The mythical connection between unwearied but unwilling toil and arrogance and presumption is referred to by the Rev. G. W. Cox in the following terms:—"The myth of Ixîôn exhibits the sun as bound to the four-spoked wheel which is whirled round everlastingly in the sky.[33] In that of Sisyphos we see the same being condemned to the daily toil of heaving a stone to the summit of a hill from which it immediately rolls down. This idea of tasks unwillingly done, or of natural operations as accomplished by means of punishment, is found also in the myth of Atlas, a name which like that of Tantalos denotes endurance and suffering, and so passes into the notion of arrogance and presumption." In a note he adds,—"The Hellenic Atlas is simply the Vedic Skambha."
The story of the "spectre huntsman," under various modifications, is found in different parts of the country. They seem invariably to suggest the common origin to which I have referred, however much it may be obscured by relatively modern additions or poetic embellishments.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Query:—May not the "marks of the comb" be, in reality, striæ resulting from glacial action?
[30] Since this was written, I have been told in a public company, in Manchester, by an intelligent man, that the squeaking of a pig did give the name to Winwick. My suggestion that the old name of the brook, the "Wynwede," with the common suffix "wick," a village, was sufficient to explain the etymology, was, of course, laughed at as a relatively very prosaic affair indeed.
[31] See the following chapter.
[32] Mr. Roby's version of the tradition states that a half-witted lad met Sir Ralph Ashton, when driving a cow towards the Knight's residence. The boy, who was unacquainted with his superior, in answer to questions, said his father was dead, and he was driving the cow to Sir Ralph's as the heriot due under the circumstance. He further asked if the stranger did not think that, on Sir Ralph's death, the devil, his master, would demand his soul as heriot. The question so astonished the Knight that he sent the cow back to the poor widow. Dr. Hibbert Ware mentions a similar tradition, but the Knight's name is not Ralph, but Robert Ashton.
[33] "This wheel reappears in the Gaelic story of the Widow and her Daughters, Campbell, ii. 265, and in Grimm's German tale of the Iron Stove. The treasure house of Ixîôn, which none may enter without being either destroyed like Hesioneus or betrayed by marks of gold or blood, reappears in a vast number of popular stories, and is the foundation of the story of Bluebeard."