, lies in Thuringia, between
   Eisenach and Gotha. High up on its slope yawns a cavern, the
   Hörselloch, or cave of Venus within which is heard a muffled roar, as
   of subterranean water. From this cave, in old times, the frightened
   inhabitants of the neighbouring valley would hear at night wild moans
   and cries issuing, mingled with peals of demon-like laughter. Here it
   was believed that Venus held her court; "and there were not a few who
   declared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning them
   from the mouth of the chasm."16 Tannhäuser was a Frankish knight and
   famous minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Hörselberg,
   "saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before him
   and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her,
   whom he knew to be none other than Venus. He descended to her palace
   in the heart of the mountain, and there passed seven years in careless
   revelry. Then, stricken with remorse and yearning for another glimpse
   of the pure light of day, he called in agony upon the Virgin Mother,
   who took compassion on him and released him. He sought a village
   church, and to priest after priest confessed his sin, without
   obtaining absolution, until finally he had recourse to the Pope. But
   the holy father, horrified at the enormity of his misdoing, declared
   that guilt such as his could never be remitted sooner should the staff
   in his hand grow green and blossom. "Then Tannhäuser, full of despair
   and with his soul darkened, went away, and returned to the only asylum
   open to him, the Venusberg. But lo! three days
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -30-
 
   after he had gone, Pope Urban discovered that his pastoral staff had
   put forth buds and had burst into flower. Then he sent messengers
   after Tannhäuser, and they reached the Hörsel vale to hear that a
   wayworn man, with haggard brow and bowed head, had just entered the
   Hörselloch. Since then Tannhäuser has not been seen." (p. 201.)
   
      As Mr. Baring-Gould rightly observes, this sad legend, in its
   Christianized form, is doubtless descriptive of the struggle between
   the new and the old faiths. The knightly Tannhäuser, satiated with
   pagan sensuality, turns to Christianity for relief, but, repelled by
   the hypocrisy, pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers, gives up
   in despair, and returns to drown his anxieties in his old debauchery.
   
      But this is not the primitive form of the myth, which recurs in the
   folk-lore of every people of Aryan descent. Who, indeed, can read it
   without being at once reminded of Thomas of Erceldoune (or Hörsel-hill),
   entranced by the sorceress of the Eilden; of the nightly visits of Numa
   to the grove of the nymph Egeria; of Odysseus held captive by the Lady
   Kalypso; and, last but not least, of the delightful Arabian tale of
   Prince Ahmed and the Peri Banou? On his westward journey, Odysseus is
   ensnared and kept in temporary bondage by the amorous nymph of darkness,
   Kalypso, to veil or cover. So the zone of the moon-goddess Aphrodite
   inveigles all-seeing Zeus to treacherous slumber on Mount Ida; and by
   a similar sorcery Tasso's great hero is lulled in unseemly idleness in
   Armida's golden paradise, at the western verge of the world. The
   disappearance of Tannhäuser behind the moonlit cliff, lured by Venus
   Ursula, the pale goddess of night, is a precisely parallel circumstance.
   
      But solar and lunar phenomena are by no means the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -31-
 
   only sources of popular mythology. Opposite my writing-table hangs a
   quaint German picture, illustrating Goethe's ballad of the Erlking, in
   which the whole wild pathos of the story is compressed into one
   supreme moment; we see the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erlking,
   his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic
   gallop of the horse, the alarmed father clasping his darling to his
   bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like elves hovering overhead,
   to lure the little soul with their weird harps. There can be no better
   illustration than is furnished by this terrible scene of the magic
   power of mythology to invest the simplest physical phenomena with the
   most intense human interest; for the true significance of the whole
   picture is contained in the father's address to his child,
   "Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind;
   In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind."
   
      The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version of
   Robert Browning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good people
   of Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the
   direful host of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange
   man in a bunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid
   the town of the vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out
   a pipe and piped, and instantly all the rats in town, in an army which
   blackened the face of the earth, came forth from their haunts, and
   followed the piper until he piped them to the river Weser, where they
   alls jumped in and were drowned. But as soon as the torment was gone,
   the townsfolk refused to pay the piper on the ground that he was
   evidently a wizard. He went away, vowing vengeance, and on St. John's
   day reappeared, and putting his pipe to his mouth blew a different
   air. Whereat all the little, plump, rosy-cheeked,
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -32-
 
