Part 3

But the sun, though ever victorious in open contest with his enemies, is nevertheless not invulnerable. At times he succumbs to treachery, is bound by the frost-giants, or slain by the demons of darkness. The poisoned shirt of the cloud-fiend Nessos is fatal even to the mighty Herakles, and the prowess of Siegfried at last fails to save him from the craft of Hagen. In Achilleus and Meleagros we see the unhappy solar hero doomed to toil for the profit of others, and to be cut off by an untimely death. The more fortunate Odysseus, who lives to a ripe old age, and triumphs again and again over all the powers of darkness, must nevertheless yield to the craving desire to visit new cities and look upon new works of strange men, until at last he is swallowed up in the western sea. That the unrivalled navigator of the celestial ocean should disappear beneath the western waves is as intelligible as it is that the horned Venus or Astarte should rise from the sea in the far east. It is perhaps less obvious that winter should be so frequently symbolized as a thorn or sharp instrument. Achilleus dies by an arrow-wound in the heel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk, while Odysseus escapes with an ugly scar, which afterwards secures his recognition by his old servant, the dawn-nymph Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth of the Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the spindle. In her cosmic palace, all is locked in icy repose, naught thriving save the ivy which defies the cold, until the kiss of the golden-haired sun-god reawakens life and activity.

The wintry sleep of nature is symbolized in innumerable stories of spell-bound maidens and fair-featured youths, saints, martyrs, and heroes. Sometimes it is the sun, sometimes the earth, that is supposed to slumber. Among the American Indians the sun-god Michabo is said to sleep through the winter months; and at the time of the falling leaves, by way of composing himself for his nap, he fills his great pipe and divinely smokes; the blue clouds, gently floating over the landscape, fill the air with the haze of Indian summer. In the Greek myth the shepherd Endymion preserves his freshness in a perennial slumber. The German Siegfried, pierced by the thorn of winter, is sleeping until he shall be again called forth to fight. In Switzerland, by the Vierwald-stattersee, three Tells are awaiting the hour when their country shall again need to be delivered from the oppressor. Charlemagne is reposing in the Untersberg, sword in hand, waiting for the coming of Antichrist; Olger Danske similarly dreams away his time in Avallon; and in a lofty mountain in Thuringia, the great Emperor Yrederic Barbarossa slumbers with his knights around him, until the time comes for him to sally forth and raise Germany to the first rank among the kingdoms of the world. The same story is told of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastian of Portugal, and of the Moorish King Boabdil. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, having taken refuge in a cave from the persecutions of the heathen Decius, slept one hundred and sixty-four years, and awoke to find a Christian emperor on the throne. The monk of Hildesheim, in the legend so beautifully rendered by Longfellow, doubting how with God a thousand years ago could be as yesterday, listened three minutes entranced by the singing of a bird in the forest, and found, on waking from his revery, that a thousand years had flown. To the same family of legends belong the notion that St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until the last days of the world; the myth of the enchanter Merlin, spell-bound by Vivien; the story of the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed away fifty-seven years in a cave; and Rip Van Winkle's nap in the Catskills. [14]

We might go on almost indefinitely citing household tales of wonderful sleepers; but, on the principle of the association of opposites, we are here reminded of sundry cases of marvellous life and wakefulness, illustrated in the Wandering Jew; the dancers of Kolbeck; Joseph of Arimathaea with the Holy Grail; the Wild Huntsman who to all eternity chases the red deer; the Captain of the Phantom Ship; the classic Tithonos; and the Man in the Moon.

The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject for the play of human fancy. Plutarch wrote a treatise on them, but the myth-makers had been before him. "Every one," says Mr. Baring-Gould, "knows that the moon is inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has been exiled thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he is beyond the reach of death. He has once visited this earth, if the nursery rhyme is to be credited when it asserts that

'The Man in the Moon Came down too soon And asked his way to Norwich';

but whether he ever reached that city the same authority does not state." Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer has him put up there as a punishment for theft, and gives him a thorn-bush to carry; Shakespeare also loads him with the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a dog for a companion. Ordinarily, however, his offence is stated to have been, not stealing, but Sabbath-breaking,--an idea derived from the Old Testament. Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers, he is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an example to mankind, he is condemned to stand forever in the moon, with his bundle on his back. Instead of a dog, one German version places with him a woman, whose crime was churning butter on Sunday. She carries her butter-tub; and this brings us to Mother Goose again:--

"Jack and Jill went up the hill To get a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after."

