5.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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,
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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,
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]
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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,
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.