Myths and Myth-makers - Chapter 5


   
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                                     V.
                        MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD.
 
      THE theory of mythology set forth in the four preceding papers, and
   illustrated by the examination of numerous myths relating to the
   lightning, the storm-wind, the clouds, and the sunlight, was
   originally framed with reference solely to the mythic and legendary
   lore of the Aryan world. The phonetic identity of the names of many
   Western gods and heroes with the names of those Vedic divinities which
   are obviously the personifications of natural phenomena, suggested the
   theory which philosophical considerations had already foreshadowed in
   the works of Hume and Comte, and which the exhaustive analysis of
   Greek, Hindu, Keltic, and Teutonic legends has amply confirmed. Let us
   now, before proceeding to the consideration of barbaric folk-lore,
   briefly recapitulate the results obtained by modern scholarship
   working strictly within the limits of the Aryan domain.
   
      In the first place, it has been proved once for all that the
   languages spoken by the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts,
   Slaves, and Teutons are all descended from a single ancestral
   language, the Old Aryan, in the same sense that French, Italian, and
   Spanish are descended from the Latin. And from this undisputed fact it
   is an inevitable inference that these various races contain, along
   with other elements, a race-element in common, due to their Aryan
   pedigree. That the Indo-European races are wholly Aryan is very
   improbable, for in every case the countries overrun by them were
   occupied
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   by inferior races, whose blood must have mingled in varying degrees
   with that of their conquerors; but that every Indo-European people is
   in great part descended from a common Aryan stock is not open to
   question.
   
      In the second place, along with a common fund of moral and
   religious ideas and of legal and ceremonial observances, we find these
   kindred peoples possessed of a common fund of myths, superstitions,
   proverbs, popular poetry, and household legends. The Hindu mother
   amuses her child with fairy-tales which often correspond, even in
   minor incidents, with stories in Scottish or Scandinavian nurseries;
   and she tells them in words which are phonetically akin to words in
   Swedish and Gaelic. No doubt many of these stories might have been
   devised in a dozen different places independently of each other; and
   no doubt many of them have been transmitted laterally from one people
   to another; but a careful examination shows that such cannot have been
   the case with the great majority of legends and beliefs. The agreement
   between two such stories, for instance, as those of Faithful John and
   Rama and Luxman is so close as to make it incredible that they should
   have been independently fabricated, while the points of difference are
   so important as to make it extremely improbable that the one was ever
   copied from the other. Besides which, the essential identity of such
   myths as those of Sigurd and Theseus, or of Helena and Saramâ, carries
   us back historically to a time when the scattered Indo-European tribes
   had not yet begun to hold commercial and intellectual intercourse with
   each other, and consequently could not have interchanged their epic
   materials or their household stories. We are therefore driven to the
   conclusion -- which, startling as it may seem, is after all the most
   natural and plausible one that can be stated -- that the
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   Aryan nations, which have inherited from a common ancestral stock
   their languages and their customs, have inherited also from the same
   common original their fireside legends. They have preserved Cinderella
   and Punchkin just as they have preserved the words for father and
   mother, ten and twenty; and the former case, though more imposing to
   the imagination, is scientifically no less intelligible than the
   latter.
   
      Thirdly, it has been shown that these venerable tales may be
   grouped in a few pretty well defined classes; and that the archetypal
   myth of each class -- the primitive story in conformity to which
   countless subsequent tales have been generated -- was originally a
   mere description of physical phenomena, couched in the poetic diction
   of an age when everything was personified, because all natural
   phenomena were supposed to be due to the direct workings of a volition
   like that of which men were conscious within themselves. Thus we are
   led to the striking conclusion that mythology has had a common root,
   both with science and with religious philosophy. The myth of Indra
   conquering Vritra was one of the theorems of primitive Aryan science;
   it was a provisional explanation of the thunder-storm, satisfactory
   enough until extended observation and reflection supplied a better
   one. It also contained the germs of a theology; for the life-giving
   solar light furnished an important part of the primeval conception of
   deity. And finally, it became the fruitful parent of countless myths,
   whether embodied in the stately epics of Homer and the bards of the
   Nibelungenlied, or in the humbler legends of St. George and William
   Tell and the ubiquitous Boots.
   
      Such is the theory which was suggested half a century ago by the
   researches of Jacob Grimm, and which, so far as concerns the mythology
   of the Aryan race, is now
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   victorious along the whole line. It remains for us to test the
   universality of the general principles upon which it is founded, by a
   brief analysis of sundry legends and superstitions of the barbaric
   world. Since the fetichistic habit of explaining the outward phenomena
   of nature after the analogy of the inward phenomena of conscious
   intelligence is not a habit peculiar to our Aryan ancestors, but is,
   as psychology shows, the inevitable result of the conditions under
   which uncivilized thinking proceeds, we may expect to find the
   barbaric mind personifying the powers of nature and making myths about
   their operations the whole world over. And we need not be surprised if
   we find in the resulting mythologic structures a strong resemblance to
   the familiar creations of the Aryan intelligence. In point of fact, we
   shall often be called upon to note such resemblance; and it
   accordingly behooves us at the outset to inquire how far a similarity
   between mythical tales shall be taken as evidence of a common
   traditional origin, and how far it may be interpreted as due merely to
   the similar workings of the untrained intelligence in all ages and
   countries.
   
      Analogies drawn from the comparison of languages will here be of
   service to us, if used discreetly; otherwise they are likely to
   bewilder far more than to enlighten us. A theorem which Max Müller has
   laid down for our guidance in this kind of investigation furnishes us
   with an excellent example of the tricks which a superficial analogy
   may play even with the trained scholar, when temporarily off his
   guard. Actuated by a praiseworthy desire to raise the study of myths
   to something like the high level of scientific accuracy already
   attained by the study of words, Max Müller endeavours to introduce one
   of the most useful canons of philology into a department of inquiry
   where its introduction
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   could only work the most hopeless confusion. One of the earliest
   lessons to be learned by the scientific student of linguistics is the
   uselessness of comparing together directly the words contained in
   derivative languages. For example, you might set the English twelve
   side by side with the Latin duodecim, and then stare at the two words
   to all eternity without any hope of reaching a conclusion, good or
   bad, about either of them: least of all would you suspect that they
   are descended from the same radical. But if you take each word by
   itself and trace it back to its primitive shape, explaining every
   change of every letter as you go, you will at last reach the old Aryan
   dvadakan, which is the parent of both these strangely metamorphosed
   words.1 Nor will it do, on the other hand, to trust to verbal
   similarity without a historical inquiry into the origin of such
   similarity. Even in the same language two words of quite different
   origin may get their corners rubbed off till they look as like one
   another as two pebbles. The French words souris, a "mouse," and
   souris, a "smile," are spelled exactly alike; but the one comes from
   Latin sorex and the other from Latin subridere.
   
