Myths and Myth-makers - Chapter 2



                                    -37-

                                     II.
                            THE DESCENT OF FIRE.
 
      IN the course of my last summer's vacation, which was spent at a
   small inland village, I came upon an unexpected illustration of the
   tenacity with which conceptions descended from prehistoric antiquity
   have now and then kept their hold upon life. While sitting one evening
   under the trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the
   unusual conduct of half a dozen men and boys who were standing
   opposite. An elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road,
   holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter
   Y inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a
   branch of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed upward; but
   every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would
   gradually bend downwards until it had assumed the likeness of a Y in
   its natural position, where it would remain pointing to something in
   the ground beneath. One by one the bystanders proceeded to try the
   experiment, but with no variation in the result. Something in the
   ground seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could not pass
   over that spot without bending down and pointing to it.
   
      My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques Aymar and Dousterswivel, as
   I perceived that these men were engaged in sorcery. During the long
   drought more than half the wells in the village had become dry, and
   here was an attempt to make good the loss by the aid of the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -38-
 
   god Thor. These men were seeking water with a divining-rod. Here,
   alive before my eyes, was a superstitious observance, which I had
   supposed long since dead and forgotten by all men except students
   interested in mythology.
   
      As I crossed the road to take part in the ceremony a farmer's boy
   came up, stoutly affirming his incredulity, and offering to show the
   company how he could carry the rod motionless across the charmed spot.
   But when he came to take the weird twig he trembled with an ill-defined
   feeling of insecurity as to the soundness of his conclusions, and when
   he stood over the supposed rivulet the rod bent in spite of him, -- as
   was not so very strange. For, with all his vague scepticism, the honest
   lad had not, and could not be supposed to have, the foi scientifique of
   which Littré speaks.1
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -39-
 
      Hereupon I requested leave to try the rod; but something in my
   manner seemed at once to excite the suspicion and scorn of the
   sorcerer. "Yes, take it," said he, with uncalled-for vehemence, "but
   you can't stop it; there 's water below here, and you can't help its
   bending, if you break your back trying to hold it." So he gave me the
   twig, and awaited, with a smile which was meant to express withering
   sarcasm, the discomfiture of the supposed scoffer. But when I
   proceeded to walk four or five times across the mysterious place, the
   rod pointing steadfastly toward the zenith all the while, our friend
   became grave and began to philosophize. "Well," said he, "you see,
   your temperament is peculiar; the conditions ain't favourable in your
   case; there are some people who never can work these things. But
   there's water below here, for all that, as you'll find, if you dig for
   it; there's nothing like a hazel-rod for finding out water."
   
      Very true: there are some persons who never can make such things
   work; who somehow always encounter "unfavourable conditions" when they
   wish to test the marvellous powers of a clairvoyant; who never can
   make "Planchette" move in conformity to the requirements of any known
   alphabet; who never see ghosts, and never have "presentiments," save
   such as are obviously due to association of ideas. The ill-success of
   these persons is commonly ascribed to their lack of faith; but, in the
   majority of cases, it might be more truly referred to the strength of
   their faith, -- faith in the constancy of nature, and in the adequacy
   of ordinary human experience as interpreted by science.2 La foi
   scientifique is an excellent preventive against that obscure, though
   not uncommon,
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -40-
 
   kind of self-deception which enables wooden tripods to write and
   tables to tip and hazel-twigs to twist upside-down, without the
   conscious intervention of the performer. It was this kind of faith, no
   doubt, which caused the discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on his visit to
   Paris,3 and which has in late years prevented persons from obtaining
   the handsome prize offered by the French Academy for the first
   authentic case of clairvoyance.
   
      But our village friend, though perhaps constructively right in his
   philosophizing, was certainly very defective in his acquaintance with
   the time-honoured art of rhabdomancy. Had he extended his inquiries so
   as to cover the field of Indo-European tradition, he would have learned
   that the mountain-ash, the mistletoe, the white and black thorn, the
   Hindu asvattha, and several other woods, are quite as efficient as the
   hazel for the purpose of detecting water in times of drought; and in due
   course of time he would have perceived that the divining-rod itself is
   but one among a large class of things to which popular belief has
   ascribed, along with other talismanic properties, the power of opening
   the ground or cleaving rocks, in order to reveal hidden treasures.
   Leaving him in peace, then, with his bit of forked hazel, to seek for
   cooling springs in some future thirsty season, let us endeavour to
   elucidate the origin of this curious superstition.
   
      The detection of subterranean water is by no means the only use to
   which the divining-rod has been put. Among the ancient Frisians it was
   regularly used for the detection of criminals; and the reputation of
   Jacques
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -41-
 
   Aymar was won by his discovery of the perpetrator of a horrible murder
   at Lyons. Throughout Europe it has been used from time immemorial by
   miners for ascertaining the position of veins of metal; and in the
   days when talents were wrapped in napkins and buried in the field,
   instead of being exposed to the risks of financial speculation, the
   divining-rod was employed by persons covetous of their neighbours'
   wealth. If Boulatruelle had lived in the sixteenth century, he would
   have taken a forked stick of hazel when he went to search for the
   buried treasures of Jean Valjean. It has also been applied to the cure
   of disease, and has been kept in households, like a wizard's charm, to
   insure general good-fortune and immunity from disaster.
   
      As we follow the conception further into the elf-land of popular
   tradition, we come upon a rod which not only points out the situation
   of hidden treasure, but even splits open the ground and reveals the
   mineral wealth contained therein. In German legend, "a shepherd, who
   was driving his flock over the Ilsenstein, having stopped to rest,
   leaning on his staff, the mountain suddenly opened, for there was a
   springwort in his staff without his knowing it, and the princess
   [Ilse] stood before him. She bade him follow her, and when he was
   inside the mountain she told him to take as much gold as he pleased.
   The shepherd filled all his pockets, and was going away, when the
   princess called after him, 'Forget not the best.' So, thinking she
   meant that he had not taken enough, he filled his hat also; but what
   she meant was his staff with the springwort, which he had laid against
   the wall as soon as he stepped in. But now, just as he was going out
   at the opening, the rock suddenly slammed together and cut him in
   two."4
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -42-
 
