Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/170

Rh 158 M Y T M Z E lets her shine in full beauty. The Andaman Islanders account for the white brilliance of the moon by saying that he is daubing himself with white clay, a custom common in savage and Greek mysteries. The Red Men accounted to the Jesuits for the spherical forms of sun and moon by saying that their appearance was caused bv their bended bows. The Moon in Greek myths loved Endy- mion, and was bribed to be the mistress of Pan by the present of a fleece, like the Dawn in Australia, whose unchastity was rewarded by a gift of a red cloak of opossum skin. Solar and lunar myths usually account for the observed phenomena of eclipse, waning and waxing, sunset, spots on the moon, and so forth, by various mythical adventures of the animated heavenly beings. In modern folk-lore the moon is a place to which bad people are sent, rather than a woman or a man. The mark of the hare in the moon has struck the imagination of Germans, Mexicans, Hottentots, Cingalese, and produced myths among all these races. 1 Myths of Death. Few savage races regard death as a natural event. All natural deaths are supernatural with them. Men are assumed to be naturally immortal, hence a series of myths to account for the origin of death. Usually some custom or &quot; taboo &quot; is represented as having been broken, when death has followed. In New Zealand, Maui was not properly baptized. In Australia, a woman was told not to go near a certain tree where a bat lived ; she infringed the prohibition, the bat fluttered out, and men died. The Ningphoos were dismissed from paradise, and became mortal, because one of them bathed in water which had been tabooed (Dalton, p. 13). In the Atharva-Veda, Yama, like Maui in New Zealand, first &quot;spied out the path to the other world,&quot; which all men after him have taken. In the Rig-Veda (x. 14), Yama &quot;sought out a road for many.&quot; In the Solomon Islands (Jour. Anth. Inst., Feb. 1881), &quot; Koevari was the author of death, by resuming her cast-off skin. &quot; The same story is told in the Banks Islands. In the Greek myth (Hesiod, Works and Days, 90), men lived without &quot;ill diseases that give death to men&quot; till the cover was lifted from the forbidden box of Pandora. As to the myths of Hades, the place of the dead, they are far too many to be men tioned in detail. In almost all the gates of hell are guarded by fierce beasts, and in Ojibway, Finnish, Greek, Papuan, and Japanese myths no mortal visitor may escape from Hades who has once tasted the food of the dead. Myths of Fire-stealing. Those current in North America (where an animal is commonly the thief) will be found in Bancroft, vol. iv. The Australian version, singularly like one Greek legend, is given by Brough Smyth. Stories of the theft of Prometheus are recorded by Hesiod, ^Eschylus, and their commentators. Muir and Kuhn may be consulted for Vedic fire-stealing. Heroic and Romantic Myths. In addition to myths which are clearly intended to explain facts of the universe, most nations have their heroic and romantic myths. Familiar examples are the stories of Perseus, Odysseus, Sigurd, the Indian epic stories, the adventures of Ilmarinen and Wainamoinen in the Kalewala, and so forth. To discuss these myths as far as they can be considered apart from divine and explanatory tales would demand more space than we have at our disposal. It will become evident to any student of the romantic myths that they consist of different arrange ments of a rather limited set of incidents. These incidents have been roughly classified by Von Hahn. 2 We may modify his arrangement as follows. There is (1) the story of a bride or bridegroom who transgresses a commandment of a mystic nature, and disappears as a result of the sin. The bride sins as in Eros and Psyche, Freja and Oddur, Pururavas and Urvasi. 3 The sin of Urvasi and Psyche was seeing their husbands naked in the latter case. The sin was against &quot; the manner of women.&quot; Now the rule of etiquette which forbids seeing or naming the husband (especially the latter) is of the widest distribution. The offence in the Welsh form of the story is naming the partner a thing forbidden among early Greeks and modern Zulus. Presumably the tale (with its example of the sanction) sur vives the rule in many cases. (2) &quot;Penelope formula.&quot; The man leaves the wife and returns after many years. A good example occurs in Chinese legend. (3) Formula of the attempt to avoid fate or the prophecy of an oracle. This incident takes numerous shapes, as in the story of the fatal birth of Perseus, Paris, the Egyptian prince shut upinatower, the birth of (Edipus. (4) Slaughter of a monster. This is best known in the case of Andromeda and Perseus. (5) Flight, by aid of an animal usually, from cannibalism, human sacrifice, or incest. The Greek example is Phrixus, Helle, and the ram of the golden fleece. (6) Flight of a lady and her lover from a giant father or wizard father. Jason and Medea furnish the Greek example. (7) The youngest brother the successful adventurer, and the head of the family. We have seen the example of Greek mythic illus- 1 See Cornhill Magazine, &quot;How the Stars got their Names&quot; (18S2, p. 35); and &quot;Some Solar and Lunar Myths &quot; (1882, p. 440) ; Max Mtiller, Selected Assays. i. 609-611. 2 Griechische und Albanesische Marchen, i. 45. 