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Myths and Myth-makers - Chapter 7
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VII.
THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD.
NO earnest student of human culture can as yet have forgotten or
wholly outlived the feeling of delight awakened by the first perusal
of Max Müller's brilliant "Essay on Comparative Mythology," -- a work
in which the scientific principles of myth-interpretation, though not
newly announced, were at least brought home to the reader with such an
amount of fresh and striking concrete illustration as they had not
before received. Yet it must have occurred to more than one reader
that, while the analyses of myths contained in this noble essay are in
the main sound in principle and correct in detail, nevertheless the
author's theory of the genesis of myth is expressed, and most likely
conceived, in a way that is very suggestive of carelessness and
fallacy. There are obvious reasons for doubting whether the existence
of mythology can be due to any "disease," abnormity, or hypertrophy of
metaphor in language; and the criticism at once arises, that with the
myth-makers it was not so much the character of the expression which
originated the thought, as it was the thought which gave character to
the expression. It is not that the early Aryans were myth-makers
because their language abounded in metaphor; it is that the Aryan
mother-tongue abounded in metaphor because the men and women who spoke
it were myth-makers. And they were myth-makers because they had
nothing but the phenomena of human will and effort with which to
compare objective phenomena. Therefore
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it was that they spoke of the sun as an unwearied voyager or a
matchless archer, and classified inanimate no less than animate
objects as masculine and feminine. Max Müller's way of stating his
theory, both in this Essay and in his later Lectures, affords one
among several instances of the curious manner in which he combines a
marvellous penetration into the significance of details with a certain
looseness of general conception.1 The principles of philological
interpretation are an indispensable aid to us in detecting the hidden
meaning of many a legend in which the powers of nature are represented
in the guise of living and thinking persons; but before we can get at
the secret of the myth-making tendency itself, we must leave philology
and enter upon a psychological study. We must inquire into the
characteristics of that primitive style of thinking to which it seemed
quite natural that the sun should be an unerring archer, and the
thunder-cloud a black demon or gigantic robber finding
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his richly merited doom at the hands of the indignant Lord of Light.
Among recent treatises which have dealt with this interesting
problem, we shall find it advantageous to give especial attention to
Mr. Tylor's "Primitive Culture,"2 one of the few erudite works which
are at once truly great and thoroughly entertaining. The learning
displayed in it would do credit to a German specialist, both for
extent and for minuteness, while the orderly arrangement of the
arguments and the elegant lucidity of the style are such as we are
accustomed to expect from French essay-writers. And what is still more
admirable is the way in which the enthusiasm characteristic of a
genial and original speculator is tempered by the patience and caution
of a cool-headed critic. Patience and caution are nowhere more needed
than in writers who deal with mythology and with primitive religious
ideas; but these qualities are too seldom found in combination with
the speculative boldness which is required when fresh theories are to
be framed or new paths of investigation opened. The state of mind in
which the explaining powers of a favourite theory are fondly
contemplated is, to some extent, antagonistic to the state of mind in
which facts are seen, with the eye of impartial criticism, in all
their obstinate and uncompromising reality. To be able to preserve the
balance between the two opposing tendencies is to give evidence of the
most consummate scientific training. It is from the want of such a
balance that the recent great work of Mr. Cox is at times so
unsatisfactory. It may, I fear, seem ill-natured to say so, but the
eagerness with which Mr. Cox waylays
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every available illustration of the physical theory of the origin of
myths has now and then the curious effect of weakening the reader's
conviction of the soundness of the theory. For my own part, though by
no means inclined to waver in adherence to a doctrine once adopted on
good grounds, I never felt so much like rebelling against the
mythologic supremacy of the Sun and the Dawn as when reading Mr. Cox's
volumes. That Mr. Tylor, while defending the same fundamental theory,
awakens no such rebellious feelings, is due to his clear perception
and realization of the fact that it is impossible to generalize in a
single formula such many-sided correspondences as those which
primitive poetry end philosophy have discerned between the life of man
and the life of outward nature. Whoso goes roaming up and down the
elf-land of popular fancies, with sole intent to resolve each episode
of myth into some answering physical event, his only criterion being
outward resemblance, cannot be trusted in his conclusions, since
wherever he turns for evidence he is sure to find something that can
be made to serve as such. As Mr. Tylor observes, no household legend
or nursery rhyme is safe from his hermeneutics. "Should he, for
instance, demand as his property the nursery 'Song of Sixpence,' his
claim would be easily established, -- obviously the four-and-twenty
blackbirds are the four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them
is the underlying earth covered with the overarching sky, -- how true
a touch of nature it is that when the pie is opened, that is, when day
breaks, the birds begin to sing; the King is the Sun, and his counting
out his money is pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of Danaë;
the Queen is the Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight; the
Maid is the 'rosy-fingered' Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her
master, and hangs
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out the clouds, his clothes, across the sky; the particular blackbird,
who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour
of sunrise." In all this interpretation there is no a priori
improbability, save, perhaps, in its unbroken symmetry and
completeness. That some points, at least, of the story are thus
derived from antique interpretations of physical events, is in harmony
with all that we know concerning nursery rhymes. In short, "the
time-honoured rhyme really wants but one thing to prove it a sun-myth,
that one thing being a proof by some argument more valid than
analogy." The character of the argument which is lacking may be
illustrated by a reference to the rhyme about Jack and Jill, explained
some time since in the paper on "The Origins of Folk-Lore." If the
argument be thought valid which shows these ill-fated children to be
the spots on the moon, it is because the proof consists, not in the
analogy, which is in this case not especially obvious, but in the fact
that in the Edda, and among ignorant Swedish peasants of our own day,
the story of Jack and Jill is actually given as an explanation of the
moon-spots. To the neglect of this distinction between what is
plausible and what is supported by direct evidence, is due much of the
crude speculation which encumbers the study of myths.
It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology into the wider
inquiry into the characteristic features of the mode of thinking in
which myths originated, that we can best appreciate the practical
value of that union of speculative boldness and critical sobriety
which everywhere distinguishes him. It is pleasant to meet with a
writer who can treat of primitive religious ideas without losing his
head over allegory and symbolism, and who duly realizes the fact that
a savage is not a rabbinical commentator, or a cabalist, or a
Rosicrucian, but a plain
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man who draws conclusions like ourselves, though with feeble
intelligence and scanty knowledge. The mystic allegory with which such
modern writers as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity is
no part of their original clothing, but is rather the late product of
a style of reasoning from analogy quite similar to that which we shall
perceive to have guided the myth-makers in their primitive
constructions. The myths and customs and beliefs which, in an advanced
stage of culture, seem meaningless save when characterized by some
quaintly wrought device of symbolic explanation, did not seem
meaningless in the lower culture which gave birth to them. Myths, like
words, survive their primitive meanings. In the early stage the myth
is part and parcel of the current mode of philosophizing; the
explanation which it offers is, for the time, the natural one, the one
which would most readily occur to any one thinking on the theme with
which the myth is concerned. But by and by the mode of philosophizing
has changed; explanations which formerly seemed quite obvious no
longer occur to any one, but the myth has acquired an independent
substantive existence, and continues to be handed down from parents to
children as something true, though no one can tell why it is true:
Lastly, the myth itself gradually fades from remembrance, often leaving
behind it some utterly unintelligible custom or seemingly absurd
superstitious notion. For example, -- to recur to an illustration
already cited in a previous paper, -- it is still believed here and
there by some venerable granny that it is wicked to kill robins; but he
who should attribute the belief to the old granny's refined sympathy
with all sentient existence, would be making one of the blunders which
are always committed by those who reason a priori about historical
matters without following the
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historical method. At an earlier date the superstition existed in the
shape of a belief that the killing of a robin portends some calamity;
in a still earlier form the calamity is specified as death; and again,
still earlier, as death by lightning. Another step backward reveals
that the dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the fact that he is
the bird of Thor, the lightning god; and finally we reach that
primitive stage of philosophizing in which the lightning is explained
as a red bird dropping from its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks.
Again, the belief that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the
life of a drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a
case of survival in culture. In the older form of the superstition it
is held that the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned himself; and
thus we pass to the fetichistic interpretation of drowning as the
seizing of the unfortunate person by the water-spirit or nixy, who is
naturally angry at being deprived of his victim, and henceforth bears
a special grudge against the bold mortal who has thus dared to
frustrate him.
The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and of drowning
as the work of a smiling but treacherous fiend, are parts of that
primitive philosophy of nature in which all forces objectively
existing are conceived as identical with the force subjectively known
as volition. It is this philosophy, currently known as fetichism, but
treated by Mr. Tylor under the somewhat more comprehensive name of
"animism," which we must now consider in a few of its most conspicuous
exemplifications. When we have properly characterized some of the
processes which the untrained mind habitually goes through, we shall
have incidentally arrived at a fair solution of the genesis of
mythology.
Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric or
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uncultivated mind reaches all manner of apparently fanciful
conclusions through reckless reasoning from analogy. It is through the
operation of certain laws of ideal association that all human
thinking, that of the highest as well as that of the lowest minds, is
conducted: the discovery of the law of gravitation, as well as the
invention of such a superstition as the Hand of Glory, is at bottom
but a case of association of ideas. The difference between the
scientific and the mythologic inference consists solely in the number
of checks which in the former case combine to prevent any other than
the true conclusion from being framed into a proposition to which the
mind assents. Countless accumulated experiences have taught the modern
that there are many associations of ideas which do not correspond to
any actual connection of cause and effect in the world of phenomena;
and he has learned accordingly to apply to his newly framed notions
the rigid test of verification. Besides which the same accumulation of
experiences has built up an organized structure of ideal associations
into which only the less extravagant newly framed notions have any
chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the modern savage who is to
some extent his counterpart, must reason without the aid of these
multifarious checks. That immense mass of associations which answer to
what are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilized
modern have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind of
the savage; nor has he learned the necessity of experimentally testing
any of his newly framed notions, save perhaps a few of the commonest.
Consequently there is nothing but superficial analogy to guide the
course of his thought hither or thither, and the conclusions at which
he arrives will be determined by associations of ideas occurring
apparently at haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies
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with which European and barbaric folk-lore is filled, in the framing
of which the myth-maker was but reasoning according to the best
methods at his command. To this simplest class, in which the
association of ideas is determined by mere analogy, belong such cases
as that of the Zulu, who chews a piece of wood in order to soften the
heart of the man with whom he is about to trade for cows, or the
Hessian lad who "thinks he may escape the conscription by carrying a
baby-girl's cap in his pocket, -- a symbolic way of repudiating
manhood."3 A similar style of thinking underlies the mediæval
necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of his enemy and
shooting at it with arrows, in order to bring about the enemy's death;
as also the case of the magic rod, mentioned in a previous paper, by
means of which a sound thrashing can be administered to an absent foe
through the medium of an old coat which is imagined to cover him. The
principle involved here is one which is doubtless familiar to most
children, and is closely akin to that which Irving so amusingly
illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a field of
cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and
imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed a host
of caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies that the breaking
of a mirror heralds a death in the family, -- probably because of the
destruction of the reflected human image; that the "hair of the dog
that bit you" will prevent hydrophobia if laid upon the wound; or that
the tears shed by human victims, sacrificed to mother earth, will
bring down showers upon the land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord Chesterfield's
remark, "that the king had been ill, and that people generally
expected the illness to be fatal, because the oldest lion in the
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Tower, about the king's age, had just died. 'So wild and capricious is
the human mind,'" observes the elegant letter-writer. But indeed, as
Mr. Tylor justly remarks, "the thought was neither wild nor
capricious; it was simply such an argument from analogy as the
educated world has at length painfully learned to be worthless, but
which, it is not too much to declare, would to this day carry
considerable weight to the minds of four fifths of the human race."
Upon such symbolism are based most of the practices of divination and
the great pseudo-science of astrology. "It is an old story, that when
two brothers were once taken ill together, Hippokrates, the physician,
concluded from the coincidence that they were twins, but Poseidonios,
the astrologer, considered rather that they were born under the same
constellation; we may add that either argument would be thought
reasonable by a savage." So when a Maori fortress is attacked, the
besiegers and besieged look to see if Venus is near the moon. The moon
represents the fortress; and if it appears below the companion planet,
the besiegers will carry the day, otherwise they will be repulsed.
Equally primitive and childlike was Rousseau's train of thought on the
memorable day at Les Charmettes when, being distressed with doubts as
to the safety of his soul, he sought to determine the point by
throwing a stone at a tree. "Hit, sign of salvation; miss, sign of
damnation!" The tree being a large one and very near at hand, the
result of the experiment was reassuring, and the young philosopher
walked away without further misgivings concerning this momentous
question.4
When the savage, whose highest intellectual efforts result only in
speculations of this childlike character, is
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confronted with the phenomena of dreams, it is easy to see what he
will make of them. His practical knowledge of psychology is too
limited to admit of his distinguishing between the solidity of waking
experience and what we may call the unsubstantialness of the dream. He
may, indeed, have learned that the dream is not to be relied on for
telling the truth; the Zulu, for example, has even reached the
perverse triumph of critical logic achieved by our own Aryan ancestors
in the saying that "dreams go by contraries." But the Zulu has not
learned, nor had the primeval Aryan learned, to disregard the
utterances of the dream as being purely subjective phenomena. To the
mind as yet untouched by modern culture, the visions seen and the
voices heard in sleep possess as much objective reality as the
gestures and shouts of waking hours. When the savage relates his
dream, he tells how he saw certain dogs, dead warriors, or demons last
night, the implication being that the things seen were objects
external to himself. As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude language fails
to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing
and dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language it not
only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to others,
but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence in the
absence of an alternative interpretation, his belief, and that of
those to whom he tells his adventures, is that his other self has been
away and came back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find among
various existing savage tribes, we equally find in the traditions of
the early civilized races."5
Let us consider, for a moment, this assumption of the
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other self, for upon this is based the great mass of crude inference
which constitutes the primitive man's philosophy of nature. The
hypothesis of the other self, which serves to account for the savage's
wanderings during sleep in strange lands and among strange people,
serves also to account for the presence in his dreams of parents,
comrades, or enemies, known to be dead and buried. The other self of
the dreamer meets and converses with the other selves of his dead
brethren, joins with them in the hunt, or sits down with them to the
wild cannibal banquet. Thus arises the belief in an ever-present world
of souls or ghosts, a belief which the entire experience of
uncivilized man goes to strengthen and expand. The existence of some
tribe or tribes of savages wholly destitute of religious belief has
often been hastily asserted and as often called in question. But there
is no question that, while many savages are unable to frame a
conception so general as that of godhood, on the other hand no tribe
has ever been found so low in the scale of intelligence as not to have
framed the conception of ghosts or spiritual personalities, capable of
being angered, propitiated, or conjured with. Indeed it is not
improbable a priori that the original inference involved in the notion
of the other self may be sufficiently simple and obvious to fall
within the capacity of animals even less intelligent than uncivilized
man. An authentic case is on record of a Skye terrier who, being
accustomed to obtain favours from his master by sitting on his
haunches, will also sit before his pet india-rubber ball placed on the
chimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump down and play with
him.6 Such a fact as this is quite in
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harmony with Auguste Comte's suggestion that such intelligent animals
as dogs, apes, and elephants may be capable of forming a few
fetichistic notions. The behaviour of the terrier here rests upon the
assumption that the ball is open to the same sort of entreaty which
prevails with the master; which implies, not that the wistful brute
accredits the ball with a soul, but that in his mind the distinction
between life and inanimate existence has never been thoroughly
established. Just this confusion between things living and things not
living is present throughout the whole philosophy of fetichism; and
the confusion between things seen and things dreamed, which suggests
the notion of another self, belongs to this same twilight stage of
intelligence in which primeval man has not yet clearly demonstrated
his immeasurable superiority to the brutes.7
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The conception of a soul or other self, capable of going away from
the body and returning to it, receives decisive confirmation from the
phenomena of fainting, trance, catalepsy, and ecstasy,8 which occur
less rarely among savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, than
among civilized men. "Further verification," observes Mr. Spencer, "is
afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body, during the
absence of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does
it happen that the other self on returning denies all knowledge of
what his body has been doing? And this supposition, that the body has
been 'possessed' by some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of
somnambulism and insanity."
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Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we recollect that
savages are very generally unwilling to have their portraits taken,
lest a portion of themselves should get carried off and be exposed to
foul play,9 we
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must readily admit that the weird reflection of the person and
imitation of the gestures in rivers or still woodland pools will go
far to intensify the belief in the other self. Less frequent but
uniform confirmation is to be found in echoes, which in Europe within
two centuries have been commonly interpreted as the voices of mocking
fiends or wood-nymphs, and which the savage might well regard as the
utterances of his other self.
Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Schlemihl belongs to a widely
diffused family of legends, which show that a man's shadow has been
generally regarded not only as an entity, but as a sort of spiritual
attendant of the body, which under certain circumstances it may
permanently forsake. It is in strict accordance with this idea that
not only in the classic languages, but in various barbaric tongues,
the word for "shadow" expresses also the soul or other self.
Tasmanians, Algonquins, Central-Americans, Abipones, Basutos, and
Zulus are cited by Mr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the identity
of the shadow with the ghost or phantasm seen in dreams; the Basutos
going so far as to think "that if a man walks on the river-bank, a
crocodile may seize his shadow in the water and draw him in." Among
the Algonquins a sick person is supposed to have his shadow or other
self temporarily detached from his body, and the convalescent is at
times "reproached for exposing himself before his shadow was safely
settled down in him." If the sick man has been
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plunged into stupor, it is because his other self has travelled away
as far as the brink of the river of death, but not being allowed to
cross has come back and re-entered him. And acting upon a similar
notion the ailing Fiji will sometimes lie down and raise a hue and cry
for his soul to be brought back. Thus, continues Mr. Tylor, "in
various countries the bringing back of lost souls becomes a regular
part of the sorcerer's or priest's profession."10 On Aryan soil we
find the notion of a temporary departure of the soul surviving to a
late date in the theory that the witch may attend the infernal Sabbath
while her earthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping at home. The primeval
conception reappears, clothed in bitterest sarcasm, in Dante's
reference to his living contemporaries whose souls he met with in the
vaults of hell, while their bodies were still walking about on the
earth, inhabited by devils.
