The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A psychological interpretation of mythology

by Otto Rank

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A short and fairly complete review of the general theories of mythology and its principal advocates is to be found in Wundt’s “Völkerpsychologie,” Vol. II, Myths and Religion. Part I [Leipzig, 1905], p. 527.

[2] “Das Beständige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer Veränderlichkeit.” Berlin, 1868.

[3] “Die Kyros Sage und Verwandtes,” Sitzb. Wien. Akad., 100, 1882, p. 495.

[4] Schubert. Herodots Darstellung der Cyrussage, Breslau, 1890.

[5] Compare E. Stucken, “Astral mythen,” Leipzig, 1896-1907, especially Part V, “Moses.” H. Lessmann, “Die Kyrossage in Europe,” Wiss. beit. z. Jahresbericht d. städt. Realschule zu Charlottenburg, 1906.

[6] “Naturgeschichte d. Sage.” Tracing all religious ideals, legends, and systems back to their common family tree, and their primary root, 2 volumes, Munich 1864-65.

[7] Some of the important writings of Winckler will be mentioned in the course of this article.

[8] Zeitschrift f. d. Oesterr. Gym., 1891, p. 161, etc. Schubert’s reply is also found here, p. 594, etc.

[9] Lessmann, “Object and Aim of Mythological Research,” Mythol. Bibliot., 1, Heft 4, Leipzig.

[10] Winckler, “Die babylonische Geisteskultur in ihren Beziehungen zur Kulturentwicklung der Menschheit,” Wissenschaft u. Bildung, Vol. 15, 1907, p. 47.

[11] Of course no time will be wasted on the futile question as to what this first legend may have been; for in all probability this never had existence, any more than a “first human couple.”

[12] As an especially discouraging example of this mode of procedure may be mentioned a contribution by the well-known natural mythologist Schwartz, which touches upon this circle of myths, and is entitled: “Der Ursprung der Stamm und Gründungssage Roms unter dem Reflex indogermanischer Mythen” [Jena, 1898].

[13] Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengotten, Berlin, 1904.

[14] Siecke, “Hermes als Mondgott,” Myth. Bibl., Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 48.

[15] Compare for example, Paul Koch, “Sagen der Bibel und ihre Ubereinstimmung mit der Mythologie der Indogermanen,” Berlin, 1907. Compare also the partly lunar, partly solar, but at any rate entirely one sided conception of the hero myth, in Gustav Friedrich’s “Grundlage, Entstehung und genaue Einzeldeutung der bekanntesten germanischen Märchen, Mythen und Sagen” [Leipzig, 1909], p. 118.

[16] Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill. Macmillan Co.

[17] The fable of Shakespeare’s Hamlet also permits of a similar interpretation, according to Freud. It will be seen later on how mythological investigators bring the Hamlet legend from entirely different view points into the correlation of the mythical circle.

[18] In Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1912. Also collected in this Monograph Series, No. 15.

[19] Compare Lessmann (Mythol. Bibl., I, 4). Ehrenreich alone (loc. cit., p. 149) admits the extraordinary significance of dream-life for the myth-fiction of all times. Wundt does so likewise, for individual mythical motives.

[20] Stucken [Mose, p. 432] says in this sense. The myth transmitted by the ancestors was transferred to natural processes and interpreted in a naturalistic way, not vice versa. “Interpretation of nature is a motive in itself” [p. 633, annotation]. In a very similar way, we read in Meyer’s History of Antiquity, Vol. V, p. 48: In many cases, the natural symbolism, sought in the myths, is only apparently present or has been secondarily introduced, as often in the Vedda and in the Egyptian myths; it is a primary attempt at interpretation, like the myth-interpretations which arose among the Greeks since the fifth century.

[21] For fairy tales, in this as well as in other essential features, Thimme advocates the same point of view as is here claimed for the myths. Compare Adolf Thimme, “Das Märchen,” 2d volume of the Handbücher zur Volkskunde, Leipzig, 1909.

[22] Volume II of the German translation, Leipzig, 1869, p. 143.

[23] Of this myth-interpretation, Wundt has well said that it really should have accompanied the original myth-formation. (Loc. cit., p. 352.)

[24] See Ignaz Goldziher, “Der Mythus bei den Hebräern und seine geschichtliche Entwickelung” [Leipzig, 1876], p. 125. According to the writings of Siecke [“Hermes als Mondgott,” Leipzig, 1908, p. 39], the incest myths lose all unusual features through being referred to the moon, and its relation to the sun. The explanation being quite simple: the daughter, the new moon, is the repetition of the mother [the old moon], with her the father [the sun] [also the brother, the son] becomes reunited.

[25] Is it to be believed? In an article entitled “Urreligion der Indogermanen” [Berlin, 1897], where Siecke points out that the incest myths are descriptive narrations of the seen but inconceivable process of nature, he objects to a statement of Oldenburg [“Religion der Veda,” p. 5] who assumes a primeval tendency of myths to the incest motive, with the remark that in the days of yore the motive was thrust upon the narrator, without an inclination of his own, through the forcefulness of the witnessed facts.