      Now Max Müller tells us that this principle, which is indispensable
   in the study of words, is equally indispensable in the study of
   myths.2 That is, you must not rashly pronounce the Norse story of the
   Heartless Giant identical with the Hindu story of Punchkin, although
   the two correspond in every essential incident. In both legends a
   magician turns several members of the same family into stone; the
   youngest member of the family comes to the rescue, and on the way
   saves the lives of
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   sundry grateful beasts; arrived at the magician's castle, he finds a
   captive princess ready to accept his love and to play the part of
   Delilah to the enchanter. In both stories the enchanter's life depends
   on the integrity of something which is elaborately hidden in a
   far-distant island, but which the fortunate youth, instructed by the
   artful princess and assisted by his menagerie of grateful beasts,
   succeeds in obtaining. In both stories the youth uses his advantage to
   free all his friends from their enchantment, and then proceeds to
   destroy the villain who wrought all this wickedness. Yet, in spite of
   this agreement, Max Müller, if I understand him aright, would not have
   us infer the identity of the two stories until we have taken each one
   separately and ascertained its primitive mythical significance.
   Otherwise, for aught we can tell, the resemblance may be purely
   accidental, like that of the French words for "mouse" and "smile."
   
      A little reflection, however, will relieve us from this perplexity,
   and assure us that the alleged analogy between the comparison of words
   and the comparison of stories is utterly superficial. The
   transformations of words -- which are often astounding enough --
   depend upon a few well-established physiological principles of
   utterance; and since philology has learned to rely upon these
   principles, it has become nearly as sure in its methods and results as
   one of the so-called "exact sciences." Folly enough is doubtless
   committed within its precincts by writers who venture there without
   the laborious preparation which this science, more than almost any
   other, demands. But the proceedings of the trained philologist are no
   more arbitrary than those of the trained astronomer. And though the
   former may seem to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel when
   he coolly tells you that violin
   and fiddle are the
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                                   -147-
 
   same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to do with
   each other, he is nevertheless no more indulging in guess-work than
   the astronomer who confesses his ignorance as to the habitability of
   Venus while asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydrogen in
   the atmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example out of a hundred, every
   philologist knows that s may become r, and that the broad a-sound may
   dwindle into the closer o-sound; but when you adduce some plausible
   etymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o into
   a, apart from the demonstrable influence of some adjacent letter, the
   philologist will shake his head.
   
      Now in the study of stories there are no such simple rules all cut
   and dried for us to go by. There is no uniform psychological principle
   which determines that the three-headed snake in one story shall become
   a three-headed man in the next. There is no Grimm's Law in mythology
   which decides that a Hindu magician shall always correspond to a
   Norwegian Troll or a Keltic Druid. The laws of association of ideas
   are not so simple in application as the laws of utterance. In short,
   the study of myths, though it can be made sufficiently scientific in
   its methods and results, does not constitute a science by itself, like
   philology. It stands on a footing similar to that occupied by physical
   geography, or what the Germans call "earth-knowledge." No one denies
   that all the changes going on over the earth's surface conform to
   physical laws; but then no one pretends that there is any single
   proximate principle which governs all the phenomena of rain-fall, of
   soil-crumbling, of magnetic variation, and of the distribution of
   plants and animals. All these things are explained by principles
   obtained from the various sciences of physics, chemistry, geology, and
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                                   -148-
 
   physiology. And in just the same way the development and distribution
   of stories is explained by the help of divers resources contributed by
   philology, psychology, and history. There is therefore no real analogy
   between the cases cited by Max Müller. Two unrelated words may be
   ground into exactly the same shape, just as a pebble from the North
   Sea may be undistinguishable from another pebble on the beach of the
   Adriatic; but two stories like those of Punchkin and the Heartless
   Giant are no more likely to arise independently of each other than two
   coral reefs on opposite sides of the globe are likely to develop into
   exactly similar islands.
   
      Shall we then say boldly, that close similarity between legends is
   proof of kinship, and go our way without further misgivings?
   Unfortunately we cannot dispose of the matter in quite so summary a
   fashion; for it remains to decide what kind and degree of similarity
   shall be considered satisfactory evidence of kinship. And it is just
   here that doctors may disagree. Here is the point at which our
   "science" betrays its weakness as compared with the sister study of
   philology. Before we can decide with confidence in any case, a great
   mass of evidence must be brought into court. So long as we remained on
   Aryan ground, all went smoothly enough, because all the external
   evidence was in our favour. We knew at the outset, that the Aryans
   inherit a common language and a common civilization, and therefore we
   found no difficulty in accepting the conclusion that they have
   inherited, among other things, a common stock of legends. In the
   barbaric world it is quite otherwise. Philology does not pronounce in
   favour of a common origin for all barbaric culture, such as it is. The
   notion of a single primitive language, standing in the same relation
   to all existing dialects as the relation of old Aryan
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   to Latin and English, or that of old Semitic to Hebrew and Arabic, was
   a notion suited only to the infancy of linguistic science. As the case
   now stands, it is certain that all the languages actually existing
   cannot be referred to a common ancestor, and it is altogether probable
   that there never was any such common ancestor. I am not now referring
   to the question of the unity of the human race. That question lies
   entirely outside the sphere of philology. The science of language has
   nothing to do with skulls or complexions, and no comparison of words
   can tell us whether the black men are brethren of the white men, or
   whether yellow and red men have a common pedigree: these questions
   belong to comparative physiology. But the science of language can and
   does tell us that a certain amount of civilization is requisite for
   the production of a language sufficiently durable and wide-spread to
   give birth to numerous mutually resembling offspring Barbaric
   languages are neither widespread nor durable. Among savages each
   little group of families has its own dialect, and coins its own
   expressions at pleasure; and in the course of two or three generations
   a dialect gets so strangely altered as virtually to lose its identity.
   Even numerals and personal pronouns, which the Aryan has preserved for
   fifty centuries, get lost every few years in Polynesia. Since the time
   of Captain Cook the Tahitian language has thrown away five out of its
   ten simple numerals, and replaced them by brand-new ones; and on the
   Amazon you may acquire a fluent command of some Indian dialect, and
   then, coming back after twenty years, find yourself worse off than Rip
   Van Winkle, and your learning all antiquated and useless. How absurd,
   therefore, to suppose that primeval savages originated a language
   which has held its own like the old Aryan and become the prolific
   mother of the
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                                   -150-
 
   three or four thousand dialects now in existence! Before a durable
   language can arise, there must be an aggregation of numerous tribes
   into a people, so that there may be need of communication on a large
   scale, and so that tradition may be strengthened. Wherever mankind
   have associated in nations, permanent languages have arisen, and their
   derivative dialects bear the conspicuous marks of kinship; but where
   mankind have remained in their primitive savage isolation, their
   languages have remained sporadic and transitory, incapable of organic
   development, and showing no traces of a kinship which never existed.
   
