POLYPHEMOS. of Warwickshire tradition. Other myths were subjected to the same process of degradation. The kindly Dêmêtêr becomes the devil's mother, grandmother, or sister, who still shows something of her ancient character in the part which she plays towards those who throw themselves on her protection. Thus she shields Thor and Tyr in the house of Hymir, as the giant's mother shelters Jack in the nursery story. In the lay of Beowulf Grendel's mother is less complying, and avenges on the hero the death of her son. The binding of the devil, like that of Prometheus and Ahriman, is implied in the phrase the devil is loose,' the sequel being 'the devil is dead.' 365 CHAP. X. blinded One legend of the devil's death furnishes some singular The points of comparison with the myth of Polyphêmos, although Devil. it seems rash to infer any direct derivation of the story from the Odyssey. The devil asks a man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing; and when the man answers that he is moulding eyes, asks him further whether he can give him a pair of new eyes. He is told to come again another day; and when he makes his appearance accordingly, the man tells him that the operation cannot be performed rightly unless he is first tightly bound with his back fastened to a bench. While he is thus pinioned, he asks the man's name. The reply is Issi ('himself"). When the lead is melted, the devil opens his eyes wide to receive the deadly stream. As soon as he is blinded he starts up in agony, bearing away the bench to which he had been bound, devil therefore has a beard of that colour, BOOK and when some workpeople in the fields ask him who had thus treated him, his answer is 'Issi teggi' (Self did it). With a laugh they bid him lie on the bed which he has made; 'selbst gethan, selbst habe.' The devil died of his new eyes, and was never seen again.' 1 Grimm, D. M. 963-980. It is unnecessary to trace in detail all the fancies and notions on the subject of the devil and his works which Grimm has gathered together; but it may be fairly said that scarcely a single point mentioned by him is without its value, as throwing light on popular forms of thought and expression. The blinded devil reappears in Grimm's story of the Robber and his Sons, which reproduces the narrative of the Odyssey. Here the robber is the only one who is not devoured by the Giant, and he blinds his enemy while pretending to heal his eyes. In the sequel, instead of clinging to the ram's fleece he clings to the rafters of the ceiling, and afterwards wraps himself in a ram's skin, and so escapes between the giant's legs. But as soon as he gets out of the cave, he cannot resist the temptation of turning round, like Odysseus, to mock at his enemy. The giant, saying that so clever a man ought not go unrewarded, holds out to him a ring which, when placed on his finger, makes him cry out, Here I am, here I am.' But although he is guided by the sound, the giant stumbles sadly in his blindness, and the robber at last makes his escape by biting off his finger and so getting rid of the ring.. The blinded Kyklops forms the subject of the third voyage of Sindbad; but the myth has gained nothing by being dressed out in Arabian garb. He is the Urisk of the Western Fairy Tale. Keightley, Fairy Mythology, 396. The Lap story runs as follows: 'There was a Karelian who had been taken by a giant and was kept in a castle. The giant had only one eye, but he had flocks and herds. The night came and the giant fell asleep. The Karelian put out his eye. The giant, who now could no longer see, sat at the door, and felt everything that went out. He had a great many sheep in the courtyard. The Karelian got under the belly of one of them and escaped.' Latham, Nationalities of Europe, i. 227. APPENDICES. APPENDIX A.-Page 72. Laios and Dasyu. The objections raised by M. Comparetti (Edipo e la Mitologia Comparata), can scarcely be regarded as of weight against the identification of the Greek Laios with the Vedic Dasa or Dasyu, an enemy. Professor Max Müller, who thinks that dáoç as a name of slaves, on which M. Bréal lays stress, may admit of a different explanation, still holds that Leôphontês as a name of Bellerophôn is a Greek equivalent of the Sanskrit dasyuhantu, the slayer of the enemies of the bright gods, i.e., of the dasas or demons of the Veda, 'such as Vritra, "Oppoç, Namuki, 'Aμukóc, Sambara and others.' He would even be inclined to trace back the common Greek word for people laos, to the same source with the Sanskrit dasa, were it not that the change of d to l in Greek is restricted to certain dialects, and that it cannot be admitted as a general rule, unless there be some evidence to that effect,' Chips, ii. 167, 186-7. Some such evidence may be furnished by deuw and low as being both the equivalents of the Latin lavare in our Homeric poems. Of the adjective daïoc or dijios, hostile, he says, that it is clearly derived from the same source, the root being das, to perish, though it is true that in its frequent application to fire the adjective dáïos might well be referred to the root da, to burn.' But surely a root which conveys the sense of perishing, i.e., of an abstract result, must itself be referred to some means or process which produced that result. We could not say that mri was a root signifying, in the first instance, to die: but this meaning is accounted for, when we see that it first meant to grind, and hence that the thing crushed may be said to die. The root das would thus be simply the root da in a different application. APPENDIX B.