[26] The great variability and wide distribution of the birth myths of the hero results from the above quoted writings of Bauer, Schubert and others, while their comprehensive contents and fine ramifications were especially discussed by Husing, Lessmann, and the other representatives of the modern direction.

Innumerable fairy tales, stories, and poems of all times, up to the most recent dramatic and novelistic literature, show very distinct individual main motives of this myth. The exposure-romance is known to appear in the following literary productions: The late Greek pastorals, as told in Heliodor’s “Aethiopika,” in Eustathius’ “Ismenias and Ismene,” and in the Story of the two exposed children, Daphnis and Chloe. The more recent Italian pastorals are likewise very frequently based upon the exposure of children, who are raised as shepherds by their foster-parents, but are later recognized by the true parents, through identifying marks which they received at the time of their exposure. To the same set belong the family history in Grimmelshausen’s “Limplizissimus” (1665), in Jean Paul’s “Titan” (1800), as well as certain forms of the Robinson stories and Cavalier romances (compare Würzbach’s Introduction to the Edition of “Don Quichote” in Hesse’s edition).

[27] The various translations of the partly mutilated text differ only in unessential details. Compare Hommel’s “History of Babylonia and Assyria” (Berlin, 1885), p. 302, where the sources of the tradition are likewise found, and A. Jeremias, “The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient Orient,” II edition, Leipzig, 1906, p. 410.

[28] On account of these resemblances, a dependence of the Exodus tale from the Sargon legend has often been assumed, but apparently not enough attention has been paid to certain fundamental distinctions, which will be taken up in detail in the interpretation.

[29] The parents of Moses were originally nameless, as were all persons in this, the oldest account. Their names were only conferred upon them by the priesthood. Chapter 6, 20, says: “And Amram took him Jocabed his father’s sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses” [and their sister Miriam, IV, 26, 59]. Also compare Winckler, “History of Israel,” II, and Jeremias, l. c., p. 408.

[30] The name, according to Winckler (“Babylonian Mental Culture,” p. 119), means “The Water-Drawer” (see also Winckler, “Ancient Oriental Studies,” III, 468, etc.), which would still further approach the Moses legend to the Sargon legend, for the name Akki signifies I have drawn water.

[31] Schemot Rabba, fol. 2, 4. Concerning 2, Moses 1, 22, says that Pharaoh was told by the astrologers of a woman who was pregnant with the Redeemer of Israel.

[32] The Hindu birth legend of the mythical king Vikramâdita must also be mentioned in this connection. Here again occur the barren marriage of the parents, the miraculous conception, ill-omened warnings, the exposure of the boy in the forest, his nourishment with honey, finally the acknowledgment by the father. (See Jülg, “Mongolian Fairy Tales,” Innsbruck, 1868, p. 73, et seq.)

[33] “Hindu Legends,” Karlsruhe, 1846, Part II, pp. 117 to 127.

[34] “Hindu Legends,” l. c.

[35] See Röscher, concerning the Ion of Euripides. Where no other source is stated, all Greek and Roman myths are taken from the Extensive Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology, edited by Röscher, which also contains a list of all sources.

[36] According to Bethe, “Thebanische Heldenlieder,” the exposure on the waters was the original rendering. According to other versions, the boy is found and raised by horse herds; according to a later myth, by a countryman, Melibios.

[37] The entire material has been discussed by Rank in Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage, 1912, Chapter X.

[38] I. In the version of Euripides, whose tragedies “Auge” and “Telephos” are extant, Aleos caused the mother and the child to be thrown into the sea in a box, but through the protection of Athene this box was carried to the end of the Mysian River, Kaikos. There it was found by Teuthras. who made Auge his wife and took her child into his house as his foster son.

[39] Later authors, including Pindar, state that Danae was impregnated, not by Zeus, but by the brother of her father.

[40] Simonides of Keos (fr. 37, ed. Bergk), speaks of a casement strong as ore, in which Danae is said to have been exposed. (Geibel, Klassisches Liederbuch, page 52.)

[41] According to Hüsing, the Perseus myth in several versions is also demonstrable in Japan. Compare also, Sydney Hartland, Legend of Perseus, 1894-96; 3 volumes. London.

[42] Claudius Aelianus, “Historia animalium,” XII, 21, translated by Fr. Jacobs (Stuttgart, 1841).

[43] It was also told of Ptolemaös, the son of Lagos and Arsinoë, that an eagle protected the exposed boy with his wings against the sunshine, the rain and birds of prey (loc. cit.).

[44] F. E. Lange, “Herodot’s Geschichten” (Reclam). Compare also Duncker’s “History of Antiquity” (Leipsig, 1880), N. 5, page 256 et sequitur.

[45] The same “playing king” is found in the Hindoo myth of Candragupta, the founder of the Maurja dynasty, whom his mother exposed after his birth, in a vessel at the gate of a cowshed, where a herder found him and raised him. Later on he came to a hunter, where he as cow-herder played “king” with the other boys, and as king ordered that the hands and feet of the great criminals be chopped off. [The mutilation motive occurs also in the Kyros saga, and is generally widely distributed.] At his command, the separated limbs returned to their proper position. Kanakja, who once looked on as they were at play, admired the boy, and bought him from the hunter for one thousand Kârshâpana; at home he discovered that the boy was a Maurja. (After Lassen’s Indische Altertumskunde, II, 196, Annotation 1.)