The theory which identifies the soul with the shadow, and supposes
the shadow to depart with the sickness and death of the body, would
seem liable to be attended with some difficulties in the way of
verification, even to the dim intelligence of the savage. But the
propriety of identifying soul and breath is borne out by all primeval
experience. The breath, which really quits the body at its decease,
has furnished the chief name for the soul, not only to the Hebrew, the
Sanskrit, and the classic tongues; not only to German and English,
where geist, and ghost, according to Max Müller, have the meaning of
"breath," and are akin to such words as gas, gust, and geyser; but
also to numerous barbaric languages. Among
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the natives of Nicaragua and California, in Java and in West
Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze which passes in
and out through the nostrils and mouth; and the Greenlanders,
according to Cranz, reckon two separate souls, the breath and the
shadow. "Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in
childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her parting
spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for its future
use..... Their state of mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese
peasants, who can still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his
mouth at death like a little white cloud."11 It is kept up, too, in
Lancashire, where a well-known witch died a few years since; "but
before she could 'shuffle off this mortal coil' she must needs
transfer her familiar spirit to some trusty successor. An intimate
acquaintance from a neighbouring township was consequently sent for in
all haste, and on her arrival was immediately closeted with her dying
friend. What passed between them has never fully transpired, but it is
confidently affirmed that at the close of the interview this associate
received the witch's last breath into her mouth and with it her
familiar spirit. The dreaded woman thus ceased to exist, but her
powers for good or evil were transferred to her companion; and on
passing along the road from Burnley to Blackburn we can point out a
farmhouse at no great distance with whose thrifty matron no
neighbouring farmer will yet dare to quarrel."12
Of the theory of embodiment there will be occasion to speak further
on. At present let us not pass over the fact that the other self is
not only conceived as shadow or breath, which can at times quit the
body during life, but is also supposed to become temporarily embodied
in
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the visible form of some bird or beast. In discussing elsewhere the
myth of Bishop Hatto, we saw that the soul is sometimes represented in
the form of a rat or mouse; and in treating of werewolves we noticed
the belief that the spirits of dead ancestors, borne along in the
night-wind, have taken on the semblance of howling dogs or wolves.
"Consistent with these quaint ideas are ceremonies in vogue in China
of bringing home in a cock (live or artificial) the spirit of a man
deceased in a distant place, and of enticing into a sick man's coat
the departing spirit which has already left his body and so conveying
it back."13 In Castrén's great work on Finnish mythology, we find the
story of the giant who could not be killed because he kept his soul
hidden in a twelve-headed snake which he carried in a bag as he rode
on horseback; only when the secret was discovered and the snake
carefully killed, did the giant yield up his life. In this Finnish
legend we have one of the thousand phases of the story of the "Giant
who had no Heart in his Body," but whose heart was concealed, for safe
keeping, in a duck's egg, or in a pigeon, carefully disposed in some
belfry at the world's end a million miles away, or encased in a
wellnigh infinite series of Chinese boxes.14 Since, in spite of all
these precautions, the poor giant's heart invariably came to grief, we
need not wonder at the Karen superstition that the soul is in danger
when it quits the body
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on its excursions, as exemplified in countless Indo-European stories
of the accidental killing of the weird mouse or pigeon which embodies
the wandering spirit. Conversely it is held that the detachment of the
other self is fraught with danger to the self which remains. In the
philosophy of "wraiths" and "fetches," the appearance of a double,
like that which troubled Mistress Affery in her waking dreams of Mr.
Flintwinch, has been from time out of mind a signal of alarm. "In New
Zealand it is ominous to see the figure of an absent person, for if it
be shadowy and the face not visible, his death may erelong be
expected, but if the face be seen he is dead already. A party of
Maoris (one of whom told the story) were seated round a fire in the
open air, when there appeared, seen only by two of them, the figure of
a relative, left ill at home; they exclaimed, the figure vanished, and
on the return of the party it appeared that the sick man had died
about the time of the vision."15 The belief in wraiths has survived
into modern times, and now and then appears in the records of that
remnant of primeval philosophy known as "spiritualism," as, for
example, in the case of the lady who "thought she saw her own father
look in at the church-window at the moment he was dying in his own
house."
The belief in the "death-fetch," like the doctrine which identifies
soul with shadow, is instructive as showing that in barbaric thought
the other self is supposed to resemble the material self with which it
has customarily been associated. In various savage superstitions the
minute resemblance of soul to body is forcibly stated. The Australian,
for instance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right
thumb of the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated
from throwing a spear.
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Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixion to decapitation,
that their souls may not wander headless about the spirit-world.16
Thus we see how far removed from the Christian doctrine of souls is
the primeval theory of the soul or other self that figures in
dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitive conception that
the savage who cherishes it will bore holes in the coffin of his dead
friend, so that the soul may again have a chance, if it likes, to
revisit the body. To this day, among the peasants in some parts of
Northern Europe, when Odin, the spectral hunter, rides by attended by
his furious host, the windows in every sick-room are opened, in order
that the soul, if it chooses to depart, may not be hindered from
joining in the headlong chase. And so, adds Mr. Tylor, after the
Indians of North America had spent a riotous night in singeing an
unfortunate captive to death with firebrands, they would howl like the
fiends they were, and beat the air with brushwood, to drive away the
distressed and revengeful ghost. "With a kindlier feeling, the Congo
negroes abstained for a whole year after a death from sweeping the
house, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the
ghost"; and even now, "it remains a German peasant saying that it is
wrong to slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it."17 Dante's
experience with the ghosts in hell and purgatory, who were astonished
at his weighing down the boat in which they were carried, is belied by
the sweet German notion "that the dead mother's coming back in the
night to suckle the
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baby she has left on earth may be known by the hollow pressed down in
the bed where she lay." Almost universally ghosts, however impervious
to thrust of sword or shot of pistol, can eat and drink like Squire
Westerns. And lastly, we have the grotesque conception of souls
sufficiently material to be killed over again, as in the case of the
negro widows who, wishing to marry a second time, will go and duck
themselves in the pond, in order to drown the souls of their departed
husbands, which are supposed to cling about their necks; while,
according to the Fiji theory, the ghost of every dead warrior must go
through a terrible fight with Samu and his brethren, in which, if he
succeeds, he will enter Paradise, but if he fails he will be killed
over again and finally eaten by the dreaded Samu and his unearthly
company.
From the conception of souls embodied in beast-forms, as above
illustrated, it is not a wide step to the conception of beast-souls
which, like human souls, survive the death of the tangible body. The
wide-spread superstitions concerning werewolves and swan-maidens, and
the hardly less general belief in metempsychosis, show that primitive
culture has not arrived at the distinction attained by modern
philosophy between the immortal man and the soulless brute. Still more
direct evidence is furnished by sundry savage customs. The Kafir who
has killed an elephant will cry that he did n't mean to do it, and,
lest the elephant's soul should still seek vengeance, he will cut off
and bury the trunk, so that the mighty beast may go crippled to the
spirit-land. In like manner, the Samoyeds, after shooting a bear, will
gather about the body offering excuses and laying the blame on the
Russians; and the American redskin will even put the pipe of peace
into the dead animal's mouth, and beseech him to forgive the deed. In
Assam it is believed that
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the ghosts of slain animals will become in the next world the property
of the hunter who kills them; and the Kamtchadales expressly declare
that all animals, even flies and bugs, will live after death, -- a
belief, which, in our own day, has been indorsed on philosophical
grounds by an eminent living naturalist.18 The Greenlanders, too, give
evidence of the same belief by supposing that when after an exhausting
fever the patient comes up in unprecedented health and vigour, it is
because he has lost his former soul and had it replaced by that of a
young child or a reindeer. In a recent work in which the crudest
fancies of primeval savagery are thinly disguised in a jargon learned
from the superficial reading of modern books of science, M. Figuier
maintains that human souls are for the most part the surviving souls
of deceased animals; in general, the souls of precocious musical
children like Mozart come from nightingales, while the souls of great
architects have passed into them from beavers, etc., etc.19
The practice of begging pardon of the animal one has just slain is
in some parts of the world extended to the case of plants. When the
Talein offers a prayer to the tree which he is about to cut down, it
is obviously because he regards the tree as endowed with a soul or
ghost which in the next life may need to be propitiated. And the
doctrine of transmigration distinctly includes plants along with
animals among the future existences into which the human soul may
pass.
