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Myths and Myth-makers - Chapter 4
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IV.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS.
WHEN Maitland blasphemously asserted that God was but "a Bogie of
the nursery," he unwittingly made a remark as suggestive in point of
philology as it was crude and repulsive in its atheism. When examined
with the lenses of linguistic science, the "Bogie" or "Bug-a-boo" or
"Bugbear" of nursery lore turns out to be identical, not only with the
fairy "Puck," whom Shakespeare has immortalized, but also with the
Slavonic "Bog" and the "Baga" of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, both of
which are names for the Supreme Being. If we proceed further, and
inquire after the ancestral form of these epithets, -- so strangely
incongruous in their significations, -- we shall find it in the Old
Aryan "Bhaga," which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the Vedas,
and has left a memento of itself in the surname of the Phrygian Zeus
"Bagaios." It seems originally to have denoted either the unclouded
sun or the sky of noonday illumined by the solar rays. In Sayana's
commentary on the Rig-Veda, Bhaga is enumerated among the seven (or
eight) sons of Aditi, the boundless Orient; and he is elsewhere
described as the lord of life, the giver of bread, and the bringer of
happiness.1
Thus the same name which, to the Vedic poet, to the Persian of the
time of Xerxes, and to the modern Russian,
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suggests the supreme majesty of deity, is in English associated with
an ugly and ludicrous fiend, closely akin to that grotesque Northern
Devil of whom Southey was unable to think without laughing. Such is
the irony of fate toward a deposed deity. The German name for idol --
Abgott, that is, "ex-god," or "dethroned god" -- sums up in a single
etymology the history of the havoc wrought by monotheism among the
ancient symbols of deity. In the hospitable Pantheon of the Greeks and
Romans a niche was always in readiness for every new divinity who
could produce respectable credentials; but the triumph of monotheism
converted the stately mansion into a Pandemonium peopled with fiends.
To the monotheist an "ex-god" was simply a devilish deceiver of
mankind whom the true God had succeeded in vanquishing; and thus the
word demon, which to the ancient meant a divine or semi-divine being,
came to be applied to fiends exclusively. Thus the Teutonic races, who
preserved the name of their highest divinity, Odin, -- originally,
Guodan, -- by which to designate the God of the Christian,2 were
unable to regard the Bog of ancient tradition as anything but an
"ex-god," or vanquished demon.
The most striking illustration of this process is to be found in
the word devil itself: To a reader unfamiliar with the endless tricks
which language delights in playing, it may seem shocking to be told
that the Gypsies use the word devil as the name of God.3 This, however,
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is not because these people have made the archfiend an object of
worship, but because the Gypsy language, descending directly from the
Sanskrit, has retained in its primitive exalted sense a word which the
English language has received only in its debased and perverted sense.
The Teutonic words devil, teufel, diuval, djöfull, djevful, may all be
traced back to the Zend dev,4 a name in which is implicitly contained
the record of the oldest monotheistic revolution known to history. The
influence of the so-called Zoroastrian reform upon the long-subsequent
development of Christianity will receive further notice in the course
of this paper; for the present it is enough to know that it furnished
for all Christendom the name by which it designates the author of
evil. To the Parsee follower of Zarathustra the name of the Devil has
very nearly the same signification as to the Christian; yet, as Grimm
has shown, it is nothing else than a corruption of deva, the Sanskrit
name for God. When Zarathustra overthrew the primeval Aryan
nature-worship in Bactria, this name met the same evil fate which in
early Christian times overtook the word demon, and from a symbol of
reverence became henceforth a symbol of detestation.5 But throughout
the rest of the Aryan world it achieved
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a nobler career, producing the Greek theos, the Lithuanian diewas, the
Latin deus, and hence the modern French Dieu, all meaning God.
If we trace back this remarkable word to its primitive source in
that once lost but now partially recovered mother-tongue from which
all our Aryan languages are descended, we find a root div
or dyu, meaning "to shine." From the first-mentioned form comes deva,
with its numerous progeny of good and evil appellatives; from the
latter is derived the name of Dyaus, with its brethren, Zeus and
Jupiter. In Sanskrit dyu, as a noun, means "sky" and "day"; and there
are many passages in the Rig-Veda where the character of the god
Dyaus, as the personification of the sky or the brightness of the
ethereal heavens, is unmistakably apparent. This key unlocks for us
one of the secrets of Greek mythology. So long as there was for Zeus
no better etymology than that which assigned it to the root zen, "to
live,"6 there was little hope of understanding the nature of Zeus. But
when we learn that Zeus is identical with Dyaus, the bright sky, we
are enabled to understand Horace's expression, "sub Jove frigido," and
the prayer of the Athenians, "Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the land of
the Athenians, and on the fields."7 Such expressions as these were
retained by the Greeks and Romans long after they had forgotten that
their supreme deity was once the sky. Yet even the Brahman, from whose
mind the physical significance
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of the god's name never wholly disappeared, could speak of him as
Father Dyaus, the great Pitri, or ancestor of gods and men; and in
this reverential name Dyaus pitar may be seen the exact equivalent of
the Roman's Jupiter, or Jove the Father. The same root can be followed
into Old German, where Zio is the god of day; and into Anglo-Saxon,
where Tiwsdaeg, or the day of Zeus, is the ancestral form of Tuesday.
Thus we again reach the same results which were obtained from the
examination of the name Bhaga. These various names for the supreme Aryan
god, which without the help afforded by the Vedas could never have been
interpreted, are seen to have been originally applied to the
sun-illumined firmament. Countless other examples, when similarly
analyzed, show that the earliest Aryan conception of a Divine Power,
nourishing man and sustaining the universe, was suggested by the light
of the mighty Sun; who, as modern science has shown, is the originator
of all life and motion upon the globe, and whom the ancients delighted
to believe the source, not only of "the golden light,"8 but of
everything that is bright, joy-giving, and pure. Nevertheless, in
accepting this conclusion as well established by linguistic science,
we must be on our guard against an error into which writers on mythology
are very liable to fall. Neither sky nor sun nor light of day, neither
Zeus nor Apollo, neither Dyaus nor Indra, was ever worshipped by the
ancient Aryan in anything like a monotheistic sense. To interpret Zeus
or Jupiter as originally the supreme Aryan god, and to regard classic
paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is
to sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy.
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Philology itself teaches us that this could not have been so. Father
Dyaus was originally the bright sky and nothing more. Although his
name became generalized, in the classic languages, into deus, or God,
it is quite certain that in early days, before the Aryan separation,
it had acquired no such exalted significance. It was only in Greece
and Rome -- or, we may say, among the still united Italo-Hellenic
tribes -- that Jupiter-Zeus attained a pre-eminence over all other
deities. The people of Iran quite rejected him, the Teutons preferred
Thor and Odin, and in India he was superseded, first by Indra,
afterwards by Brahma and Vishnu. We need not, therefore, look for a
single supreme divinity among the old Aryans; nor may we expect to
find any sense, active or dormant, of monotheism in the primitive
intelligence of uncivilized men.9 The whole fabric of comparative
mythology, as at present constituted, and as described above, in the
first of these papers, rests upon the postulate that the earliest
religion was pure fetichism.
