Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

POLYPHÊMOS.

or boat-shaped emblems of fertility which have been associated with the signs of the male-powers in nature. But the artificial character of these theogonies can neither be ignored nor explained away; nor can it be denied, that the deliberate process of manufacture which they have undergone deprives them in great part of any mythological value, while it frees us from the necessity of going through their tedious details, or of adhering invariably to their order. Thus, if we take the story, whether of the gigantic Polyphêmos or of the Kyklôpes among whom he is reckoned, we are not bound to go through the cumbrous genealogy of Ouraniones, Titans, and Gigantes with which the theogonies are overloaded. It is enough to say that when Argês, Steropês, and Brontês are spoken of as Kyklôpes, these are manifestly the dazzling and scorching flashes which plough up the storm-clad heavens. But although it is possible to trace the affinity between these Kyklôpes and the beings to whom the poets of the Iliad and the Odyssey give the same name, the latter exhibit nevertheless features very different from the former. The Kyklôps of the Odyssey has nothing to do with fire; he is the son of Poseidon and the nymph Thoôsa; in other words, he is emphatically the child of the waters, and of the waters only-the huge mists which wrap the earth in a dark shroud. Instead of forging armour, he feeds his flock of sheep and goats on the rough hill-side. These herds answer to the cattle of Helios in every respect except their brilliance. The flocks of the Kyklôps are the rough and misshapen vapours on which no sunshine sheds its glory, while the Kyklôps himself is the oppressive and blackening mist, through which glares the ghastly eye of the shrouded sun. This terrible being may be seen drawn with wonderful fidelity to the spirit of the old myth in Turner's picture of the overthrow of the troops sent by Cambyses to the shrine of the Libyan Ammon; and they who see the one-eyed monster glaring down on the devoted army, where the painter was probably utterly unconscious that he was doing more than representing the simoom of the desert, will recognise at once the unconscious accuracy with which the modern painter conveys the old Homeric conception of

213

CHAP.

IV.

BOOK

II.

The Kyklopes.

Polyphêmos. In this picture, as in the storms of the desert, the sun becomes the one great eye of an enormous monster, who devours every living thing that crosses his path, as Polyphêmos devoured the comrades of Odysseus.' The blinding of this monster is the natural sequel when his mere brute force is pitted against the craft of his adversary. In his seeming insignificance and his despised estate, in his wayworn mien and his many sorrows, Odysseus takes the place of the Boots or Cinderella of Teutonic folk-lore; and as the giant is manifestly the enemy of the bright being whose splendours are for the time hidden beneath a veil, so it is the representative of the sun himself who pierces out his eye; and thus Odysseus, Boots, and Jack the Giant Killer alike overcome and escape from the enemy, although they may each be said to escape with the skin of their teeth.

Polyphêmos then is the Kyklôps, in his aspect as a shepherd feeding his vast flocks on the mountain sides; but from the mighty vapours through which his great eye glares may dart at any moment the forked streams of lightning; and thus the Kyklôpes are connected with the fire-convulsed heaven, and with Hephaistos the lord of the awful flames. These, with the Hekatoncheires, or hundred-handed monsters, are the true Gigantes, the earth-born children of Ouranos, whom he thrusts down into the nether abyss, like the pentup fires of a volcano. But the Titans still remained free. Whatever may be the names of these beings, they are clearly the mighty forces which carry on the stupendous changes

The sun, thus glaring through the storm cloud, may be regarded not merely as the eye but as the whole face of some horrible monster; and the name Kyklops agrees etymologically with the latter meaning better than with the other. The word no more means of necessity a being with one eye in the middle of his forehead, than Glaukôpis, as an epithet of Athênê, implies that she had only a grey eye. This name really denotes the blinding splendour of her countenance; and thus the Kyklôps became a being not with an eye in the middle of his head, but with a round face. In this case, as it so happens, either description

is equally true to the phenomena of nature. Even if the notion of the round face was suggested before the Greek myth-makers reached the idea of the one eye in the centre of the forehead, we can see at once how readily the latter notion may be derived from the sight of the black storm-cloud, as it suffers the sun to glare dimly through its mysterious shadows.

2 The story and attributes of Polyphêmos with a thousand others were transferred to the devil, when the Christian missionaries had converted all the ancient gods into demons. See ch. x. of this book, section 8.

THE WARS OF THE TITANS.

