Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/307

 The European Sky -god, 283

usages are alike common in Greek,^^'^ Indeed, correspond- ing to our nursery-rhyme — ^^s

" One's none, Two's some, Three's a many, Four's a penny, ' Five's a little hundred " —

a late Greek proverb'^'' says :

elf ovSeig, One's none,

Svo TToXXoi, Two's a many,

rpelg ox^og, Three's a crowd,

TiacjapeQ Travrjyvpig Four's a congregation.

We have, therefore, some warrant for supposing that for the unsophisticated Greek three was tantamount to " a number," a typical plurality. Hence Typhon the hundred- headed was also represented as a three-bodied monster both in literature^'^'' and in art.^^^ Scylla, according to one account, has not six heads but three.^^^ Pindar^^*^ and Horace,^*^ using a poet's license, might give Cerberus a hundred heads — Hesiod^*'-^ gave him fifty — but he was ordinarily thought to have three.^'^^ The number of heads

'^'' On the use of three as a superlative in Greek see H. Usener, " Dreiheit," in Rhein. Miiseiwi, 1903, N. F., Iviii., 357 f.

'^ Tylor, op. cit., i., 264.

•'^ Usener, loc. cit., p. 357, n i.

"^ Eur. Here, fur., 127 1 f.

'^' A pediment-group in /o;-^i--stone found on the Akropolis at Athens : see Perrot-Chipiez ZTwA de V Art dans T Antiquite, viii. , 217, pi. 3, Th. Wiegand, Die archaische Poros-Architektiir der Akropolis zu Athen, p. 73 ff-j pl- 4- A black-figured vase in the Museo Archeologico at Florence : see Wiegand, ib., p. 77, fig. 84.

'^^ Anaxilas ap. Athen., 558 A; Eustath., 1714, 37 f.

'^ Schol. Hes. theog., 311.

'*' Hor. od., 2. 13. 34.

'^2 Hes. theog., 311 f.

'" Roscher, Lex., ii., 11 26.