In the unsystematic nature-worship of the old Aryans the gods are
presented to us only as vague powers, with their nature and attributes
dimly defined, and their relations to each other fluctuating and often
contradictory. There is no theogony, no regular subordination of one
deity to another. The same pair of divinities appear now as father and
daughter, now as brother and sister,
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now as husband and wife; and again they quite lose their personality,
and are represented as mere natural phenomena. As Müller observes,
"The poets of the Veda indulged freely in theogonic speculations
without being frightened by any contradictions. They knew of Indra as
the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god of gods, they knew
of Varuna as the ruler of all; but they were by no means startled at
the idea that their Indra had a mother, or that their Agni [Latin
ignis] was born like a babe from the friction of two fire-sticks, or
that Varuna and his brother Mitra were nursed in the lap of Aditi."10
Thus we have seen Bhaga, the daylight, represented as the offspring,
of Aditi, the boundless Orient; but he had several brothers, and among
them were Mitra, the sun, Varuna, the overarching firmament, and
Vivasvat, the vivifying sun. Manifestly we have here but so many
different names for what is at bottom one and the same conception. The
common element which, in Dyaus and Varuna, in Bhaga and Indra, was
made an object of worship, is the brightness, warmth, and life of day,
as contrasted with the darkness, cold, and seeming death of the
night-time. And this common element was personified in as many
different ways as the unrestrained fancy of the ancient worshipper saw
fit to devise.11
Thus we begin to see why a few simple objects, like the sun, the
sky, the dawn, and the night, should be represented in mythology by
such a host of gods, goddesses, and heroes. For at one time the Sun is
represented as the conqueror of hydras and dragons who hide away from
men the golden treasures of light and warmth, and at another time he
is represented as a weary voyager traversing
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the sky-sea amid many perils, with the steadfast purpose of returning
to his western home and his twilight bride; hence the different
conceptions of Herakles, Bellerophon, and Odysseus. Now he is
represented as the son of the Dawn, and again, with equal propriety,
as the son of the Night, and the fickle lover of the Dawn; hence we
have, on the one hand, stories of a virgin mother who dies in giving
birth to a hero, and, on the other hand, stories of a beautiful maiden
who is forsaken and perhaps cruelly slain by her treacherous lover.
Indeed, the Sun's adventures with so many dawn-maidens have given him
quite a bad character, and the legends are numerous in which he
appears as the prototype of Don Juan. Yet again his separation from
the bride of his youth is described as due to no fault of his own, but
to a resistless decree of fate, which hurries him away as Aineias was
compelled to abandon Dido. Or, according to a third and equally
plausible notion, he is a hero of ascetic virtues, and the dawn-maiden
is a wicked enchantress, daughter of the sensual Aphrodite, who vainly
endeavours to seduce him. In the story of Odysseus these various
conceptions are blended together. When enticed by artful women,12 he
yields for a while to the temptation; but by and by his longing to see
Penelope takes him homeward, albeit with a record which Penelope might
not altogether have liked. Again, though the Sun, "always roaming with
a hungry heart,"
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has seen many cities and customs of strange men, he is nevertheless
confined to a single path, -- a circumstance which seems to have
occasioned much speculation in the primeval mind. Garcilaso de la Vega
relates of a certain Peruvian Inca, who seems to have been an
"infidel" with reference to the orthodox mythology of his day, that he
thought the Sun was not such a mighty god after all; for if he were,
he would wander about the heavens at random instead of going forever,
like a horse in a treadmill, along the same course. The American
Indians explained this circumstance by myths which told how the Sun
was once caught and tied with a chain which would only let him swing a
little way to one side or the other. The ancient Aryan developed the
nobler myth of the labours of Herakles, performed in obedience to the
bidding of Eurystheus. Again, the Sun must needs destroy its parents,
the Night and the Dawn; and accordingly his parents, forewarned by
prophecy, expose him in infancy, or order him to be put to death; but
his tragic destiny never fails to be accomplished to the letter. And
again the Sun, who engages in quarrels not his own, is sometimes
represented as retiring moodily from the sight of men, like Achilleus
and Meleagros: he is short-lived and ill-fated, born to do much good
and to be repaid with ingratitude; his life depends on the duration of
a burning brand, and when that is extinguished he must die.
The myth of the great Theban hero, Oidipous, well illustrates the
multiplicity of conceptions which clustered about the daily career of
the solar orb. His father, Laios, had been warned by the Delphic
oracle that he was in danger of death from his own son. The newly born
Oidipous was therefore exposed on the hillside, but, like Romulus and
Remus, and all infants similarly situated
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in legend, was duly rescued. He was taken to Corinth, where he grew up
to manhood. Journeying once to Thebes, he got into a quarrel with an
old man whom he met on the road, and slew him, who was none other than
his father, Laios. Reaching Thebes, he found the city harassed by the
Sphinx, who afflicted the land with drought until she should receive
an answer to her riddles. Oidipous destroyed the monster by solving
her dark sayings, and as a reward received the kingdom, with his own
mother, Iokaste, as his bride. Then the Erinyes hastened the discovery
of these dark deeds; Iokaste died in her bridal chamber; and Oidipous,
having blinded himself, fled to the grove of the Eumenides, near
Athens, where, amid flashing lightning and peals of thunder, he died.
Oidipous is the Sun. Like all the solar heroes, from Herakles and
Perseus to Sigurd and William Tell, he performs his marvellous deeds
at the behest of others. His father, Laios, is none other than the
Vedic Dasyu, the night-demon who is sure to be destroyed by his solar
offspring In the evening, Oidipous is united to the Dawn, the mother
who had borne him at daybreak; and here the original story doubtless
ended. In the Vedic hymns we find Indra, the Sun, born of Dahana
(Daphne), the Dawn, whom he afterwards, in the evening twilight,
marries. To the Indian mind the story was here complete; but the
Greeks had forgotten and outgrown the primitive signification of the
myth. To them Oidipous and Iokaste were human, or at least
anthropomorphic beings; and a marriage between them was a fearful
crime which called for bitter expiation. Thus the latter part of the
story arose in the effort to satisfy a moral feeling As the name of
Laios denotes the dark night, so, like Iole, Oinone, and Iamos, the
word Iokaste
signifies the delicate violet tints of the morning and evening clouds.
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Oidipous was exposed, like Paris upon Ida (a Vedic word meaning "the
earth"), because the sunlight in the morning lies upon the hillside.13
He is borne on to the destruction of his father and the incestuous
marriage with his mother by an irresistible Moira, or Fate; the sun
cannot but slay the darkness and hasten to the couch of the violet
twilight.14 The Sphinx is the storm-demon who sits on the cloud-rock
and imprisons the rain; she is the same as Medusa, Ahi, or Echidna,
and Chimaira, and is akin to the throttling snakes of darkness which
the jealous Here sent to destroy Herakles in his cradle. The idea was
not derived from Egypt, but the Greeks, on finding Egyptian figures
resembling their conception of the Sphinx, called them by the same
name. The omniscient Sun comprehends the sense of her dark mutterings,
and destroys her, as Indra slays Vritra, bringing down rain upon the
parched earth. The Erinyes, who bring to light the crimes of Oidipous,
have been explained, in a previous paper, as the personification of
daylight, which reveals the evil deeds done under the cover of night.
The grove of the Erinyes, like the garden of the Hyperboreans,
represents "the fairy network of clouds, which are the first to
receive and the last to lose the light of the sun in the morning and
in the evening; hence, although Oidipous dies in a thunder-storm, yet
the Eumenides are kind to him, and his last hour is one of
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deep peace and tranquillity."15 To the last remains with him his
daughter Antigone, "she who is born opposite," the pale light which
springs up opposite to the setting sun.