As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena of life, though to a
much less conspicuous degree, it is not incomprehensible that the
savage should attribute souls to them. But the primitive process of
anthropomorphisation
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does not end here. Not only the horse and dog, the bamboo, and the
oak-tree, but even lifeless objects, such as the hatchet, or bow and
arrows, or food and drink of the dead man, possess other selves which
pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis and other contemporary savages,
when questioned, expressly declare that this is their belief. "If an
axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the
service of the gods." The Algonquins told Charlevoix that since
hatchets and kettles have shadows, no less than men and women, it
follows, of course, that these shadows (or souls) must pass along with
human shadows (or souls) into the spirit-land. In this we see how
simple and consistent is the logic which guides the savage, and how
inevitable is the genesis of the great mass of beliefs, to our minds
so arbitrary and grotesque, which prevail throughout the barbaric
world. However absurd the belief that pots and kettles have souls may
seem to us, it is nevertheless the only belief which can be held
consistently by the savage to whom pots and kettles, no less than
human friends or enemies, may appear in his dreams; who sees them
followed by shadows as they are moved about; who hears their voices,
dull or ringing, when they are struck; and who watches their doubles
fantastically dancing in the water as they are carried across the
stream.20 To minds, even in civilized countries, which are unused to
the severe training of science, no stronger evidence can be alleged
than what is called "the evidence of the senses"; for it is only long
familiarity with science which teaches
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us that the evidence of the senses is trustworthy only in so far as it
is correctly interpreted by reason. For the truth of his belief in the
ghosts of men and beasts, trees and axes, the savage has undeniably
the evidence of his senses which have so often seen, heard, and
handled these other selves.
The funeral ceremonies of uncultured races freshly illustrate this
crude philosophy, and receive fresh illustration from it. On the
primitive belief in the ghostly survival of persons and objects rests
the almost universal custom of sacrificing the wives, servants, horses,
and dogs of the departed chief of the tribe, as well as of presenting
at his shrine sacred offerings of food, ornaments, weapons, and money.
Among the Kayans the slaves who are killed at their master's tomb are
enjoined to take great care of their master's ghost, to wash and shampoo
it, and to nurse it when sick. Other savages think that "all whom they
kill in this world shall attend them as slaves after death," and for
this reason the thrifty Dayaks of Borneo until lately would not allow
their young men to marry until they had acquired some post mortem
property by procuring at least one human head. It is hardly necessary
to do more than allude to the Fiji custom of strangling all the wives
of the deceased at his funeral, or to the equally well-known Hindu
rite of suttee. Though, as Wilson has shown, the latter rite is not
supported by any genuine Vedic authority, but only by a shameless
Brahmanic corruption of the sacred text, Mr. Tylor is nevertheless
quite right in arguing that unless the horrible custom had received
the sanction of a public opinion bequeathed from pre-Vedic times, the
Brahmans would have had no motive for fraudulently reviving it; and
this opinion is virtually established by the fact of the prevalence of
widow sacrifice among Gauls, Scandinavians, Slaves, and other European
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Aryans.21 Though under English rule the rite has been forcibly
suppressed, yet the archaic sentiments which so long maintained it are
not yet extinct. Within the present year there has appeared in the
newspapers a not improbable story of a beautiful and accomplished
Hindu lady who, having become the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and
after living several years in England amid the influences of modern
society, nevertheless went off and privately burned herself to death
soon after her husband's decease.
The reader who thinks it far-fetched to interpret funeral offerings
of food, weapons, ornaments, or money, on the theory of object-souls,
will probably suggest that such offerings may be mere memorials of
affection or esteem for the dead man. Such, indeed, they have come to
be in many countries after surviving the phase of culture in which
they originated; but there is ample evidence to show that at the
outset they were presented in the belief that their ghosts would be
eaten or otherwise employed by the ghost of the dead man. The stout
club which is buried with the dead Fiji sends its soul along with him
that he may be able to defend himself against the hostile ghosts which
will lie in ambush for him on the road to Mbulu, seeking to kill and
eat him. Sometimes the club is afterwards removed from the grave as of
no further use, since its ghost is all that the dead man needs. In
like manner, "as the Greeks gave the dead man the obolus for Charon's
toll, and the old Prussians furnished him with spending money, to buy
refreshment on his weary journey, so to this day German peasants bury
a corpse with money in his mouth or hand," and this is also said to be
one of the regular ceremonies of an Irish wake. Of similar purport
were the funeral feasts and oblations
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of food in Greece and Italy, the "rice-cakes made with ghee" destined
for the Hindu sojourning in Yama's kingdom, and the meat and gruel
offered by the Chinaman to the manes of his ancestors. "Many
travellers have described the imagination with which the Chinese make
such offerings. It is that the spirits of the dead consume the
impalpable essence of the food, leaving behind its coarse material
substance, wherefore the dutiful sacrificers, having set out sumptuous
feasts for ancestral souls, allow them a proper time to satisfy their
appetite, and then fall to themselves."22 So in the Homeric sacrifice
to the gods, after the deity has smelled the sweet savour and consumed
the curling steam that rises ghost-like from the roasting viands, the
assembled warriors devour the remains."23
Thus far the course of fetichistic thought which we have traced
out, with Mr. Tylor's aid, is such as is not always obvious to the
modern inquirer without considerable concrete illustration. The
remainder of the process, resulting in that systematic and complete
anthropomorphisation of nature which has given rise to mythology, may
be more succinctly described. Gathering together the conclusions
already obtained, we find that daily or frequent experience of the
phenomena of shadows and dreams has combined with less frequent
experience of the phenomena of trance, ecstasy, and insanity, to
generate in the mind of uncultured man the notion of a twofold
existence appertaining alike to all animate or inanimate objects: as
all alike possess material bodies, so all alike possess ghosts or
souls. Now when the theory of object-souls is expanded into a general
doctrine of spirits, the
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philosophic scheme of animism is completed. Once habituated to the
conception of souls of knives and tobacco-pipes passing to the land of
ghosts, the savage cannot avoid carrying the interpretation still
further, so that wind and water, fire and storm, are accredited with
indwelling spirits akin by nature to the soul which inhabits the human
frame. That the mighty spirit or demon by whose impelling will the
trees are rooted up and tile storm-clouds driven across the sky should
resemble a freed human soul, is a natural inference, since uncultured
man has not attained to the conception of physical force acting in
accordance with uniform methods, and hence all events are to his mind
the manifestations of capricious volition. If the fire burns down his
hut, it is because the fire is a person with a soul, and is angry with
him, and needs to be coaxed into a kindlier mood by means of prayer or
sacrifice. Thus the savage has a priori no alternative but to regard
fire-soul as something akin to human-soul; and in point of fact we
find that savage philosophy makes no distinction between the human
ghost and the elemental demon or deity. This is sufficiently proved by
the universal prevalence of the worship of ancestors. The essential
principle of manes-worship is that the tribal chief or patriarch, who
has governed the community during life, continues also to govern it
after death, assisting it in its warfare with hostile tribes,
rewarding brave warriors, and punishing traitors and cowards. Thus
from the conception of the living king we pass to the notion of what
Mr. Spencer calls "the god-king," and thence to the rudimentary notion
of deity. Among such higher savages as the Zulus, the doctrine of
divine ancestors has been developed to the extent of recognizing a
first ancestor, the Great Father, Unkulunkulu, who made the world. But
in the stratum of savage
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thought in which barbaric or Aryan folk-lore is for the most part
based, we find no such exalted speculation. The ancestors of the rude
Veddas and of the Guinea negroes, the Hindu pitris (patres,
"fathers"), and the Roman manes have become elemental deities which
send rain or sunshine, health or sickness, plenty or famine, arid to
which their living offspring appeal for guidance amid the vicissitudes
of life.24 The theory of embodiment, already alluded to, shows how
thoroughly the demons which cause disease are identified with human
and object souls. In Australasia it is a dead man's ghost which creeps
up into the liver of the impious wretch who has ventured to pronounce
his name; while conversely in the well-known European theory of
demoniacal possession, it is a fairy from elf-land, or an imp from
hell, which has entered the body of the sufferer. In the close
kinship, moreover, between disease-possession and oracle-possession,
where the body of tile Pythia, or the medicine-man, is placed under
the direct control of some great deity,25
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we may see how by insensible transitions the conception of the human
ghost passes into the conception of the spiritual numen, or divinity.
To pursue this line of inquiry through the countless nymphs and
dryads and nixies of the higher nature-worship up to the Olympian
divinities of classic polytheism, would be to enter upon the history
of religious belief, and in so doing to lose sight of our present
purpose, which has merely been to show by what mental process the
myth-maker can speak of natural objects in language which implies that
they are animated persons. Brief as our account of this process has
been, I believe that enough has been said, not only to reveal the
inadequacy of purely philological solutions (like those contained in
Max Müller's famous Essay) to explain the growth of myths, but also to
exhibit the vast importance for this purpose of the kind of
psychological inquiry into the mental habits of savages which Mr.
