There seems, indeed, no reason to seek for any higher genesis than this for any of the culture-heroes of any mythology, notwithstanding that they have with so much unanimity been forced into identification with the sun. Zeus himself means but the same thing as Zulu, namely, the Sky or Heaven, so that it is only natural that nothing that could be told of the sky ‘was not in some form or other ascribed to Zeus,’[404] just as we see that modern Zulus ascribe to their chiefs all atmospheric phenomena, and actually confer on them the appellation, Zulu. There is indeed nothing in which Zeus differs essentially from Manabozho of North American mythology, from Krishna of the Hindus, from Maui of the Polynesians, from Quawteaht of the rude Ahts, or from Kutka of the still ruder Kamschadals. The stories told of one may be more refined than those told of another, but in no case are these divinities more than names, which serve as convenient centres for the grouping of memorable feats or fictions. Such names serve also, when once men have begun to reflect on the arts or customs of their lives, as sufficient explanations of their origin; and just as we find the institution of marriage attributed in China, or Greece, or India to some mythical hero, so we find the discovery of fire and light, or the invention of remarkable arts, duly ascribed to some hypothetical originator. In Polynesian mythology, Maui, in Thlinkeet Indian mythology, Yehl, played the part of Prometheus in procuring fire for the use of men. From seeing a spider make its web, Manabozho invented the art of making fishing nets; and Kutka (who, like Manabozho, is also in some sense the maker of all things) taught the Kamschadals how to build huts, how to catch birds, and beasts, and fish.[405] The supreme deity of Finnish mythology not only brought fire for men from heaven but was the inventor of music; yet like the other gods he was but a magician, able to destroy the world at pleasure, to hold the sun captive in a box, to conquer all monsters and heal all diseases.[406]
American mythology abounds in culture-heroes, mythical personages who taught men useful arts and laws, and left, in the reverence attached to their memory, a quasi-religious system for their posterity.[407] These too have been resolved into observation of the phenomena of the sun or the dawn. Manabozho or Michabo, the ancestor of the Algonquins, whose name literally means the Great Hare, and conferred peculiar respect on the clan who bore it as their totem, means in reality (according to this theory) the Great Light, the Spirit of Dawn, or under another aspect the North-west Wind; the confusion between the hare and the dawn being supposed to have arisen from a root wab, which gave two words, one meaning white and the other hare, so that what was originally told of the White Light came to be told of a Hare, and what was at first but a personification of natural phenomena became a tissue of inconsistent absurdities.[408] Ingenious, however, as such a solution undoubtedly is, it is easier to believe that the stories of the Great Hare have grown round a man, called, in complete accordance with American custom, after the hare, and once a famous sorcerer or warrior like Mannan Mac Lear; for in all the more recent traditions of him, there is much more of the magician or shaman than of the wind or the dawn. He turns at will into a wolf or an oak stump, he converses with all creation, he outwits serpents by his cunning, he has a lodge from which he utters oracles; as brother of the winds, by reason of his swiftness, there is no incongruity in the idea that since his death he is the director of storms, and resides in the region of his brother, the North Wind. It is curious that he is swallowed up by the king of the fish, in this resembling in Aryan mythology Pradyumna, the son of Vishnu, who after being swallowed by a fish is ultimately restored to life,[409] or in Polynesian mythology Maui, who is rescued by the sky from the embrace of the jelly fish. Maui, like Tell, Sigurd, Hercules, and others, has recently been discovered to be the sun, the fish which swallows him signifying really the earth; for does not the earth swallow the sun every night, and is not the sun only freed by the eastern sky in the morning?[410] Doubtless, on such a reading of his life, Manabozho has as just a claim as Mani to a place in the solar system; but then—who that has ever lived and died but has the same?
Samé, the great name of Brazilian legend, came across the ocean from the rising sun; he had power over the elements and tempests; the trees of the forests would recede to make room for him, the animals used to crouch before him; lakes and rivers became solid for him; and he taught the use of agriculture and magic. Like him, Bochica, the great lawgiver of the Muyscas and son of the sun, he who invented for them their calendar and regulated their festivals, had a white beard, a detail in which all the American culture-heroes agree.[411] It is not, however, on this particular feature, so much as on their whiteness in general that stress has been laid to identify them with the great White Light of Dawn. Of the Mexican Quetzalcoatl, Dr. Brinton says, ‘Like all the dawn heroes he, too, was represented of white complexion, clothed in long white robes.’ The white is the emphatic thing about them. So the name Viracocha of the Peruvians, translated by Oviedo, ‘the foam of the sea,’ is, we are to believe, a metaphor: ‘the dawn rises above the horizon as the snowy foam on the surface of the lake.’[412] But Peruvian tradition was confused as to whether Viracocha was the highest god and creator of the world, or only the first Inca; and such confusion between humanity and divinity, which is everywhere the normal result of the deification of the dead, is at least a more natural account of the origin of his worship than a fancied resemblance between the sea-foam and the dawn.[413] Heitsi Eibip, whom the Namaqua Hottentots call their Great Father, and on whose graves they throw stones for luck, so far resembles a solar hero that he is believed to have come like Samé from the East; yet, though much that is wonderful already attaches to his memory, he has not yet thrown off his human personality, but is known to have been merely a sorcerer of great fame;[414] so that in his deification we have almost living evidence of the process here assumed to have operated widely in the formation of the world’s mythology.