      Here the rod derives its marvellous properties from the enclosed
   springwort, but in many cases a leaf or flower is itself competent to
   open the hillside. The little blue flower, forget-me-not, about which
   so many sentimental associations have clustered, owes its name to the
   legends told of its talismanic virtues.5 A man, travelling on a lonely
   mountain, picks up a little blue flower and sticks it in his hat.
   Forthwith an iron door opens, showing up a lighted passage-way,
   through which the man advances into a magnificent hall, where rubies
   and diamonds and all other kinds of gems are lying piled in great
   heaps on the floor. As he eagerly fills his pockets his hat drops from
   his head, and when he turns to go out the little flower calls after
   him, "Forget me not!" He turns back and looks around, but is too
   bewildered with his good fortune to think of his bare head or of the
   luck-flower which he has let fall. He selects several more of the
   finest jewels he can find, and again starts to go out; but as he
   passes through the door the mountain closes amid the crashing of
   thunder, and cuts off one of his heels. Alone, in the gloom of the
   forest, he searches in vain for the mysterious door: it has
   disappeared forever, and the traveller goes on his way, thankful, let
   us hope, that he has fared no worse.
   
      Sometimes it is a white lady, like the Princess Ilse, who invites
   the finder of the luck-flower to help himself to her treasures, and
   who utters the enigmatical warning. The mountain where the event
   occurred may be found almost anywhere in Germany, and one just like it
   stood in Persia, in the golden prime of Haroun Alraschid. In the story
   of the Forty Thieves, the mere name of the plant sesame
   serves as a talisman to open and shut the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -43-
 
   secret door which leads into the robbers' cavern; and when the
   avaricious Cassim Baba, absorbed in the contemplation of the bags of
   gold and bales of rich merchandise, forgets the magic formula, he
   meets no better fate than the shepherd of the Ilsenstein. In the story
   of Prince Ahmed, it is an enchanted arrow which guides the young
   adventurer through the hillside to the grotto of the Peri Banou. In
   the tale of Baba Abdallah, it is an ointment rubbed on the eyelid
   which reveals at a single glance all the treasures hidden in the
   bowels of the earth
   
      The ancient Romans also had their rock-breaking plant, called
   Saxifraga, or "sassafras." And the further we penetrate into this
   charmed circle of traditions the more evident does it appear that the
   power of cleaving rocks or shattering hard substances enters, as a
   primitive element, into the conception of these treasure-showing
   talismans. Mr. Baring-Gould has given an excellent account of the
   rabbinical legends concerning the wonderful schamir, by the aid of
   which Solomon was said to have built his temple. From Asmodeus, prince
   of the Jann, Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, wrested the secret of a
   worm no bigger than a barley-corn, which could split the hardest
   substance. This worm was called schamir. "If Solomon desired to
   possess himself of the worm, he must find the nest of the moor-hen,
   and cover it with a plate of glass, so that the mother bird could not
   get at her young without breaking the glass. She would seek schamir
   for the purpose, and the worm must be obtained from her." As the
   Jewish king did need the worm in order to hew the stones for that
   temple which was to be built without sound of hammer, or axe, or any
   tool of iron,6 he sent Benaiah to obtain it. According to another
   account, schamir was a mystic stone which enabled Solomon to
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -44-
 
   penetrate the earth in search of mineral wealth. Directed by a Jinni,
   the wise king covered a raven's eggs with a plate of crystal, and thus
   obtained schamir which the bird brought in order to break the plate.7
   
      In these traditions, which may possibly be of Aryan descent, due to
   the prolonged intercourse between the Jews and the Persians, a new
   feature is added to those before enumerated: the rock-splitting
   talisman is always found in the possession of a bird. The same feature
   in the myth reappears on Aryan soil. The springwort, whose marvellous
   powers we have noticed in the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is
   obtained, according to Pliny, by stopping up the hole in a tree where
   a woodpecker keeps its young. The bird flies away, and presently
   returns with the springwort, which it applies to the plug, causing it
   to shoot out with a loud explosion. The same account is given in
   German folk-lore. Elsewhere, as in Iceland, Normandy, and ancient
   Greece, the bird is an eagle, a swallow, an ostrich, or a hoopoe.
   
      In the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir, or "raven-stone,"
   also renders its possessor invisible, -- a property which it shares with
   one of the treasure-finding plants, the fern.8 In this respect it
   resembles the ring of Gyges, as in its divining and rock-splitting
   qualities it resembles that other ring which the African magician
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -45-
 
   gave to Aladdin, to enable him to descend into the cavern where stood
   the wonderful lamp.
   
      In the North of Europe schamir appears strangely and grotesquely
   metamorphosed. The hand of a man that has been hanged, when dried and
   prepared with certain weird unguents and set on fire, is known as the
   Hand of Glory; and as it not only bursts open all safe-locks, but also
   lulls to sleep all persons within the circle of its influence, it is
   of course invaluable to thieves and burglars. I quote the following
   story from Thorpe's "Northern Mythology": "Two fellows once came to
   Huy, who pretended to be exceedingly fatigued, and when they had
   supped would not retire to a sleeping-room, but begged their host
   would allow them to take a nap on the hearth. But the maid-servant,
   who did not like the looks of the two guests, remained by the kitchen
   door and peeped through a chink, when she saw that one of them drew a
   thief's hand from his pocket, the fingers of which, after having
   rubbed them with an ointment, he lighted, and they all burned except
   one. Again they held this finger to the fire, but still it would not
   burn, at which they appeared much surprised, and one said, 'There must
   surely be some one in the house who is not yet asleep.' They then hung
   the hand with its four burning fingers by the chimney, and went out to
   call their associates. But the maid followed them instantly and made
   the door fast, then ran up stairs, where the landlord slept, that she
   might wake him, but was unable, notwithstanding all her shaking and
   calling. In the mean time the thieves had returned and were
   endeavouring to enter the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -46-
 
   house by a window, but the maid cast them down from the ladder. They
   then took a different course, and would have forced an entrance, had
   it not occurred to the maid that the burning fingers might probably be
   the cause of her master's profound sleep. Impressed with this idea she
   ran to the kitchen and blew them out, when the master and his
   men-servants instantly awoke, and soon drove away the robbers." The
   same event is said to have occurred at Stainmore in England; and
   Torquermada relates of Mexican thieves that they carry with them the
   left hand of a woman who has died in her first childbed, before which
   talisman all bolts yield and all opposition is benumbed. In 1831 "some
   Irish thieves attempted to commit a robbery on the estate of Mr.
   Naper, of Loughcrew, county Meath. They entered the house armed with a
   dead man's hand with a lighted candle in it, believing in the
   superstitious notion that a candle placed in a dead man's hand will
   not be seen by any but those by whom it is used; and also that if a
   candle in a dead hand be introduced into a house, it will prevent
   those who may be asleep from awaking. The inmates, however, were
   alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them."9
   
      In the Middle Ages the hand of glory was used, just like the
   divining-rod, for the detection of buried treasures.
   