These examples show that a story-root may be as prolific of
heterogeneous offspring as a word-root. Just as we find the root spak,
"to look," begetting words so various as sceptic, bishop, speculate,
conspicuous, species, and spice, we must expect to find a simple
representation of the diurnal course of the sun, like those lyrically
given in the Veda, branching off into stories as diversified as those
of Oidipous, Herakles, Odysseus, and Siegfried. In fact, the types
upon which stories are constructed are wonderfully few. Some clever
playwright -- I believe it was Scribe -- has said that there are only
seven possible dramatic situations; that is, all the plays in the
world may be classed with some one of seven archetypal dramas.16 If
this be true, the astonishing complexity of mythology taken in the
concrete, as compared with its extreme simplicity when analyzed, need
not surprise us.
The extreme limits of divergence between stories descended from a
common root are probably reached in the myths of light and darkness
with which the present discussion is mainly concerned The subject will
be best elucidated by taking a single one of these myths and following
its various fortunes through different regions of the Aryan world. The
myth of Hercules and
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Cacus has been treated by M. Bréal in an essay which is one of the
most valuable contributions ever made to the study of comparative
mythology; and while following his footsteps our task will be an easy
one.
The battle between Hercules and Cacus, although one of the oldest
of the traditions common to the whole Indo-European race, appears in
Italy as a purely local legend, and is narrated as such by Virgil, in
the eighth book of the Æneid; by Livy, at the beginning of his
history; and by Propertius and Ovid. Hercules, journeying through
Italy after his victory over Geryon, stops to rest by the bank of the
Tiber. While he is taking his repose, the three-headed monster Cacus,
a son of Vulcan and a formidable brigand, comes and steals his cattle,
and drags them tail-foremost to a secret cavern in the rocks. But the
lowing of the cows arouses Hercules, and he runs toward the cavern
where the robber, already frightened, has taken refuge. Armed with a
huge flinty rock, he breaks open the entrance of the cavern, and
confronts the demon within, who vomits forth flames at him and roars
like the thunder in the storm-cloud. After a short combat, his hideous
body falls at the feet of the invincible hero, who erects on the spot
an altar to Jupiter Inventor, in commemoration of the recovery of his
cattle. Ancient Rome teemed with reminiscences of this event, which
Livy regarded as first in the long series of the exploits of his
countrymen. The place where Hercules pastured his oxen was known long
after as the Forum Boarium; near it the Porta Trigemina preserved the
recollection of the monster's triple head; and in the time of Diodorus
Siculus sight-seers were shown the cavern of Cacus on the slope of the
Aventine. Every tenth day the earlier generations of Romans celebrated
the victory with solemn sacrifices at the Ara Maxima; and on days of
triumph
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the fortunate general deposited there a tithe of his booty, to be
distributed among the citizens.
In this famous myth, however, the god Hercules did not originally
figure. The Latin Hercules was an essentially peaceful and domestic
deity, watching over households and enclosures, and nearly akin to
Terminus and the Penates. He does not appear to have been a solar
divinity at all. But the purely accidental resemblance of his name to
that of the Greek deity Herakles,17 and the manifest identity of the
Cacus-myth with the story of the victory of Herakles over Geryon, led
to the substitution of Hercules for the original hero of the legend,
who was none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine name Sancus. Now
Johannes Lydus informs us that, in Sabine, Sancus signified "the sky,"
a meaning which we have already seen to belong to the name Jupiter. The
same substitution of the Greek hero for the Roman divinity led to the
alteration of the name of the demon overcome by his thunderbolts. The
corrupted title Cacus was supposed to be identical with the Greek word
kakos, meaning "evil" and the corruption was suggested by the epithet
of Herakles, Alexikakos, or "the averter of ill." Originally, however,
the name was Cæcius, "he who
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blinds or darkens," and it corresponds literally to the name of the
Greek demon Kaikias, whom an old proverb, preserved by Aulus Gellius,
describes as a stealer of the clouds.18
Thus the significance of the myth becomes apparent. The three-headed
Cacus is seen to be a near kinsman of Geryon's three-headed dog Orthros,
and of the three-headed Kerberos, the hell-hound who guards the dark
regions below the horizon. He is the original werewolf or Rakshasa,
the fiend of the storm who steals the bright cattle of Helios, and
hides them in the black cavernous rock, from which they are afterwards
rescued by the schamir or lightning-stone of the solar hero. The
physical character of the myth is apparent even in the description of
Virgil, which reads wonderfully like a Vedic hymn in celebration of
the exploits of Indra. But when we turn to the Veda itself, we find
the correctness of the interpretation demonstrated again and again,
with inexhaustible prodigality of evidence. Here we encounter again
the three-headed Orthros under the identical title of Vritra, "he who
shrouds or envelops," called also Çushna, "he who parches," Pani, "the
robber," and Ahi, "the strangler." In many hymns of the Rig-Veda the
story is told over and over, like a musical theme arranged with
variations. Indra, the god of light, is a herdsman who tends a herd of
bright golden or violet-coloured cattle. Vritra, a snake-like monster
with three heads, steals them and hides them in a cavern, but Indra
slays him as Jupiter slew Cæcius, and the cows are recovered. The
language of the myth is so significant, that the Hindu commentators of
tile Veda have themselves given explanations of it similar to those
proposed
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by modern philologists. To them the legend never became devoid of
sense, as the myth of Geryon appeared to Greek scholars like
Apollodoros.19
These celestial cattle, with their resplendent coats of purple and
gold, are the clouds lit up by the solar rays; but the demon who
steals them is not always the fiend of the storm, acting in that
capacity. They are stolen every night by Vritra the concealer, and
Cæcius the darkener, and Indra is obliged to spend hours in looking
for them, sending Sarama, the inconstant twilight, to negotiate for
their recovery. Between the storm-myth and the myth of night and
morning the resemblance is sometimes so close as to confuse the
interpretation of the two. Many legends which Max Müller explains as
myths of the victory of day over night are explained by Dr. Kuhn as
storm-myths; and the disagreement between two such powerful champions
would be a standing reproach to what is rather prematurely called the
science of comparative mythology, were it not easy to show that the
difference is merely apparent and non-essential. It is the old story of
the shield with two sides; and a comparison of the ideas fundamental to
these myths will show that there is no valid ground for disagreement
in the interpretation of them. The myths of schamir and the
divining-rod, analyzed in a previous paper, explain the rending of the
thunder-cloud and the procuring of water without especial reference to
any struggle between opposing divinities. But in the myth of Hercules
and Cacus, the fundamental idea is the victory of the solar god over
the robber who steals the light. Now whether the robber carries off
the light in the evening when Indra has gone to sleep, or boldly rears
his black form against the sky during the daytime, causing darkness to
spread
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over the earth, would make little difference to the framers of the
myth. To a chicken a solar eclipse is the same thing as nightfall, and
he goes to roost accordingly. Why, then, should the primitive thinker
have made a distinction between the darkening of the sky caused by
black clouds and that caused by the rotation of the earth? He had no
more conception of the scientific explanation of these phenomena than
the chicken has of the scientific explanation of an eclipse. For him
it was enough to know that the solar radiance was stolen, in the one
case as in the other, and to suspect that the same demon was to blame
for both robberies.