      The bearing of these considerations upon the origin and diffusion
   of barbaric myths is obvious. The development of a common stock of
   legends is, of course, impossible, save where there is a common
   language; and thus philology pronounces against the kinship of
   barbaric myths with each other and with similar myths of the Aryan and
   Semitic worlds. Similar stories told in Greece and Norway are likely
   to have a common pedigree, because the persons who have preserved them
   in recollection speak a common language and have inherited the same
   civilization. But similar stories told in Labrador and South Africa
   are not likely to be genealogically related, because it is altogether
   probable that the Esquimaux and the Zulu had acquired their present
   race characteristics before either of them possessed a language or a
   culture sufficient for the production of myths. According to the
   nature and extent of the similarity, it must be decided whether such
   stories have been carried about from one part of the world to another,
   or have been independently originated in many different places.
   
      Here the methods of philology suggest a rule which will often be
   found useful. In comparing, the vocabularies
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                                   -151-
 
   of different languages, those words which directly imitate natural
   sounds -- such as whiz, crash, crackle -- are not admitted as evidence
   of kinship between the languages in which they occur. Resemblances
   between such words are obviously no proof of a common ancestry; and
   they are often met with in languages which have demonstrably had no
   connection with each other. So in mythology, where we find two stories
   of which the primitive character is perfectly transparent, we need
   have no difficulty in supposing them to have originated independently.
   The myth of Jack and his Beanstalk is found all over the world; but
   the idea of a country above the sky, to which persons might gain
   access by climbing, is one which could hardly fail to occur to every
   barbarian. Among the American tribes, as well as among the Aryans, the
   rainbow and the Milky-Way have contributed the idea of a Bridge of the
   Dead, over which souls must pass on the way to the other world. In
   South Africa, as well as in Germany, the habits of the fox and of his
   brother the jackal have given rise to fables in which brute force is
   overcome by cunning. In many parts of the world we find curiously
   similar stories devised to account for the stumpy tails of the bear
   and hyæna, the hairless tail of the rat, and the blindness of the
   mole. And in all countries may be found the beliefs that men may be
   changed into beasts, or plants, or stones; that the sun is in some way
   tethered or constrained to follow a certain course; that the
   storm-cloud is a ravenous dragon; and that there are talismans which
   will reveal hidden treasures. All these conceptions are so obvious to
   the uncivilized intelligence, that stories founded upon them need not
   be supposed to have a common origin, unless there turns out to be a
   striking similarity among their minor details. On the other hand,
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   the numerous myths of an all-destroying deluge have doubtless arisen
   partly from reminiscences of actually occurring local inundations, and
   partly from the fact that the Scriptural account of a deluge has been
   carried all over the world by Catholic and Protestant missionaries.3
   
      By way of illustrating these principles, let us now cite a few of
   the American myths so carefully collected by Dr. Brinton in his
   admirable treatise. We shall not find in the mythology of the New
   World the wealth of wit and imagination which has so long delighted us
   in the stories of Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd, and Indra. The
   mythic lore of the American Indians is comparatively scanty and
   prosaic, as befits the product of a lower grade of culture and a more
   meagre intellect. Not only are the personages less characteristically
   pourtrayed, but there is a continual tendency to extravagance, the
   sure index of an inferior imagination. Nevertheless, after making due
   allowances for differences in the artistic method of treatment, there
   is between the mythologies of the Old and the New Worlds a fundamental
   resemblance. We come upon solar myths and myths of the storm curiously
   blended with culture-myths, as in the cases of Hermes, Prometheus, and
   Kadmos. The American parallels to these are to be found in the stories
   of Michabo, Viracocha, Ioskeha, and Quetzalcoatl. "As elsewhere the
   world over, so in America, many tribes had to tell of .... an august
   character, who taught them what they knew, -- the tillage of the soil,
   the properties of plants, the art of picture-writing, the secrets of
   magic; who founded their institutions and established their religions;
   who governed them long with glory abroad and
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                                   -153-
 
   peace at home; and finally did not die, but, like Frederic Barbarossa,
   Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great heroes, vanished mysteriously,
   and still lives somewhere, ready at the right moment to return to his
   beloved people and lead them to victory and happiness."4 Everyone is
   familiar with the numerous legends of white-skinned, full-bearded
   heroes, like the mild Quetzalcoatl, who in times long previous to
   Columbus came from the far East to impart the rudiments of
   civilization and religion to the red men. By those who first heard
   these stories they were supposed, with naïve Euhemerism, to refer to
   pre-Columbian visits of Europeans to this continent, like that of the
   Northmen in the tenth century. But a scientific study of the subject
   has dissipated such notions. These legends are far too numerous, they
   are too similar to each other, they are too manifestly symbolical, to
   admit of any such interpretation. By comparing them carefully with
   each other, and with correlative myths of the Old World, their true
   character soon becomes apparent.
   