      Here, then, we have a large and motley group of objects -- the
   forked rod of ash or hazel, the springwort and the luck-flower,
   leaves, worms, stones, rings, and dead men's hands -- which are for
   the most part competent to open the way into cavernous rocks, and
   which all agree in pointing out hidden wealth. We find, moreover, that
   many of these charmed objects are carried about by birds, and that
   some of them possess, in addition
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -47-
 
   to their generic properties, the specific power of benumbing people's
   senses. What, now, is the common origin of this whole group of
   superstitions? And since mythology has been shown to be the result of
   primeval attempts to explain the phenomena of nature, what natural
   phenomenon could ever have given rise to so many seemingly wanton
   conceptions? Hopeless as the problem may at first sight seem, it has
   nevertheless been solved. In his great treatise on "The Descent of
   Fire," Dr. Kuhn has shown that all these legends and traditions are
   descended from primitive myths explanatory of the lightning and the
   storm-cloud.10
   
      To us, who are nourished from childhood on the truths revealed by
   science, the sky is known to be merely an optical appearance due to
   the partial absorption of the solar rays in passing through a thick
   stratum of atmospheric air; the clouds are known to be large masses of
   watery vapour, which descend in rain-drops when sufficiently
   condensed; and the lightning is known to be a flash of light
   accompanying an electric discharge. But these conceptions are
   extremely recondite, and have been attained only through centuries of
   philosophizing and after careful observation and laborious experiment.
   To the untaught mind of a child or of an uncivilized man, it seems far
   more natural and plausible to regard the sky as a solid dome of blue
   crystal, the clouds as snowy mountains, or perhaps even as giants or
   angels, the lightning as a flashing dart or a fiery serpent. In point
   of fact, we find that the conceptions actually entertained are often
   far more grotesque than these. I can recollect once framing the
   hypothesis that the flaming clouds of sunset were transient
   apparitions, vouchsafed us by way of warning,
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -48-
 
   of that burning Calvinistic hell with which my childish imagination
   had been unwisely terrified;11 and I have known of a four-year-old boy
   who thought that the snowy clouds of noonday were the white robes of
   the angels hung out to dry in the sun.12 My little daughter is anxious
   to know whether it is necessary to take a balloon in order to get to
   the place where God lives, or whether the same end can be accomplished
   by going to the horizon and crawling up the sky;13 the Mohammedan of
   old was working at the same problem when he called the rainbow the
   bridge Es-Sirat, over which souls must pass on their way to heaven.
   According to the ancient Jew, the sky was a solid plate, hammered out
   by the gods, and spread over the earth in order to keep up the ocean
   overhead;14 but the plate was full of little windows, which were
   opened whenever it became necessary to let the rain come through.15
   With equal plausibility the Greek represented the rainy sky as a sieve
   in which the daughters of Danaos were vainly trying to draw
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -49-
 
   water; while to the Hindu the rain-clouds were celestial cattle milked
   by the wind-god. In primitive Aryan lore, the sky itself was a blue
   sea, and the clouds were ships sailing over it; and an English legend
   tells how one of these ships once caught its anchor on a gravestone in
   the churchyard, to the great astonishment of the people who were
   coming out of church. Charon's ferry-boat was one of these vessels,
   and another was Odin's golden ship, in which the souls of slain heroes
   were conveyed to Valhalla. Hence it was once the Scandinavian practice
   to bury the dead in boats; and in Altmark a penny is still placed in
   the mouth of the corpse, that it may have the means of paying its fare
   to the ghostly ferryman.16 In such a vessel drifted the Lady of
   Shalott on her fatal voyage; and of similar nature was the dusky
   barge, "dark as a funeral-scarf from stem to stern," in which Arthur
   was received by the black-hooded queens.17
   
      But the fact that a natural phenomenon was explained in one way did
   not hinder it from being explained in a dozen other ways. The fact
   that the sun was generally regarded as an all-conquering hero did not
   prevent its
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -50-
 
   being called an egg, an apple, or a frog squatting on the waters, or
   Ixion's wheel, or the eye of Polyphemos, or the stone of Sisyphos,
   which was no sooner pushed to the zenith than it rolled down to the
   horizon. So the sky was not only a crystal dome, or a celestial ocean,
   but it was also the Aleian land through which Bellerophon wandered,
   the country of the Lotos-eaters, or again the realm of the Graiai
   beyond the twilight; and finally it was personified and worshipped as
   Dyaus or Varuna, the Vedic prototypes of the Greek Zeus and Ouranos.
   The clouds, too, had many other representatives besides ships and
   cows. In a future paper it will be shown that they were sometimes
   regarded as angels or houris; at present it more nearly concerns us to
   know that they appear, throughout all Aryan mythology, under the form
   of birds. It used to be a matter of hopeless wonder to me that
   Aladdin's innocent request for a roc's egg to hang in the dome of his
   palace should have been regarded as a crime worthy of punishment by
   the loss of the wonderful lamp; the obscurest part of the whole affair
   being perhaps the Jinni's passionate allusion to the egg as his
   master: "Wretch! dost thou command me to bring thee my master, and
   hang him up in the midst of this vaulted dome?" But the incident is to
   some extent cleared of its mystery when we learn that the roc's egg is
   the bright sun, and that the roc itself is the rushing storm-cloud
   which, in the tale of Sindbad, haunts the sparkling starry firmament,
   symbolized as a valley of diamonds.18
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -51-
 
   According to one Arabic authority, the length of its wings is ten
   thousand fathoms. But in European tradition it dwindles from these
   huge dimensions to the size of an eagle, a raven, or a woodpecker.
   Among the birds enumerated by Kuhn and others as representing the
   storm-cloud are likewise the wren or "kinglet" (French roitelet); the
   owl, sacred to Athene; the cuckoo, stork, and sparrow; and the
   red-breasted robin, whose name Robert was originally an epithet of the
   lightning-god Thor. In certain parts of France it is still believed
   that the robbing of a wren's nest will render the culprit liable to be
   struck by lightning. The same belief was formerly entertained in
   Teutonic countries with respect to the robin; and I suppose that from
   this superstition is descended the prevalent notion, which I often
   encountered in childhood, that there is something peculiarly wicked in
   killing robins.
   