Tylor has so ably conducted. Indeed, however lacking we may still be
in points of detail, I think we have already reached a very
satisfactory explanation of the genesis of mythology. Since the
essential characteristic of a myth is that it is an attempt to explain
some natural phenomenon by endowing with human feelings and capacities
the senseless factors in the phenomenon, and since it has here been
shown how uncultured man, by the best use he can make of his rude
common sense, must inevitably come, and has invariably come, to regard
all objects as endowed with souls, and all nature as peopled with
supra-human entities shaped after the general pattern of the human
soul, I am inclined to suspect that we have got very near to the root
of the
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whole matter. We can certainly find no difficulty in seeing why a
water-spout should be described in the "Arabian Nights" as a living
demon: "The sea became troubled before them, and there arose from it a
black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and approaching the
meadow,.... and behold it was a Jinni, of gigantic stature." We can
see why the Moslem camel-driver should find it most natural to regard
the whirling simoom as a malignant Jinni; we may understand how it is
that the Persian sees in bodily shape the scarlet fever as "a blushing
maid with locks of flame and cheeks all rosy red"; and we need not
consider it strange that the primeval Aryan should have regarded the
sun as a voyager, a climber, or an archer, and the clouds as cows
driven by the wind-god Hermes to their milking. The identification of
William Tell with the sun becomes thoroughly intelligible; nor can we
be longer surprised at the conception of the howling night-wind as a
ravenous wolf. When pots and kettles are thought to have souls that
live hereafter, there is no difficulty in understanding how the blue
sky can have been regarded as the sire of gods and men. And thus, as
the elves and bogarts of popular lore are in many cases descended from
ancient divinities of Olympos and Valhalla, so these in turn must
acknowledge their ancestors in the shadowy denizens of the primeval
ghost-world.
[1] "The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Dawn, finds out the
criminal, was originally quite free from mythology; it meant no more
than that crime would be brought to light some day or other.
It became mythological, however, as soon as the etymological meaning
of Erinys was forgotten, and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time,
assumed the rank of a personal being." -- Science of Language, 6th
edition, II. 615. This paragraph, in which the italicizing is mine,
contains Max Müller's theory in a nutshell. It seems to me wholly at
variance with the facts of history. The facts concerning primitive
culture which are to be cited in this paper will show that the case is
just the other way. Instead of the expression "Erinys finds the
criminal" being originally a metaphor, it was originally a literal
statement of what was believed to be fact. The Dawn (not "a portion of
time,"(!) but the rosy flush of the morning sky) was originally
regarded as a real person. Primitive men, strictly speaking, do not
talk in metaphors; they believe in the literal truth of their similes
and personifications, from which, by survival in culture, our poetic
metaphors are lineally descended. Homer's allusion to a rolling stone
as [egr.gif] [sgr.gif] [sgr.gif] [uacugr.gif] [mgr.gif] [egr.gif]
[ngr.gif] [ogr.gif] [sgr.gif] or "yearning" (to keep on rolling), is
to us a mere figurative expression; but to the savage it is the
description of a fact.
[2] Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology,
Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom By Edward B. Tylor. 2 vols. 8vo.
London. 1871.
[3] Tylor, op. cit. I. 107.
[4] Rousseau, Confessions, I. vi. For further illustration, see
especially the note on the "doctrine of signatures," supra, p. 55.
[5] Spencer, Recent Discussions in Science, etc., p. 36, "The Origin
of Animal Worship."
[6] See Nature, Vol. VI. p. 262, August 1, 1872. The circumstances
narrated are such as to exclude the supposition that the sitting up is
intended to attract the master's attention. The dog has frequently
been seen trying to soften the heart of the ball, while observed
unawares by his master.
[7] "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attention Mr. Mark
Twain's dog, who 'could n't be depended on for a special providence,'
as being nearer to the actual dog of every-day life than is the Skye
terrier mentioned by a certain correspondent of Nature, to whose letter
Mr. Fiske refers. The terrier is held to have had 'a few fetichistic
notions,' because he was found standing up on his hind legs in front of
a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball with which he wished
to play, but which he could not reach, and which, says the
letter-writer, he was evidently beseeching to come down and play with
him. We consider it more reasonable to suppose that a dog who had been
drilled into a belief that standing upon his hind legs was very pleasing
to his master, and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to stand on
his hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way of
getting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for him, may
have stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather from force of habit
and eagerness of desire than because he had any fetichistic notions, or
expected the india-rubber ball to listen to his supplications. We admit,
however, to avoid polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the
dog is capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October 1,
1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on in the
dog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I will only add
another fact of similar import. "The tendency in savages to imagine that
natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living
essences is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed:
my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn
during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze
occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly
disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time
that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He
must, I think, have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconscious
manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence
of some strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his
territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. p. 64. Without insisting
upon all the details of this explanation, one may readily grant, I
think, that in the dog, as in the savage, there is an undisturbed
association between motion and a living motor agency; and that out of
a multitude of just such associations common to both, the savage, with
his greater generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.
[8] Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of these Greek
words. Catalepsy, a seizing of the body by some spirit or demon, who
holds it rigid. Ecstasy, a displacement or removal of the soul from
the body, into which the demon enters and causes strange laughing,
crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, but the literal belief ill
a ghost-world, which has given rise to such words as these, and to such
expressions as "a man beside himself or transported."
[9] Something akin to the savage's belief in the animation of pictures
may be seen in young children. I have often been asked by my
three-year-old boy, whether the dog in a certain picture would bite
him if he were to go near it; and I can remember that, in my own
childhood, when reading a book about insects, which had the formidable
likeness of a spider stamped on the centre of the cover, I was always
uneasy lest my finger should come in contact with the dreaded thing as
I held the book.
With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken, lest it
fall into the hands of some enemy who may injure him by conjuring with
it, may be compared the reluctance which he often shows toward telling
his name, or mentioning the name of his friend, or king, or tutelar
ghost-deity. In fetichistic thought, the name is an entity
mysteriously associated with its owner, and it is not well to run the
risk of its getting into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes
the similarly originated fear that the person whose name is spoken may
resent such meddling with his personality. For the latter reason the
Dayak will not allude by name to the small pox, but will call it "the
chief" or "jungle-leaves"; the Laplander speaks of the bear as the
"old man with the fur coat"; in Annam the tiger is called
"grandfather" or "Lord"; while in more civilized communities such
sayings are current as "talk of the Devil, and he will appear," with
which we may also compare such expressions as "Eumenides" or "gracious
ones" for the Furies, and other like euphemisms. Indeed, the maxim nil
mortuis nisi bonum had most likely at one time a fetichistic flavour.
In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above
specified, the name of the reigning chief is so rigorously "tabu,"
that common words and even syllables resembling that name in sound
must be omitted from the language. In New Zealand, where a chief's
name was Maripi, or "knife," it became necessary to call knives nekra;
and in Tahiti, fetu, "star," had to be changed into fetia, and tui,
"to strike," became tiai, etc., because the king's name was Tu. Curious
freaks are played with the languages of these islands by this
ever-recurring necessity. Among the Kafirs the women have come to
speak a different dialect from the men, because words resembling the
names of their lords or male relatives are in like manner "tabu." The
student of human culture will trace among such primeval notions the
origin of the Jew's unwillingness to pronounce the name of Jehovah;
and hence we may perhaps have before us the ultimate source of the
horror with which the Hebraizing Puritan regards such forms of light
swearing -- "Mon Dieu," etc. -- as are still tolerated on the continent
of Europe, but have disappeared from good society in Puritanic England
and America. The reader interested in this group of ideas and customs
may consult Tylor, Early History of Mankind, pp. 142, 363; Max Müller,
Science of Language, 6th edition, Vol. II. p. 37; Mackay, Religious
Development of the Greeks and Hebrews, Vol. I. p. 146.
[10] Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that a dead
body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance departed from it
at the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and
Folk-Lore, p. 123.
[11] Tylor, op. cit. I. 391.
[12] Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867, p. 210.
[13] Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.
[14] In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be embodied in
pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore and his three
schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs, as
the 'Old Believers' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. In
Volhynia dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to
their native village under the semblance of swallows and other small
birds, and to seek by soft twittering or song to console their
sorrowing parents." Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.
[15] Tylor, op. cit. I. 404.
[16] Tylor, op. cit. I. 407.
[17] Tylor, op. cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survival this belief
will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a door, no reason being
assigned; and in the succeeding stage, when the child asks why it is
naughty to slam a door, he will be told, because it is an evidence of
bad temper. Thus do old-world fancies disappear before the inroads of
the practical sense.
[18] Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 97-99.
[19] Figuier, The To-morrow of Death, p. 247.
[20] Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comes in to
complete the proof. "Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling Island,
who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; this spoon had
been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full
moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a table or a
hat at a modern spirit-séance." Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.
[21] Tylor, op. cit. I. 414-422.
