This is a very good example of the philological way of explaining a myth. If once we admit that ark, or arch, in the sense of ‘bright’ and of ‘bear,’ existed, not only in Sanskrit, but in the undivided Aryan tongue, and that the name Riksha, bear, ‘became in that sense most popular in Greek and Latin,’ this theory seems more than plausible. But the explanation does not look so well if we examine, not only the Aryan, but all the known myths and names of the Bear and the other stars. Professor Sayce, a distinguished philologist, says we may not compare non-Aryan with Aryan myths. We have ventured to do so, however, in this paper, and have shown that the most widely severed races give the stars animal names, of which the Bear is one example. Now, if the philologists wish to persuade us that it was decaying and half-forgotten language which caused men to give the names of animals to the stars, they must prove their case on an immense collection of instances—on Iowa, Kaneka, Murri, Maori, Brazilian, Peruvian, Mexican, Egyptian, Eskimo, instances. It would be the most amazing coincidence in the world if forgetfulness of the meaning of their own speech compelled tribes of every tongue and race to recognise men and beasts, cranes, cockatoos, serpents, monkeys, bears, and so forth, in the heavens. How came the misunderstood words always to be misunderstood in the same way? Does the philological explanation account for the enormous majority of the phenomena? If it fails, we may at least doubt whether it solves the one isolated case of the Great Bear among the Greeks and Romans. It must be observed that the philological explanation of Mr. Müller does not clear up the Arcadian story of their own descent from a she-bear who is now a star. Yet similar stories of the descent of tribes from animals are so widespread that it would be difficult to name the race or the quarter of the globe where they are not found. Are they all derived from misunderstood words meaning ‘bright’? These considerations appear to be a strong argument for comparing not only Aryan, but all attainable myths. We shall often find, if we take a wide view, that the philological explanation which seemed plausible in a single case is hopelessly narrow when applied to a large collection of parallel cases in languages of various families.
Finally, in dealing with star myths, we adhere to the hypothesis of Mr. Tylor: ‘From savagery up to civilisation,’ Akkadian, Greek, or English, ‘there may be traced in the mythology of the stars a course of thought, changed, indeed, in application, yet never broken in its evident connection from first to last. The savage sees individual stars as animate beings, or combines star-groups into living celestial creatures, or limbs of them, or objects connected with them; while at the other extremity of the scale of civilisation the modern astronomer keeps up just such ancient fancies, turning them to account in useful survival, as a means of mapping out the celestial globe.’
MOLY AND MANDRAGORA.
‘I have found out a new cure for rheumatism,’ said the lady beside whom it was my privilege to sit at dinner. ‘You carry a potato about in your pocket!’
Some one has written an amusing account of the behaviour of a man who is finishing a book. He takes his ideas everywhere with him and broods over them, even at dinner, in the pauses of conversation. But here was a lady who kindly contributed to my studies and offered me folklore and survivals in cultivated Kensington.
My mind had strayed from the potato cure to the New Zealand habit of carrying a baked yam at night to frighten away ghosts, and to the old English belief that a bit of bread kept in the pocket was sovereign against evil spirits. Why should ghosts dread the food of mortals when it is the custom of most races of mortals to feed ancestral ghosts? The human mind works pretty rapidly, and all this had passed through my brain while I replied, in tones of curiosity: ‘A potato!’
‘Yes; but it is not every potato that will do. I heard of the cure in the country, and when we came up to town, and my husband was complaining of rheumatism, I told one of the servants to get me a potato for Mr. Johnson’s rheumatism. “Yes, ma’am,” said the man; “but it must be a stolen potato.” I had forgotten that. Well, one can’t ask one’s servants to steal potatoes. It is easy in the country, where you can pick one out of anybody’s field.’ ‘And what did you do?’ I asked. ‘Oh, I drove to Covent Garden and ordered a lot of fruit and flowers. While the man was not looking, I stole a potato—a very little one. I don’t think there was any harm in it.’ ‘And did Mr. Johnson try the potato cure?’ ‘Yes, he carried it in his pocket, and now he is quite well. I told the doctor, and he says he knows of the cure, but he dares not recommend it.’
