Myths and Folk-tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars

by Jeremiah Curtin

The Morning-star heard, and asked his boy: “Is that man on the island yet?”

“Oh,” said the boy, “the man is at home; the old woman herself is on the island now. She says that you appeared to her in a dream, and promised to save her from distress.”

“I never appeared to that old woman,” said the star. “I will not hurry daylight to-day.”

The water rose till the old woman was on the highest point of the tree that would bear her. The water raised all the crowd of hungry, terrible creatures. They tore her to pieces, devoured her.

So the Delawares on the Atlantic, who enjoy seniority among the Algonkin,—the most widely-extended Indian stock of America,—agree with the Modocs, near the Pacific, in the theory of the Morning-star, which for them, as for the Latins, was the Light-bearer. The opposite view, to which I refer in the night-scene at Milwaukee, gave birth to the myth of the struggle of the stars with the sun for possession of the sky. Now, a combination of these two myths—the one in which the Morning-star is the Light-bearer being the earlier—gives us a third, in which the Morning-star is not merely an opponent, but a rebel. This third myth, after it had increased in age, came to be used in describing, not an event in the sky, looked at variously by primitive men, but an event in the moral world; and the stories of the Morning-star and the sun were transferred from the fields of heaven to the kingdom of the soul. This done, Milton had at hand the splendid mythologic material and accessories which he used with such power in Paradise Lost.

I know no American myth in which the Morning-star is represented as hostile to the sun; the discovery of one would be very interesting and valuable, as showing that the primitive people of this continent might possibly have worked out a physical myth like that made in the Eastern hemisphere, and afterwards spiritualized till it was given the meaning which we find in the pages of Milton.

But whatever the future may bring, the present American Morning-star myth is interesting; for it shows a complete parallelism with Aryan mythology as far as it goes,—that is, to the highest point reached by the non-Aryan tribes of America.

It should be remembered that whatever be the names of the myth-tale heroes at present, the original heroes were not human. They were not men and women, though in most cases the present heroes or heroines bear the names of men and women, or children; they perform deeds which no man could perform, which only one of the forces of Nature could perform, if it had the volition and desires of a person. This is the great cause of wonderful deeds in myth-tales.

The following Indian myth, in which we know exactly who the actors were, illustrates this fact very well. I give the myth from memory, and in a compressed form, making first the statement that in a part of eastern Oregon and Washington, where I found it, there are two winds, as the Indians informed me, which are all, or practically all, that blow in that region. One of these is a northeast, the other a southwest wind. The Indians subdivide each one of them into five. Each of these five is a little different from the other,—that is, there are five kinds of southwest winds, and five kinds of northeast winds. Each has a proper name describing its character; and in telling the myth these names are used, just as the name Ivan the Fool, and Mirko the king’s son are used in Russia and Hungary. The Northeast brothers have a sister more harassing and cruel than they,—cold, damp, fitful. She also has a name describing her character. The five Southwest winds have grandparents very old, who live in a hut by themselves. They have no sister; but the eldest has a wife, brought by him to Oregon from her birthplace in the Southern seas.

One time the Northeast winds challenged the others to a wrestling-match, in which whoever should be thrown would have his head cut off. The Southwest brothers were not free to refuse; they had to accept. All the details of this match are described precisely as if the opponents were men and not winds. The Southwest brothers were thrown, every one, and each had his head cut off; all were killed, and now the Northeast brothers were lords of that region. The old feeble grandparents were all of the family left in Oregon. The young wife went home to her parents and people in the Southern seas. The victorious brothers did as they pleased,—when they wished to knock any one down they did so; but the crowning wickedness of the victorious family was the malice of the sister against the aged grandparents. She came every morning to their hut and insulted them in a manner that will not bear recital. Weeping and helpless, they endured the foulest abuse. The evil sister rejoiced, the wicked brothers rejoiced, and all men besides were suffering. Some time after the widow had returned to her home in the Southern seas a son was born to the late eldest brother,—a wonderful boy. This posthumous child grew not by years but by days; and when he was three weeks old he had attained full growth. He was a hero of awful strength; nothing could resist him. He asked about his father; his mother told how his fathers had perished (the brothers of a father are fathers too in the Indian system) at the hands of the Northeast brothers. “I will go to avenge my fathers,” said he, and started.