-Page 102. I give this conclusion in Professor Max Müller's words, Chips &c. ii. 234, not only because they must strengthen any inferences which I may venture to make, but because I wish to disclaim any merit of having been the first to proclaim it. I must be forgiven if I notice here, once for all, the strange plan which some writers have thought fit to adopt of quoting as coming from myself passages which I have quoted from others. Thus Mr. Mozley, writing in the Contemporary Review, rejected the solar character of the Trojan War on the ground that this conclusion was a fancy on my part shared by none others, and cited without inverted commas words which in the Manual of Mythology I had quoted with inverted commas from Professor Max Müller's Lectures on Language, second series, p. 471. These words are the simple assertion that the siege of Troy is 'a reflection of the daily siege of the East by the solar powers that every evening are robbed of their brightest treasures in the West.' I am fully prepared to share the responsibility which may be involved in this belief, supported as it is by a mass of evidence which it is almost impossible to strengthen, and which might rather be thought, and probably hereafter will be thought, ludicrously excessive in amount; but I cannot claim the merit of having been the first to propound it. The solar character of Achilleus and of the Odyssey I had fully recognised and distinctly declared in the Introduction to the Tales of Thebes and Argos; but on the meaning of the siege of Troy itself I had said nothing. 6 I cannot but regret the remarks with which Mr. Gould has closed his excellent chapter on the Tell story, which he thinks has not its signification 'painted on the surface' like the legends of Phoibos or Baldur. Though it is possible,' he adds, 'that Gessler or Harald may be the power of evil and darkness, and the bold archer the storm-cloud with his arrow of lightning and his iris bow bent against the sun which is resting like a coin or golden apple on the edge of the horizon, yet we have no guarantee that such an interpretation is not an overstraining of a theory.' Such an overstraining would probably be confined to himself. The elements common to all the versions of the myth are the apple, or some other round object, and an unerring archer: but here, as we have seen, the absolute agreement ends; and it is enough to say that the attributes assigned to Tell, Cloudeslee (whose very name marks him as an inhabitant of the Phaiakian or Cloudland), and the rest are the attributes of the sun in all the systems of Aryan mythology, while no such unfailing skill is attributed to the storm-cloud. Still less was it necessary to insert here a caution which in its proper place may be of great service. This caution is directed against a supposed temptation felt by Comparative Mythologists to resolve real history into solar legends, and it is supported by an ingenious and amusing argument proving that Napoleon Bonaparte was the Sun. The parallel cited by Mr. Gould is drawn out with great cleverness; but with reference to the legend of Tell it is absolutely without point. Mr. Gould has demolished its historical character and cast it aside as a narrative based on actual facts not less decidedly than Professor Max Müller or Dr. Dasent. Like the latter he is perfectly aware that it is not told at all of Tell in Switzerland before the year 1499, and the earlier Swiss Chronicles omit it altogether.'-Dasent, Norse Tales, Introduction, xxxv. Hence we are dealing with matters which have not only no sort of contemporary attestation but which cannot be made to fit in with the known facts of the time. Thus the warning based on the supposed mythical character of Napoleon applies only to those who may resolve Perikles or Alexander the Great into the sun; and we may well wait until some Comparative Mythologist gravely asserts that we may treat or regard as mythical events and characters for which we have the undoubted and unquestionable testimony of contemporary writers. The lack or the complete absence of all such evidence is an essential criterion in the assignment of a narrative to the respective domains of mythology or history or to the border lands which may separate the one from the other. All, therefore, that Professor Max Müller does for the story of Tell is to group it with other legends more or less closely resembling it, and then to state the meaning of a myth, which is not more a myth in his own judgment than it is in that of Mr. Gould. APPENDIX C.-Page 115. The Stauros or Cross. The forms of these crosses varied indefinitely from the simple Tau to the most elaborate crosses of four limbs, with whose modified outlines the beautiful designs of Christian art have made us familiar. 'Wäre das Kreuz keine Phallus-zeichen, so fragt sich, was sollte die Kreuzigung der Psychê (die Seele ist hier, weil sie zur Sinnlichkeit sich hinneigt, als weibliches Wesen aufgefasst) durch Eros, für einen Sinn gehabt haben? Oder welche Absicht leitete jenen Maler, dessen Kunstwerk den Ausonius zu der Idylle, Cupido cruci affixus, begeisterte ?'-Nork, s. v. Kreuz, 389. The malefactor's cross or gibbet, the infelix arbos or accursed tree of the old Roman VOL. II. BB |