How oddly superstitions survive! The central idea of this modern folly about the potato is that you must pilfer the root. Let us work the idea of the healing or magical herb backwards, from Kensington to European folklore, and thence to classical times, to Homer, and to the Hottentots. Turning first to Germany, we note the beliefs, not about the potato, but about another vegetable, the mandrake. Of all roots, in German superstition, the Alraun, or mandrake, is the most famous. The herb was conceived of, in the savage fashion, as a living human person, a kind of old witch-wife. [{144}]
Again, the root has a human shape. ‘If a hereditary thief who has preserved his chastity gets hung,’ the broad-leafed, yellow-flowered mandrake grows up, in his likeness, beneath the gallows from which he is suspended. The mandrake, like the moly, the magical herb of the Odyssey, is ‘hard for men to dig.’ He who desires to possess a mandrake must stop his ears with wax, so that he may not hear the deathly yells which the plant utters as it is being dragged out of the earth. Then before sunrise, on a Friday, the amateur goes out with a dog, ‘all black,’ makes three crosses round the mandrake, loosens the soil about the root, ties the root to the dog’s tail, and offers the beast a piece of bread. The dog runs at the bread, drags out the mandrake root, and falls dead, killed by the horrible yell of the plant. The root is now taken up, washed with wine, wrapped in silk, laid in a casket, bathed every Friday, ‘and clothed in a little new white smock every new moon.’ The mandrake acts, if thus considerately treated, as a kind of familiar spirit. ‘Every piece of coin put to her over night is found doubled in the morning.’ Gipsy folklore, and the folklore of American children, keep this belief in doubling deposits. The gipsies use the notion in what they call ‘The Great Trick.’ Some foolish rustic makes up his money in a parcel which he gives to the gipsy. The latter, after various ceremonies performed, returns the parcel, which is to be buried. The money will be found doubled by a certain date. Of course when the owner unburies the parcel he finds nothing in it but brass buttons. In the same way, and with pious confidence, the American boy buries a marble in a hollow log, uttering the formula, ‘What hasn’t come here, come! what’s here, stay here!’ and expects to find all the marbles he has ever lost. [{145}] Let us follow the belief in magical roots into the old Pagan world.
The ancients knew mandragora and the superstitions connected with it very well. Dioscorides mentions mandragorus, or antimelon, or dircæa, or Circæa, and says the Egyptians call it apemoum, and Pythagoras ‘anthropomorphon.’ In digging the root, Pliny says, ‘there are some ceremonies observed, first they that goe about this worke, look especially to this that the wind be not in their face, but blow upon their backs. Then with the point of a sword they draw three circles round about the plant, which don, they dig it up afterwards with their face unto the west.’ Pliny says nothing of the fetich qualities of the plant, as credited in modern and mediæval Germany, but mentions ‘sufficient it is with some bodies to cast them into sleep with the smel of mandrago.’ This is like Shakespeare’s ‘poppy and mandragora, and all the drowsy syrups of the world.’ Plato and Demosthenes [{146a}] also speak of mandragora as a soporific. It is more to the purpose of magic that Columella mentions ‘the half-human mandragora.’ Here we touch the origin of the mandrake superstitions. The roots have a kind of fantastic resemblance to the human shape; Pliny describes them as being ‘of a fleshy substance and tender.’ Now it is one of the recognised principles in magic, that things like each other, however superficially, affect each other in a mystic way, and possess identical properties. Thus, in Melanesia, according to Mr. Codrington, [{146b}] ‘a stone in the shape of a pig, of a bread-fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable find,’ because it made pigs prolific, and fertilised bread-fruit trees and yam-plots. In Scotland, too, ‘stones were called by the names of the limbs they resembled, as “eye-stane,” “head-stane.” A patient washed the affected part of his body, and rubbed it well with the stone corresponding.’ [{147a}] In precisely the same way, the mandrake root, being thought to resemble the human body, was credited with human and superhuman powers. Josephus mentions [{147b}] a plant ‘not easily caught, which slips away from them that wish to gather it, and never stands still’ till certain repulsive rites are performed. These rites cannot well be reported here, but they are quite familiar to Red Indian and to Bushman magic. Another way to dig the plant spoken of by Josephus is by aid of the dog, as in the German superstition quoted from Grimm. Ælian also recommends the use of the dog to pluck the herb aglaophotis, which shines at night. [{147c}] When the dog has dragged up the root, and died of terror, his body is to be buried on the spot with religious honours and secret sacred rites.