This may read like mere nonsense; but there is a point of view from which it may be safely said that there is very little absolute nonsense in the world. The story of Jack and Jill is a venerable one. In Icelandic mythology we read that Jack and Jill were two children whom the moon once kidnapped and carried up to heaven. They had been drawing water in a bucket, which they were carrying by means of a pole placed across their shoulders; and in this attitude they have stood to the present day in the moon. Even now this explanation of the moon-spots is to be heard from the mouths of Swedish peasants. They fall away one after the other, as the moon wanes, and their water-pail symbolizes the supposed connection of the moon with rain-storms. Other forms of the myth occur in Sanskrit.

The moon-goddess, or Aphrodite, of the ancient Germans, was called Horsel, or Ursula, who figures in Christian mediaeval mythology as a persecuted saint, attended by a troop of eleven thousand virgins, who all suffer martyrdom as they journey from England to Cologne. The meaning of the myth is obvious. In German mythology, England is the Phaiakian land of clouds and phantoms; the succubus, leaving her lover before daybreak, excuses herself on the plea that "her mother is calling her in England." [15] The companions of Ursula are the pure stars, who leave the cloudland and suffer martyrdom as they approach the regions of day. In the Christian tradition, Ursula is the pure Artemis; but, in accordance with her ancient character, she is likewise the sensual Aphrodite, who haunts the Venusberg; and this brings us to the story of Tannhauser.

The Horselberg, or mountain of Venus, lies in Thuringia, between Eisenach and Gotha. High up on its slope yawns a cavern, the Horselloch, or cave of Venus within which is heard a muffled roar, as of subterranean water. From this cave, in old times, the frightened inhabitants of the neighbouring valley would hear at night wild moans and cries issuing, mingled with peals of demon-like laughter. Here it was believed that Venus held her court; "and there were not a few who declared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning them from the mouth of the chasm." [16] Tannhauser was a Frankish knight and famous minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Horselberg, "saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before him and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her, whom he knew to be none other than Venus. He descended to her palace in the heart of the mountain, and there passed seven years in careless revelry. Then, stricken with remorse and yearning for another glimpse of the pure light of day, he called in agony upon the Virgin Mother, who took compassion on him and released him. He sought a village church, and to priest after priest confessed his sin, without obtaining absolution, until finally he had recourse to the Pope. But the holy father, horrified at the enormity of his misdoing, declared that guilt such as his could never be remitted sooner should the staff in his hand grow green and blossom. "Then Tannhauser, full of despair and with his soul darkened, went away, and returned to the only asylum open to him, the Venusberg. But lo! three days after he had gone, Pope Urban discovered that his pastoral staff had put forth buds and had burst into flower. Then he sent messengers after Tannhauser, and they reached the Horsel vale to hear that a wayworn man, with haggard brow and bowed head, had just entered the Horselloch. Since then Tannhauser has not been seen." (p. 201.)

As Mr. Baring-Gould rightly observes, this sad legend, in its Christianized form, is doubtless descriptive of the struggle between the new and the old faiths. The knightly Tannhauser, satiated with pagan sensuality, turns to Christianity for relief, but, repelled by the hypocrisy, pride, and lack of sympathy of its ministers, gives up in despair, and returns to drown his anxieties in his old debauchery.

But this is not the primitive form of the myth, which recurs in the folk-lore of every people of Aryan descent. Who, indeed, can read it without being at once reminded of Thomas of Erceldoune (or Horsel-hill), entranced by the sorceress of the Eilden; of the nightly visits of Numa to the grove of the nymph Egeria; of Odysseus held captive by the Lady Kalypso; and, last but not least, of the delightful Arabian tale of Prince Ahmed and the Peri Banou? On his westward journey, Odysseus is ensnared and kept in temporary bondage by the amorous nymph of darkness, Kalypso (kalnptw, to veil or cover). So the zone of the moon-goddess Aphrodite inveigles all-seeing Zeus to treacherous slumber on Mount Ida; and by a similar sorcery Tasso's great hero is lulled in unseemly idleness in Armida's golden paradise, at the western verge of the world. The disappearance of Tannhauser behind the moonlit cliff, lured by Venus Ursula, the pale goddess of night, is a precisely parallel circumstance.