[46] Justinus, “Extract from Pompeius Trogus’ Philippian History,” I, 4-7. As far as results from Justinus’ extract, Deinon’s Persian tales (written in the first half of the fourth century before Christ) are presumably the sources of Trogus’ narrative.

[47] The words in parenthesis are said to be lacking in certain manuscripts.

[48] Nicol. Damasc. Frag. 66, Ctes.; Frag. Pers., 2, 5.

[49] This daughter’s name is Amytis (not Mandane) in the version of Ktesias.

[50] On the basis of this motive of simulated dementia and certain other corresponding features Jiriczek (“Hamlet in Iran,” in the Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, Vol. X, 1900, p. 353) has represented the Hamlet Saga as a variation of the Iranese myth of Kaikhosrav. This idea was followed up by H. Lessmann (“Die Kyrossage in Europa”), who shows that the Hamlet saga strikingly agrees in certain items, for example, in the simulated folly, with the sagas of Brutus and of Tell. (Compare also the protestations of Moses.) In another connection, the deeper roots of these relations have been more extensively discussed, especially with reference to the Tell saga. (See: Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage, Chapter VIII.) Attention is also directed to the story of David, as it is told in the books of Samuel. Here again, the royal scion, David, is made a shepherd, who gradually rises in the social scale up to the royal throne. He likewise is given the king’s (Saul’s) daughter in marriage, and the king seeks his life, but David is always saved by miraculous means from the greatest perils. He also evades persecution by simulating dementia and playing the fool. The relationship between the Hamlet saga and the David saga has already been pointed out by Jiriczek and Lessmann. The biblical character of this entire mythical cycle is also emphasized by Jiriczek, who finds in the tale of Siâvaksh’s death certain features from the Passion of the Savior.

[51] The name Zohâk is a mutilation of the original Zend expression Ashi-dahaka [Azis-dahaka], meaning pernicious serpent. (See “The Myth of Feridun in India and Iran,” by Dr. R. Roth, in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, II, p. 216.) To the Iranese Feridum corresponds the Hindoo Trita, whose Avestian double is Thraetaona. The last named form is the most predominantly authenticated; from it was formed, by transition of the aspirated sounds, first Phreduna, then Frêdûn or Afrêdun; Feridun is a more recent corruption. Compare F. Spiegel’s “Eranische Altertumskunde,” I, p. 537 et seq.

[52] Compare Immermann, “Tristan und Isolde, Ein Gedicht in Romanzen,” Düsseldorf, 1841. Like the epic of Gottfried of Strassburg, his poem begins with the preliminary history of the loves of Tristan’s parents, King Riwalin Kannlengres of Parmenia and Marke’s beautiful sister Blancheflur. The maiden never reveals her love, which is not sanctioned by her brother, but she visits the king, who is wounded unto death, in his chamber, and dying he procreates Tristan, “the son of the most daring and doleful love.” Grown up as a foundling in the care of Rual and his wife, Florete, the winsome youth Tristan introduces himself to Marke in a stag hunt, as an expert huntsman, is recognized as his nephew by a ring, the king’s gift to his beloved sister, and becomes his favorite.

[53] See translation by W. A. White, M.D.., Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. I, No. 1, et seq.

[54] Compare the substitution of the bride, through Brangäne.

[55] Mommsen, Th., “Die echte und die falsche Acca Larentia”; in Festgaben für G. Homeyer (Berlin, 1891), p. 93, et seq.; and Römische Forschungen (Berlin, 1879), II, p. 1, et seq. Mommsen reconstructs the lost narrative of Fabius from the preserved reports of Dionysius (I, 79-831, and of Plutarch (Romulus)).

[56] The Capitoline She Wolf is considered as the work of very ancient Etruscan artists, which was erected at the Lupercal, in the year 296 B.C., according to Livy (X, 231). Compare picture on title page.

[57] All these renderings were compiled by Schwegler, in his Roman History, I, p. 384, et seq.

[58] Some Greek twin sagas are quoted by Schubert (loc. cit., p. 13, et seq.) in their essential content. Concerning the extensive distribution of this legendary form, compare the somewhat confused book of J. H. Becker, “The Twin Saga as the Key to the Interpretation of Ancient Tradition. With a Table of the Twin Saga.” Leipsic, 1891. German text.

[59] Mommsen, “Die Remus Legende,” Hermes, 1881.

[60] After Preller, Greek Mythology (Leipzig, 1854, II, pp. 120 et seq.).

[61] The same transformation of the divine procreator into the form of the human father is found in the birth history of the Egyptian queen, Hatshepset (about 1500 before Christ), who believes that the god Amen cohabited with her mother, Aahames, in the form of her father, Thothmes the First (see Budge: A History of Egypt, V; Books on Egypt and Chaldea, Vol. XII, p. 21, etc.). Later on she married her brother, Thothmes II, presumably the Pharaoh of Exodus, after whose dishonorable death she endeavored to eradicate his memory, and herself assumed the rulership, in masculine fashion (cp. the Deuteronium, edited by Schrader, II ed., 1902).

