Such was the sad conclusion of the myth of which the memory is kept up even in these days. For in Norway and Sweden—nay, in some parts of Scotland, the bale-fires celebrating the bale or death of the sun-god are lighted on the day when the sun passes the highest point in the ecliptic. Balder will not, said tradition, remain for ever in Helheim. A day will come, the twilight of the gods, when the gods themselves will be destroyed in a final victorious contest with the evil powers. And then, when a new earth has arisen from the deluge which destroys the old, Balder, the god of Peace, will come from Death’s home to rule over this regenerate world. A sublime myth—if indeed it can be called a myth.
CHAPTER XI.
MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK-TALES.
Diversity of myths.
If we found it difficult to reduce to a consistent simplicity the religious ideas of the Aryan races, what hope have we to find any thread through the labyrinth of their unbridled imagination in dealing with more fanciful subjects? The world is all before them where to choose; nature, in her multitudinous works and ever-changing shows, is at hand to give breath to the faculty of myth-making, and lay the foundation of all the stories which have ever been told. The two elements concurrent to the manufacture of mythologies are the varying phenomena in nature, and that which is called the anthropomorphic (personifying) faculty in man. I do not mean by this that all myths represent natural appearances. Some simply relate events, real human experiences; all that is mythic about such stories is that they are misplaced. Some one has gone through the adventures, but not the person of whom they are told. Other tales transfer in a like fashion human experiences to beings who are not human, to animals, to trees and streams, maybe even to implements, to spades and ploughs, to hatchets, swords, or ships. All these may be subject of mere tale-telling. But what I understand by mythology are the stories related of the gods—at all events, stories of supernatural beings who are almost gods. And among the Aryan folk, as the gods are in almost every instance the personifications of phenomena or powers of nature, the myths of widest extension were necessarily occupied with these.
Religion being the greatest concern of man, the myths which allied themselves most closely to his religious ideas would be those which maintained the longest life and most universal acceptance. In reviewing some of the Aryan myths—in a hasty and general review as it must needs be—the preceding chapter will serve to guide us to the myths most closely connected with religious notions, which have a chief claim upon our attention. Indeed, reading in a converse manner, it was the fact that so many myths clung around certain natural phenomena which allowed us, with proper reservation, to point these out as the phenomena which held the most intimate place in men’s minds and hearts. With proper reservations, because the highest, most abstracted god does not lend himself as a subject for the myth-making faculty. He stands apart from the polytheistic circle: below him stand the nature-gods who are also the heroes of the mythologies.
And now, with a backward glance to what has been already written, we may expect the chief myth systems to divide themselves into certain classes corresponding with the god—or natural phenomenon—that is their concern. We may expect to find myths relating especially to the labours of the sun, like those of Heracles and Thorr, or to the wind, like that of Hermes stealing the cattle of Apollo, or to the earth sleeping in the embrace of winter, or sorrowing for the loss of her greenery, or joying again in her recovered life. And again we may look to find myths more intimately concerned with death, and with the looked-for future of the soul. These will mingle like mingling streams, but we shall often be able to trace their origin.
But, to begin with, do not suppose that, if I say that a natural phenomenon has given rise to a story, I mean to say that the story could not have arisen except through this natural phenomenon. Or, to put it in plainer language, do not suppose that if I say that this or that adventure is related of the sun or of the wind, I mean that the adventure was never heard of before the sun or wind was worshipped as a god or idealized as a hero. If Indra, or Apollo, is called the serpent-slayer, I do not mean that it is by the battle of the sun and the clouds that men got the idea of slaying serpents. If the wind is said to ride a-horseback over hill and dale, if the thunder-god is said to hurl his hammer at the mountain-tops, I do not mean that men never thought of horses or battle-hammers till they began to make stories about the wind and sun. What I do mean is that certain special forms of the myths related, as we now see them, were told of the Aryan god who was some phenomenon of nature—the sun or whatever he might be. It is necessary to give this word of caution, because the relationship of mythology to religion has sometimes, by recent writings upon the subject, been a good deal confused and obscured.
The diversity of the natural phenomena which give them rise will not in any way hinder the myths from reproducing the human elements which have, since the world began held their pre-eminence in romance and history. There will be love-stories, stories of battle and victory, of magic and strange disguises, of suddenly acquired treasure, and, most attractive of all to the popular mind, stories of princes and princesses whose princedom is hidden under a servile station or beggar’s gaberdine, and of heroes who allow their heroism to rust for a while in strange inaction, that
‘Imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at.’
Not necessarily because such heroes were the sun, but rather that the tales, appealing so intimately to the common sympathies of human nature, attach themselves pre-eminently to the great natural hero, the sun-god.