      Now, as the raven or woodpecker, in the various myths of schamir,
   is the dark storm-cloud, so the rock-splitting worm or plant or pebble
   which the bird carries in its beak and lets fall to the ground is
   nothing more or less than the flash of lightning carried and dropped
   by the cloud. "If the cloud was supposed to be a great bird, the
   lightnings were regarded as writhing worms or serpents in its beak.
   These fiery serpents, are believed in to this day by the Canadian
   Indians, who call the thunder their hissing."19
   
      But these are not the only mythical conceptions which are to be
   found wrapped up in the various myths of schamir and the divining-rod.
   The persons who told these stories were not weaving ingenious
   allegories about thunder-storms; they were telling stories, or giving
   utterance
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -52-
 
   to superstitions, of which the original meaning was forgotten. The old
   grannies who, along with a stoical indifference to the fate of quails
   and partridges, used to impress upon me the wickedness of killing
   robins, did not add that I should be struck by lightning if I failed
   to heed their admonitions. They had never heard that the robin was the
   bird of Thor; they merely rehearsed the remnant of the superstition
   which had survived to their own times, while the essential part of it
   had long since faded from recollection. The reason for regarding a
   robin's life as more sacred than a partridge's had been forgotten; but
   it left behind, as was natural, a vague recognition of that mythical
   sanctity. The primitive meaning of a myth fades away as inevitably as
   the primitive meaning of a word or phrase; and the rabbins who told of
   a worm which shatters rocks no more thought of the writhing
   thunderbolts than the modern reader thinks of oyster-shells when he
   sees the word ostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer as he writes
   the phrase good bye. It is only in its callow infancy that the full
   force of a myth is felt, and its period of luxuriant development dates
   from the time when its physical significance is lost or obscured. It
   was because the Greek had forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky,
   that he could make him king over an anthropomorphic Olympos. The Hindu
   Dyaus, who carried his significance in his name as plainly as the
   Greek Helios, never attained such an exalted position; he yielded to
   deities of less obvious pedigree, such as Brahma and Vishnu.
   
      Since, therefore, the myth-tellers recounted merely the wonderful
   stories which their own nurses and grandmas had told them, and had no
   intention of weaving subtle allegories or wrapping up a physical truth
   in mystic emblems, it follows that they were not bound to avoid
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -53-
 
   incongruities or to preserve a philosophical symmetry in their
   narratives. In the great majority of complex myths, no such symmetry
   is to be found. A score of different mythical conceptions would get
   wrought into the same story, and the attempt to pull them apart and
   construct a single harmonious system of conceptions out of the pieces
   must often end in ingenious absurdity. If Odysseus is unquestionably
   the sun, so is the eye of Polyphemos, which Odysseus puts out.20 But
   the Greek poet knew nothing of the incongruity, for he was thinking
   only of a superhuman hero freeing himself from a giant cannibal; he
   knew nothing of Sanskrit, or of comparative mythology, and the sources
   of his myths were as completely hidden from his view as the sources of
   the Nile.
   
      We need not be surprised, then, to find that in one version of the
   schamir-myth the cloud is the bird which carries the worm, while in
   another version the cloud is the rock or mountain which the talisman
   cleaves open; nor need we wonder at it, if we find stories in which
   the two conceptions are mingled together without regard to an
   incongruity which in the mind of the myth-teller no longer exists.21
   
      In early Aryan mythology there is nothing by which
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -54-
 
   the clouds are more frequently represented than by rocks or mountains.
   Such were the Symplegades, which, charmed by the harp of the wind-god
   Orpheus, parted to make way for the talking ship Argo, with its crew
   of solar heroes.22 Such, too, were the mountains Ossa and Pelion,
   which the giants piled up one upon another in their impious assault
   upon Zeus, the lord of the bright sky. As Mr. Baring-Gould observes:
   "The ancient Aryan had the same name for cloud and mountain. To him
   the piles of vapour on the horizon were so like Alpine ranges, that he
   had but one word whereby to designate both.23 These great mountains of
   heaven were opened by the lightning. In the sudden flash he beheld the
   dazzling splendour within, but only for a moment, and then, with a
   crash, the celestial rocks closed again. Believing these vaporous
   piles to contain resplendent treasures of which partial glimpse was
   obtained by mortals in a momentary gleam, tales were speedily formed,
   relating the adventures of some who had succeeded in entering these
   treasure-mountains."
   
      This sudden flash is the smiting of the cloud-rock by the arrow of
   Ahmed, the resistless hammer of Thor, the spear of Odin, the trident
   of Poseidon, or the rod of Hermes. The forked streak of light is the
   archetype of the divining-rod in its oldest form, -- that in which it
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -55-
 
   not only indicates the hidden treasures, but, like the staff of the
   Ilsenstein shepherd, bursts open the enchanted crypt and reveals them
   to the astonished wayfarer. Hence the one thing essential to the
   divining-rod, from whatever tree it be chosen, is that it shall be
   forked.
   