[62] A similar mingling of the divine and human posterity is related in the myth of Theseus, whose mother Aithra, the beloved of Poseidon, was visited in one night by this god, and by the childless King Aigeus of Athens, who had been brought under the influence of wine. The boy was raised in secret, and in ignorance of his father (v. Roscher’s dictionary, article Aigeus).

[63] Alkmene bore Herakles as the son of Zeus, and Iphikles as the offspring of Amphitryon. According to Apollodorus, 2, 4, 8, they were twin children, born at the same time; according to others Iphikles was conceived and born one night later than Herakles (see Roscher’s Lexicon, Amphitryon and Alkmene). The shadowy character of the twin brother, and his loose connection with the entire myth, is again evident. In a similar way, Telephos, the son of Auge, was exposed together with Parthenopaüs, the son of Atalantis, nursed by a doe, and taken by herders to King Korythos. The external subsequent insertion of the partner is here again quite obvious.

[64] For the formal demonstration of the entire identity of the birth and early history of Jesus with the other hero-myths, the author has presumed to re-arrange the corresponding paragraphs from the different versions, in the Gospels, irrespective of the traditional sequence and the originality of the individual parts. The age, origin and genuineness of these parts are briefly summarized and discussed in W. Soltan’s Birth History of Jesus Christ (German text), Leipsic, 1902. The transmitted versions of the several Gospels,—which according to Usener (Birth and Childhood of Christ, 1903, in Lectures and Essays (German text), Leipsic, 1907), contradict and even exclude each other,—have been placed, or left, in juxtaposition, precisely for the reason that the apparently contradictory elements in these birth myths are to be elucidated in the present research, no matter if these contradictions be encountered within a single uniform saga, or in its different versions (as, for example, in the Kyros myth).

[65] Concerning the birth of Jesus in a cave, and the furnishing of the birth place with the typical animals (ox and ass) compare Jeremias, Babylonisches im Neuen Testament (Leipzig, 1905), p. 56, and Preuschen, Jesu Geburt in einer Höhle, Zeitschrift für die Neutest. Wissenschaften, 1902, P. 359.

[66] According to recent investigations, the birth history of Christ is said to have the greatest resemblance with the royal Egyptian myth, over five thousand years old, which relates the birth of Amenophis III. Here again recurs the divine prophecy of the birth of a son, to the waiting queen; her fertilization by the breath of heavenly fire; the divine cows, which nurse the new born child; the homage of the kings, and so forth. In this connection, compare A. Malvert, Wissenschaft und Religion, Frankfort, 1904, pp. 49 et seq, also the suggestion of Professor Idleib in Bonn (Feuilleton of Frankfurter Zeitung, November 8, 1908).

[67] Very similar traits are found in the Keltic saga of Habis, as transmitted by Justin (44,4). Born as the illegitimate son of a king’s daughter, Habis is persecuted in all sorts of ways by his royal grandfather, Gargoris, but is always saved by divine providence, until he is finally recognized by his grandfather, and assumes royal sway. As in the Zarathustra legend, there occurs an entire series of the most varied methods of persecution. He is at first exposed, but nursed by wild animals; then he was to be trampled upon by a herd in a narrow path; then he was cast before hungry beasts, but they again nursed him, and finally he is thrown into the sea, but is gently lapped ashore and nursed by a doe, near which he grows up.

[68] Compare August Rassmann: Die deutsche Heldensage und ihre Heimat, Hanover, 1857-8, Vol. II, pp. 7 et seq; for the sources, see Jiriczek, Die deutsche Heldensage (collection Göschen) and Piper’s introduction to the volume: Die Nibelungen, in Kürschner’s German National Literature.

[69] Compare: Deutsches Heldenbuch, Part III, Vol. I (Berlin, 1871), edited by Amelung and Jaenicke, which also contains the second version (B) of the Wolfdietrich saga.

[70] The motive of calumniation of the wife by a rejected suitor, in combination with the exposure and nursing by an animal (doe), forms the nucleus of the story of Genovefa and her son Schmerzenreich, as told, for example, by the Grimm brothers, in their German Sagas, II, Berlin, 1818, pp. 280 et seq. Here, again, the faithless calumniator proposes to drown the countess with her child in the water. For literary and historical orientation, compare L. Zacher, Die Historic von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa, Koenigsberg, 1860, and B. Seuffert, Die Legende von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa, Würzburg, 1877. Similar sagas of wives suspected of infidelity and punished by exposure are discussed in the XI chapter of my investigation of “Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und Sage” (The Incest Motive in Fiction and Legends).

[71] The same accentuation of the animal motive is found in the saga of Schalû, the Hindoo wolf child; compare Jülg, Mongolische Märchen (Mongolian fairy tales; Innsbruck, 1868).