wrought from time to time in the physical world. Of the titles given to them by mythographers, many doubtless, like the abstract conceptions of Themis and Mnemosynê, are artificial additions, and may be the manufacture of the mythographers themselves. Others, as Krios and Hyperion, denote simply might or supremacy, and as such might become the names of Helios, Phoibos, or other kindred beings. Others, as Kronos, have their origin in epithets wrongly understood. Between these beings and their father a second war is waged, in which Gaia enables her children to mutilate Ouranos, from whose blood spring the Erinyes, so fearful on Hellenic soil, so beautiful in the land of the five streams, and Aphroditê, the dawn goddess, who may be terrible as well as lovely. The Kyklôpes are now delivered from their prison-house, and Kronos becomes the supreme king; but time can only swallow the things which he has made, and vomit them forth again. The thing which hath been, shall be, and there is nothing new under the sun. But it was as impossible that the Kyklôpes could continue the allies of any monarch of heaven, as that the same fountain should send forth sweet water and bitter; and again they are thrust down into the depths from which they had been rescued, once more to be avenged when the Titans, led on by Zeus, waged a third war of elements, in which Kronos is hurled from his throne, and the child born in the Diktaian (or Light) cave reigns in his stead. But when the Kyklôpes are once more set free, Zeus avails himself of their might to crush the Titans; and finally the Kyklôpes themselves are slain by Phoibos in vengeance for the death of Asklepios the Healer and the Saviour. These several contests are not distinguished from each by any peculiar features; and the theogonies simply heap together mountains of words almost as vast as the rocks hurled by the hands of the giants, as if conscious of the barrenness of their theme, and of its lack of interest as compared with myths springing from phrases which, though they may denote the phenomena of nature, strike a responsive chord in the human heart. It is, in fact, the old story of the struggle between Indra and Vritra,

215

CHAP.

IV.

BOOK regarded from a point of view which removes it altogether from the region of human sympathies.1

II.

Schamir and

Thus, then, the myth of the Kyklôps brings before us in Sassafras. close connexion the two images of the cloud and the lightning. This connexion may be traced through a vast number of stories, in many cases but slightly resembling each other, yet all adhering to the original ideas of mist and fire. In these the lightning becomes an arrow capable of piercing the mountain side or the huge storm-cloud, and displaying for a moment marvellous treasures of jewels and gold. The effects produced by this arrow or spear are sometimes good, sometimes disastrous. It may scorch and paralyse, or in times of drought, when the waters are pent up in the cloud, it may cleave the vapours and call the dead earth to life again with the streams let loose upon her parched surface. But the cloud might assume the form not only of sheep and cattle, as in the Vedic hymns and in the Thrinakian legend, but of birds, as of swans or eagles; and as the clouds carry the lightning with them until the time comes for using the mighty weapons, so the bird carries a stone capable of splitting the hardest substance. Finally the stone becomes a worm, and thus we have the framework of a large family of stories which, if they have their origin among Aryan tribes, have been extended far beyond the limits of that race. These myths have been so fully traced by Mr. Baring Gould, that nothing is left for us but to follow his steps. In the many versions devised by Hebrew tradition for a legend gained through their contact with Iranian tribes, the cloud is in each case a bird, the lightning being either a stone or a worm. Thus Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, discovers the wonder-working pebble Schamir, by watching a moor-hen, which, finding a piece of glass laid over her nest, flies away, and fetching a worm, splits the cover; or Solomon obtains it in the form of a stone from the raven, of whom he has been informed by the demon Sackar. In similar stories told

In short, these theogonies are the result, in part, of a backward process, which led the mythographer back to the mundane egg, and, in part, of that systematic rearrangement of current

myths, which might be carried out in any way most congenial to the worker.

2 Curious Myths, second series, 'Schamir.'

ROCK-SPLITTING PLANTS.

by Ælian and Pliny of the woodpecker or the hoopoe, the in-
strument by which the bird gets at her young is a grass; and
thus we reach the family of plants whose power of splitting
rocks has won for them the name of Saxifrage, or Sassafras.
This grass or plant will either reveal treasures, as in the
blinding glare of the electric fluid, or will restore life, as in
the effects of lightning in setting free the waters on a
parched-up soil. Thus the story of Glaukos and Polyidos, of
the Three Snake Leaves, and of Rama and Luxman, is re-
peated in Fouqué's Sir Elidoc, where the young Amyot is
watching the corpse of a woman as Glaukos watches that of
Polyidos. This mysterious herb becomes the German Luck-
flower, the possessor of which is enabled to go down into the
rocks which gape to receive him, and to fill his pockets with
the glittering treasures of which the beautiful queen of this
hidden palace bids him take his fill, warning him only not
to forget the best. This warning is, of course, understood
by the peasant as a charge to select the most precious
stones, and leaving the flower behind him, he finds, as the
rocks close with a crash, that the mountain is closed to him
for ever.
This flower is sometimes inclosed in a staff, which
is obviously only another form of the lighning-spear, as in
the tale of the luckless shepherd of Ilsenstein, who, for-
getting to take the staff as he leaves the cave, is himself
cloven by the closing rocks. In all these cases the flower or
plant, as the talismanic spell, is more precious than the hid
treasures; and unless the treasure-seeker keeps it by him he
is lost. It is, in short, the flower, sometimes blue, some-
times yellow or red (as the hues vary of the lightning
flashes), which, in Mr. Gould's words, exclaims in feeble
piteous tone, Forget me not,' but its little cry is unheeded.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

217

CHAP

IV.

and Tan

In the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves the flower Ahmed itself has disappeared, but the spell still lies in its name; hauser. for, as Mr. Gould remarks, sesame is the name of a well known Eastern plant (Sesamum orientale); so that probably, in the original form of the Persian tale absorbed into the Arabian Nights, a flower was employed to give admission to the mountain.' In the story of Allah-ud-deen, the same verbal talisman is employed by the African magician, when

« ПредишнаНапред »