      It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons which led the
   ancients to speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent, trident, arrow,
   or forked wand; but when we inquire why it was sometimes symbolized as
   a flower or leaf; or when we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such
   as the ash, hazel, white-thorn, and mistletoe, were supposed to be in
   a certain sense embodiments of it, we are entering upon a subject too
   complicated to be satisfactorily treated within the limits of the
   present paper. It has been said that the point of resemblance between
   a cow and a comet, that both have tails, was quite enough for the
   primitive word-maker: it was certainly enough for the primitive
   myth-teller.24 Sometimes the pinnate shape of a leaf, the forking of
   a branch, the tri-cleft corolla, or even the red colour of a flower,
   seems to have been sufficient to determine the association of ideas.
   The Hindu commentators of the Veda certainly lay great stress on the
   fact that the palasa, one of their lightning-trees, is trident-leaved.
   The mistletoe branch is forked, like a wish-bone,25 and so is the stem
   which bears the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -56-
 
   forget-me-not or wild scorpion grass. So too the leaves of the Hindu
   ficus religiosa resemble long spear-heads.26 But in many cases it is
   impossible for us to determine with confidence the reasons which may
   have guided primitive men in their choice of talismanic plants. In the
   case of some of these stories, it would no doubt be wasting ingenuity
   to attempt to assign a mythical origin for each point of detail. The
   ointment of the dervise, for instance, in the Arabian tale, has
   probably no special mythical significance, but was rather suggested by
   the exigencies of the story, in an age when the old mythologies were
   so far disintegrated and mingled together that any one talisman would
   serve as well as another the purposes of the narrator. But the
   lightning-plants of Indo-European folk-lore cannot be thus summarily
   disposed of; for however difficult it may be for us to perceive any
   connection between them and the celestial phenomena which they
   represent, the myths concerning them are so numerous and explicit as
   to render it certain that some such connection was imagined by the
   myth-makers. The superstition concerning the hand of glory is not so
   hard to interpret. In the mythology of the Finns, the storm-cloud is a
   black man with a bright copper hand; and in Hindustan, Indra Savitâr,
   the deity who slays the demon of the cloud, is golden-handed. The
   selection of the hand of a man who has been hanged is probably due to
   the superstition which regarded the storm-god Odin as peculiarly the
   lord of the gallows.
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -57-
 
   The man who is raised upon the gallows is placed directly in the track
   of the wild huntsman, who comes with his hounds to carry off the
   victim; and hence the notion, which, according to Mr. Kelly, is "very
   common in Germany and not extinct in England," that every suicide by
   hanging is followed by a storm.
   
      The paths of comparative mythology are devious, but we have now
   pursued them long enough I believe, to have arrived at a tolerably
   clear understanding of the original nature of the divining-rod. Its
   power of revealing treasures has been sufficiently explained; and its
   affinity for water results so obviously from the character of the
   lightning-myth as to need no further comment. But its power of
   detecting criminals still remains to be accounted for.
   
      In Greek mythology, the being which detects and punishes crime is
   the Erinys, the prototype of the Latin Fury, figured by late writers
   as a horrible monster with serpent locks. But this is a degradation of
   the original conception. The name Erinys did not originally mean Fury,
   and it cannot be explained from Greek sources alone. It appears in
   Sanskrit as Saranyu, a word which signifies the light of morning
   creeping over the sky. And thus we are led to the startling conclusion
   that, as the light of morning reveals the evil deeds done under the
   cover of night, so the lovely Dawn, or Erinys, came to be regarded
   under one aspect as the terrible detector and avenger of iniquity. Yet
   startling as the conclusion is, it is based on established laws of
   phonetic change, and cannot be gainsaid.
   
      But what has the avenging daybreak to do with the lightning and the
   divining-rod? To the modern mind the association is not an obvious
   one: in antiquity it was otherwise. Myths of the daybreak and myths of
   the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -58-
 
   lightning often resemble each other so closely that, except by a
   delicate philological analysis, it is difficult to distinguish the one
   from the other. The reason is obvious. In each case the phenomenon to
   be explained is the struggle between the day-god and one of the demons
   of darkness. There is essentially no distinction to the mind of the
   primitive man between the Panis, who steal Indra's bright cows and
   keep them in a dark cavern all night, and the throttling snake Ahi or
   Echidna, who imprisons the waters in the stronghold of the
   thunder-cloud and covers the earth with a short-lived darkness. And so
   the poisoned arrows of Bellerophon, which slay the storm-dragon,
   differ in no essential respect from the shafts with which Odysseus
   slaughters the night-demons who have for ten long hours beset his
   mansion. Thus the divining-rod, representing as it does the weapon of
   the god of day, comes legitimately enough by its function of detecting
   and avenging crime.
   
      But the lightning not only reveals strange treasures and gives
   water to the thirsty land and makes plain what is doing under cover of
   darkness; it also sometimes kills, benumbs, or paralyzes. Thus the
   head of the Gorgon Medusa turns into stone those who look upon it.
   Thus the ointment of the dervise, in the tale of Baba Abdallah, not
   only reveals all the treasures of the earth, but instantly thereafter
   blinds the unhappy man who tests its powers. And thus the hand of
   glory, which bursts open bars and bolts, benumbs also those who happen
   to be near it. Indeed, few of the favoured mortals who were allowed to
   visit the caverns opened by sesame or the luck-flower, escaped without
   disaster. The monkish tale of "The Clerk and the Image," in which the
   primeval mythical features are curiously distorted, well illustrates
   this point.
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -59-
 
      In the city of Rome there formerly stood an image with its right
   hand extended and on its forefinger the words "strike here." Many wise
   men puzzled in vain over the meaning of the inscription; but at last a
   certain priest observed that whenever the sun shone on the figure, the
   shadow of the finger was discernible on the ground at a little
   distance from the statue. Having marked the spot, he waited until
   midnight, and then began to dig. At last his spade struck upon
   something hard. It was a trap-door, below which a flight of marble
   steps descended into a spacious hall, where many men were sitting in
   solemn silence amid piles of gold and diamonds and long rows of
   enamelled vases. Beyond this he found another room, a gynæcium
   filled with beautiful women reclining on richly embroidered sofas; yet
   here, too, all was profound silence. A superb banqueting-hall next met
   his astonished gaze; then a silent kitchen; then granaries loaded with
   forage; then a stable crowded with motionless horses. The whole place
   was brilliantly lighted by a carbuncle which was suspended in one
   corner of the reception-room; and opposite stood an archer, with his
   bow and arrow raised, in the act of taking aim at the jewel. As the
   priest passed back through this hall, he saw a diamond-hilted knife
   lying on a marble table; and wishing to carry away something wherewith
   to accredit his story, he reached out his hand to take it; but no
   sooner had he touched it than all was dark. The archer had shot with
   his arrow, the bright jewel was shivered into a thousand pieces, the
   staircase had fled, and the priest found himself buried alive.27
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -60-
 
