A Guide to Mythology

by Helen A. Clarke

Sometimes the trees of one land will look exceedingly like those in another land—in fact, being the same sort of trees, but differing somewhat in shape. Then the smaller plants and flowers are the symbols for many kinds of little mythical stories about every thing that you can think of, or rather that primitive man could think of, for he didn’t know about trolleys and telephones and automobiles, and so there are not any myths about such things as these. And the Christmas trees are the myths which have been enlarged and glorified by having myths from other lands added to them.

Now the point comes up, how did all this vast forest of myths which covers the whole world arise, for the forest symbolizes, remember, only the forms oral or written in which the myths of the world have come to us. To answer this, we must now try to imagine behind all this wonderful growth of myth, on the one hand, the mind of mankind, and on the other hand all the objects of external nature. And besides we must think of mankind as it was untold ages ago in the real childhood of the world. In those far off days when the first men used to roam about the world getting their food by hunting, with nothing but caves or tents to live in, man’s consciousness of himself was not even as strong as that of a small child to-day. Still, he had implanted in him the power of observing whatever went on before him, and a constant curiosity to know the cause or the “reason why” of every thing he saw. Above all he had a vivid imagination. He could “make believe” about the things he saw far better than children do in their games to-day, and that is how he came to invent explanations of most of the things he saw about him. Here, for example, is a little story invented by the Hottentots to explain two things which they had observed, the spots on the moon, and the way in which the upper lip of a hare is split.

“The moon sent an insect to men saying, ‘Go thou to men and tell them, as I die and dying live, so ye shall also die and dying live.’ The insect started with his message, but while on the way was overtaken by the hare who asked him upon what errand he was bound. The insect answered that he had been sent by the moon to tell men that as she dies and dying lives so also shall they die and dying live! The hare said, ‘As thou art an awkward runner, let me go.’ With these words he ran off and when he reached men he said, ‘I am sent by the moon to tell you, as I die and dying perish, in the same manner shall ye also die and come wholly to an end.’ Then the hare returned to the moon and told her what he had said to men. The moon reproached him angrily, saying, ‘Darest thou tell the people a thing which I have not said?’ With these words she took up a hatchet to split his head, missing that the hatchet fell upon the upper lip and made a deep gash. Maddened by such treatment, the hare flew at the moon and scratched her face which are the dark spots which we now see on the moon.”

You see these primitive Hottentots treat every thing in nature as if it were alive just as we learned from Tylor. They really did not know what a great difference there is between a human being and an animal or between animals and plants or even plants and stones. All of the objects in nature being endowed with life, they might speak and act just like human beings. But it was only the very wisest of human beings who could understand this language that the animals and plants and other objects in nature might speak.

On this account all nature seemed very mysterious to primitive man, and he therefore was ready to worship almost any object that caught his attention.

Then the strange feeling he had that another spirit quite detached from his ordinary life lived inside his body, made him imagine queer things about this spirit; for one thing, that it might leave his body and go off on independent journeys in the form of a bird or an animal, or even that it might be stowed away for safe keeping in some animal or other object, like the famous story of the Norse giant whose heart, which is equivalent to his true life, is far away in an egg that is in a church that is on an island that lies in a lake. In many stories belonging to this primitive time, a man’s luck often stands for his life and is bound up in some object outside of himself as in this story of the Algonquin Indians, which reflects all the strange notions I have spoken of as well as giving an explanation of the appearance of the sheldrake duck. It is the story of how one of the Partridge’s wives became a sheldrake duck, and why her feet and feathers are red.

“There was once a hunter who lived in the woods. He had a brother or spirit who was so small that he kept him in a box, and when he went forth he closed this very carefully, for fear lest an evil spirit should get him.

“One day this hunter, returning, saw a very beautiful girl sitting on a rock by a river, making a moccasin. And being in a canoe he paddled up softly and silently to capture her; but she, seeing him coming, jumped into the water and disappeared. On returning to her mother, who lived at the bottom of the river, she was told to go back to the hunter and be his wife; ‘for now,’ said the mother, ‘you belong to that man.’

“The hunter’s name was Mitchihess, the Partridge. When she came to his lodge he was absent. So she arranged every thing for his return, making a bed of boughs. At night he came back with one beaver. This he divided; cooked one half for supper and laid by the other half. In the morning when she awoke he was gone, and the other half of the beaver had also disappeared. That night he returned with another beaver, and the same thing took place again. Then she resolved to spy and find out what all this meant.