      One of the most widely famous of these culture-heroes was Manabozho
   or Michabo, the Great Hare. With entire unanimity, says Dr. Brinton, the
   various branches of the Algonquin race, "the Powhatans of Virginia, the
   Lenni Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the
   Ottawas of the far North, and the Western tribes, perhaps without
   exception, spoke of this chimerical beast,' as one of the old
   missionaries calls it, as their common ancestor. The totem, or clan,
   which bore his name was looked up to with peculiar respect." Not only
   was Michabo the ruler and guardian of these numerous tribes, -- he was
   the founder of their religious rites, the inventor of picture-writing,
   the ruler of the weather, the creator and preserver of earth and
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                                   -154-
 
   heaven. "From a grain of sand brought from the bottom of the primeval
   ocean he fashioned the habitable land, and set it floating on the
   waters till it grew to such a size that a strong young wolf, running
   constantly, died of old age ere he reached its limits." He was also,
   like Nimrod, a mighty hunter. "One of his footsteps measured eight
   leagues, the Great Lakes were the beaver-dams he built, and when the
   cataracts impeded his progress he tore them away with his hands."
   "Sometimes he was said to dwell in the skies with his brother, the
   Snow, or, like many great spirits, to have built his wigwam in the far
   North on some floe of ice in the Arctic Ocean..... But in the oldest
   accounts of the missionaries he was alleged to reside toward the East;
   and in the holy formulæ of the meda craft, when the winds are invoked
   to the medicine lodge, the East is summoned in his name, the door
   opens in that direction, and there, at the edge of the earth where the
   sun rises, on the shore of the infinite ocean that surrounds the land,
   he has his house, and sends the luminaries forth on their daily
   journeys."5 From such accounts as this we see that Michabo was no more
   a wise instructor and legislator than Minos or Kadmos. Like these
   heroes, he is a personification of the solar life-giving power, which
   daily comes forth from its home in the east, making the earth to
   rejoice. The etymology of his name confirms the otherwise clear
   indications of the legend itself. It is compounded of michi, "great,"
   and wabos, which means alike "hare" and "white." "Dialectic forms in
   Algonquin for white are wabi, wape, wampi, etc.; for morning, wapan,
   wapanch, opah; for east, wapa, wanbun, etc.; for day, wompan, oppan;
   for light, oppung." So that Michabo is the Great White One, the God of
   the Dawn and the East.
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   And the etymological confusion, by virtue of which he acquired his
   soubriquet of the Great Hare, affords a curious parallel to what has
   often happened in Aryan and Semitic mythology, as we saw when
   discussing the subject of werewolves.
   
      Keeping in mind this solar character of Michabo, let us note how
   full of meaning are the myths concerning him. In the first cycle of
   these legends, "he is grandson of the Moon, his father is the West
   Wind, and his mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment
   of conception. For the Moon is the goddess of night; the Dawn is her
   daughter, who brings forth the Morning, and perishes herself in the
   act; and the West, the spirit of darkness, as the East is of light,
   precedes, and as it were begets the latter, as the evening does the
   morning. Straightway, however, continues the legend, the son sought
   the unnatural father to revenge the death of his mother, and then
   commenced a long and desperate struggle. It began on the mountains.
   The West was forced to give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers
   and over mountains and lakes, and at last he came to the brink of this
   world. 'Hold,' cried he, 'my son, you know my power, and that it is
   impossible to kill me.' What is this but the diurnal combat of light
   and darkness, carried on from what time 'the jocund morn stands tiptoe
   on the misty mountain-tops,' across the wide world to the sunset, the
   struggle that knows no end, for both the opponents are immortal?"6
   
      Even the Veda nowhere affords a more transparent narrative than
   this. The Iroquois tradition is very similar. In it appear twin
   brothers,7 born of a virgin mother,
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                                   -156-
 
   daughter of the Moon, who died in giving them life. Their names,
   Ioskeha and Tawiskara, signify in the Oneida dialect the White One and
   the Dark One. Under the influence of Christian ideas the contest
   between the brothers has been made to assume a moral character, like
   the strife between Ormuzd and Ahriman. But no such intention appears
   in the original myth, and Dr. Brinton has shown that none of the
   American tribes had any conception of a Devil. When the quarrel came
   to blows, the dark brother was signally discomfited; and the
   victorious Ioskeha, returning to his grandmother, "established his
   lodge in the far East, on the horders of the Great Ocean, whence the
   sun comes. In time he became the father of mankind, and special
   guardian of the Iroquois." He caused the earth to bring forth, he
   stocked the woods with game, and taught his children the use of fire.
   "He it was who watched and watered their crops; 'and, indeed, without
   his aid,' says the old missionary, quite out of patience with their
   puerilities, 'they think they could not boil a pot.'" There was more
   in it than poor Brébouf thought, as we are forcibly reminded by recent
   discoveries in physical science. Even civilized men would find it
   difficult to boil a pot without the aid of solar energy. Call him what
   we will, -- Ioskeha, Michabo, or Phoibos, -- the beneficent Sun is the
   master and sustainer of us all; and if we were to relapse into
   heathenism, like Erckmann-Chatrian's innkeeper, we could not do better
   than to select him as our chief object of worship.
   
      The same principles by which these simple cases are explained
   furnish also the key to the more complicated mythology of Mexico and
   Peru. Like the deities just discussed, Viracocha, the supreme god of
   the Quichuas, rises from the bosom of Lake Titicaca and journeys
   westward,
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   slaying with his lightnings the creatures who oppose him, until he
   finally disappears in the Western Ocean. Like Aphrodite, he bears in
   his name the evidence of his origin, Viracocha signifying "foam of the
   sea"; and hence the "White One" (l'aube), the god of light rising
   white on the horizon, like the foam on the surface of the waves. The
   Aymaras spoke of their original ancestors as white; and to this day,
   as Dr. Brinton informs us, the Peruvians call a white man Viracocha.
   The myth of Quetzalcoatl is of precisely the same character. All these
   solar heroes present in most of their qualities and achievements a
   striking likeness to those of the Old World. They combine the
   attributes of Apollo, Herakles, and Hermes. Like Herakles, they
   journey from east to west, smiting the powers of darkness, storm, and
   winter with the thunderbolts of Zeus or the unerring arrows of
   Phoibos, and sinking in a blaze of glory on the western verge of the
   world, where the waves meet the firmament. Or like Hermes, in a second
   cycle of legends, they rise with the soft breezes of a summer morning,
   driving before them the bright celestial cattle whose udders are heavy
   with refreshing rain, fanning the flames which devour the forests,
   blustering at the doors of wigwams, and escaping with weird laughter
   through vents and crevices. The white skins and flowing beards of
   these American heroes may be aptly compared to the fair faces and long
   golden locks of their Hellenic compeers. Yellow hair was in all
   probability as rare in Greece as a full beard in Peru or Mexico; but
   in each case the description suits the solar character of the hero.
   One important class of incidents, however is apparently quite absent
   from the American legends. We frequently see the Dawn described as a
   virgin mother who dies in giving birth to the Day; but nowhere do we
   remember seeing
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -158-
 
   her pictured as a lovely or valiant or crafty maiden, ardently wooed,
   but speedily forsaken by her solar lover. Perhaps in no respect is the
   superior richness and beauty of the Aryan myths more manifest than in
   this. Brynhild, Urvasi, Medeia, Ariadne, Oinone, and countless other
   kindred heroines, with their brilliant legends, could not be spared
   from the mythology of our ancestors without, leaving it meagre indeed.
   These were the materials which Kalidasa, the Attic dramatists, and the
   bards of the Nibelungen found ready, awaiting their artistic treatment.
   But the mythology of the New World, with all its pretty and agreeable
   naïveté, affords hardly enough, either of variety in situation or of
   complexity in motive, for a grand epic or a genuine tragedy.
   