[22] Tylor, op. cit. I. 435, 446; II. 30, 36.
[23] According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the soul of the
eye is eaten by demons. Id., II. 353.
[24] The following citation is interesting as an illustration of the
directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christian
saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own
adventurous infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to
the health and safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers
would carry sickly infants to present them in his little round temple
at the foot of the Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced by
the church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers Middleton, who drew
public attention to its curious history, used to look in and see ten
or a dozen women, each with a sick child in her lap, sitting in silent
reverence before the altar of the saint. The ceremony of blessing
children, especially after vaccination, may still be seen there on
Thursday mornings." Op. cit. II. 111.
[25] Want of space prevents me from remarking at length upon Mr.
Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of oracular inspiration.
Attention should be called, however, to the brilliant explanation of
the importance accorded by all religions to the rite of fasting.
Prolonged abstinence from food tends to bring on a mental state which
is favourable to visions. The savage priest or medicine-man qualifies
himself for the performance of his duties by fasting, and where this
is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs; whence the
sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic soma-juice. The
practice of fasting among civilized peoples is an instance of
survival.
August, 1872.
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NOTE.
THE following are some of the modern works most likely to be of use
to the reader who is interested in the legend of William Tell.
HISELY, J. J. Dissertatio historiea inauguralis de Oulielmo Tellio,
etc. Groningæ, 1824.
IDELER, J. L. Die Sage von dem Schuss des Tell. Berlin, 1836.
HÄUSSER, L. Die Sage von Tell aufs Neue kritisch untersucht.
Heidelberg, 1840.
HISELY, J. J. Recherches critiques sur l'histoire de Guillaume Tell.
Lausanne, 1843.
LIEBENAU, H. Die Tell-Sage zu dem Jahre 1230 historisoh nach
neuesten Quellen. Aarau, 1864.
VISCHER, W. Die Sage von der Befreinng der Waldstätte, etc. Nebst
einer Beilage: das älteste Tellensehauspiel. Leipzig, 1867.
BORDIER, H. L. Le Grütli et Guillaume Tell, ou défense de la
tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la confédération suisse. Genève
et Bâle, 1869.
The same. La querelle sur les traditions concernant l'origine de la
confédération suisse. Genève et Bâle, 1869.
RILLIET, A. Les origines de la confédération suisse: histoire et
légende. 2e éd., revue et corrigée. Genève et Bâle, 1869.
The same. Lettre à M. Henri Bordier à propos de sa défense de la
tradition vulgaire sur les origines de la confédération suisse. Genève
et Bâle, 1869.
HUNGERBÜHLER, H. Etude critique sur les traditions relatives aux
origines de la confédération suisse. Genève et Bâyle, 1869.
MEYER, KARL. Die Tellsage. [In Bartsch, Germanistische Studien, I.
159-170.] Wien, 1872.
See also the articles by M. Scherer, in Le Temps,
18 Feb., 1868; by M. Reuss, in the Revue critique d'histoire, 1868; by
M. de Wiss, in the Journal de Genève, 7 July, 1868; also Revue
critique, 17 July, 1869; Journal de Genève, 24 Oct., 1868; Gazette de
Lausanne, feuilleton littéraire, 2-5 Nov., 1868, "Les origines de la
confédération suisse," par M. Secrétan; Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1869,
"The Legend of Tell and Rutli."
--------------------------------
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--------------------------------
-243-
INDEX.
A.
Abgott, 105.
Achaians, 180.
Achilleis, Mr. Grote's theory of, 187.
Achilleus, 20, 24, 112, 187, seq.
Adeva, 121.
Aditi, 104, 110.
Adonis, 25, 204.
Agamemnon, 19, 187, seq., 200.
Agassiz, his belief in the immortality of lower animals, 231.
Agni, 110.
Ahana, 20.
Aharyu, 20, 121, 196.
Ahi, 58, 114, 118.
Ahmed and the Peri Banou, 30, 43, 49.
Ahriman, 121.
Ahuramazda, 121.
Aias, 193.
Aineias, 193.
Aithiopes, 199.
Aladdin's ring, 45; his request for a roe's egg to hang in the dome
of his palace, 50.
Aleian land, 50.
Alexandrian library, 15.
Alexikakos, 117.
Allegorical interpretations of myths inadequate, 21, 214.
Ambrosia, 63.
American culture-myths, 152; sun-catcher-myth, 170; tortoise-myth,
172.
Amrita, 63.
Analogical reasoning among savages, examples of, 217.
Animism, 215.
Anro-mainyas, 121.
Anteia, 205.
Antigone, 115.
Antiquity of man, 176.
Antwerp, 71.
Aphrodite, 18, 28, 30, 190, 204.
Apollo and the Messiah, 203.
Apsaras, 96.
Arabian Nights, 11,13, 36, 43, 50, 99, 111, 239.
Argive as an epithet, 202.
Argonauts, 133.
Arkadians, 73.
Arktos, 73.
Armida's gardens, 30.
Artemis, 18, 28, 190.
Aryan immigration into Europe, 197.
Ash-tree dreaded by venomous snakes, 61.
Ass delivered from enchantment by old coat, 101.
Association of ideas variously illustrated in scientific and in
barbaric thought, 216.
Astarte, 25, 204.
Astyages, 114.
Athene, 20, compared by Mr. Gladstone to the Logos, 203.
Auerbach's cellar, 124.
Autolykos, 71.
Aymar, Jacques, 38, 40.
Azidahaka, 114.
B.
Baba Abdallah, 43.
Babel, 72.
Baga, 104.
Bagaios, epithet of Zeus, 104.
Balder, 25.
--------------------------------
-244-
Banier, Abbé, 15.
Barbaric and Aryan myths, 149.
Barbarossa, 26, 201.
Baring-Gould, 7, 17, 26, 29, 40, 43, 51, 80, seq.
Bazra, 71.
Belisarius, 15.
Bellerophon, 19, 205.
Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, 43.
Berserkir madness, 79, 89.
Beth-Gellert, 7.
Bhaga, 104.
Bishop Hatto, 34, 72, 227.
Blue-beard, 60.
Boabdil, 26.
Bog, Bogie, 104.
Boots, 9; his eating-match with the Troll, 131.
Brahman and goat, 12.
Bréal, Michel, 116.
Bridge of souls, 48.
Bridge of the dead, 151.
Brisaya, 20, 196.
Briseis, 20, 196.
Brunehault, 201.
Brynhild, 132.
Bug-a-boo and Bugbear, 104.
Byrsa, 71.
C.
Cacus, 117, 121.
Cæcius, 117, 121.
Cannibalism, abnormal: tailor of Châlons, 81; beggar of Polomyia,
82; Jean Grenier, 83; Jacques Roulet, 84.
Cannibals (in Zulu folk-lore) and Trolls, 165.
Cardinal points, 160.
Carib lightning-myth, 169.
Carvara, 20, 124.
Cassim Baba, 43.
Cat-woman, 91.
Catalepsy, 78, 222.
Catequil the thunder-god, 65.
Cattle of Helios, 116, 119.
Celestinus and the Miller's Horse, 125.
Châlons, tailor of; 81.
Changelings, 86.
Charis and Charites, 190.
Chark, 62.
Charlemagne, 26, 199, seq.
Charon's ferry-boat, 49; obolus in funeral rites, 234.
Chateau Vert, 72.
Chesterfield, Lord, his remark about the capriciousness of the human
mind, 218.
Chimaira, 114.
Clerk and Image, 59.
Cloud-maidens, 96.
Clouds as cows, 19, 49; as birds, 50; as mountains or rocks, 54.
Cows as psychopomps, 49.
Cox, G. W., 9, 14, 89, 193, 197, 211.
Creation of man, 65.
Cushna, 118.
Cyrus, legend of his infancy, 114.
D.
Dagon, 19, 24.
Dahana, 113.
Dancers of Kolbeck, 27.
Danish legend of Tell, 3.
Daphne, 113.
Daras, 71.
Dasyu, 113.
Davy's locker, 124.
Dawn as detector of crimes, 57, 210.
Day swallowed by Night, 77.
Death misinterpreted by savages, 75.
Demoniacal possession, 237.
Deva, 107.
Devil and walnut, 36; etymology of, 106; in mediæval mythology,
123-129; a profound scholar according to Scotch divines, 124; blillded
like Polyphemos, 125; his gullibility, 125, seq.
Dewel, Gypsy name for God, 105.
Dido and the ox hides, 71, abandoned by Aineias, 111.
Dietrich, 201.
Diocletian's ostrich, 44.
Diomedes, 193.
Dionysos, 124.
Divining-rod, 37, 55, 64.
Dog howling under the window, 35, 76.
--------------------------------
-245-
Dogs, how far capable of fetichistic notions, 221.
Don Carlos, 22.
Dorians in Peloponnesos, 180.
Dousterswivel, 37.
Dreams, primitive philosophy of, 219.
Drowning man ought not to be rescued, 215.
Durandal, 24.
