Baldr, whom no weapon pierced or clove,
But in his breast stood fix’d the fatal bough
Of mistletoe, which Lok, the accuser, gave
To Hoder, and the unwitting Hoder threw;
’Gainst that alone had Baldr’s life no charm.“
“Thus Infendiyar, in the Persian epic, cannot be wounded by any weapon.... All these are fragments of solar myths.” One hardly likes to disturb such illusions. Solar myths! well, allow me at least to repeat the history which seems to me so very like this myth. Many centuries ago, in a beautiful garden which a concurrence of tradition places somewhere in Central Asia, a man, the first man of our race, framed according to the “divine prototype,;” dwelt beloved by the whole world. God and the angels, and the whole of nature—all that grows and lives, were agreed that nothing should do him harm. One fruit or growth alone—the mistletoe it may have been—something that does not grow on the earth, but on trees, was excepted; and it was told to this man, whose name was—but we will not anticipate—that on the day on which he touched this fruit he should die the death. It so came about that the accuser, whom some call the serpent, had previously handed it to his companion, and his unwitting companion gave it to him. He took it, and he died. Against that fatal bough his life had no charm. No weapon pierced or clove him; for Baldr—I should say Adam—was invulnerable, as was Achilles and Meleager, except in one single respect.
I believe that instances might be indefinitely multiplied. I shall content myself, however, with the following, which I think will be generally considered among the happiest illustrations of nature worship.[138]
“And as it is with this sad and beautiful tale of Orpheus and Euridike (Euridice). [The story of Euridice was this—‘Euridice was bitten by a serpent, she dies, and descends into the lower regions. Orpheus follows her, and obtains from the gods that his wife should follow him if he promised not to look back, &c’ It reads to me like a sad reminiscence of Adam and Eve.] Mr Max Müller proceeds—‘so it is with all those which may seem to you coarse, or dull, or ugly. They are so only because the real meaning of the names has been half-forgotten or wholly lost. Œdipus and Perseus (vide [Appendix]), we are told, killed their parents, but it was only because the sun was said to kill the darkness from which it seemed to spring.’”[139]
But why is darkness called the parent of the sun, and not rather light the parent of darkness? and why not a contrary legend founded on this surmise? Is it merely accidental that the metaphor is not reversed?
Compare the above speculation of Mr Max Müller’s with the following passage from Gainet, “Hist. de l’Ancien. Nouv. Test.,” i.; “Les Souvenirs du genre Humain,” p. 79:—