      But little reflection is needed to assure us that the imagination
   of the barbarian, who either carries away his wife by brute force or
   buys her from her relatives as he would buy a cow, could never have
   originated legends in which maidens are lovingly solicited, or in
   which their favour is won by the performance of deeds of valour. These
   stories owe their existence to the romantic turn of mind which has
   always characterized the Aryan, whose civilization, even in the times
   before the dispersion of his race, was sufficiently advanced to allow
   of his entertaining such comparatively exalted conceptions of the
   relations between men and women. The absence of these myths from
   barbaric folk-lore is, therefore, just what might be expected; but it
   is a fact which militates against any possible hypothesis of the
   common origin of Aryan and barbaric mythology. If there were any
   genetic relationship between Sigurd and Ioskeha, between Herakles and
   Michabo, it would be hard to tell why Brynhild and Iole should have
   disappeared entirely from one whole group of legends, while retained,
   in some
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -159-
 
   form or other, throughout the whole of the other group. On the other
   hand, the resemblances above noticed between Aryan and American
   mythology fall very far short of the resemblances between the stories
   told in different parts of the Aryan domain. No barbaric legend, of
   genuine barbaric growth, has yet been cited which resembles any Aryan
   legend as the story of Punchkin resembles the story of the Heartless
   Giant. The myths of Michabo and Viracocha are direct copies, so to
   speak, of natural phenomena, just as imitative words are direct copies
   of natural sounds. Neither the Redskin nor the Indo-European had any
   choice as to the main features of the career of his solar divinity. He
   must be born of the Night, -- or of the Dawn, -- must travel westward,
   must slay harassing demons. Eliminating these points of likeness, the
   resemblance between the Aryan and barbaric legends is at once at an
   end. Such an identity in point of details as that between the wooden
   horse which enters Ilion, and the horse which bears Sigurd into the
   place where Brynhild is imprisoned, and the Druidic steed which leaps
   with Sculloge over the walls of Fiach's enchanted castle, is, I
   believe, nowhere to be found after we leave Indo-European territory.
   
      Our conclusion, therefore, must be, that while the legends of the
   Aryan and the non-Aryan worlds contain common mythical elements, the
   legends themselves are not of common origin. The fact that certain
   mythical ideas are possessed alike by different races, shows that in
   each case a similar human intelligence has been at work explaining
   similar phenomena; but in order to prove a family relationship between
   the culture of these different races, we need something more than
   this. We need to prove not only a community of mythical ideas, but
   also a community between the stories based upon these
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -160-
 
   ideas. We must show not only that Michabo is like Herakles in those
   striking features which the contemplation of solar phenomena would
   necessarily suggest to the imagination of the primitive myth-maker,
   but also that the two characters are similarly conceived, and that the
   two careers agree in seemingly arbitrary points of detail, as is the
   case in the stories of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant. The mere fact
   that solar heroes, all over the world, travel in a certain path and
   slay imps of darkness is of great value as throwing light upon
   primeval habits of thought, but it is of no value as evidence for or
   against an alleged community of civilization between different races.
   The same is true of the sacredness universally attached to certain
   numbers. Dr. Blinton's opinion that the sanctity of the number four in
   nearly all systems of mythology is due to a primitive worship of the
   cardinal points, becomes very probable when we recollect that the
   similar pre-eminence of seven is almost demonstrably connected with
   the adoration of the sun, moon, and five visible planets, which has
   left its record in the structure and nomenclature of the Aryan and
   Semitic week.8
   
      In view of these considerations, the comparison of barbaric myths
   with each other and with the legends of the Aryan world becomes doubly
   interesting, as illustrating the similarity in the workings of the
   untrained intelligence the world over. In our first paper we saw how
   the moon-spots have been variously explained by Indo-Europeans, as a
   man with a thorn-bush or as two children bearing a bucket of water on
   a pole. In Ceylon it is
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -161-
 
   said that as Sakyamuni was one day wandering half starved in the
   forest, a pious hare met him, and offered itself to him to be slain
   and cooked for dinner; whereupon the holy Buddha set it on high in the
   moon, that future generations of men might see it and marvel at its
   piety. In the Samoan Islands these dark patches are supposed to be
   portions of a woman's figure. A certain woman was once hammering
   something with a mallet, when the moon arose, looking so much like a
   bread-fruit that the woman asked it to come down and let her child eat
   off a piece of it; but the moon, enraged at the insult, gobbled up
   woman, mallet, and child, and there, in the moon's belly, you may
   still behold them. According to the Hottentots, the Moon once sent the
   Hare to inform men that as she died away and rose again, so should men
   die and again come to life. But the stupid Hare forgot the purport of
   the message, and, coming down to the earth, proclaimed it far and wide
   that though the Moon was invariably resuscitated whenever she died,
   mankind, on the other hand, should die and go to the Devil. When the
   silly brute returned to the lunar country and told what he had done,
   the Moon was so angry that she took up an axe and aimed a blow at his
   head to split it. But the axe missed and only cut his lip open; and
   that was the origin of the "hare-lip." Maddened by the pain and the
   insult, the Hare flew at the Moon and almost scratched her eyes out;
   and to this day she bears on her face the marks of the Hare's claws.9
   