Dyaus, or Dyaus-pitar, 20, 50, 52, 107, 108.
E.
East of the sun and west of the moon, 98.
Echidna, 58, 114.
Echoes fetichistically explained, 224.
Ecstasy, 222.
Eden-myth, 122.
Efreets, 123.
Egeria, 30.
Egil, 5, 24.
Eleanor, wife of Edward I., 22.
Eleven thousand virgins, 28.
Elixir of life, 63.
Elizabeth, Hungarian countess, 80.
Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., 22.
Elves, 96.
Embodiment, theory of, 226.
Endymion, 25, 161.
England, the land of ghosts, 28.
Eos, 198.
Epimenides, 26.
Epimetheus, 64.
Erceldoune, Thomas of, 30.
Erinys, 57, 114, 123, 210.
Erlking, 31, seq.
Erotic virtues of lightning-plants, 65.
Es-Sirat, 48.
Esquimaux moon-myth, 162.
Etymological myths, 70.
Etzel, 201.
Euhemeros, 15.
Eumenides, 223.
Euphemisms for dreaded beings, 223.
Eurykleia, 25.
Eurystheus, 112, 169.
Evil, Jewish conception of, 122.
Excalibur, 24.
F.
Fafnir, 132.
Fairies degraded by Christianity, 129.
Faithful John, 9, 142.
Farid-Uddin Attar, 5.
Fasting, origin of the practice in savage philosophy, 237.
Faust, black dog which appeared in his study, 124.
Feather-dresses, 98.
Fena and Phoinix, 71.
Fenrir, 77.
Fern-seed, 44
Fetches, 228.
Figuier, Louis, his fancies concerning metempsychosis, 231.
Fiji theory of souls, 18; of the second death, 230.
Fingal, 71.
Fish, in the tale of Sindbad, 172.
Fisherman and Efreet, 36.
Foi scientifique, 39.
Folliculus, 7.
Forget-me-not, 42.
Forty Thieves, 42.
Four a sacred number, 160.
Freeman, E. A., his view of the Trojan War, 199, seq.
Freischütz and Devil, 127.
Frere's "Old Deccan Days," 10.
Freudenberger, Uriel, 3.
Frodi and his quern, 66.
Funeral sacrifices illustrating theory of object-souls, 233.
Furies, 57, 123.
G.
Gaia, 198.
Gambrinus, 128.
Gandharvas, 95.
Garcilaso de la Vega, 112.
Gellert, 6.
Gertrude, 34.
Gessler, 2.
Gesta Romanorum, 7, 44, 94, 125.
Ghost, geist, etymology of, 225.
Giant who had no Heart in his Body, 9, 132, 146, 163, 227.
--------------------------------
-246-
Giants or Trolls as uncivilized prehistoric Europeans, 130.
Gladstone, W. E., his "Juventus Mundi," 174, seq.; maintains the
unity of the Homeric poems, 181, seq.; his uncritical views of ancient
history and legend, 191; his ignorance of comparative mythology, 203;
unsoundness of his philology, 206.
Glaukos, 199.
Glaukos and Polyidos, 60.
Glistening Heath, 132.
Gnat and Shepherd, 7.
God, etymology of, 105, 198.
Golden Fleece, 133.
Gorgon's head, 58.
Graiai, 50.
Grateful beasts, 9.
Great Bear, 73.
Grenier Jean, 83, 90.
Grote, G., his theory of the structure of the Iliad, 187.
Guilliman, his work on Swiss antiquities, 3.
Gunadhya, 33.
Guodan, 105.
Gyges, ring of, 44.
H.
Hagen, 24.
Hair of werewolf growing inward, 89.
Hamelin, piper of, 31.
Hamlet, 195.
Hand of glory, 45, 56.
Hare-lip, 161.
Harold Blue-tooth, 4.
Harold Hardrada, 5.
Harpies and swan-maidens, 164.
Hassan of El-Basrah, 13.
Hatto (Bishop), 34, 72, 227.
Heartless Giant, 9, 132, 146, 163, 227.
Hektor, 189.
Helena, 20, 121, 196.
Helios, oxen of, 205.
Hellenes, 180.
Hemingr, 5, 24.
Hephaistos and Aphrodite, 65, 190; and Devil, 124.
Herakleids, legend of, 179, 192.
Herakles, 15, 24, 112, 169.
Herakles and Geryon, 117.
Heraldic emblems, 78.
Hercules and Cacus, 22, 116, seq.
Here, 19.
Hermes, 19, 20, 32, 35, 67, 124, 204.
Hesperides, 15.
Hildesheim, monk of, 26.
Hindu practice of self-immolation for purposes of revenge, 75.
Historic period, beginning of, 177.
Hitopadesa, 12.
Holda, 35.
Holy water, 63.
Homer, birthplace of, 178.
Homeric poems, date of, 179; Wolfian hypothesis, 181; unity of
style, 185; not analogous to ballad poetry, 186; artistic structure,
187; unhistorical character, 191.
Homerids, 183.
Hörsel, 28.
Hörselberg, 29.
Houris, 102.
Hyperboreans, garden of, 114.
I.
Ida, 114.
Iliad, its structure, according to Grote, 187.
Ilsenstein shepherd, 41.
Indian summer, myth of, 25.
Indra, 109, seq., 196.
Indra Savitâr, 56.
Invisibility from use of talismans, 44.
Iokaste, Iole, and Iamos, 113.
Iole, 19, 196.
Ioskeha, 156.
Iris, 204.
Itshe-likantunjambili, 168.
Ixion, 19, 50.
J.
Jack and Jill, 28, 213.
Jack and the Beanstalk, 23, 33, 79, 151, 163, 168.
Jack the Giant-killer, 130.
--------------------------------
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Jacolliot, "Bible in India," 205.
Jewish notion of the firmament, 48.
Jinn, 129, 239.
Jonah and the whale, 77.
Joseph of Arimathæa, 27.
Joseph and Zuleikha, 205.
Jötuns, 129.
Jupiter, 20, 108, 117.
K.
Kaikias, 117.
Kalypso, 30, 111.
Kamtchatkan lightning-myth, 169.
Karl the Great, 200.
Kasimbaha, 163.
Kelly, W. K., on lightning-myths, 49, 62, 66.
Kennedy, P., his Irish legends, 86, 101, 136.
Kerberos, 20, 124.
Kinships among barbaric myths, 150.
Kirke, 111.
Koroibos, Olympiad of, 177.
Krilof's Fables, 7.
Kuhn's "Descent of Fire," 47; his theory of myths not incompatible
with Max Müller's, 119.
L.
Labe, Queen, 111.
Lad who went to the North Wind, 67.
Lady of Shalott, 49.
Laios, 112.
Lancashire witch bequeaths her soul to a friend, 226.
Lapps as giants or Trolls, 130.
Latium, 72.
Leichnam, 102.
Leopard and Ram, 131.
Leto, 198.
Lightning-birds, 51, 168.
Lightning-myths in barbaric folk-lore, 168, seq.
Lightning-plants, 40, 44, 55, 61.
Llangeller, 7.
Lotos-eaters, 50.
Loup-garou, 69.
Luck-flower, 43.
Lykson, 69.
Lykegenes, 71.
Lykians, 73, 199.
M.
Maitland, blasphemous remark of, 104.
Malay swan-maidens, 162.
Malleus Maleficarum, 5.
Man in the Moon, 27.
Manabozho, 153.
Mandara, or Manthara, 63, 171.
Manes-worship, 74, 236.
Maori divination with Venus and moon, 218.
Mara, 93, seq.
Maréchal de Retz, 80.
Master Thief, 11, 35.
Maui, 67, 169.
Max Müller, his theory of mythology inadequate, 135, 210.
Medeia, 111.
Medusa, 58, 114.
Meleagros, 19, 24, 112.
Melusina, 96.
Memnon, 199.
Merchant of Louvain and Devil, 126.
Merlin, 26.
Mermaid's cap, 100.
Mermaids foretokening shipwreck, 103.
Metempsychosis, 74, 230, seq.
Mice and rats as souls, 33.
Michabo, 25, 73, 153.
Milesian, soubriquet for the Irish, 71.
Milky Way, 151.
Mirror, when broken, portends a death in the family, 217.
Mishkat-ul-Másábih, 22.
Mitra, 110.
Moon and hare, 161.
Moon-myths among barbarians, 161.
Moon-spots, 27.
Mother Goose, 27.
Mouse Tower, maut-thurm, 34, 72.
Muri-ranga-whenua, 169.
Mykenai, its ancient supremacy in Greece, 200.
Myth, definition of, 21, seq.
--------------------------------
-248-
N.
Names, savages unwilling to tell them, 223.
Nausikaa, 102.
Necklace of swan-maiden, 99.
Nectar, 63.
Nephele, 133, 196.
Nessos-shirt, 24.
Nestor, 193.
Nibelungenlied, 132; as illustrating Iliad, 201.
Nibelungs, 196.
Nick, as epithet of the Devil, 124.