[72] The Grimm Brothers, in their German Sagas (part II, p. 206, etc.), quote six further versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan. Certain fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers, such as “The Six Swans” (No. 49), “The Twelve Brothers” (No. 9), and the “Seven Ravens” (No. 25), with their parallels and variations, mentioned in the 3d volume of the “Kinder-und Hausmärchen,” also belong to the same mythological cycle. Further material from this cycle may be found in Leo’s “Beowulf,” and in Görre’s “Introduction to Lohengrin” (Heidelberg, 1813).

[73] The ancient Longobard tale of the exposure of King Lamissio, related by Paulus Diaconus (L, 15), gives a similar incident. A public woman had thrown her seven newborn infants into a fish pond. King Agelmund passed by, and looked curiously at the children, turning them around with his spear. But when one of the children took hold of the spear, the king considered this as of good augury; he ordered this boy to be taken out of the pond, and to be given to a wet nurse. As he had taken him from the pond, which in his language is called “lama,” he named the boy Lamissio. He grew up into a stalwart champion, and after Agelmund’s death, became king of the Longobards.

[74] Scaf is the high German “Schaffing” (barrel), which leads Leo to assume, in connection with Scild’s being called Scefing, that he had no father Sceaf or Schaf at all, but was himself the boy cast ashore by the waves, who was named the “son of the barrel” (Schaffing). The name Beowulf itself, explained by Grimm as Bienen-wolf (bee-wolf), seems to mean originally (according to Wolzogen) Bärwelf, namely Jungbär (bear cub or whelp), which is suggestive of the saga of the origin of the Guelphs (Ursprung der Welfen, Grimm, II, 233), where the boys are to be thrown into the water as “whelps.”

[75] The possibility of further specification of separate items of this schedule will be seen from the compilation as given by H. Lessmann, at the conclusion of his work on “The Kyros Saga in Europe.”

[76] See also Wundt, who psychologically interprets the hero as a projection of human desires and aspirations (loc. cit., p. 48).

[77] Compare Freud, “Hysterical Fancies, and their Relation to Bisexuality,” with references to the literature on this subject. This contribution is contained in the second series of the “Collection of Short Articles on the Neurosis Doctrine,” Vienna and Leipsic, 1909.

[78] For the idealizing of the parents by the children, compare Maeder’s comments (Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse, p. 152, and Centralblatt f. Psychoanalyse, I, p. 51) on Varendonk’s essay, “Les idéals d’enfant,” Tome VII, 1908.

[79] Dream Interpretation (Traumdeutung), II ed., p. 200. See Brill’s Translation, Macmillan & Co., 1913.

[80] Compare the “birth dreams” in Freud’s “Traumdeutung” (see Brill’s translation, Macmillan & Co., p. 207 et seq.), also the examples quoted by the author in the “Lohengrin saga” (p. 27 et seq.).

[81] In fairy tales, which are adapted to infantile ideation, and especially to the infantile sexual theories (compare Freud in the December number of Sexuelle Probleme), the birth of man is frequently represented as a lifting of the child from a well or a lake (Thimme, l. c., p. 157). The story of “Dame Holle’s Pond” (Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, I, 7) relates that the newborn children come from her well, whence she brings them forth. The same interpretation is apparently expressed in certain national rites; for example, when a Celt had reason to doubt his paternity, he placed the newborn child on a large shield and put it adrift in the nearest river. If the waves carried it ashore, it was considered as legitimate, but if the child was drowned, this was proof of the contrary and the mother was also put to death (see Franz Helbing, “History of Feminine Infidelity”). Additional ethnological material from folklore has been compiled by the author in his “Lohengrin saga” (p. 20 et seq.).

[82] The “box” in certain myths is represented by the cave, which also distinctly symbolizes the womb; aside from statements in Abraham, Ion, and others, especially in case of Zeus, who is born in a cave of the Ida mountains, and nourished by the goat Amalthea, his mother concealing him for fear of her husband, Kronos. According to Homer’s Iliad (XVIII, 396, et seq.), Hephaistos is also cast into the water by his mother, on account of his lameness, and remains hidden, for nine years, in a cave surrounded by water. By exchanging the reversal, the birth (the fall into the water) is here plainly represented as the termination of the nine months of the intrauterine life. More common than the cave birth is the exposure in a box, which is likewise told in the Babylonian Marduk-Tammuz myth, as well as in the Egyptian-Phoenician Osiris-Adonis myth (compare Winckler, “Die Weltanschauung des alten Orients, Ex Oriente Lux” I, 1, p. 43, and Jeremias, loc. cit., p. 41). Bacchus, according to Paus, III, 24, is also removed from the persecution of the king, through exposure in a chest on the Nile, and is saved at the age of three months by a king’s daughter, which is remarkably suggestive of the Moses legend. A similar story is told of Tennes, the son of Kyknos, who has been mentioned in another connection (Siecke: Hermes, p. 48, annotation), and of many others.

The occurrence of the same symbolic representation among the aborigines is illustrated by the following examples: Stucken relates the New Zealand tale of the Polynesian Fire (and Seed) Robber, Mani-tiki-tiki, who is exposed directly after his birth, his mother throwing him into the sea, wrapped in an apron (chest, box). A similar story is reported by Frobenius (loc. cit., p. 379) from Betsimisaraka, where the child is exposed on the water, and is found and raised by a rich childless woman, but finally resolves to discover his actual parents. According to a report of Bab (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1906, p. 281) the wife of the Raja Besurjay was presented with a child floating on a bubble of water-foam (from Singapore).