      Again, every reader of the classics knows how Selene cast Endymion
   into a profound slumber because he refused her love, and how at
   sundown she used to come
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -162-
 
   and stand above him on the Latmian hill, and watch him as he lay
   asleep on the marble steps of a temple half hidden among drooping
   elm-trees, over which clambered vines heavy with dark blue grapes.
   This represents the rising moon looking down on the setting sun; in
   Labrador a similar phenomenon has suggested a somewhat different
   story. Among the Esquimaux the Sun is a maiden and the Moon is her
   brother, who is overcome by a wicked passion for her. Once, as this
   girl was at a dancing-party in a friend's hut, some one came up and
   took hold of her by the shoulders and shook her, which is (according
   to the legend) the Esquimaux manner of declaring one's love. She could
   not tell who it was in the dark, and so she dipped her hand in some
   soot and smeared one of his cheeks with it. When a light was struck in
   the hut, she saw, to her dismay, that it was her brother, and, without
   waiting to learn any more, she took to her heels. He started in hot
   pursuit, and so they ran till they got to the end of the world, -- the
   jumping-off place, -- when they both jumped into the sky. There the
   Moon still chases his sister, the Sun; and every now and then he turns
   his sooty cheek toward the earth, when he becomes so dark that you
   cannot see him.10
   
      Another story, which I cite from Mr. Tylor, shows that Malays, as
   well as Indo-Europeans, have conceived of the clouds as swan-maidens.
   In the island of Celebes it is said that "seven heavenly nymphs came
   down from the sky to bathe, and they were seen by Kasimbaha, who
   thought first that they were white doves, but in the bath he saw that
   they were women. Then he stole one of the thin robes that gave the
   nymphs their power of flying, and so he caught Utahagi, the one whose
   robe he had stolen, and took her for his wife, and she bore him a son.
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -163-
 
   Now she was called Utahagi from a single white hair she had, which was
   endowed with magic power, and this hair her husband pulled out. As
   soon as he had done it, there arose a great storm, and Utahagi went up
   to heaven. The child cried for its mother, and Kasimbaha was in great
   grief, and cast about how he should follow Utahagi up into the sky."
   Here we pass to the myth of Jack and the Beanstalk. "A rat gnawed the
   thorns off the rattans, and Kasimbaha clambered up by them with his
   son upon his back, till he came to heaven. There a little bird showed
   him the house of Utahagi, and after various adventures he took up his
   abode among the gods."11
   
      In Siberia we find a legend of swan-maidens, which also reminds us
   of the story of the Heartless Giant. A certain Samojed once went out
   to catch foxes, and found seven maidens swimming in a lake surrounded
   by gloomy pine-trees, while their feather dresses lay on the shore. He
   crept up and stole one of these dresses, and by and by the swan-maiden
   came to him shivering with cold and promising to become his wife if he
   would only give her back her garment of feathers. The ungallant
   fellow, however, did not care for a wife, but a little revenge was not
   unsuited to his way of thinking. There were seven robbers who used to
   prowl about the neighbourhood, and who, when they got home, finding
   their hearts in the way, used to hang them up on some pegs in the
   tent. One of these robbers had killed the Samojed's mother; and so he
   promised to return the swan-maiden's dress after she should have
   procured for him these seven hearts. So she stole the hearts, and the
   Samojed smashed six of them, and then woke up the seventh robber, and
   told him to restore his mother to life, on pain of instant death,
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -164-
 
   Then the robber produced a purse containing the old woman's soul, and
   going to the graveyard shook it over her bones, and she revived at
   once. Then the Samojed smashed the seventh heart, and the robber died;
   and so the swan-maiden got back her plumage and flew away rejoicing.12
   
      Swan-maidens are also, according to Mr. Baring-Gould, found among
   the Minussinian Tartars. But there they appear as foul demons, like
   the Greek Harpies, who delight in drinking the blood of men slain in
   battle. There are forty of them, who darken the whole firmament in
   their flight; but sometimes they all coalesce into one great black
   storm-fiend, who rages for blood, like a werewolf.
   
      In South Africa we find the werewolf himself.13 A certain Hottentot
   was once travelling with a Bushwoman and her child, when they
   perceived at a distance a troop of wild horses. The man, being hungry,
   asked the woman to turn herself into a lioness and catch one of these
   horses, that they might eat of it; whereupon the woman set down her
   child, and taking off a sort of petticoat made of human skin became
   instantly transformed into a lioness, which rushed across the plain,
   struck down a wild horse and lapped its blood. The man climbed a tree
   in terror, and conjured his companion to resume her natural shape.
   Then the lioness came back, and putting on the skirt made of human
   skin reappeared as a woman, and took up her child, and the two friends
   resumed their journey after making a meal of the horse's flesh.14
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -165-
 
      The werewolf also appears in North America, duly furnished with his
   wolf-skin sack; but neither in America nor in Africa is he the genuine
   European werewolf, inspired by a diabolic frenzy, and ravening for
   human flesh. The barbaric myths testify to the belief that men can be
   changed into beasts or have in some cases descended from beast
   ancestors, but the application of this belief to the explanation of
   abnormal cannibal cravings seems to have been confined to Europe. The
   werewolf of the Middle Ages was not merely a transformed man, -- he
   was an insane cannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due to the
   machinations of the Devil, showed its power over his physical organism
   by changing the shape of it. The barbaric werewolf is the product of a
   lower and simpler kind of thinking. There is no diabolism about him;
   for barbaric races, while believing in the existence of hurtful and
   malicious fiends, have not a sufficiently vivid sense of moral
   abnormity to form the conception of diabolism. And the cannibal
   craving, which to the mediæval European was a phenomenon so strange as
   to demand a mythological explanation, would not impress the barbarian
   as either very exceptional or very blame-worthy.
   
      In the folk-lore of the Zulus, one of the most quick-witted and
   intelligent of African races, the cannibal possesses many features in
   common with the Scandinavian Troll, who also has a liking for human
   flesh. As we saw in the preceding paper, the Troll has very likely
   derived some of his characteristics from reminiscences of the
   barbarous races who preceded the Aryans in Central and Northern
   Europe. In like manner the long-haired cannibal of Zulu nursery
   literature, who is always represented as belonging to a distinct race,
   has been supposed to be explained by the existence of inferior races
   conquered
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -166-
 
