Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/99

Rh treating of folklore and kindred matters; and indeed some of Sir Alfred's strictures call for a reply. He has in some places brought a sweeping indictment against the study of folklore, which we believe cannot be substantiated.

We must thank Sir Alfred Lyall for urging the claims of a modified Euhemerism. It is strange but true that some authorities have been inclined to deny the existence of deified men as a part of ancient religions. Exaggeration seems to be the curse of such studies as mythology. Like Mr. Casaubon, most men seem to seek one key to fit all the mythologies. First, everything in heaven and earth is a sun-myth; again, it is averred to be the dawn; another seems to think intoxication is the source of all religions. Ten years ago, totems and corn-spirits swept everything before them; but they have only scotched the enemy, for now Herr Gilbert will have it that all Greek myths at least come from the clouds. Sir Alfred Lyall rises and reminds us that we have forgotten all about deified men; and though his common sense keeps him from going so far as the Sun and Cloud schools, yet he is undoubtedly too ready to be rationalistic, as we shall show. But his observations on the process of deification in India are of high value. They are not the scholar's deductions; they describe facts provable and proven. No one can call Nicholson a corn-spirit; and in India, any person who strikes the imagination as strong or remarkable has a chance of being deified. Such facts as he adduces give strong presumption that many ancient cults rest on a similar deification. Among the Greeks, it is difficult to draw the line between the worship of dead ancestors and the worship of the rulers of Hades. In the ancient votive and sepulchral reliefs the same scheme, the same symbols are used for both. The "heroes" were universally believed by the Greeks to have been men, and they were worshipped by them for their beneficent powers or from fear. We can sometimes trace how step by step the "hero" grows into a god. Æsculapius is a man in Homer; his cult was long local, and confined to his reputed descendants or those of his tribe; then, perhaps by the accident of association with the healing spring in Trikka, his fame as a healer became great. The tribe which worshipped him spread over all Greece, and carried the worship with them; and in the fifth century he is already one of the most famous gods of the Greek world. Down to the latest times one of the commonest