   golden-haired children came merrily running after him, their parents
   standing aghast, not knowing what to do, while he led them up a hill
   in the neighbourhood. A door opened in the mountain-side, through
   which he led them in, and they never were seen again; save one lame
   boy, who hobbled not fast enough to get in before the door shut, and
   who lamented for the rest of his life that he had not been able to
   share the rare luck of his comrades. In the street through which this
   procession passed no music was ever afterwards allowed to be played.
   For a long time the town dated its public documents from this fearful
   calamity, and many authorities have treated it as an historical
   event.17 Similar stories are told of other towns in Germany, and,
   strange to say, in remote Abyssinia also. Wesleyan peasants in England
   believe that angels pipe to children who are about to die; and in
   Scandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away by the songs of
   elf-maidens. In Greece, the sirens by their magic lay allured voyagers
   to destruction; and Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to follow
   him. Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the wind sighing
   through untold acres of pine forest. "The piper is no other than the
   wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the
   dead." To this day the English peasantry believe that they hear the
   wail of the spirits of unbaptized children, as the gale sweeps past
   their cottage doors. The Greek Hermes resulted from the fusion of two
   deities. He is the sun and also the wind; and in the latter capacity
   he bears away the souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like
   Hermes fillfils a double function, is supposed to rush at night over
   the tree-tops, "accompanied by the scudding train of brave men's
   spirits." And readers of recent French
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -33-
 
   literature cannot fail to remember Erokmann-Chatrian's terrible story
   of the wild huntsman Vittikâb, and how he sped through the forest,
   carrying away a young girl's soul.
   
      Thus, as Tannhäuser is the Northern Ulysses, so is Goethe's Erlking
   none other than the Piper of Hamelin. And the piper, in turn, is the
   classic Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of the Finnish Wainamoinen
   and the Sanskrit Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon,
   the lyre of Apollo (who, like the piper, was a rat-killer), the harp
   stolen by Jack when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle.18
   And the father, in Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he
   assures his child that the siren voice which tempts him is but the
   rustle of the wind among the dried leaves; for from such a simple
   class of phenomena arose this entire family of charming legends.
   
      But why does the piper, who is a leader of souls (Psychopompos),
   also draw rats after him? In answering this we shall have occasion
   to note that the ancients by no means shared that curious prejudice
   against the brute creation which is indulged in by modern
   anti-Darwinians. In many countries, rats and mice have been regarded
   as sacred animals; but in Germany they were thought to represent the
   human soul. One story out of a hundred must suffice to illustrate
   this. "In Thuringia, at Saalfeld, a servant-girl fell asleep whilst
   her companions were shelling nuts. They observed a little red mouse
   creep from her mouth and run out of the window.
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   One of the fellows present shook the sleeper, but could not wake her,
   so he moved her to another place. Presently the mouse ran back to the
   former place and dashed about, seeking the girl; not finding her, it
   vanished; at the same moment the girl died."19 This completes the
   explanation of the piper, and it also furnishes the key to the
   horrible story of Bishop Hatto.
   
      This wicked prelate lived on the bank of the Rhine, in the middle
   of which stream he possessed a tower, now pointed out to travellers as
   the Mouse Tower. In the year 970 there was a dreadful famine, and
   people came from far and near craving sustenance out of the Bishop's
   ample and well-filled granaries. Well, he told them all to go into the
   barn, and when they had got in there, as many as could stand, he set
   fire to the barn and burnt them all up, and went home to eat a merry
   supper. But when he arose next morning, he heard that an army of rats
   had eaten all the corn in his granaries, and was now advancing to
   storm the palace. Looking from his window, he saw the roads and fields
   dark with them, as they came with fell purpose straight toward his
   mansion. In frenzied terror he took his boat and rowed out to the
   tower in the river. But it was of no use: down into the water marched
   the rats, and swam across, and scaled the walls, and gnawed through
   the stones, and came swarming in about the shrieking Bishop, and ate
   him up, flesh, bones, and all. Now, bearing in mind what was said
   above, there can be no doubt that these rats were the souls of those
   whom the Bishop had murdered. There are many versions of the story in
   different Teutonic countries, and in some of them the avenging rats or
   mice issue directly, by a strange metamorphosis, from the corpses of
   the victims. St. Gertrude, moreover, the
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   heathen Holda, was symbolized as a mouse, and was said Go lead an army
   of mice; she was the receiver of children's souls. Odin, also, in his
   character of a Psychopompos, was followed by a host of rats.20
   
      As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so is the
   psychopomp himself often figured as a dog. Sarameias, the Vedic
   counterpart of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears invested with canine
   attributes; and countless other examples go to show that by the early
   Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or wolf. As
   the fearful beast was heard speeding by the windows or over the
   house-top, the inmates trembled, for none knew but his own soul might
   forthwith be required of him. Hence, to this day, among ignorant
   people, the howling of a dog under the window is supposed to portend a
   death in the family. It is the fleet greyhound of Hermes, come to
   escort the soul to the river Styx.21
   
      But the wind-god is not always so terrible. Nothing can be more
   transparent than the phraseology of the Homeric Hymn, in which Hermes
   is described as acquiring the strength of a giant while yet a babe in
   the cradle, as sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of
   Apollo, and driving them helter-skelter in various directions, then as
   crawling through the keyhole, and with a mocking laugh shrinking into
   his cradle. He is the Master Thief, who can steal the burgomaster's
   horse from under him and his wife's mantle from off her back, the
   prototype not only of the crafty architect of Rhampsinitos, but even
   of the ungrateful slave who robs Sancho of his mule in the Sierra
   Morena. He furnishes in part the conceptions
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                                    -36-
 
   of Boots and Reynard; he is the prototype of Paul Pry and peeping Tom
   of Coventry; and in virtue of his ability to contract or expand
   himself at pleasure, he is both the Devil in the Norse Tale,22 whom
   the lad persuades to enter a walnut, and the Arabian Efreet, whom the
   fisherman releases from the bottle.
   