[83] The before-mentioned work of Abraham, “Dreams and Myths,” pp. 22, 23, English translation, Monograph Series, No. 15, contains the analysis of a very similar although more complicated birth dream, corresponding to the actual conditions; the dreamer, a young pregnant woman, who was awaiting her delivery, not without fear, dreamed of the birth of her son, and the water appeared directly as the amniotic fluid.

[84] This phantasy of an enormous water is extremely suggestive of the large and widespread group of the Flood Myths, which actually seem to be no more than the universal expression of the exposure myth. The hero is here represented by humanity at large. The wrathful father is the god; the destruction as well as the rescue of humanity likewise follow one another in immediate succession. In this parallelization, it is of interest to note that the ark, or pitched house, in which Noah floats upon the water is designated in the Old Testament by the same word (tebah) as the receptacle in which the infant Moses is exposed (Jeremias, loc. cit., p. 250). For the motive of the great flood, compare Jeremias, p. 226, and Lessmann, at the close of his treatise on the Kyros saga in Europe, where the flood is described as a possible digression of the exposure in the water. A transition instance is illustrated by the flood saga told by Bader, in his Badensian folk legends. When the Sunken Valley was inundated once upon a time by a cloudburst, a little boy was seen floating upon the waters in a cradle, who was miraculously saved by a cat (Gustav Friedrichs, loc. cit., p. 265).

The author has endeavored to explain the psychological relations between the exposure-myth, the flood legend, and the devouring myth, in his article on the “Overlying Symbols in Dream Awakening, and Their Recurrence in Mythical Ideation” (“Die Symbolschichtung in Wecktraum und ihre Wiederkehr im mythischen Denken” Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse, V, 1912).

[85] Compare the same reversal of the meanings in Winckler’s interpretation of the etymology of the name of Moses (p. 13).

[86] The same conditions remain in the formation of dreams and in the transformation of hysterical phantasies into seizures (compare “Traumdeutung,” p. 238, and the annotation in the same place), also, Freud, “Allgemeines über den hysterischen Anfall” (“General Remarks on Hysterical Seizures”) in Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 2 Series, p. 146 et seq.

[87] According to a pointed remark of Jung’s, this reversal in its further mythical sublimation permits the approximation of the hero’s life to the solar cycle (“Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido,” II Part, Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse, V, 1912, p. 253).

[88] The second item of the schedule here enters into consideration: the voluntary continence or prolonged separation of the parents, which naturally induces the miraculous conception and virgin birth of the mother. The abortion phantasies, which are especially distinct in the Zoroaster legend, also belong under this heading.

[89] The comparison of birth with a shipwreck, by the Roman poet Lucretius, seems to be in perfect harmony with this symbolism: “Behold the infant: Like a shipwrecked sailor, cast ashore by the fury of the billows, the poor child lies naked on the ground, bereft of all means for existence, after Nature has dragged him in pain from the mother’s womb. With plaintive wailing he filleth the place of his birth, and he is right, for many evils await him in life” (Lucretius, “De Nature Rerum,” V, 222-227). Similarly, the first version of Schiller’s “Robbers,” in speaking of Nature, says: “She endowed us with the spirit of invention, when she exposed us naked and helpless on the shore of the great Ocean, the World. Let him swim who may, and let the clumsy perish!”

[90] Compare the representation of this relation and its psychic consequences, in Freud’s Significance of Dreams.

[91] Some myths convey the impression as if the love relation with the mother had been removed, as being too objectionable to the consciousness of certain periods or peoples. Traces of this suppression are still evident in a comparison of different myths or different versions of the same myth. For example, in the version of Herodotus, Kyros is a son of the daughter of Astyages, but according to the report of Ktesias, he makes the daughter of Astyages, whom he conquers, his wife, and kills her husband, who in the rendering of Herodotus is his father. Compare Hüsing, “Contributions to the Kyros Legend,” XI. Also a comparison of the saga of Darab, with the very similar legend of St. Gregory, serves to show that in the Darab story the incest with the mother is simply omitted, which otherwise precedes the recognition of the son; here, on the contrary, the recognition prevents the incest. This attenuation may be studied in the nascent state, as it were, in the myth of Telephos, where the hero is married to his mother, but recognizes her before the consummation of the incest. The fairy-tale-like setting of the Tristan legend, which makes Isolde draw the little Tristan from the water (i.e., give him birth), thereby suggests the fundamental incest theme, which is likewise manifested in the adultery with the wife of the uncle.

The reader is referred to Rank’s paper, “Das Inzest Motiv in Dichtung und Sage” (“The incest motive in fiction and legend”), in which the incest theme, which is here merely mentioned, is discussed in detail, picking up the many threads which lead to this theme, but which have been dropped at the present time.

[92] The mechanism of this defense is discussed in Freud’s “Hamlet Analysis” (“Traumdeutung,” p. 183, annotation); also by Jones, Am. Jl. of Psychology, 1911.