But solar and lunar phenomena are by no means the only sources of popular mythology. Opposite my writing-table hangs a quaint German picture, illustrating Goethe's ballad of the Erlking, in which the whole wild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme moment; we see the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erlking, his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the alarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul with their weird harps. There can be no better illustration than is furnished by this terrible scene of the magic power of mythology to invest the simplest physical phenomena with the most intense human interest; for the true significance of the whole picture is contained in the father's address to his child,

"Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind; In durren Blattern sauselt der Wind."

The story of the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version of Robert Browning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good people of Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the direful host of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange man in a bunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid the town of the vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe and piped, and instantly all the rats in town, in an army which blackened the face of the earth, came forth from their haunts, and followed the piper until he piped them to the river Weser, where they alls jumped in and were drowned. But as soon as the torment was gone, the townsfolk refused to pay the piper on the ground that he was evidently a wizard. He went away, vowing vengeance, and on St. John's day reappeared, and putting his pipe to his mouth blew a different air. Whereat all the little, plump, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired children came merrily running after him, their parents standing aghast, not knowing what to do, while he led them up a hill in the neighbourhood. A door opened in the mountain-side, through which he led them in, and they never were seen again; save one lame boy, who hobbled not fast enough to get in before the door shut, and who lamented for the rest of his life that he had not been able to share the rare luck of his comrades. In the street through which this procession passed no music was ever afterwards allowed to be played. For a long time the town dated its public documents from this fearful calamity, and many authorities have treated it as an historical event. [17] Similar stories are told of other towns in Germany, and, strange to say, in remote Abyssinia also. Wesleyan peasants in England believe that angels pipe to children who are about to die; and in Scandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away by the songs of elf-maidens. In Greece, the sirens by their magic lay allured voyagers to destruction; and Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to follow him. Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the wind sighing through untold acres of pine forest. "The piper is no other than the wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the dead." To this day the English peasantry believe that they hear the wail of the spirits of unbaptized children, as the gale sweeps past their cottage doors. The Greek Hermes resulted from the fusion of two deities. He is the sun and also the wind; and in the latter capacity he bears away the souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like Hermes fillfils a double function, is supposed to rush at night over the tree-tops, "accompanied by the scudding train of brave men's spirits." And readers of recent French literature cannot fail to remember Erokmann-Chatrian's terrible story of the wild huntsman Vittikab, and how he sped through the forest, carrying away a young girl's soul.

Thus, as Tannhauser is the Northern Ulysses, so is Goethe's Erlking none other than the Piper of Hamelin. And the piper, in turn, is the classic Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of the Finnish Wainamoinen and the Sanskrit Gunadhya. His wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon, the lyre of Apollo (who, like the piper, was a rat-killer), the harp stolen by Jack when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle. [18] And the father, in Goethe's ballad, is no more than right when he assures his child that the siren voice which tempts him is but the rustle of the wind among the dried leaves; for from such a simple class of phenomena arose this entire family of charming legends.

But why does the piper, who is a leader of souls (Psychopompos), also draw rats after him? In answering this we shall have occasion to note that the ancients by no means shared that curious prejudice against the brute creation which is indulged in by modern anti-Darwinians. In many countries, rats and mice have been regarded as sacred animals; but in Germany they were thought to represent the human soul. One story out of a hundred must suffice to illustrate this. "In Thuringia, at Saalfeld, a servant-girl fell asleep whilst her companions were shelling nuts. They observed a little red mouse creep from her mouth and run out of the window. One of the fellows present shook the sleeper, but could not wake her, so he moved her to another place. Presently the mouse ran back to the former place and dashed about, seeking the girl; not finding her, it vanished; at the same moment the girl died." [19] This completes the explanation of the piper, and it also furnishes the key to the horrible story of Bishop Hatto.