The Veda itself sustains this view. It is certain that the victory
of Indra over Vritra is essentially the same as his victory over the
Panis. Vritra, the storm-fiend, is himself called one of the Panis;
yet the latter are uniformly represented as night-demons. They steal
Indra's golden cattle and drive them by circuitous paths to a dark
hiding-place near the eastern horizon. Indra sends the dawn-nymph,
Sarama, to search for them, but as she comes within sight of the dark
stable, the Panis try to coax her to stay with them: "Let us make thee
our sister, do not go away again; we will give thee part of the cows,
O darling."20 According to the text of this hymn, she scorns their
solicitations, but elsewhere the fickle dawn-nymph is said to coquet
with the powers of darkness. She does not care for their cows, but
will take a drink of milk, if they will be so good as to get it for
her. Then she goes back and tells Indra that she cannot find the cows.
He kicks her with his foot, and she runs back to the Panis, followed
by the god, who smites them all with his unerring arrows and recovers
the stolen light. From such a simple beginning as this
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has been deduced the Greek myth of the faithlessness of Helen.21
These night-demons, the Panis, though not apparently regarded with
any strong feeling of moral condemnation, are nevertheless hated and
dreaded as the authors of calamity. They not only steal the daylight,
but they parch the earth and wither the fruits, and they slay vegetation
during the winter months. As Cæcius, the "darkener," became ultimately
changed into Cacus, the "evil one," so the name of Vritra, the
"concealer," the most famous of the Panis, was gradually generalized
until it came to mean "enemy," like the English word fiend, and began
to be applied indiscriminately to any kind of evil spirit. In one place
he is called Adeva, the "enemy of the gods," an epithet exactly
equivalent to the Persian dev.
In the Zendavesta the myth of Hercules and Cacus has given rise to
a vast system of theology. The fiendish Panis are concentrated in
Ahriman or Anro-mainyas, whose name signifies the "spirit of
darkness," and who carries on a perpetual warfare against Ormuzd or
Ahuramazda, who is described by his ordinary surname, Spentomainyas,
as the "spirit of light." The ancient polytheism here gives place to a
refined dualism, not very different from what in many Christian sects
has passed current as monotheism. Ahriman is the archfiend, who
struggles with Ormuzd, not for the possession of a herd of perishable
cattle, but for the dominion of the universe. Ormuzd creates the world
pure and beautiful, but Ahriman comes
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after him and creates everything that is evil in it. He not only keeps
the earth covered with darkness during half of the day, and withholds
the rain and destroys the crops, but he is the author of all evil
thoughts and the instigator of all wicked actions. Like his progenitor
Vritra and his offspring Satan, he is represented under the form of a
serpent; and the destruction which ultimately awaits these demons is
also in reserve for him. Eventually there is to be a day of reckoning,
when Ahriman will be bound in chains and rendered powerless, or when,
according to another account, he will be converted to righteousness,
as Burns hoped and Origen believed would be the case with Satan.
This dualism of the ancient Persians has exerted a powerful
influence upon the development of Christian theology. The very idea of
an archfiend Satan, which Christianity received from Judaism, seems
either to have been suggested by the Persian Ahriman, or at least to
have derived its principal characteristics from that source. There is
no evidence that the Jews, previous to the Babylonish captivity,
possessed the conception of a Devil as the author of all evil. In the
earlier books of the Old Testament Jehovah is represented as
dispensing with his own hand the good and the evil, like the Zeus of
the Iliad.22 The story of the serpent in Eden -- an Aryan story in
every particular, which has crept into the Pentateuch -- is not once
alluded to in the Old Testament; and the notion of Satan as the author
of evil appears only in the later books, composed after the Jews had
come into close contact with Persian ideas.23 In the
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Book of Job, as Réville observes, Satan is "still a member of the
celestial court, being one of the sons of the Elohim, but having as
his special office the continual accusation of men, and having become
so suspicious by his practice as public accuser, that he believes in
the virtue of no one, and always presupposes interested motives for
the purest manifestations of human piety." In this way the character
of this angel became injured, and he became more and more an object of
dread and dislike to men, until the later Jews ascribed to him all the
attributes of Ahriman, and in this singularly altered shape he passed
into Christian theology. Between the Satan of the Book of Job and the
mediæval Devil the metamorphosis is as great as that which degraded
the stern Erinys, who brings evil deeds to light, into the demon-like
Fury who torments wrong-doers in Tartarus; and, making allowance for
difference of circumstances, the process of degradation has been very
nearly the same in the two cases.
The mediæval conception of the Devil is a grotesque compound of
elements derived from all the systems of pagan mythology which
Christianity superseded. He is primarily a rebellious angel, expelled
from heaven along with his followers, like the giants who attempted to
scale Olympos, and like the impious Efreets of Arabian legend who
revolted against the beneficent rule of Solomon. As the serpent prince
of the outer darkness, he retains the old characteristics of Vritra,
Ahi, Typhon, and Echidna.
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As the black dog which appears behind the stove in Dr. Faust's study,
he is the classic hell-hound Kerberos, the Vedic Çarvara. From the
sylvan deity Pan he gets his goat-like body, his horns and cloven
hoofs. Like the wind-god Orpheus, to whose music the trees bent their
heads to listen, he is an unrivalled player on the bagpipes. Like
those other wind-gods the psychopomp Hermes and the wild huntsman
Odin, he is the prince of the powers of the air: his flight through
the midnight sky, attended by his troop of witches mounted on their
brooms, which sometimes break the boughs and sweep the leaves from the
trees, is the same as the furious chase of the Erlking Odin or the
Burckar Vittikâb. He is Dionysos, who causes red wine to flow from the
dry wood, alike on the deck of the Tyrrhenian pirate-ship and in
Auerbach's cellar at Leipzig. He is Wayland, the smith, a skilful
worker in metals and a wonderful architect, like the classic fire-god
Hephaistos or Vulcan; and, like Hephaistos, he is lame from the
effects of his fall from heaven. From the lightning-god Thor he
obtains his red beard, his pitchfork, and his power over thunderbolts;
and, like that ancient deity, he is in the habit of beating his wife
behind the door when the rain falls during sunshine. Finally, he takes
a hint from Poseidon and from the swan-maidens, and appears as a
water-imp or Nixy (whence probably his name of Old Nick), and as the
Davy (deva) whose "locker" is situated at the bottom of the sea.24
According to the Scotch divines of the seventeenth century, the
Devil is a learned scholar and profound thinker. Having profited by
six thousand years of intense
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study and meditation, he has all science, philosophy, and theology at
his tongue's end; and, as his skill has increased with age, he is far
more than a match for mortals in cunning.25 Such, however, is not the
view taken by mediæval mythology, which usually represents his
stupidity as equalling his malignity. The victory of Hercules over
Cacus is repeated in a hundred mediæval legends in which the Devil is
overreached and made a laughing-stock. The germ of this notion may be
found in the blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, which is itself a
victory of the sun-hero over the night-demon, and which curiously
reappears in a Middle-Age story narrated by Mr. Cox. "The Devil asks a
man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing; and when the man
answers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further whether he can give
him a pair of new eyes. He is told to come again another day; and when
he makes his appearance accordingly, the man tells him that the
operation cannot be performed rightly unless he is first tightly bound
with his back fastened to a bench. While he is thus pinioned he asks
the man's name. The reply is Issi ('himself'). When the lead is
melted, the Devil opens his eyes wide to receive the deadly stream. As
soon as he is blinded, he starts up in agony, bearing away the bench
to which he had been bound; and when some workpeople in the fields ask
him who had thus treated him, his answer is, 'Issi teggi' ('Self did
it'). With a laugh they bid him lie on the bed which he has made:
'selbst gethan, selbst habe.' The Devil died of his new eyes, and was
never seen again."