[93] In regard to further meanings of the grandfather, compare Freud, “Analysis of the Phobia of a 5-year-old Boy” (Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalyse, I, 1909, p. 7378); also the contributions by Jones, Abraham and Ferenzi (Internat. Zeitschrift f. ärzt. Psychoanalyse, Vol. I, 1913, March number).

[94] A similar identification of the father with God (heavenly father, etc.) occurs, according to Freud, with the same regularity in the fantasies of normal and pathological psychic activity as the identification of the emperor with the father. It is also noteworthy in this connection that almost all peoples derive their origin from their god (Abraham, “Dream and Myth,” Monograph Series, No. 15).

[95] An amusing example of unconscious humor in children recently ran through the daily press: A politician had explained to his little son that a tyrant is a man who forces others to do what he commands, without heeding their wishes in the matter. “Well,” said the child, “then you and mamma are also tyrants!”

[96] See Max Müller, “Essais,” Vol. II (Leipzig, 1869), p. 20 et seq. Concerning the various psychological contingencies of this setting, compare p. 83 et al. of the author’s “Incest Book.”

[97] Compare E. Meyer (Bericht d. Kgl. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss., XXXI, 1905, p. 640). The Moses legends and the Levites: “Presumably Moses was originally the son of the tyrant’s daughter (who is now his foster mother), and probably of divine origin.” The subsequent elaboration into the present form is probably referable to national motives.

[98] This idea which is derived from the knowledge of the neurotic fantasy and symptom construction, was applied by Professor Freud to the interpretation of the romantic and mythical work of poetic imagination, in a lecture entitled: “Der Dichter und das Phantasieren” (Poets and Imaginings) (Reprint, 2d series of Collected Short Articles), p. 1970.

[99] For ethno-psychologic parallels and other infantile sexual theories which throw some light upon the supplementary myth of the hero’s procreation compare the author’s treatise in Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, II, 1911, pp. 392-425.

[100] The fairy tales, which have been left out of consideration in the context, precisely on account of these complications, include especially: “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” (Grimm, No. 29), and the very similar “Saga of Emperor Henry III” (Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, II, p. 177), “Water-Peter,” with numerous variations (Grimm, III, p. 103), “Fundevogel,” No. 51, “The Three Birdies” (No. 96), “The King of the Golden Mountain” (No. 92), with its parallels, as well as some foreign fairy tales, which are quoted by Bauer, at the end of his article. Compare also, in Hahn, “Greek and Albanese Fairy Tales” (Leipsic, 1864), the review of the exposure stories and myths, especially 20 and 69.

[101] A connection is here supplied with the motive of the twins, in which we seem to recognize the two boys born at the same time, one of which dies for the sake of the other, be it directly after birth, or later, and whose parents appear divided in our myths into two or more parent couples. Concerning the probable significance of this shadowy twin-brother as the after-birth, compare the author’s discussion in his Incest Book (p. 457, etc.).

[102] The early history of Sigurd, as it is related in the Völsunga Saga (compare Rassmann, I, 99), closely resembles the Ktesian version of the Kyros saga, giving us the tradition of another hero’s wonderful career, together with its rational rearrangement. For particulars, see Bauer, p. 554. Also the biblical history of Joseph (1 Moses, 37, et seq.), with the exposure, the animal sacrifice, the dreams, the sketchy brethren, and the fabulous career of this hero, seem to belong to this type of myth.

[103] In order to avoid misunderstandings, it appears necessary to emphasize at this point the historical nucleus of certain hero-myths. Kyros, as is shown by the inscriptions which have been discovered (compare Duncker, p. 289, Bauer, p. 498), was descended from an old hereditary royal house. It could not be the object of the myth to elevate the descent of Kyros, nor must the above interpretation be regarded as an attempt to establish a lowly descent of Kyros. Similar conditions prevail in the case of Sargon, whose royal father is also known (compare Jeremias, p. 410, annotation). Nevertheless, an historian writes about Sargon as follows (Ungnad, “Die Anfänge der Staatenbildung in Babylonien” (Beginnings of State Formation in Babylonia), Deutsche Rundschau, July, 1905): “He was evidently not of noble descent, or no such saga could have been woven about his birth and his youth.” It would be a gross error to consider our interpretation as an argument in this sense. Again, the apparent contradiction which might be held up against our explanation, under another mode of interpretation, becomes the proof of its correctness, through the reflection that it is not the hero, but the average man who makes the myth, and wishes to vindicate himself in the same. The people imagine the hero in this manner, investing him with their own infantile fantasies, irrespective of their actual compatibility or incompatibility with historical facts. This also serves to explain the transference of the typical motives, be it to several generations of the same hero family, or be it to historical personalities in general (concerning Cæsar, Augustus and others, compare Usener, Rhein. Mus. LV, p. 271).

[104] This identification of the families is carried through to the minutest detail in certain myths, as for example in the Œdipus myth, where one royal couple is offset by another, and where even the herdsman who receives the infant for exposure has his exact counterpart in the herdsman to whom he entrusts the rescue of the boy.