      The very interesting series of myths and popular superstitions
   suggested by the storm-cloud and the lightning must be reserved for a
   future occasion. When carefully examined, they will richly illustrate
   the conclusion which is the result of the present inquiry, that the
   marvellous tales and quaint superstitions current in every Aryan
   household have a common origin with the classic legends of gods and
   heroes, which formerly were alone thought worthy of the student's
   serious attention. These stories -- some of them familiar to us in
   infancy, others the delight of our maturer years -- constitute the
   débris, or alluvium, brought down by the stream of tradition from the
   distant highlands of ancient mythology.
   
   [1] See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75.
   
   [2] Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.
   
   [3] According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really derived from
   "St. Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth century, to whom the church of
   Llangeller is consecrated." (Words and Places, p. 339.)
   
   [4] Compare Krilof's story of the Gnat and the Shepherd, in Mr.
   Ralston's excellent version, Krilof and his Fables, p. 170. Many
   parallel examples are cited by Mr. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol.
   I. pp. 126-136. See also the story of Folliculus, -- Swan, Gesta
   Romanorum, ad. Wright, Vol. I. p. lxxxii.
   
   [5] See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. pp. 145-149.
   
   [6] The same incident occurs in the Arabian story of Seyf-el-Mulook
   and Bedeea-el-Jemál, where the Jinni's soul is enclosed in the crop of
   a sparrow, and the sparrow imprisoned in a small box, and this
   enclosed in another small box, and this again in seven other boxes,
   which are put into seven chests, contained in a coffer of marble,
   which is sunk in the ocean that surrounds the world. Seyf-el-Mulook
   raises the coffer by the aid of Suleymán's seal-ring, and having
   extricated the sparrow, strangles it, whereupon the Jinni's body is
   converted into a heap of black ashes, and Seyf-el-Mulook escapes with
   the maiden Dólet-Khátoon. See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 316.
   
   [7] The same incident is repeated in the story of Hassan of El-Basrah.
   See Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III p. 452.
   
   [8] "Retrancher le merveilleux d'un mythe, c'est le supprimer." --
   Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 50.
   
   [9] "No distinction between the animate and inanimate is made in the
   languages of the Esquimaus, the Choctaws, the Muskoghee, and the
   Caddo. Only the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the Algonquin-Lenape have it,
   so far as is known, and with them it is partial." According to the
   Fijians, "vegetables and stones, nay, even tools and weapons, pots and
   canoes, have souls
   that are immortal, and that, like the souls of men, pass on at last to
   Mbulu, the abode of departed spirits." -- M'Lennan, The Worship of
   Animals and Plants, Fortnightly Review, Vol. XII. p, 416.
   
   [10] Marcus Aurelius, V. 7.
   
   [11] Some of these etymologies are attacked by Mr. Mahaffy in his
   Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 49. After long consideration I am
   still disposed to follow Max Müller in adopting them, with the
   possible exception of Achilleus. With Mr. Mahaffy s suggestion (p. 52)
   that many of the Homeric legends may have clustered around some
   historical basis, I fully agree; as will appear, further on, from my
   paper on "Juventus Mundi."
   
   [12] "Les facultés qui engendrent la mythologie sont les mêmes que
   celles qui engendront la philosophie, et ce n'est pas sans raison que
   l'Inde et la Grèce nous présentent le phénomène de la plus riche
   mythologie a cote de la plus profonde métaphysique. "La conception de
   la multiplicité dans l'univers, c'est le polythéisme chez les peuples
   enfants; c'est la science chez les peuples arrivés à l'âge mûr." --
   Renan, Hist. des Langues Sémitiques, Tom. I. p. 9.
   
   [13] Cases coming under this head are discussed further on, in my
   paper on "Myths of the Barbaric World."
   
   [14] A collection of these interesting legends maybe found in
   Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," of which work this
   paper was originally a review.
   
   [15] See Procopius, De Bello Gothico, IV. 20; Villemarqué, Barzas
   Breiz, I. 136. As a child I was instructed by an old nurse that Vas
   Diemen's Land is the home of ghosts and departed spirits.
   
   [16] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. p. 197.
   
   [17] Hence perhaps the adage, "Always remember to pay the piper."
   
   [18] And it reappears as the mysterious lyre of the Gaelic musician, who
   "Could harp a fish out o' the water,
   Or bluid out of a stane,
   Or milk out of a maiden's breast,
   That bairns had never nane."
   
   [19] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 159.
   
   [20] Perhaps we may trace back to this source the frantic terror which
   Irish servant-girls often manifest at sight of a mouse.
   
   [21] In Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the person who is
   dying, in order that the soul may be sure of a prompt escort. The same
   custom exists in India. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 123.
   
   [22] The Devil, who is proverbially "active in a gale of wind," is
   none other than Hermes.
   September, 1870.