3 Tenth Book of Rig-Veda and &quot; Brahmana &quot; of Yajur-Veda ; Mliller, Selected Essays, i. 410. trations of &quot;jiingsten-recht,&quot; or supremacy of the youngest, in the Hesiodic myth of Zeus, the youngest child of Cronus. (8) Bride given to whoever will accomplish difficult adventures, or vanquish girl in race. The custom of giving a bride without demanding bride-price, in reward for a great exploit, is several times alluded to in the Iliad. In Greek heroic myth Jason thus wins Medea, and (in the race) Milanion wins Atalanta. In the Kalewala much of the Jason cycle, including this part, recurs. The rider through the fire wins Brunhild but this may belong to another cycle of ideas. (9) The grateful beasts, who, having been aided by the hero, aid him in his adventures. Melampus and the snakes is a Greek example. This story is but one specimen of the personal human character of animals in myths, already referred to the intellectual condition of savages. (10) Story of the strong man and his adventures, and stories of the comrades Keen-eye, Quick- ear, and the rest. Jason has comrades like these, as had Ilmarinen and Heracles, the Greek &quot;strong man.&quot; (11) Adventure with an ogre, who is blinded and deceived by a pun of the hero s. Odysseus and Polyphemus is the Greek example. (12) Descent into Hades of the hero. Heracles, Odysseus, Wainamoinen in the Kale wala, are the best-known examples in epic literature. These are twelve specimens of the incidents, to which we may add (13) &quot;the false bride,&quot; as in the poem of Berte aux grans Pies, and (14) the legend of the bride said to produce beast-children. The belief in the latter phenomenon is very common in Africa, and in the Arabian Nights, and we have seen it in America. Of these formulae (chosen because illustrated by Greek heroic legends) (1) is a sanction of barbarous nuptial etiquette ; (2) is an obvious ordinary incident ; (3) is moral, and both (3) and (1) may pair off with all the myths of the origin of death from the infringe ment of a taboo or sacred command ; (4) would naturally occur wherever, as on the west coast of Africa, human victims have been offered to sharks or other beasts ; (5), the story of flight from a horrible crime, occurs in some stellar myths, and is an easy and natural invention ; (6), flight from wizard father or husband, is found in Bushman and Namaqua myth, where the husband is an elephant ; (7), success of youngest brother, may have been an ex planation and sanction of &quot;jiingsten-recht,&quot; Maui in New Zealand is an example, and Herodotus found the story among the Scythians ; (8), the bride given to successful adventurer, is consonant with heroic manners as late as Homer ; (9) is no less consonant with the belief that beasts have human sentiments and supernatural powers ; (10), the &quot; strong man,&quot; is found among Eskimo and Zulus, and was an obvious invention when strength was the most admired of qualities ; (11), the baffled ogre, is found among Basques and Irish, and turns on a form of punning which inspires an &quot;ananzi&quot; story in West Africa ; (12), descent into Hades, is the natural result of the savage conception of Hades, and the tale is told of actual living people in the Solomon Islands and in New Caledonia ; Eskimo Angekoks can and do descend into Hades, it is the prerogative of the necro mantic magician; (13), &quot;the false bride&quot;, found among the Zulus, does not permit of such easy explanation, naturally, in Zululand, the false bride is an animal ; (14), the bride accused of bearing beast-children, has already been disposed of ; the belief is inevitable where no distinction worth mentioning is taken between men and animals. English folk-lore has its woman who bore rabbits. The formulae here summarized, with others, are familiar in the marchen of Samoyeds, Zulus, Bushmen, Hottentots, and Red Indians. 4 For an argument intended to show that Greek heroic myths may be adorned and classified marchen, in themselves survivals of savage fancy, see Fortnightly Review, May 1872, &quot;Myths and Fairy Tales.&quot; The usual explanation is that marchen are degenerate heroic myths. This does not explain the marchen of African, and per haps not of Siberian races. In this sketch of mythology that of Rome is not included, be cause its most picturesque parts are borrowed from or adapted into harmony with the mythology of Greece. Japanese, Chinese, and Persian matters are omitted from want of information, and because of the extreme obscurity of the subject. Greece, India, and Scandi navia will supply a fair example of Aryan mythology (without entering on the difficult Slavonic and Celtic fields). There is perhaps no single work which contains a good comparative view of civilized and savage mythologies. Tylor s Primitive Culture comes nearest to what a reader interested in truly comparative mythology desires. As a rule, writers like Cox, Gubernatis, and other &quot;elemental&quot; mythologists lay little stress on non-Aryan stories. Gubernatis s Zoological Mythology and Cox s Mythology of the Aryan People, must be consulted with caution. Schwartz, in his Der Ursprung der Mythologie, has got hold of a correct idea (the belief in meteoric animals), but he works his idea too hard. The writings of Max Miiller, Muir s Ancient Sanskrit Texts, and other standard works have already been repeatedly quoted. The old writers, like Bryant, are useless, except for occa sional references to ancient authorities. There are many useful references in Sir Brown s Great Dionysiak Myth, but the reasonings need not be adopted. As a rule the German treatises adopt various forms of the &quot;meteorological&quot; and &quot;solar&quot; hypotheses. (A. L.) MYTILENE. See LESBOS. MZENSK, another form of MTSENSK (q.v.). 4 See Castren, Callaway, Theal, Bleek, Schoolcraft, whose Algic Researches must be read with caution.