This wicked prelate lived on the bank of the Rhine, in the middle of which stream he possessed a tower, now pointed out to travellers as the Mouse Tower. In the year 970 there was a dreadful famine, and people came from far and near craving sustenance out of the Bishop's ample and well-filled granaries. Well, he told them all to go into the barn, and when they had got in there, as many as could stand, he set fire to the barn and burnt them all up, and went home to eat a merry supper. But when he arose next morning, he heard that an army of rats had eaten all the corn in his granaries, and was now advancing to storm the palace. Looking from his window, he saw the roads and fields dark with them, as they came with fell purpose straight toward his mansion. In frenzied terror he took his boat and rowed out to the tower in the river. But it was of no use: down into the water marched the rats, and swam across, and scaled the walls, and gnawed through the stones, and came swarming in about the shrieking Bishop, and ate him up, flesh, bones, and all. Now, bearing in mind what was said above, there can be no doubt that these rats were the souls of those whom the Bishop had murdered. There are many versions of the story in different Teutonic countries, and in some of them the avenging rats or mice issue directly, by a strange metamorphosis, from the corpses of the victims. St. Gertrude, moreover, the heathen Holda, was symbolized as a mouse, and was said Go lead an army of mice; she was the receiver of children's souls. Odin, also, in his character of a Psychopompos, was followed by a host of rats. [20]

As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so is the psychopomp himself often figured as a dog. Sarameias, the Vedic counterpart of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears invested with canine attributes; and countless other examples go to show that by the early Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or wolf. As the fearful beast was heard speeding by the windows or over the house-top, the inmates trembled, for none knew but his own soul might forthwith be required of him. Hence, to this day, among ignorant people, the howling of a dog under the window is supposed to portend a death in the family. It is the fleet greyhound of Hermes, come to escort the soul to the river Styx. [21]

But the wind-god is not always so terrible. Nothing can be more transparent than the phraseology of the Homeric Hymn, in which Hermes is described as acquiring the strength of a giant while yet a babe in the cradle, as sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of Apollo, and driving them helter-skelter in various directions, then as crawling through the keyhole, and with a mocking laugh shrinking into his cradle. He is the Master Thief, who can steal the burgomaster's horse from under him and his wife's mantle from off her back, the prototype not only of the crafty architect of Rhampsinitos, but even of the ungrateful slave who robs Sancho of his mule in the Sierra Morena. He furnishes in part the conceptions of Boots and Reynard; he is the prototype of Paul Pry and peeping Tom of Coventry; and in virtue of his ability to contract or expand himself at pleasure, he is both the Devil in the Norse Tale, [22] whom the lad persuades to enter a walnut, and the Arabian Efreet, whom the fisherman releases from the bottle.

The very interesting series of myths and popular superstitions suggested by the storm-cloud and the lightning must be reserved for a future occasion. When carefully examined, they will richly illustrate the conclusion which is the result of the present inquiry, that the marvellous tales and quaint superstitions current in every Aryan household have a common origin with the classic legends of gods and heroes, which formerly were alone thought worthy of the student's serious attention. These stories--some of them familiar to us in infancy, others the delight of our maturer years--constitute the debris, or alluvium, brought down by the stream of tradition from the distant highlands of ancient mythology.

September, 1870.

II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE.

IN the course of my last summer's vacation, which was spent at a small inland village, I came upon an unexpected illustration of the tenacity with which conceptions descended from prehistoric antiquity have now and then kept their hold upon life. While sitting one evening under the trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct of half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would gradually bend downwards until it had assumed the likeness of a Y in its natural position, where it would remain pointing to something in the ground beneath. One by one the bystanders proceeded to try the experiment, but with no variation in the result. Something in the ground seemed to fascinate the bit of hazel, for it could not pass over that spot without bending down and pointing to it.

My thoughts reverted at once to Jacques Aymar and Dousterswivel, as I perceived that these men were engaged in sorcery. During the long drought more than half the wells in the village had become dry, and here was an attempt to make good the loss by the aid of the god Thor. These men were seeking water with a divining-rod. Here, alive before my eyes, was a superstitious observance, which I had supposed long since dead and forgotten by all men except students interested in mythology.

As I crossed the road to take part in the ceremony a farmer's boy came up, stoutly affirming his incredulity,

and offering to show the company how he could carry the rod motionless across the charmed spot. But when he came to take the weird twig he trembled with an ill-defined feeling of insecurity as to the soundness of his conclusions, and when he stood over the supposed rivulet the rod bent in spite of him,--as was not so very strange. For, with all his vague scepticism, the honest lad had not, and could not be supposed to have, the foi scientifique of which Littre speaks. [23]