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In his attempts to obtain human souls the Devil is frequently
foiled by the superior cunning of mortals. Once, he agreed to build a
house for a peasant in exchange for the peasant's soul; but if the
house were not finished before cockcrow, the contract was to be null
and void. Just as the Devil was putting on the last tile the man
imitated a cockcrow and waked up all the roosters in the
neighbourhood, so that the fiend had his labour for his pains. A
merchant of Louvain once sold himself to the Devil, who heaped upon
him all manner of riches for seven years, and then came to get him.
The merchant "took the Devil in a friendly manner by the hand and, as
it was just evening, said, 'Wife, bring a light quickly for the
gentleman.' 'That is not at all necessary,' said the Devil; 'I am
merely come to fetch you.' 'Yes, yes, that I know very well,' said the
merchant, 'only just grant me the time till this little candle-end is
burnt out, as I have a few letters to sign and to put on my coat.'
'Very well,' said the Devil, 'but only till the candle is burnt out.'
'Good,' said the merchant, and going into the next room, ordered the
maid-servant to place a large cask full of water close to a very deep
pit that was dug in the garden. The men-servants also carried, each of
them, a cask to the spot; and when all was done, they were ordered
each to take a shovel, and stand round the pit. The merchant then
returned to the Devil, who seeing that not more than about an inch of
candle remained, said, laughing, 'Now get yourself ready, it will soon
be burnt out.' 'That I see, and am content; but I shall hold you to
your word, and stay till it *is burnt.' 'Of course,' answered the
Devil; 'I stick to my word.' 'It is dark in the next room,' continued
the merchant, 'but I must find the great book with clasps, so let me
just take the light for one moment.' 'Certainly,' said the
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Devil, 'but I 'll go with you.' He did so, and the merchant's
trepidation was now on the increase. When in the next room he said on
a sudden, 'Ah, now I know, the key is in the garden door.' And with
these words he ran out with the light into the garden, and before the
Devil could overtake him, threw it into the pit, and the men and the
maids poured water upon it, and then filled up the hole with earth.
Now came the Devil into the garden and asked, 'Well, did you get the
key? and how is it with the candle? where is it?' 'The candle?' said
the merchant. 'Yes, the candle.' 'Ha, ha, ha! it is not yet burnt
out,' answered the merchant, laughing, 'and will not be burnt out for
the next fifty years; it lies there a hundred fathoms deep in the
earth.' When the Devil heard this he screamed awfully, and went off
with a most intolerable stench."26
One day a fowler, who was a terrible bungler and could n't hit a
bird at a dozen paces, sold his soul to the Devil in order to become a
Freischütz. The fiend was to come for him in seven years, but must be
always able to name the animal at which he was shooting, otherwise the
compact was to be nullified. After that day the fowler never missed
his aim, and never did a fowler command such wages. When the seven
years were out the fowler told all these things to his wife, and the
twain hit upon an expedient for cheating the Devil. The woman stripped
herself, daubed her whole body with molasses, and rolled herself up in
a feather-bed, cut open for this purpose. Then she hopped and skipped
about the field where her husband stood parleying with Old Nick.
"there's a shot for you, fire away," said the Devil. "Of course I'll
fire, but do you first tell me what kind of a bird it is; else our
agreement is cancelled, Old Boy."
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There was no help for it; the Devil had to own himself nonplussed, and
off he fled, with a whiff of brimstone which nearly suffocated the
Freischutz and his good woman.27
In the legend of Gambrinus, the fiend is still more ingloriously
defeated. Gambrinus was a fiddler, who, being jilted by his
sweetheart, went out into the woods to hang himself. As he was sitting
on the bough, with the cord about his neck, preparatory to taking the
fatal plunge, suddenly a tall man in a green coat appeared before him,
and offered his services. He might become as wealthy as he liked, and
make his sweetheart burst with vexation at her own folly, but in
thirty years he must give up his soul to Beelzebub. The bargain was
struck, for Gambrinus thought thirty years a long time to enjoy one's
self in, and perhaps the Devil might get him in any event; as well be
hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Aided by Satan, he invented
chiming-bells and lager-beer, for both of which achievements his name
is held in grateful remembrance by the Teuton. No sooner had the Holy
Roman Emperor quaffed a gallon or two of the new beverage than he made
Gambrinus Duke of Brabant and Count of Flanders, and then it was the
fiddler's turn to laugh at the discomfiture of his old sweetheart.
Gambrinus kept clear of women, says the legend, and so lived in peace.
For thirty years he sat beneath his belfry with the chimes,
meditatively drinking beer with his nobles and burghers around him.
Then Beelzebub sent Jocko, one of his imps, with orders to
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bring back Gambrinus before midnight. But Jocko was, like Swiveller's
Marchioness, ignorant of the taste of beer, never having drunk of it
even in a sip, and the Flemish schoppen were too much for him. He fell
into a drunken sleep, and did not wake up until noon next day, at
which he was so mortified that he had not the face to go back to hell
at all. So Gambrinus lived on tranquilly for a century or two, and
drank so much beer that he turned into a beer-barrel.28
The character of gullibility attributed to the Devil in these
legends is probably derived from the Trolls, or "night-folk," of
Northern mythology. In most respects the Trolls resemble the Teutonic
elves and fairies, and the Jinn or Efreets of the Arabian Nights; but
their pedigree is less honourable. The fairies, or "White Ladies,"
were not originally spirits of darkness, but were nearly akin to the
swan-maidens, dawn-nymphs, and dryads, and though their wrath was to
be dreaded, they were not malignant by nature. Christianity, having no
place for such beings, degraded them into something like imps; the
most charitable theory being that they were angels who had remained
neutral during Satan's rebellion, in punishment for which Michael
expelled them from heaven, but has left their ultimate fate
unannounced until the day of judgment. The Jinn appear to have been
similarly degraded on the rise of Mohammedanism. But the Trolls were
always imps of darkness. They are descended from the Jötuns, or
Frost-Giants of Northern paganism, and they correspond to the Panis,
or night-demons of the Veda. In many Norse tales they are said to
burst when they see the risen sun.29 They eat human flesh, are
ignorant of the simplest arts, and live in the
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deepest recesses of the forest or in caverns on the hillside, where
the sunlight never penetrates. Some of these characteristics may very
likely have been suggested by reminiscences of the primeval Lapps,
from whom the Aryan invaders wrested the dominion of Europe.30 In some
legends the Trolls are represented as an ancient race of beings now
superseded by the human race. "'What sort of an earth-worm is this?'
said one Giant to another, when they met a man as they walked. 'These
are the earth-worms that will one day eat us up, brother,' answered
the other; and soon both Giants left that part of Germany." "'See what
pretty playthings, mother!' cries the Giant's daughter, as she unties
her apron, and shows her a plough, and horses, and a peasant. 'Back
with them this instant,' cries the mother in wrath, 'and put them down
as carefully as you can, for these playthings can do our race great
harm, and when these come we must budge.'" Very naturally the
primitive Teuton, possessing already the conception of night-demons,
would apply it to these men of the woods whom even to this day his
uneducated descendants believe to be sorcerers, able to turn men into
wolves. But whatever contributions historical fact may have added to
his character, the Troll is originally a creation of mythology, like
Polyphemos, whom he resembles in his uncouth person, his cannibal
appetite, and his lack of wit. His ready gullibility is shown in the
story of "Boots who ate a Match with the Troll." Boots, the brother of
Cinderella, and the counterpart alike of Jack the Giant-killer, and of
Odysseus, is the youngest of three brothers who go into a forest to
cut wood. The Troll appears and threatens to kill any one who dares to
meddle with his timber. The
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elder brothers flee, but Boots puts on a bold face. He pulled a cheese
out of his scrip and squeezed it till the whey began to spurt out.