To the influence of the language of adulation in the formation of mythology, may also be added that of the language of affection or of ridicule. Nicknames, taken at hazard from the animal world, or from any object of earth, air, or water, would be obvious sources of improbable stories, tending to the completest confusion between the doings of a man and the attributes of the thing after which he was named. Nicknames of affection would produce the same result; and if, as is likely, other people besides the Finns call their daughters Moon, Sunshine, or Water-glimmer, it is easy to see how, for instance, the departure of Sunshine as a bride might come afterwards to be explained as a myth of the dawn or of twilight, and in the same way anything else that happened to her.[415]
An elemental explanation has been applied with such uniform effect, first to Aryan and then to Polynesian and American mythology, that in the resort to a more natural, albeit less poetical hypothesis, there may be danger of carrying opposing theories too far. There are, however, certain obvious limits; nor, if we doubt whether man in a primitive state really had the poetical views of nature so generally claimed for him, need we deny to him all poetical origination in the construction of his mythology. Take, for instance, this typical Aryan passage, ‘By the early Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or wolf. As the fearful beast was heard speeding by the windows or over the house-top, the inmates trembled, for none knew but his own soul might forthwith be required of him. Hence to this day, among ignorant people, the howling of a dog is supposed to portend a death in the family.’[416] When we find that a dog’s howling portends the death of its master among the Nubians,[417] and is regarded as a dreaded omen by the Kamschadals,[418] as well as by the Fijians,[419] and that the Esquimaux lay a dog’s head by the grave of a child to show it the way to the land of souls, we may safely reject the Aryan pedigree of the superstition, nor go any farther for its explanation than the nature of the sound itself. But though Aryan mythology may be taken to have grown, like any other, round human personalities, and though popular superstitions are in many instances the primary products of the laws of psychology, ranking rather among the sources than the débris of mythology, there is proof from the fairy-lore of savages that some of them have so far advanced in thought as to be not incapable of personifying abstract ideas. Dr. Rink alludes to the tendency of the Esquimaux to give figurative explanations of things, to personify, for instance, human qualities, just as they are personified in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’[420] The Chippewya Indians personified sleep as Weeng, a giant insect that was once seen on a tree in a wood, where it made a murmuring sound with its wings; and it was generally conceived to cause sleep by sending a number of little fairies to beat drowsy foreheads with their tiny clubs.[421] And the Odjibwas, with a fancy which has been so poetically preserved by Longfellow, identified Winter with an old hoary-headed man called Peboan, Spring with a young man of quick step and rosy face called Segwun.[422]
The testimony, therefore, afforded by the observation of modern savage races as to the growth of mythology discloses several ways in which, as it is being formed now, we may infer that it was formed thousands of years ago. The evidence of Steller that the Kamschadals explained everything to themselves according to the liveliness of their fancy, letting nothing escape their examination,[423] accords with evidence concerning other races to the effect that some intellectual curiosity enters as a constituent into the lowest human intelligence, giving birth to explanations which are as absurd to us as they are natural to their original framers. A ready capacity for invention is no rare trait of the savage character. Sir G. Grey found that the capability of Australian natives to invent marvels and wonders was proportioned to the quantity of food he offered them, and that rather than confess ignorance of a thing they would invent a tradition;[424] whilst in the fondness of the Koranna Hottentots, as they sit round their evening fires, of relating fictitious adventures, lies a source of legendary lore which is not likely to be limited to South Africa, and is probably aided elsewhere as it is there by the knowledge, common to so many savage tribes, of the preparation of intoxicating drinks.[425] If to these sources of mythology be added the help supplied by dreams to the elaboration of fiction; the misconceptions effected in traditions by the language of flattery, of affection, or of ridicule; and, lastly, the tendency, probably consequent on such confusion, to personify things or even abstract ideas; the wonder will no longer be that the mythology of the different races of the world displays so much uniformity, but that uniformity within limited ranges should ever have been taken as a proof of a common ethnological origin.
IX.
COMPARATIVE FOLK-LORE.
Folk-lore is often explained as the remains of ancient mythology, but the explanation, though perhaps true of some traditional lore still surviving in legends and fairy tales, seems of doubtful application to those popular superstitions yet so prevalent among us, of which our kitchens, our cottages, and our nurseries are the chief depositories. Beliefs, fancies, and customs, however trivial in themselves, and locally absurd, gain an interest from the area they cover and the races they connect; suggesting past unions between nations now remote, in the same way as the smallest weeds are capable of telling, by their geographical dispersion, of lands that once stretched where seas now roll. To take some instances. The English tradition that a swallow’s nest is lucky, and its life protected by imaginary penalties, is one that in isolation we should naturally and rightly disregard. But when we find that the belief belongs to Germany, and that the supposed penalties are the same in Yorkshire as they are in Swabia, our wonder is aroused; and when we further learn that in China, too, the swallow’s nest is lucky and its life inviolate, we become aware of a possible history and antiquity attaching to the superstition, which offer an inviting field for speculation and study. The belief, that the first appearance of mice in a house betokens death, becomes of interest when we find it in Russia as well as in Devonshire. Mothers there are both in Germany and in England who fear their children may grow up to be thieves if their nails are cut before their first year is over. Such superstitions, as we call them, had, without doubt, once a reason; in some cases still to be traced, in others effaced by the wear and tear of time. By the application to them of the comparative method not only may we hope to explain and connect ideas otherwise inexplicable, but also to come to conclusions not uninteresting from an archæological point of view. For if it can be shown that they are the remains of ancient barbarism rather than of ancient mythology, their testimony may be added to that, long since given by the more material relics and witnesses of early times, concerning the general history of civilisation.