Myths and Myth-Makers V. Myths of the Barbaric World
by John Fiske
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 Sarama, 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 Muller 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 Muller 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.[130] 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.
[130] For the analysis of twelve, see my essay on "The Genesis
of Language," North American Review, October 1869, p. 320.
Now Max Muller tells us that this principle, which is
indispensable in the study of words, is equally indispensable
in the study of myths.[131] 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 Muller, 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."
[131] Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. II. p. 246.
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 Muller. 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 hyaena, 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.[132]
[132] For various legends of a deluge, see Baring-Gould,
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 85-106.
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."[133]
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 naive 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.
[133] Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 160.
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 formulae 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."[134] 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.
[134] Brinton, op. cit. p. 163.
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?"[135]
[135] Brinton, op. cit. p. 167.
Even the Veda nowhere affords a more transparent narrative
than this. The Iroquois tradition is very similar. In it
appear twin brothers,[136] 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 Brebouf 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.
[136] Corresponding, in various degrees, to the Asvins, the
Dioskouroi, and the brothers True and Untrue of Norse
mythology.
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 naivete, 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.[137]
[137] 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 Irenaeus, and also
the custom, well-nigh universal in Europe, of building
Christian churches in a line east and west.
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.[138]
[138] 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.
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.[139]
[139] Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 327.
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."[140]
[140] Tylor, op. cit., p. 346.
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.[141]
[141] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 299-302.
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.[142] 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.[143]
[142] 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.
[143] Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.
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 mediaeval European was a phenomenon so strange as
to demand a mythological explanation, would not impress the
barbarian as either very exceptional or very blameworthy.
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."[144]
[144] Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30.
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.[145]
[145] 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.
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.[146] 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.[147]
[146] Brinton, op. cit. p. 104.
[147] Tylor, op. cit. p. 320.
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.[148]
[148] Tylor, op. cit. pp. 338-343.
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.[149] 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?