   and displaced by the Zulus. Nevertheless, as Dr. Callaway observes,
   neither the long-haired mountain cannibals of Western Africa, nor the
   Fulahs, nor the tribes of Eghedal described by Barth, "can be
   considered as answering to the description of long-haired as given in
   the Zulu legends of cannibals; neither could they possibly have formed
   their historical basis..... It is perfectly clear that the cannibals
   of the Zulu legends are not common men; they are magnified into giants
   and magicians; they are remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and
   terrible warriors." Very probably they may have a mythical origin in
   modes of thought akin to those which begot the Panis of the Veda and
   the Northern Trolls. The parallelism is perhaps the most remarkable
   one which can be found in comparing barbaric with Aryan folk-lore.
   Like the Panis and Trolls, the cannibals are represented as the foes
   of the solar hero Uthlakanyana, who is almost as great a traveller as
   Odysseus, and whose presence of mind amid trying circumstances is not
   to be surpassed by that of the incomparable Boots. Uthlakanyana is as
   precocious as Herakles or Hermes. He speaks before he is born, and no
   sooner has he entered the world than he begins to outwit other people
   and get possession of their property. He works bitter ruin for the
   cannibals, who, with all their strength and fleetness, are no better
   endowed with quick wit than the Trolls, whom Boots invariably
   victimizes. On one of his journeys, Uthlakanyana fell in with a
   cannibal. Their greetings were cordial enough, and they ate a bit of
   leopard together, and began to build a house, and killed a couple of
   cows, but the cannibal's cow was lean, while Uthlakanyana's was fat.
   Then the crafty traveller, fearing that his companion might insist
   upon having the fat cow, turned and said, "'Let the house be thatched
   now
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -167-
 
   then we can eat our meat. You see the sky, that we shall get wet.' The
   cannibal said, 'You are right, child of my sister; you are a man
   indeed in saying, let us thatch the house, for we shall get wet.'
   Uthlakanyana said, 'Do you do it then; I will go inside, and push the
   thatching-needle for you, in the house.' The cannibal went up. His
   hair was very, very long. Uthlakanyana went inside and pushed the
   needle for him. He thatched in the hair of the cannibal, tying it very
   tightly; he knotted it into the thatch constantly, taking it by
   separate locks and fastening it firmly, that it might be tightly
   fastened to the house." Then the rogue went outside and began to eat
   of the cow which was roasted. "The cannibal said, 'What are you about,
   child of my sister? Let us just finish the house; afterwards we can do
   that; we will do it together.' Uthlakanyana replied, 'Come down then.
   I cannot go into the house any more. The thatching is finished.' The
   cannibal assented. When he thought he was going to quit the house, he
   was unable to quit it. He cried out saying, 'Child of my sister, how
   have you managed your thatching?' Uthlakanyana said, 'See to it
   yourself. I have thatched well, for I shall not have any dispute. Now
   I am about to eat in peace; I no longer dispute with anybody, for I am
   now alone with my cow.'" So the cannibal cried and raved and appealed
   in vain to Uthlakanyana's sense of justice, until by and by "the sky
   came with hailstones and lightning Uthlakanyana took all the meat into
   the house; he stayed in the house and lit a fire. It hailed and
   rained. The cannibal cried on the top of the house; he was struck with
   the hailstones, and died there on the house. It cleared. Uthlakanyana
   went out and said, 'Uncle, just come down, and come to me. It has
   become clear. It no longer rains, and there is no more hail, neither is
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -168-
 
   there any more lightning. Why are you silent?' So Uthlakanyana ate his
   cow alone, until he had finished it. He then went on his way."15
   
      In another Zulu legend, a girl is stolen by cannibals, and shut up
   in the rock Itshe-likantunjambili, which, like the rock of the Forty
   Thieves, opens and shuts at the command of those who understand its
   secret. She gets possession of the secret and escapes, and when the
   monsters pursue her she throws on the ground a calabash full of
   sesame, which they stop to eat. At last, getting tired of running, she
   climbs a tree, and there she finds her brother, who, warned by a
   dream, has come out to look for her. They ascend the tree together
   until they come to a beautiful country well stocked with fat oxen.
   They kill an ox, and while its flesh is roasting they amuse themselves
   by making a stout thong of its hide. By and by one of the cannibals,
   smelling the cooking meat, comes to the foot of the tree, and looking
   up discovers the boy and girl in the sky-country! They invite him up
   there; to share in their feast, and throw him an end of the thong by
   which to climb up. When the cannibal is dangling midway between earth
   and heaven, they let go the rope, and down he falls with a terrible
   crash.16
   
      In this story the enchanted rock opened by a talismanic formula
   brings us again into contact with Indo-European folk-lore. And that
   the conception has in both cases been suggested by the same natural
   phenomenon is rendered probable by another Zulu tale, in which the
   cannibal's cave is opened by a swallow which flies in the air. Here we
   have the elements of a genuine lightning-myth.
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -169-
 
   We see that among these African barbarians, as well as among our own
   forefathers, the clouds have been conceived as birds carrying the
   lightning which can cleave the rocks. In America we find the same
   notion prevalent. The Dakotahs explain the thunder as "the sound of
   the cloud-bird flapping his wings," and the Caribs describe the
   lightning as a poisoned dart which the bird blows through a hollow
   reed, after the Carib style of shooting.17 On the other hand, the
   Kamtchatkans know nothing of a cloud-bird, but explain the lightning
   as something analogous to the flames of a volcano. The Kamtchatkans
   say that when the mountain goblins have got their stoves well heated
   up, they throw overboard, with true barbaric shiftlessness, all the
   brands not needed for immediate use, which makes a volcanic eruption.
   So when it is summer on earth, it is winter in heaven; and the gods,
   after heating up their stoves, throw away their spare kindlingwood,
   which makes the lightning.18
   
      When treating of Indo-European solar myths, we saw the unvarying,
   unresting course of the sun variously explained as due to the
   subjection of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger of Poseidon at
   Odysseus, or to the curse laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric
   mind has worked at the same problem; but the explanations which it has
   given are more childlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells
   how the Sun used to race through the sky so fast that men could not
   get enough daylight to hunt game for their subsistence. By and by an
   inventive genius, named Maui, conceived the idea of catching the Sun
   in a noose and making him go more deliberately. He plaited ropes and
   made a strong net, and, arming himself with the jawbone of his
   ancestress, Muri-ranga-whenua, called together all his brethren, and
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -170-
 
   they journeyed to the place where the Sun rises, and there spread the
   net. When the Sun came up, he stuck his head and fore-paws into the
   net, and while the brothers tightened the ropes so that they cut him
   and made him scream for mercy, Maui beat him with the jawbone until he
   became so weak that ever since he has only been able to crawl through
   the sky. According to another Polynesian myth, there was once a
   grumbling Radical, who never could be satisfied with the way in which
   things are managed on this earth. This bold Radical set out to build a
   stone house which should last forever; but the days were so short and
   the stones so heavy that he despaired of ever accomplishing his
   project. One night, as he lay awake thinking the matter over, it
   occurred to him that if he could catch the Sun in a net, he could have
   as much daylight as was needful in order to finish his house. So he
   borrowed a noose from the god Itu, and, it being autumn, when the Sun
   gets sleepy and stupid, he easily caught the luminary. The Sun cried
   till his tears made a great freshet which nearly drowned the island;
   but it was of no use; there he is tethered to this day.
   
