Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/451

 Tlte European Sky -god. 421

latter apparently on behalf of girls at their marriage and of infants received into the phratry. The inscription gives us more than one formula of swearing used by the Labyadae, whose oaths prove that they recognised a triad of gods, Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo. We have met with the same triad before -^^ as a variation on the original Zeus-triad, -viz. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. I am thus strengthened in my belief that Apollo at Delphi was the chthonian "^^^ form of the sky-god, in a word the local Hades. But this in turn supports my contention that he was a poplar-god. For the poplar, as Botticher^°^ has shown, was the tree sacred to Hades. Suidas^°- states that it was "a chthonian tree," adding that it was said to grow on the banks of the Acheron and hence was called 'A^j^epwiV in Homer.^°^ Some held that the a^epfyi? was a kind of oak^"^; but it was commonly identified with the white poplar or \evKr]. Its legend is told by Servius.'^°^ Leuce, daughter of Oceanus, the fairest of all nymphs, was loved by Pluto, who carried her off to the world below. With him she spent her life ; and, when in due time she died, he solaced his love by causing the tree XevKrj to grow in the Elysian fields. If my speculations are in the main correct. Hades the lover of AevKt] is to be identified, not only with Zeus Aey/caio?, but also with Apollo the god of the poplar {uTreWov).

The foregoing argument is strengthened by the fact that the same alternatives, oak and poplar, occur in the case of other solar personages. The Heliades, daughters of the

^ Folk-Lore, xv., 279.

300 Porphyrius ap. Serv. in. Verg. eel., 5. 66, declares " triplicem esse Apollinis potestatem : et eundem esse Solem apud superos, Liberum patrem in terris, Apollinem apud inferos. Vediovis, the chthonian form of the Roman Jupiter, "was commonly said to be Apollo" (Gell., 5. 12. 12).


 * ^' Botticher, Baunikultus, p. 441 ff.

^''■- Suid. s. V. XevKTi.

^^ Cp. Ety7n. ?nag., 180, 49 ff., Serv. iti Verg. Aen., 5. 134.

^^ Schol. //.., 16. 482 <p^■Yov sl^oQ.

3°* Serv. in Verg. ec/., 7. 61.