What is the gold spun from one window to another?
The answers, the obvious answers, are (1) ‘mist’ and (2) ‘sunshine.’
In Mr. Max Müller’s opinion these riddles ‘could not but lead to what we call popular myths or legends.’ Very probably; but this does not aid us to accept the philological method. The very essence of that method is the presumed absolute loss of the meaning of, e.g. ‘the Dark One.’ Before there can be a myth, ex hypothesi the words Dark One must have become hopelessly unintelligible, must have become a proper name. Thus suppose, for argument’s sake only, that Cronos once meant Dark One, and was understood in that sense. People (as in the Norse riddle just cited) said, ‘Cronos [i.e. the Dark One—meaning mist] swallows water and wood.’ Then they forgot that Cronos was their old word for the Dark One, and was mist; but they kept up, and understood, all the rest of the phrase about what mist does. The expression now ran, ‘Cronos [whatever that may be] swallows water and wood.’ But water comes from mist, and water nourishes wood, therefore ‘Cronos swallows his children.’ Such would be the development of a myth on Mr. Max Müller’s system. He would interpret ‘Cronos swallows his children,’ by finding, if he could, the original meaning of Cronos. Let us say that he did discover it to mean ‘the Dark One.’ Then he might think Cronos meant ‘night;’ ‘mist’ he would hardly guess.
That is all very clear, but the point is this—in devinettes, or riddles, the meaning of ‘the Dark One’ is not lost:—
‘Thy riddle is easy
Blind Gest,
To read’—
Heidrick answers.
What the philological method of mythology needs is to prove that such poetical statements about natural phenomena as the devinettes contain survived in the popular mouth, and were perfectly intelligible except just the one mot d’énigme—say, ‘the Dark One.’ That (call it Cronos=‘Dark One’), and that alone, became unintelligible in the changes of language, and so had to be accepted as a proper name, Cronos—a god who swallows things at large.
Where is the proof of such endurance of intelligible phrases with just the one central necessary word obsolete and changed into a mysterious proper name? The world is full of proper names which have lost their meaning—Athene, Achilles, Artemis, and so on but we need proof that poetical sayings, or riddles, survive and are intelligible except one word, which, being unintelligible, becomes a proper name. Riddles, of course, prove nothing of this kind:—
Thy riddle is easy
Blind Gest
To read!
Yet Mr. Max Müller offers the suggestion that the obscurity of many of these names of mythical gods and heroes ‘may be due . . . to the riddles to which they had given rise, and which would have ceased to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible, like those of Helios and Selene’ (i. 92). People, he thinks, in making riddles ‘would avoid the ordinary appellatives, and the use of little-known names in most mythologies would thus find an intelligible explanation.’ Again, ‘we can see how essential it was that in such mythological riddles the principal agents should not be called by their regular names.’ This last remark, indeed, is obvious. To return to the Norse riddle of the Dark One that swallows wood and water. It would never do in a riddle to call the Dark One by his ordinary name, ‘Mist.’ You would not amuse a rural audience by asking ‘What is the mist that swallows wood and water?’ That would be even easier than Mr. Burnand’s riddle for very hot weather:—