      Similar stories are met with in North America. A Dog-Rib Indian
   once chased a squirrel up a tree until he reached the sky. There he
   set a snare for the squirrel and climbed down again. Next day the Sun
   was caught in the snare, and night came on at once. That is to say,
   the sun was eclipsed. "Something wrong up there," thought the Indian,
   "I must have caught the Sun"; and so he sent up ever so many animals
   to release the captive. They were all burned to ashes, but at last the
   mole, going up and burrowing out through the ground of the sky, (!)
   succeeded in gnawing asunder the cords of the snare. Just as it thrust
   its head out through the opening
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -171-
 
   made in the sky-ground, it received a flash of light which put its
   eyes out, and that is why the mole is blind. The Sun got away, but has
   ever since travelled more deliberately.19
   
      These sun-myths, many more of which are to be found collected in
   Mr. Tylor's excellent treatise on "The Early History of Mankind," well
   illustrate both the similarity and the diversity of the results
   obtained by the primitive mind, in different times and countries, when
   engaged upon similar problems. No one would think of referring these
   stories to a common traditional origin with the myths of Herakles and
   Odysseus; yet both classes of tales were devised to explain the same
   phenomenon. Both to the Aryan and to the Polynesian the steadfast but
   deliberate journey of the sun through the firmament was a strange
   circumstance which called for explanation; but while the meagre
   intelligence of the barbarian could only attain to the quaint
   conception of a man throwing a noose over the sun's head, the rich
   imagination of the Indo-European created the noble picture of Herakles
   doomed to serve the son of Sthenelos, in accordance with the
   resistless decree of fate.
   
      Another world-wide myth, which shows how similar are the mental
   habits of uncivilized men, is the myth of the tortoise. The Hindu
   notion of a great tortoise that lies beneath the earth and keeps it
   from falling is familiar to every reader. According to one account,
   this tortoise, swimming in the primeval ocean, bears the earth on his
   back; but by and by, when the gods get ready to destroy mankind, the
   tortoise will grow weary and sink under his load, and then the earth
   will be overwhelmed by a deluge. Another legend tells us that when the
   gods and demons took Mount Mandara for a churning-stick
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -172-
 
   and churned the ocean to make ambrosia, the god Vishnu took on the
   form of a tortoise and lay at the bottom of the sea, as a pivot for
   the whirling mountain to rest upon. But these versions of the myth are
   not primitive. In the original conception the world is itself a
   gigantic tortoise swimming in a boundless ocean; the flat surface of
   the earth is the lower plate which covers the reptile's belly; the
   rounded shell which covers his back is the sky; and the human race
   lives and moves and has its being inside of the tortoise. Now, as Mr.
   Tylor has pointed out, many tribes of Redskins hold substantially the
   same theory of the universe. They regard the tortoise as the symbol of
   the world, and address it as the mother of mankind. Once, before the
   earth was made, the king of heaven quarrelled with his wife, and gave
   her such a terrible kick that she fell down into the sea. Fortunately
   a tortoise received her on his back, and proceeded to raise up the
   earth, upon which the heavenly woman became the mother of mankind.
   These first men had white faces, and they used to dig in the ground to
   catch badgers. One day a zealous burrower thrust his knife too far and
   stabbed the tortoise, which immediately sank into the sea and drowned
   all the human race save one man.20 In Finnish mythology the world is
   not a tortoise, but it is an egg, of which the white part is the
   ocean, the yolk is the earth, and the arched shell is the sky. In
   India this is the mundane egg of Brahma; and it reappears among the
   Yorubas as a pair of calabashes put together like oyster-shells, one
   making a dome over the other. In Zulu-land the earth is a huge beast
   called Usilosimapundu, whose face is a rock, and whose mouth is very
   large and broad and red: "in some countries which were on his body it
   was winter,
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -173-
 
   and in others it was early harvest." Many broad rivers flow over his
   back, and he is covered with forests and hills, as is indicated in his
   name, which means "the rugose or knotty-backed beast." In this group
   of conceptions may be seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish, which
   lay still so long that sand and clay gradually accumulated upon its
   back, and at last it became covered with trees. And lastly, passing
   from barbaric folk-lore and from the Arabian Nights to the highest
   level of Indo-European intelligence, do we not find both Plato and
   Kepler amusing themselves with speculations in which the earth figures
   as a stupendous animal?
   
   [1] For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on "The Genesis of
   Language," North American Review, October 1869, p. 320.
   
   [2] Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II. p. 246.
   
   [3] For various legends of a deluge, see Baring-Gould, Legends of the
   Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 85-106.
   
   [4] Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 160.
   
   [5] Brinton, op. cit. p. 163.
   
   [6] Brinton, op. cit. p. 167.
   
   [7] Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the Dioskouroi,
   and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse mythology.
   
   [8] See Humboldt's Kosmos, Tom. III. pp. 469-476. A fetichistic regard
   for the cardinal points has not always been absent from the minds of
   persons instructed in a higher theology as witness a well-known
   passage in Irenæus, and also the custom, well-nigh universal in
   Europe, of building Christian churches in a line east and west.
   
   [9] Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 72. Compare the Fiji story
   of Ra Vula, the Moon, and Ra Kalavo, the Rat, in Tylor, Primitive
   Culture, I. 321.
   
   [10] Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 327.
   
   [11] Tylor, op. cit., p. 346.
   
   [12] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 299-302.
   
   [13] Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr. Wallace says:
   "It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have the power to
   turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake of
   devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such
   transformations." Wallace, Malay Archipelago, Vol. I. p. 251.
   
   [14] Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.
   
   [15] Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30.
   
   [16] Callaway, op. cit. pp. 142-152; cf. a similar story in which the
   lion is fooled by the jackal. Bleek, op. cit. p. 7. I omit the sequel
   of the tale.
   
   [17] Brinton, op. cit. p. 104.
   
   [18] Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.
   
   [19] Tylor, op. cit. pp. 338-343.
   
   [20] Tylor, op. cit. p. 336. November, 1870