The Greek traditions are not early, and were probably borrowed from Semitic sources. We have seen the story told by Lucian in his book “De Dea Syra,” but in his “Timon” he follows the more authentic Greek legend, and makes Deucalion escape in a little skiff (consequently without the animals), and land on Mount Lycoris.
We have also the same catastrophe somewhat differently related by Ovid. The world he represents “as confederate in crime,” and doomed therefore to just punishment. Jupiter sends down rain from heaven, and rivers and seas gushing forth from their caves gather over the earth’s surface, and sweep mankind away. Deucalion and his wife alone, borne in a little skiff, are stranded on the top of Parnassus. By degrees, the waters subside: the only surviving pair inquire of the gods how they may again people the desert earth. They are ordered, with veiled heads, to throw behind them the bones of their great mother. Half doubtful as to the meaning of the oracle, they throw behind them stones, which are immediately changed into men and women, and the earth spontaneously produces the rest of the animal creation.[[219]]
Apollodorus relates the matter thus:—“When Zeus determined to destroy the brazen race, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, made a great ark, λάρναξ, and put into it all necessary things, and entered it with Pyrrha. Zeus then, pouring down heavy rains from heaven, overwhelmed the greater part of Greece, so that all men perished except a few who fled to the highest mountains. He floated nine days and nights in the sea of waters, and at last stopped on Mount Parnassus. Then Zeus sent Hermes to ask him what he wished, and he solicited that mankind might be made again. Zeus bade him throw stones over his head, from which men should come, and said that those cast by Pyrrha should be turned into women.”
Stephanus of Byzantium says that the tradition was that after the surface of the earth became dry, Zeus ordered Prometheus and Athene to make images of clay in the form of men; and when they were dry, he called the winds and made them breathe into each, and rendered them vital: and thus the earth after the Flood was repeopled.[[220]] Diodorus says, “In the Deluge, which happened in the time of Deucalion, almost all flesh died.”[[221]]
The Chinese begin their dynasties with Jao, the last of the old race, whose words are thus recorded in the Schu-Kiug:—“The mighty waters of the flood spread themselves out, and overflowed, and drowned everything. The mountains disappeared in the deep, and the hills were buried beneath them. The foaming billows seemed to threaten heaven. All people were drowned.”[[222]] An ancient inscription, which the Chinese attribute to Yu, the third patriarch after the Flood, and which at least dates from before Christ, refers to this event:—“The illustrious Emperor Jao said, sighing, ‘Companions and counsellors! The great and little territories up to the mountain’s peak, the homes of birds and wild beasts, were overflowed far and wide. Long had I forgotten my home; now I rest upon the mountain top of Jo-lu.... The trouble is over, and the misfortune is at an end; the streams of the south flow, clothes and food are before us. The world is at rest, and the flying rain cannot again destroy us.’”[[223]]
In one of the writings of the disciples of Tao-tse, the tradition takes a fuller form. Kung-Kung, a bad spirit, enraged at having been overcome in war, gave such a blow against one of the pillars of the sky with his head that he broke it; and the vault of heaven fell in, and a tremendous flood overwhelmed the earth. But Niu-Noa overcame the water with wood, and made a boat to save himself, which could go far; and he polished a stone of five colours—the rainbow—and therewith he fastened the heavens, and lifted them up on a tortoise-shell. Then he killed the black dragon Kong-Kong, and choked the holes in heaven with the ashes of a pumpkin.[[224]] In the story of Jao there is also a faint trace of his connection with the rainbow, for he is said to have eyebrows coloured and shaped like rainbows.[[225]]
The Kamskadales say, “that in the remote ages when their great ancestor and God, Kutka, lived in Kamschatka, there was a mighty deluge. Many men were drowned therein, but some tried to save themselves in boats, but the waves overwhelmed them. Those who were saved were rescued on great rafts made of trees bound together, to which they retreated, taking food and their property with them. And that they might not drift out to sea, they anchored themselves with great stones, which they tied to the edges and let down into the water. And when the flood abated, they rested on the top of a high mountain.”[[226]]
A Lapp tradition is that God once submerged the world, saving only one brother and sister alive, whom He placed on Mount Passeware. When all the water disappeared, the children separated to wander over the earth, and see whether they alone remained alive. They met after three years, and then separated again, for they recognized one another as brother and sister. After three years they met, but turned their backs on one another once more for the same reason. Again they met after the lapse of three years, and again they parted; but when they met again, after three years’ further absence, they no longer recognized each other, and so they took one another in marriage; and of them all generations of men are come.[[227]]
Among the Kelts, the Deluge formed a prominent feature, and the ark was connected with their most sacred religious rites.
A Welsh legend is this:—“One of the most dreadful of events was the outbreak of Llyn Llion, the sea of seas, which overwhelmed the world and drowned all men except Dwyan and Dwyvach, who escaped in a bare boat and colonized Britain. This ship was one of the three masterpieces of Hu, and was built by the heavenly lord, Reivion; and it received into it a pair of every kind of beast when the Llyn Llion burst forth.” This Reivion is the same as Hu Cadarn, the discoverer of the vine; and it is said of him that “he built the ark laden with fruit, and it was stayed up in the water, and carried forward by serpents;” and of the rainbow it was said, that the Woman of the silver wheel, Arianrhod, to control the wizards of night and evil spirits of tempest, and out of love to the Britons, “wove the stream of the rainbow,—a stream which drives the storm from the earth, and makes its former destruction stay far from it, throughout the world’s circle.”[[228]]