      Usually, however, though the lightning is wont to strike dead, with
   its basilisk glance, those who rashly enter its mysterious caverns, it
   is regarded rather as a benefactor than as a destroyer. The feelings
   with which the myth-making age contemplated the thunder-shower as it
   revived the earth paralyzed by a long drought, are shown in the myth
   of Oidipous. The Sphinx, whose name signifies "the one who binds," is
   the demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the rain, muttering,
   dark sayings which none but the all-knowing sun may understand. The
   flash of solar light which causes the monster to fling herself down
   from the cliff with a fearful roar, restores the land to prosperity.
   But besides this, the association of the thunder-storm with the
   approach of summer has produced many myths in which the lightning is
   symbolized as the life-renewing wand of the victorious sun-god. Hence
   the use of the divining-rod in the cure of disease; and hence the
   large family of schamir-myths in which the dead are restored to life
   by leaves or herbs. In Grimm's tale of the Three Snake Leaves," a
   prince is buried alive (like Sindbad) with his dead wife, and seeing
   a snake approaching her body, he cuts it in three pieces. Presently
   another snake, crawling from the corner, saw the other lying dead,
   and going, away soon returned with three green leaves in its mouth;
   then laying the parts of the body together so as to join, it put one
   leaf on each wound, and the dead snake was alive again. The prince,
   applying the leaves to his wife's body, restores her also to life."28
   In the Greek story, told by Ælian and Apollodoros, Polyidos is shut
   up with the corpse of Glaukos, which he is ordered to restore to
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -61-
 
   life. He kills a dragon which is approaching the body, but is
   presently astonished at seeing another dragon come with a blade of
   grass and place it upon its dead companion, which instantly rises from
   the ground. Polyidos takes the same blade of grass, and with it
   resuscitates Glaukos. The same incident occurs in the Hindu story of
   Panch Phul Ranee, and in Fouqué's "Sir Elidoc," which is founded on a
   Breton legend.
   
      We need not wonder, then, at the extraordinary therapeutic
   properties which are in all Aryan folk-lore ascribed to the various
   lightning-plants. In Sweden sanitary amulets are made of
   mistletoe-twigs, and the plant is supposed to be a specific against
   epilepsy and an antidote for poisons. In Cornwall children are passed
   through holes in ash-trees in order to cure them of hernia. Ash rods
   are used in some parts of England for the cure of diseased sheep,
   cows, and horses; and in particular they are supposed to neutralize
   the venom of serpents. The notion that snakes are afraid of an
   ash-tree is not extinct even in the United States. The other day I was
   told, not by an old granny, but by a man fairly educated and endowed
   with a very unusual amount of good common-sense, that a rattlesnake
   will sooner go through fire than creep over ash leaves or into the
   shadow of an ash-tree. Exactly the same statement is made by Piny, who
   adds that if you draw a circle with an ash rod around the spot of
   ground on which a snake is lying, the animal must die of starvation,
   being as effectually imprisoned as Ugolino in the dungeon at Pisa. In
   Cornwall it is believed that a blow from an ash stick will instantly
   kill any serpent. The ash shares this virtue with the hazel and fern.
   A Swedish peasant will tell you that snakes may be deprived of their
   venom by a touch with a hazel wand; and when an ancient Greek had
   occasion to make his
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -62-
 
   bed in the woods, he selected fern leaves if possible, in the belief
   that the smell of them would drive away poisonous animals.29
   
      But the beneficent character of the lightning appears still more
   clearly in another class of myths. To the primitive man the shaft of
   light coming down from heaven was typical of the original descent of
   fire for the benefit and improvement of the human race. The Sioux
   Indians account for the origin of fire by a myth of unmistakable
   kinship; they say that "their first ancestor obtained his fire from
   the sparks which a friendly panther struck from the rocks as he
   scampered up a stony hill."30 This panther is obviously the
   counterpart of the Aryan bird which drops schamir. But the Aryan
   imagination hit upon a far more remarkable conception. The ancient
   Hindus obtained fire by a process similar to that employed by Count
   Rumford in his experiments on the generation of heat by friction. They
   first wound a couple of cords around a pointed stick in such a way
   that the unwinding of the one would wind up the other, and then,
   placing the point of the stick against a circular disk of wood,
   twirled it rapidly by alternate pulls on the two strings. This
   instrument is called a chark, and is still used in South Africa,31 in
   Australia, in Sumatra, and among the Veddahs of Ceylon. The Russians
   found it in Kamtchatka; and it was formerly employed in America, from
   Labrador to the Straits of Magellan.32 The Hindus
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -63-
 
   churned milk by a similar process;33 and in order to explain the
   thunder-storm, a Sanskrit poem tells how "once upon a time the Devas,
   or gods, and their opponents, the Asuras, made a truce, and joined
   together in churning the ocean to procure amrita, the drink of
   immortality. They took Mount Mandara for a churning-stick, and,
   wrapping the great serpent Sesha round it for a rope, they made the
   mountain spin round to and fro, the Devas pulling at the serpent's
   tail, and the Asuras at its head."34 In this myth the churning-stick,
   with its flying serpent-cords, is the lightning, and the armrita, or
   drink of immortality, is simply the rain-water, which in Aryan
   folk-lore possesses the same healing virtues as the lightning. "In
   Sclavonic myths it is the water of life which restores the dead earth,
   a water brought by a bird from the depths of a gloomy cave."35 It is
   the celestial soma or mead which Indra loves to drink; it is the
   ambrosial nectar of the Olympian gods; it is the charmed water which
   in the Arabian Nights restores to human shape the victims of wicked
   sorcerers; and it is the elixir of life which mediæval philosophers
   tried to discover, and in quest of which Ponce de Leon traversed the
   wilds of Florida.36
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -64-
 
      The most interesting point in this Hindu myth is the name of the
   peaked mountain Mandara, or Manthara, which the gods and devils took
   for their churning-stick. The word means "a churning-stick," and it
   appears also, with a prefixed preposition, in the name of the
   fire-drill, pramantha. Now Kuhn has proved that this name, pramantha,
   is etymologically identical with Prometheus, the name of the beneficent
   Titan, who stole fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mankind as the
   richest of boons. This sublime personage was originally nothing but the
   celestial drill which churns fire out of the clouds; but the Greeks had
   so entirely forgotten his origin that they interpreted his name as
   meaning "the one who thinks beforehand," and accredited him with a
   brother, Epimetheus, or "the one who thinks too late." The Greeks had
   adopted another name, trypanon, for their fire-drill, and thus the
   primitive character of Prometheus became obscured.
   