"Hold your tongue, you dirty Troll," said he, "or I'll squeeze you as
I squeeze this stone." So the Troll grew timid and begged to be
spared,31 and Boots let him off on condition that he would hew all day
with him. They worked till nightfall, and the Troll's giant strength
accomplished wonders. Then Boots went home with the Troll, having
arranged that he should get the water while his host made the fire.
When they reached the hut there were two enormous iron pails, so heavy
that none but a Troll could lift them, but Boots was not to be
frightened. "Bah!" said he. "Do you suppose I am going to get water in
those paltry hand-basins? Hold on till I go and get the spring
itself!" "O dear!" said the Troll, "I 'd rather not; do you make the
fire, and I'll get the water." Then when the soup was made, Boots
challenged his new friend to an eating-match; and tying his scrip in
front of him, proceeded to pour soup into it by the ladleful. By and
by the giant threw down his spoon in despair, and owned himself
conquered. "No, no! don't give it up yet," said Boots, "just cut a
hole in your stomach like this, and you can eat forever." And suiting
the action to the words, he ripped open his scrip. So the silly Troll
cut himself open and died, and Boots carried off all his gold and
silver.
Once there was a Troll whose name was Wind-and-Weather,
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and Saint Olaf hired him to build a church. If the church were
completed within a certain specified time, the Troll was to get
possession of Saint Olaf. The saint then planned such a stupendous
edifice that he thought the giant would be forever building it; but
the work went on briskly, and at the appointed day nothing remained
but to finish the point of the spire. In his consternation Olaf rushed
about until he passed by the Troll's den, when he heard the giantess
telling her children that their father, Wind-and-Weather, was
finishing his church, and would be home to-morrow with Saint Olaf. So
the saint ran back to the church and bawled out, "Hold on,
Wind-and-Weather, your spire is crooked!" Then the giant tumbled down
from the roof and broke into a thousand pieces. As in the cases of the
Mara and the werewolf, the enchantment was at an end as soon as the
enchanter was called by name.
These Trolls, like the Arabian Efreets, had an ugly habit of
carrying off beautiful princesses. This is strictly in keeping with
their character as night-demons, or Panis. In the stories of Punchkin
and the Heartless Giant, the night-demon carries off the dawn-maiden
after having turned into stone her solar brethren. But Boots, or
Indra, in search of his kinsfolk, by and by arrives at the Troll's
castle, and then the dawn-nymph, true to her fickle character, cajoles
the Giant and enables Boots to destroy him. In the famous myth which
serves as the basis for the Völsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the
dragon Fafnir steals the Valkyrie Brynhild and keeps her shut up in a
castle on the Glistening Heath, until some champion shall be found
powerful enough to rescue her. The castle is as hard to enter as that
of the Sleeping Beauty; but Sigurd, the Northern Achilleus, riding on
his deathless horse, and wielding his resistless sword
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Gram, forces his way in, slays Fafnir, and recovers the Valkyrie.
In the preceding paper the Valkyries were shown to belong to the
class of cloud-maidens; and between the tale of Sigurd and that of
Hercules and Cacus there is no difference, save that the bright sunlit
clouds which are represented in the one as cows are in the other
represented as maidens. In the myth of the Argonauts they reappear as
the Golden Fleece, carried to the far east by Phrixos and Helle, who
are themselves Niblungs, or "Children of the Mist" (Nephele), and
there guarded by a dragon. In all these myths a treasure is stolen by
a fiend of darkness, and recovered by a hero of light, who slays the
demon. And -- remembering what Scribe said about the fewness of
dramatic types -- I believe we are warranted in asserting that all the
stories of lovely women held in bondage by monsters, and rescued by
heroes who perform wonderful tasks, such as Don Quixote burned to
achieve, are derived ultimately from solar myths, like the myth of
Sigurd and Brynhild. I do not mean to say that the story-tellers who
beguiled their time in stringing together the incidents which make up
these legends were conscious of their solar character. They did not go
to work, with malice prepense, to weave allegories and apologues. The
Greeks who first told the story of Perseus and Andromeda, the Arabians
who devised the tale of Codadad and his brethren, the Flemings who
listened over their beer-mugs to the adventures of Culotte-Verte, were
not thinking of sun-gods or dawn-maidens, or night-demons; and no
theory of mythology can be sound which implies such an extravagance.
Most of these stories have lived on the lips of the common people; and
illiterate persons are not in the habit of allegorizing in the style
of mediæval monks or rabbinical
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commentators. But what has been amply demonstrated is, that the sun
and the clouds, the light and the darkness, were once supposed to be
actuated by wills analogous to the human will; that they were
personified and worshipped or propitiated by sacrifice; and that their
doings were described in language which applied so well to the deeds
of human or quasi-human beings that in course of time its primitive
purport faded from recollection. No competent scholar now doubts that
the myths of the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for
philology itself shows that the names employed in them are the names
of the great phenomena of nature. And when once a few striking stories
had thus arisen, -- when once it had been told how Indra smote the
Panis, and how Sigurd rescued Brynhild, and how Odysseus blinded the
Kyklops, -- then certain mythic or dramatic types had been called into
existence; and to these types, preserved in the popular imagination,
future stories would inevitably conform. We need, therefore, have no
hesitation in admitting a common origin for the vanquished Panis and
the outwitted Troll or Devil; we may securely compare the legends of
St. George and Jack the Giant-killer with the myth of Indra slaying
Vritra; we may see in the invincible Sigurd the prototype of many a
doughty knight-errant of romance; and we may learn anew the lesson,
taught with fresh emphasis by modern scholarship, that in the deepest
sense there is nothing new under the sun.
I am the more explicit on this point, because it seems to me that
the unguarded language of many students of mythology is liable to give
rise to misapprehensions, and to discredit both the method which they
employ and the results which they have obtained. If we were to give
full weight to the statements which are sometimes made,
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we should perforce believe that primitive men had nothing to do but to
ponder about the sun and the clouds, and to worry themselves over the
disappearance of daylight. But there is nothing in the scientific
interpretation of myths which obliges us to go any such length. I do
not suppose that any ancient Aryan, possessed of good digestive powers
and endowed with sound common-sense, ever lay awake half the night
wondering whether the sun would come back again.32 The child and the
savage believe of necessity that the future will resemble the past,
and it is only philosophy which raises doubts on the subject.33 The
predominance of solar legends in most systems of mythology is not due
to the lack of "that Titanic assurance with which we say, the sun
"must rise";34 nor again to the fact that the phenomena of day and
night are the most striking phenomena in nature. Eclipses and
earthquakes and floods are phenomena of the most terrible and
astounding kind, and they have all generated myths; yet their
contributions to folk-lore are scanty compared with those furnished by
the strife between the day-god and his enemies. The sun-myths have
been so prolific because the dramatic types to which they have given
rise are of surpassing human interest. The dragon who swallows the sun
is no doubt a fearful personage; but the hero who toils for others,
who slays hydra-headed monsters, and dries the tears of fair-haired
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damsels, and achieves success in spite of incredible obstacles, is a
being with whom we can all sympathize, and of whom we never weary of
hearing.