[105] Compare Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, London, 1872 (In German by Hartmann: Die Tiere in der indogermanischen Mythologie. Leipzig, 1874). Concerning the significance of animals in exposure myths, see also the contributions by Bauer (p. 574 et seq.), Goldziher (p. 274) and Liebrecht: Zur Volkskunde (Romulus und die Welfen) (Folk Lore, Romulus and the Whelps), Heilbronn, 1879.

[106] Compare Freud’s article on The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism (Imago, Vol. II, 1913). Concerning the totemistic foundation of the Roman she-wolf, compare Jones’ Nightmare (Alptraum), p. 59 et seq. The woodpecker of the Romulus saga was discussed by Jung (loc. cit., p. 382 et seq.).

[107] The stork is known also in mythology as the bringer of children. Siecke (Liebesgesch. d. Himmels, p. 26) points out the swan as the player of this part in certain regions and countries. The rescue and further protection of the hero by a bird is not uncommon; compare Gilgamos, Zal and Kyknos, who is exposed by his mother near the sea and is nourished by a swan, while his son Tennes floats in a chest upon the water. The interpretation of the leading motive of the Lohengrin saga also enters into present consideration. Its most important motives belong to this mythical cycle: Lohengrin floats in a skiff upon the water, and is brought ashore by a swan. No one may ask whence he has come: the sexual mystery of the origin of man must not be revealed but it is replaced by the suggestion of the stork fable: the children are fished from the water by the swan and are taken to the parents in a box. Corresponding to the prohibition of all enquiries in the Lohengrin saga, we find in other myths (for example, the Œdipus myth), a command to investigate, or a riddle which must be solved. For the psychological significance of the stork fable, compare Freud, Infantile Sexual Theories. Concerning the Hero Myth, compare the author’s extensive contribution to the elaboration of the motives and the interpretation of the Lohengrin saga (Heft 13 of this collection, Vienna and Leipzig, 1911).

[108] Compare Freud: Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy. Jahrbuch f. psychoanalyt. u. psychopath. Forschungen, Vol. I, 1909.

[109] Usener (Stoff des griechischen Epos, S. 53—Subject Matter of Greek Epics, p. 53) says that the controversy between the earlier and the later Greek sagas concerning the mother of a divinity is usually reconciled by the formula that the mother of the general Greek saga is recognized as such while the mother of the local tradition is lowered to the rank of a nurse. There may therefore be unhesitatingly regarded as the mother, not merely the nurse of the god Ares.

[110] Abraham, loc. cit., p. 40; Riklin, loc. cit., p. 74.

[111] Brief mention is made of a case concerning a Mrs. v. Hervay, because of a few subtle psychological comments upon the same, by A. Berger (Feuilleton der Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 6, 1904, No. 14,441) which in part touch upon our interpretation of the hero myth. Berger writes as follows: “I am convinced that she seriously believes herself to be the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian lady. The desire to belong through birth to more distinguished and brilliant circles than her own surroundings probably dates back to her early years; and her wish to be a princess gave rise to the delusion that she was not the daughter of her parents, but the child of a noblewoman who had concealed her illegitimate offspring from the world by letting her grow up as the daughter of a sleight-of-hand man. Having once become entangled in these fancies, it was natural for her to interpret any harsh word that offended her, or any accidental ambiguous remark that she happened to hear, but especially her reluctance to be the daughter of this couple, as a confirmation of her romantic delusion. She therefore made it the task of her life to regain the social position of which she felt herself to have been defrauded. Her biography manifests the strenuous insistence upon this idea, with a tragic outcome.”

The female type of the family romance, as it confronts us in this case from the a-social side, has also been transmitted as a hero myth in isolated instances. The story goes of the later Queen Semiramis (in Diodos, II, 4) that her mother, the goddess Derketo, being ashamed of her, exposed the child in a barren and rocky land, where she was fed by doves and found by shepherds, who gave the infant to the overseer of the royal flocks, the childless Simmas, who raised her as his own daughter. He named her Semiramis, which means Dove in the Syrian language. Her further career, up to her autocratic rulership, thanks to her masculine energy, is a matter of history.

Other exposure myths are told of Atalante, Kybele, and Aërope (v. Roscher).

[112] Freud: Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph, No. 7. Also: Psychopathologie des Altagslebens, II ed., Berlin, 1909. Also: Hysterische Phantasien und ihre Beziehung zur Bisexualität.

[113] This is especially evident in the myths of the Greek gods, where the son (Kronos, Zeus) must first remove the father, before he can enter upon his rulership. The form of the removal, namely through castration, obviously the strongest expression of the revolt against the father, is at the same time the proof of its sexual provenance. Concerning the revenge character of this castration, as well as the infantile significance of the entire complex, compare Freud, Infantile Sexual Theories and Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy (Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalyse).

[114] Compare the contrast between Tell and Parricida, in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, which is discussed in detail in the author’s Incest Book.

[115] Compare in this connection the unsuccessful homicidal attempt of Tatjana Leontiew, and its subtle psychological illumination in Wittels: Die sexuelle Not (Vienna and Leipzig, 1909).