Niebuhr's views concerning words common to Greek and Latin, 206.
Night-and-morning-myth resembles storm-myth, 119.
Night-folk, 129.
Nightmare, 93.
Nixy and her glove, 99.
Not a Pin to choose between them, 128.
Numa, 30.
Nymph, 97.
O.
Oberon, horn of, 33.
Odin, 32, 35, 67, 105, 124; his golden ship, 49; his magic cudgel,
67, 217.
Odin, lord of the gallows, 56.
Odysseus, 23, 25, 30, 53, 111.
Oidipous, 22, 60, 112.
Oinone, 19, 113.
Olaf, Saint, 132.
Olaf Tryggvesson, 26.
Olger Danske, 26.
Olympiad of Koroibos, 177.
Omar, 15.
Oracle-possession, 237.
Ormuzd, 121.
Orpheus, 32, 124.
Orthros, 118.
Ossa and Pelion, 54.
Other self, primitive doctrine of, 219, seq.
P.
Palmatoki, 3, 24.
Pan, his relationship to the Devil, 124.
Panch Phul Ranee, 61.
Panehatantra, 7.
Panis, 20, 58, 118, 120, 196.
Paris, 20, 193; invested with solar attributes, 195, 198.
Parizade, 11.
Patroklos, 189.
Paul Pry, 36.
Pavilion given by the Peri Banou to Ahmed, 49.
Peisistratos, his recension of Homer, 181.
Pelasgian theory of Niebuhr, 206.
Penelope, 24, 111.
Permanence in language and culture, conditions essential to, 149.
Peter Schlemihl, 224.
Phæthon, 19.
Philip II., 22.
Philological method, how far useful in the study of myths, 144, seq.
Phoenician origin of the Irish, 71.
Phoibos, 19.
Phoibos Lykegenes, 71.
Phoroneus, 65.
Phrixos and Helle, 133.
Pictures, animation of, 223.
Piper of Hamelin, 31.
Pitris, 76, 237.
Pliny's account of springwort, 44.
Polomyia, cannibal beggar of, 82.
Polynesian sun-myth, 170.
Polyphemos, his one eye, 50, 53; his blinding, 125.
Poseidon, 204.
Pramantha, 64.
Primeval philosophy, 16, 18, 21, 47, 216.
Princesses carried off by Trolls and Efreets, 132.
Prometheus, 64.
Puncher, 5.
Punchkin, 10, 132, 146.
Putraka, 13.
--------------------------------
-249-
Q.
Quetzalcoatl, 157.
R.
Rain-water, mythical conception of, 63.
Rainbow, 151, 204. .
Rakshasa, 77.
Rama and Luxman, 9, 142.
Rattlesnakes afraid of ash-trees, 61.
Red James, 100.
Red Riding Hood, 77.
Renan, E., his suggestion that an exploration of the Hindu Kush
might throw light on the origin of language, 175.
Retz, Maréchal de, 80.
Rhampsinitos, 14.
Rickard the Rake, 86.
Riksha, 73.
Rip van Winkle, 26.
Robin red-breast, 71; wickedness of killing robins, 51, 214.
Roc's egg, 50.
Romulus as guardian of children, 237.
Roulet, Jacques, 84, 90.
Rousseau, J. J., his method of inquiring into the safety of his
soul, 218.
S.
Sacrifices, 233.
Saktideva, 77.
Samu and his brethren, 230.
Sancus, 117.
Sanskrit names of Greek deities, 20.
Sarama, 20, 119, seq., 196.
Sarameias, 20, 204.
Saranyu, 57, 210.
Sarpedon, 193, 199.
Sassafras, 43.
Satan, 122.
Saxo Grammaticus, 3.
Scaletta, 71.
Scarlet fever, in Persian folk-lore, 239.
Schamir, 43, 51.
Scribe, his remark about the possible number of dramatic situations,
115, 133.
Sculloge of Muskerry, 136-140.
Sea of Streams of Story, 13.
Seal-women, 100.
Sebastian of Portugal, 26.
Selene, 198; and Endymion, 161.
Serpent in Eden, 122.
Serpent's venom neutralized by ash-tree, 61.
Sesame, 42, 168.
Seven Sleepers, 26.
Seyf-el-Mulook, 10.
Shotover, 72.
Siberian swan-maidens, 163.
Siegfried, 24.
Sieve of the Daughters of Danaos, 48.
"Signatures," doctrine of, 55.
Sigurd, 24, 132.
Simoom, 239.
Sindbad, his great fish, 172.
Sioux, lightning-myth, 62.
Sir Elidoc, 61.
Sir Guyon, 59.
Sirens, 32
Sisyphos and his stone, 50.
Skin-changers, 89.
Skithblathnir, 49.
Sky descending at horizon, 48.
Sky-sea, 49.
Skye-terrier and ball, 220.
Slamming door, 229.
Sleeping Beauty, 25.
Snake leaves, 60.
Snake of darkness, 114.
Solomon, 43.
Soma, 63.
Somadeva, 13, 77.
Song of sixpence, 212.
Soul, quitting body during lifetime, 78; as shadow, 224, as breath,
225, seq.; resemblance to body, 228, seq.; killed over again, 230;
souls of beasts, 230; of plants, 231; of inanimate objects, 232.
Spencer, Herbert, on totemism, 74; on the doctrine of ghosts, 222.
Spento-mainyas, 121.
Sphinx, 22, 60, 114.
Spirits, doctrine of, 225, seq.
--------------------------------
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St. George and the Dragon, 23.
St. John's sleep at Ephesus, 26.
Stars as missiles for stoning the Devil, 22; as angels' eyes, 76; as
pitris, 76.
Storm-myth, resemblance to dawn-myth, 119.
Story-roots, 115.
Succubus, monkish tale of, 94.
Sun as prototype of Don Juan, 111.
Sun-catcher-myths, 112, 169.
Sun-myths, 23; why they are so numerous, 134.
Sun-worship, 108.
Sunset-clouds representing hell, 48.
Suttee, not sustained by Vedic authority, 233; remarkable case of,
in England, 234.
Swan-maiden as psychopomp, 102.
Swearing, Puritan horror of, 224.
Symplegades, 54.
T.
Tannhauser, 29.
Tantalos, 73.
Tawiskara, 156.
Tell, William, 1-6, 15, 24, 239, 241.
Te pi and Ukuhlonipa, or tabuing of chief's name, 223.
Themis, 206.
Thor, 19, 65, 124.
Three Princesses of Whiteland, 12.
Three Tells of Rütli, 26.
Tithonos, 27.
Tom of Coventry, 36.
Tom Thumb, 77.
Tortoise supporting world, 171.
Totemism, 74.
Trance, 78.
Trolls, 129, seq.
Trojan War, 20; elements of the myth found in the Vedas, 20, 120,
194; how far a sun-myth, 195; how far a genuine tradition, 199, seq.
Tuesday, etymology of, 108.
U.
Undine, 98.
Unity of human culture, 149.
Unkulunkulu, 236.
Ursula, 28.
Urvasi and Purûravas, 95.
Usilosimapundu, 172.
Utahagi, 163.
Uthlakanyana, 166.
V.
Valkyries, 19, 102.
Valley of diamonds, 50.
Van Diemen's Land, the home of ghosts, 28.
Varuna, 50, 110.
Vasilissa the Beautiful, 77.
Venus, 25.
Venusberg, 29.
Viracocha, 156.
Vittikâb, 33,124.
Vivasvat, 110.
Vivien, 26.
Völsunga Saga, 132.
Vritra, 114, 118, 120.
Vulcan, 124.
W.
Wainamoinen, 33.
Wali and cook, 7.
Wandering Jew, 27, 114.
Waterspout, 239.
Waxen image, necromancy with, 217.
Wayland Smith, 5, 124.
Werewolf, etymology of, 69; hallucination, 85; summary of the
superstition, 88; enchantment variously cured, 90, 92; in South
Africa, 164.
Werewolves and witchcraft, 79, 91; in Aryan and barbaric folk-lore,
contrasted, 165.
White bear as bridegroom, 98.
Why the sea is salt, 66.
Wild Huntsman, 27, 33, 76.
William of Cloudeslee, 5, 24.
Wind-and-Weather, 132.
Windows opened to let souls pass out, 76, 229.
Winterthür, John of, 2.
Wishbone, 55.
--------------------------------
-251-
Wishrod, 66.
Wolf of darkness, 77.
Wolf girdle, 90.
Wolfskin, 89.
Wolfian hypothesis, 181.
World-tortoise, 171.
Wraiths, 228.
Y.
Yama, 76.
Yarrow and rue, 100.
Yellow hair of solar heroes, 202.
Yggdrasil, 65.
Youth of the World, 175.
Z.
Zendavesta, 121.
Zeus, 20; etymology of, 107.
Zeus Lykaios, 69.
Zio, 108.
Zohak, 114.
Zulu folk-lore, 165-169.
Myths and Myth-makers - The End
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