      I have said above that it was regarded as absolutely essential that
   the divining-rod should be forked. To this rule, however, there was
   one exception, and if any further evidence be needed to convince the
   most sceptical that the divining-rod is nothing but a symbol of the
   lightning, that exception will furnish such evidence. For this
   exceptional kind of divining-rod was made of a pointed stick rotating
   in a block of wood, and it was the presence of hidden water or
   treasure which was supposed to excite the rotatory motion.
   
      In the myths relating to Prometheus, the lightning-god appears as
   the originator of civilization, sometimes as the creator of the human
   race, and always as its friend,37 suffering
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -65-
 
   in its behalf the most fearful tortures at the hands of the jealous
   Zeus. In one story he creates man by making a clay image and infusing
   into it a spark of the fire which he had brought from heaven; in
   another story he is himself the first man. In the Peloponnesian myth
   Phoroneus, who is Prometheus under another name, is the first man, and
   his mother was an ash-tree. In Norse mythology, also, the gods were
   said to have made the first man out of the ash-tree Yggdrasil. The
   association of the heavenly fire with the life-giving forces of nature
   is very common in the myths of both hemispheres, and in view of the
   facts already cited it need not surprise us. Hence the Hindu Agni and
   the Norse Thor were patrons of marriage, and in Norway, the most lucky
   day on which to be married is still supposed to be Thursday, which in
   old times was the day of the fire-god.38 Hence the lightning-plants
   have divers virtues in matters pertaining to marriage. The Romans made
   their wedding torches of whitethorn; hazel-nuts are still used all
   over Europe in divinations relating to the future lover or
   sweetheart;39 and under a mistletoe bough it is allowable for a
   gentleman to kiss a lady. A vast number of kindred superstitions are
   described by Mr. Kelly, to whom I am indebted for many of these
   examples.40
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -66-
 
      Thus we reach at last the completed conception of the divining-rod,
   or as it is called in this sense the wish-rod, with its kindred
   talismans, from Aladdin's lamp and the purse of Bedreddin Hassan, to
   the Sangreal, the philosopher's stone, and the goblets of Oberon and
   Tristram. These symbols of the reproductive energies of nature, which
   give to the possessor every good and perfect gift, illustrate the
   uncurbed belief in the power of wish which the ancient man shared with
   modern children. In the Norse story of Frodi's quern, the myth assumes
   a whimsical shape. The prose Edda tells of a primeval age of gold,
   when everybody had whatever he wanted. This was because the giant
   Frodi had a mill which ground out peace and plenty and abundance of
   gold withal, so that it lay about the roads like pebbles. Through the
   inexcusable avarice of Frodi, this wonderful implement was lost to the
   world. For he kept his maid-servants working at the mill until they
   got out of patience, and began to make it grind out hatred and war.
   Then came a mighty sea-rover by night and slew Frodi and carried away
   the maids and the quern. When he got well out to sea, he told them to
   grind out salt, and so they did with a vengeance. They ground the ship
   full of salt and sank it, and so the quern was lost forever, but the
   sea remains salt unto this day.
   
      Mr. Kelly rightly identifies Frodi with the sun-god Fro or Freyr,
   and observes that the magic mill is only another form of the
   fire-churn, or chark. According to another version the quern is still
   grinding away and keeping the sea salt, and over the place where it
   lies there is a prodigious whirlpool or maelstrom which sucks down
   ships.
   
      In its completed shape, the lightning-wand is the caduceus,
   or rod of Hermes. I observed, in the preceding
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -67-
 
   paper, that in the Greek conception of Hermes there have been fused
   together the attributes of two deities who were originally distinct.
   The Hermes of the Homeric Hymn is a wind-god; but the later Hermes
   Agoraios, the patron of gymnasia, the mutilation of whose statues
   caused such terrible excitement in Athens during the Peloponnesian
   War, is a very different personage. He is a fire-god, invested with
   many solar attributes, and represents the quickening forces of nature.
   In this capacity the invention of fire was ascribed to him as well as
   to Prometheus; he was said to be the friend of mankind, and was
   surnamed Ploutodotes, or "the giver of wealth."
   
      The Norse wind-god Odin has in like manner acquired several of the
   attributes of Freyr and Thor.41 His lightning-spear, which is borrowed
   from Thor, appears by a comical metamorphosis as a wish-rod which will
   administer a sound thrashing to the enemies of its possessor. Having
   cut a hazel stick, you have only to lay down an old coat, name your
   intended victim, wish he was there, and whack away: he will howl with
   pain at every blow. This wonderful cudgel appears in Dasent's tale of
   "The Lad who went to the North Wind," with which we may conclude this
   discussion. The story is told, with little variation, in Hindustan,
   Germany, and Scandinavia.
   
      The North Wind, representing the mischievous Hermes, once blew away
   a poor woman's meal. So her boy went to the North Wind and demanded
   his rights for the meal his mother had lost. "I have n't got your
   meal," said the Wind, "but here's a tablecloth which will cover itself
   with an excellent dinner whenever you tell it to."
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -68-
 
   So the lad took the cloth and started for home. At nightfall he
   stopped at an inn, spread his cloth on the table, and ordered it to
   cover itself with good things, and so it did. But the landlord, who
   thought it would be money in his pocket to have such a cloth, stole it
   after the boy had gone to bed, and substituted another just like it in
   appearance. Next day the boy went home in great glee to show off for
   his mother's astonishment what the North Wind had given him, but all
   the dinner he got that day was what the old woman cooked for him. In
   his despair he went back to the North Wind and called him a liar, and
   again demanded his rights for the meal he had lost. "I have n't got
   your meal," said the Wind, "but here 's a ram which will drop money
   out of its fleece whenever you tell it to." So the lad travelled home,
   stopping over night at the same inn, and when he got home he found
   himself with a ram which did n't drop coins out of its fleece. A third
   time he visited the North Wind, and obtained a bag with a stick in it
   which, at the word of command, would jump out of the bag and lay on
   until told to stop. Guessing how matters stood as to his cloth and
   ram, he turned in at the same tavern, and going to a bench lay down as
   if to sleep. The landlord thought that a stick carried about in a bag
   must be worth something, and so he stole quietly up to the bag,
   meaning to get the stick out and change it. But just as he got within
   whacking distance, the boy gave the word, and out jumped the stick and
   beat the thief until he promised to give back the ram and the
   tablecloth. And so the boy got his rights for the meal which the North
   Wind had blown away.
   