With many of these legends which present the myth of light and
darkness in its most attractive form, the reader is already
acquainted, and it is needless to retail stories which have been told
over and over again in books which every one is presumed to have read.
I will content myself with a weird Irish legend, narrated by Mr.
Patrick Kennedy,35 in which we here and there catch glimpses of the
primitive mythical symbols, as fragments of gold are seen gleaming
through the crystal of quartz.
Long before the Danes ever came to Ireland, there died at Muskerry
a Sculloge, or country farmer, who by dint of hard work and close
economy had amassed enormous wealth. His only son did not resemble
him. When the young Sculloge looked about the house, the day after his
father's death, and saw the big chests full of gold and silver, and
the cupboards shining with piles of sovereigns, and the old stockings
stuffed with large and small coin, he said to himself, "Bedad, how
shall I ever be able to spend the likes o' that!" And so he drank, and
gambled, and wasted his time in hunting and horse-racing, until after
a while he found the chests empty and the cupboards poverty-stricken,
and the stockings lean and penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house
and gambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought
him that a few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he
went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a
thimbleful of water in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the
thatch of the house all gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on
the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over everything."
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So he made up his mind to borrow a horse and take one more hunt
to-morrow and then reform his habits.
As he was returning late in the evening from this farewell hunt,
passing through a lonely glen he came upon an old man playing
backgammon, betting on his left hand against his right, and crying and
cursing because the right would win. "Come and bet with me," said he
to Sculloge. "Faith, I have but a sixpence in the world," was the reply;
"but, if you like, I'll wager that on the right." "Done," said the old
man, who was a Druid; "if you win I'll give you a hundred guineas." So
the game was played, and the old man, whose right hand was always the
winner, paid over the guineas and told Sculloge to go to the Devil with
them.
Instead of following this bit of advice, however, the young farmer
went home and began to pay his debts, and next week he went to the
glen and won another game, and made the Druid rebuild his mill. So
Sculloge became prosperous again, and by and by he tried his luck a
third time, and won a game played for a beautiful wife. The Druid sent
her to his house the next morning before he was out of bed, and his
servants came knocking at the door and crying, "Wake up! wake up!
Master Sculloge, there's a young lady here to see you." "Bedad, it's
the vanithee36 herself," said Sculloge; and getting up in a hurry, he
spent three quarters of an hour in dressing himself. At last he went
down stairs, and there on the sofa was the prettiest lady ever seen in
Ireland! Naturally, Sculloge's heart beat fast and his voice trembled,
as he begged the lady's pardon for this Druidic style of wooing, and
besought her not to feel obliged to stay with him unless she really
liked him. But the young lady,
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who was a king's daughter from a far country, was wondrously charmed
with the handsome farmer, and so well did they get along that the
priest was sent for without further delay, and they were married
before sundown. Sabina was the vanithee's name; and she warned her
husband to have no more dealings with Lassa Buaicht, the old man of
the glen. So for a while all went happily, and the Druidic bride was
as good as she was beautiful But by and by Sculloge began to think he
was not earning money fast enough. He could not bear to see his wife's
white hands soiled with work, and thought it would be a fine thing if
he could only afford to keep a few more servants, and drive about with
Sabina in an elegant carriage, and see her clothed in silk and adorned
with jewels.
"I will play one more game and set the stakes high," said Sculloge
to himself one evening, as he sat pondering over these things; and so,
without consulting Sabina, he stole away to the glen, and played a
game for ten thousand guineas. But the evil Druid was now ready to
pounce on his prey, and he did not play as of old. Sculloge broke into
a cold sweat with agony and terror as he saw the left hand win! Then
the face of Lassa Buaicht grew dark and stern, and he laid on Sculloge
the curse which is laid upon the solar hero in misfortune, that he
should never sleep twice under the same roof, or ascend the couch of
the dawn-nymph, his wife, until he should have procured and brought to
him the sword of light. When Sculloge reached home, more dead than
alive, he saw that his wife knew all. Bitterly they wept together, but
she told him that with courage all might be set right. She gave him a
Druidic horse, which bore him swiftly over land and sea, like the
enchanted steed of the Arabian Nights, until he reached the castle of
his wife's father
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who, as Sculloge now learned, was a good Druid, the brother of the
evil Lassa Buaicht. This good Druid told him that the sword of light
was kept by a third brother, the powerful magician, Fiach O'Duda, who
dwelt in an enchanted castle, which many brave heroes had tried to
enter, but the dark sorcerer had slain them all. Three high walls
surrounded the castle, and many had scaled the first of these, but
none had ever returned alive. But Sculloge was not to be daunted, and,
taking from his father-in-law a black steed, he set out for the
fortress of Fiach O'Duda. Over the first high wall nimbly leaped the
magic horse, and Sculloge called aloud on the Druid to come out and
surrender his sword. Then came out a tall, dark man, with coal-black
eyes and hair and melancholy visage, and made a furious sweep at
Sculloge with the flaming blade. But the Druidic beast sprang back
over the wall in the twinkling of an eye and rescued his rider,
leaving, however, his tail behind in the court-yard. Then Sculloge
returned in triumph to his father-in-law's palace, and the night was
spent in feasting and revelry.
Next day Sculloge rode out on a white horse, and when he got to
Fiach's castle, he saw the first wall lying in rubbish. He leaped the
second, and the same scene occurred as the day before, save that the
horse escaped unharmed.
The third day Sculloge went out on foot, with a harp like that of
Orpheus in his hand, and as he swept its strings the grass bent to
listen and the trees bowed their heads. The castle walls all lay in
ruins, and Sculloge made his way unhindered to the upper room, where
Fiach lay in Druidic slumber, lulled by the harp. He seized the sword
of light, which was hung by the chimney sheathed in a dark scabbard,
and making the best of his way back to the good king's palace, mounted
his wife's
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steed, and scoured over land and sea until he found himself in the
gloomy glen where Lassa Buaicht was still crying and cursing and
betting on his left hand against his right.
"Here, treacherous fiend, take your sword of light!" shouted
Sculloge in tones of thunder; and as he drew it from its sheath the
whole valley was lighted up as with the morning sun, and next moment
the head of the wretched Druid was lying at his feet, and his sweet
wife, who had come to meet him, was laughing and crying in his arms.
[1] Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. IV. p. 12; Müller, Rig-Veda Sanhita,
Vol. I. pp. 230-251; Fick, Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen
Grundsprache, p. 124, s v. Bhaga.
[2] In the North American Review, October, 1869, p. 354, I have
collected a number of facts which seem to me to prove beyond question
that the name God is derived from Guodan, the original form of Odin,
the supreme deity of our Pagan forefathers. The case is exactly
parallel to that of the French Dieu, which is descended from the Deus
of the pagan Roman.