   [1] "Il faut que la coeur devienne ancien parmi les aneiennes choses,
   et la plénitude de l'histoire ne se dévoile qu'à celui qui descend,
   ainsi disposé, dans le passé. Mais il faut que l'esprit demeure
   moderne, et n'oublie jamais qu'il n'y a pour lui d'autre foi que la
   foi scientifique.' -- LITTRÉ.
   
   [2] For an admirable example of scientific self-analysis tracing one
   of these illusions to its psychological sources, see the account of
   Dr. Lazarus, in Taine, De l'Intelligence, Vol. I. pp. 121-125.
   
   [3] See the story of Aymar in Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. I. pp.
   57-77. The learned author attributes the discomfiture to the
   uncongenial Parisian environment; which is a style of reasoning much
   like that of my village sorcerer, I fear.
   
   [4] Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 177.
   
   [5] The story of the luck-flower is well told in verse by Mr. Baring
   Gould, in his Silver Store, p. 115, seq.
   
   [6] 1 Kings vi. 7.
   
   [7] Compare the Mussulman account of the building of the temple, in
   Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 337, 338.
   And see the story of Diocletian's ostrich, Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ed.
   Wright, Vol I. p. lxiv. See also the pretty story of the knight
   unjustly imprisoned, id. p. cii.
   
   [8] "We have the receipt of fern-seed. We walk invisible." --
   Shakespeare, Henry IV. See Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 98
   
      According to one North German tradition, the luck-flower also will
   make its finder invisible at pleasure. But, as the myth shrewdly adds,
   it is absolutely essential that the flower be found by accident: he
   who seeks for it never finds it! Thus all cavils are skilfully
   forestalled, even if not satisfactorily disposed of. The same kind of
   reasoning is favoured by our modern dealers in mystery: somehow the
   "conditions" always are askew whenever a scientific observer wishes to
   test their pretensions.
   
   [9] Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 202.
   
   [10] Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks. Berlin,
   1859.
   
   [11] "Saga me forwhan byth seo sunne read on æfen? Ic the secge, forthon
   heo locath on helle. -- Tell me, why is the sun red at even? I tell
   thee, because she looketh on hell." Thorpe, Analecta Anglo-Saxonica,
   p. 115, apud Tylor,
   Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 63. Barbaric thought had partly
   anticipated my childish theory.
   
   [12] "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.
   
   [13] "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 Müller, Chips, II. 268.
   
   [14] "Way-yo'hmer 'helohim yehi raquianh be-thok ham-mayim wihi mavdil
   beyn mayim la-mayim. -- And said the gods, let there be a hammered
   plate in the midst of the waters, and let it be dividing between
   waters and waters." Genesis i. 6.
   
   [15] Genesis vii. 11.
   
   [16] 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 superstition that a cow
   breaking into the yard foretokens a death in the family.
   
   [17] The sun-god Freyr had a cloud-ship called Skithblathnir, which is
   thus described in Dasent's Prose Edda: "She is so great, that all the
   Æsir, 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.
   
   [18] 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.
   
   [19] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, Vol. II. p. 146. Compare Tylor,
   Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 237, seq.
   
   [20] "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.
   
   [21] The Sanskrit myth-teller indeed mixes up his materials in a way
   which seems ludicrous to a Western reader. He describes Indra (the
   sun-god) as not only cleaving the cloud-mountains with his sword, but
   also cutting off their wings and hurling them from the sky. See Burnouf,
   Bhâgavata Purâna, VI. 12, 26.
   
   [22] Mr. Tylor offers a different, and possibly a better, explanation
   of the Symplegades as the gates of Night through which the solar ship,
   having passed successfully once, may henceforth pass forever. See the
   details of the evidence in his Primitive Culture, I. 315.
   
   [23] 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 clûd, rock. See
   Justi, Orient und Occident, Vol. II. p. 62." Max Müller, Rig-Veda,
   Vol. 1. p. 44.
   
   [24] In accordance with the mediæval "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.
   
   [25] Indeed, the wish-bone, or forked clavicle of a fowl, itself
   belongs to the same family of talismans as the divining-rod.
   
   [26] 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
   [mgr.gif] [egr.gif] [lgr.gif] [igr.gif] [agr.gif] . The root of oesc
   appears in the Sanskrit as, "to throw" or "lance," whence âsa, "a
   bow," and asanâ, "an arrow." See Pictet, Origines Indo-Européennes, I.
   222.
   
   [27] Compare Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, in the "Faëry 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.
   
   [28] Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. 1. p. 161.
   
   [29] Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, pp. 147, 183, 186, 193.
   
   [30] Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151.
   
   [31] Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 173, Note 12.
   
   [32] Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 238; Primitive Culture, Vol.
   II. p. 254; Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage, p. 409.
   
      "Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and wood, and
   prepare a fire, which, to George's astonishment, he lighted thus. He
   got a block of wood, in the middle of which he made a hole; then he
   cut and pointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the block,
   worked it round between his palms for some time and with increasing
   rapidity. Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after
   it burst into a flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices of
   shark and roasted them." -- Reade, Never too Late to Mend, chap.
   xxxviii.
   
   [33] 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.
   
   [34] Kelly, Indo-European Folk-Lore, p. 39. Burnouf, Bhâgavata Purâna,
   VIII. 6, 32.
   
   [35] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, p. 149.
   
   [36] It is also the regenerating water of baptism, and the "holy water"
   of the Roman Catholic.
   
   [37] In the Vedas the rain-god Soma, originally the personification of
   the sacrificial ambrosia, is the deity who imparts to men life,
   knowledge, and happiness. See Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 85. Tylor,
   Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 277.
   
   [38] We may, perhaps, see here the reason for making the Greek fire-god
   Hephaistos the husband of Aphrodite.
   
   [39] "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.
   
   [40] In Peru, a mighty and far-worshipped deity was Catequil, the
   thunder-god, .... 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.
   
   [41] In Polynesia, "the great deity Maui adds a new complication to
   his enigmatic solar-celestial character by appearing as a wind-god."
   -- Tylor, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 242. October, 1870.