[3] See Pott, Die Zigeuner, II. 311; Kuhn, Beiträge, I. 147. Yet in the
worship of dewel by the Gypsies is to be found the element of diabolism
invariably present in barbaric worship. "Dewel, the great god in heaven
(dewa, deus), is rather feared than loved by these weather-beaten
outcasts, for he harms them on their wanderings with his thunder and
lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere with their dark
doings. Therefore they curse him foully when misfortune falls on them;
and when a child dies, they say that Dewel has eaten it." Tylor,
Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 248.
[4] See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939.
[5] The Buddhistic as well as the Zarathustrian reformation degraded
the Vedic gods into demons. "In Buddhism we find these ancient devas,
Indra and the rest, carried about at shows, as servants of Buddha, as
goblins, or fabulous heroes." Max Müller, Chips, I. 25. This is like
the Christian change of Odin into an ogre, and of Thor into the Devil.
[6] Plato, Kratylos, p. 396, A., with Stallbaum's note. See also
Proklos, Comm. ad Timæum, II. p. 226, Schneider; and compare
Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, p. 401, a, 15, who adopts the etymology.
See also Diogenes Laërtius, VII. 147.
[7] Marcus Aurelius, v. 7; Hom. Iliad, xii. 25, cf. Petronius Arbiter,
Sat. xliv.
[8] "Il Sol, dell aurea luce eterno forte." Tasso, Gerusalemme, XV.
47; ef. Dante, Paradiso, X. 28.
[9] The Aryans were, however, doubtless better off than the tribes of
North America. "In no Indian language could the early missionaries
find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and Oki meant anything
endowed with supernatural powers, from a snake-skin or a greasy Indian
conjurer up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to use a
circumlocution, -- 'the great chief of men,' or 'he who lives in the
sky.' " Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. "The Algonquins
used no oaths, for their language supplied none; doubtless because
their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to swear by."
Ibid, p. 31.
[10] Müller, Rig-Veda-Sanhita, I. 230.
[11] Compare the remarks of Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, p. 13.
[12] It should be borne in mind, however, that one of the women who
tempt Odysseus is not a dawn-maiden, but a goddess of darkness;
Kalypso answers to Venus-Ursula in the myth of Tannhäuser. Kirke, on
the other hand, seems to be a dawn-maiden, like Medeia, whom she
resembles. In her the wisdom of the dawn-goddess Athene, the loftiest
of Greek divinities, becomes degraded into the art of an enchantress.
She reappears, in the Arabian Nights, as the wicked Queen Labe, whose
sorcery none of her lovers can baffle, save Beder, king of Persia.
[13] The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage; but the story of
his perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as much as the
stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. His
grandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name being
identical with that of the night-demon, Azidahâka, who appears in the
Shah-Nameh as the biting serpent Zohâk. See Cox, Mythology of the
Aryan Nations, II. 358.
[14] In mediæval legend this resistless Moira is transformed into the
curse which prevents the Wandering Jew from resting until the day of
judgment.
[15] Cox, Manual of Mythology, p. 134.
[16] In his interesting appendix to Henderson's Folk Lore of the
Northern Counties of England, Mr. Baring-Gould has made an ingenious
and praiseworthy attempt to reduce the entire existing mass of
household legends to about fifty story-roots; and his list, though
both redundant and defective, is nevertheless, as an empirical
classification, very instructive.
[17] There is nothing in common between the names Hercules and Herakles.
The latter is a compound, formed like Themistokles; the former is a
simple derivative from the root of hercere, "to enclose." If Herakles
had any equivalent in Latin, it would necessarily begin with S, and not
with H, as septa corresponds to, sequor to, etc. It should be noted,
however, that Mommsen, in the fourth edition of his History, abandons
this view, and observes: "Auch der griechische Herakles ist früh als
Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules in Italien einheimisch und dort in
eigenthümlicher Weise aufgefasst worden, wie es scheint zunächst als
Gott des gewagten Gewinns und der ausserordentlichen
Vermögensvermehrung." Römische Geschichte, I. 181. One would gladly
learn Mommsen's reasons for recurring to this apparently less defensible
opinion.
[18] For the relations between Sancus and Herakles, see Preller,
Römische Mythologie, p. 635; Vollmer, Mythologie, p. 970.
[19] Burnouf, Bhâgavata-Purâna, III. p. lxxxvi; Bréal, op. cit. p. 98.
[20] Max Müller, Science of Language, II 484.
[21] As Max Müller observes, "apart from all mythological
considerations, Saramâ in Sanskrit is the same word as Helena in Greek."
Op. cit. p. 490. The names correspond phonetically letter for letter,
as, Surya corresponds to Helios, Sâramêyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu to
Achilleus. Müller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answers
to the Panis.
[22] "I create evil," Isaiah xiv. 7; "Shall there be evil in the city,
and the Lord hath not done it?" Amos iii. 6; cf. Iliad, xxiv. 527, and
contrast 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 with 1 Chronicles xxi. 1.
[23] Nor is there any ground for believing that the serpent in the
Eden myth is intended for Satan. The identification is entirely the
work of modern dogmatic theology, and is due, naturally enough, to the
habit, so common alike among theologians and laymen, of reasoning
about the Bible as if it were a single book, and not a collection of
writings of different ages and of very different degrees of historic
authenticity. In a future work, entitled "Aryana Vaëdjo," I hope to
examine, at considerable length, this interesting myth of the garden
of Eden.
[24] For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations,
Vol. II. pp 358, 366; to which I am indebted for several of the
details here given. Compare Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, I. 661,
seq.
[25] "Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are cited in
Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. II. p. 368. The same belief is
implied in the quaint monkish tale of "Celestinus and the Miller's
Horse." See Tales from the Gesta Romanorum, p. 134.
[26] Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. 11. p. 258.
[27] Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. p. 259. In the Norse story
of "Not a Pin to choose between them," the old woman is in doubt as to
her own identity, on waking up after the butcher has dipped her in a
tar-barrel and rolled her on a heap of feathers; and when Tray barks
at her, her perplexity is as great as the Devil's when fooled by the
Freischütz. See Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199.
[28] See Deulin, Contes d'un Buveur de Bière, pp. 3-29.
[29] Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. and No. XLII.
[30] See Dasent's Introduction, p. cxxxix; Campbell, Tales of the West
Highlands, Vol. IV. p. 344; and Williams, Indian Epic Poetry, p. 10.
[31] "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one occasion, when
he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now the Leopard had never seen a Ram
before, and accordingly, approaching submissively, he said, 'Good day,
friend! what may your name be?' The other, in his gruff voice, and
striking his breast with his forefoot, said, 'I am a Ram; who are
you?' 'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead than alive; and then,
taking leave of the Ram, he ran home as fast as he could." Bleek,
Hottentot Fables, p. 24.
[32] I agree, most heartily, with Mr. Mahaffy's remarks, Prolegomena
to Ancient History, p. 69.
[33] Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives about the
countries within the arctic circle where during part of the year the
sun never sets. "Their astonishment now knew no bounds. 'Ah! that must
be another sun, not the same as the one we see here,' said an old man;
and in spite of all my arguments to the contrary, the others adopted
this opinion." Grey's Journals, I. 293, cited in Tylor, Early History
of Mankind, p. 301.
[34] Max Müller, Chips, II. 96.
[35] Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270.
[36] A corruption of Gaelic bhan a teaigh, "lady of the house."
November, 1870.
Myths and Myth-makers - End of Chapter 4
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