Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/214

 184 King Midas and his Asss Ears.

captured the satyr Silenus, of whom it was believed that when he was drunk or asleep mortals could compel him to prophesy and sing by surrounding him with chains of flowers. Midas mixed wine in the well from which Silenus was wont to drink, and did not release him till he had held high dis- course on the nature of the world and the vanity of human life. The satyr also conferred upon him the power that whatever he touched should turn to gold, a story which in many forms is the common property of folklore.^ Another famous tale connected with this dynasty of Phrygia is that of the knot at Gordium which Alexander the Great, when he failed to untie it, cut through with his sword. Professor Frazer*' reasonably suggests that this magic virtue attached to the knot caused it to be regarded as the talisman with which the fate of the kingdom was believed to be bound up, and which, like other magic knots, was effective only so long as it remained tied.

Tales such as these invite much examination. But I am now concerned only with the story of the King Midas who had ears like those of an ass, which has come down to us in classical literature.^ These ears are said to have been fixed upon him as a punishment by Apollo, because, when Midas was called upon to judge between the lyre of Apollo and the pastoral pipe of Pan, he pronounced that the latter instrument was more harmonious. Midas tried to conceal this deformity by wearing a purple head-dress. But his slave, who discovered the secret, whispered it into a hole in the ground, where reeds grew which, when shaken by the wind, betrayed him.

We may first discuss the wanderings of this much- travelled tale.

^Yx2j£.x, Pausanias,vQ\. ii., p. 74: MaccuUoch, The Childhood of Fiction, pp. 220 et seq. ; Tawney, Kathd-saHt-sdgara, vol. ii., pp. 8, 453 ; Miss M. R. Cox, Cinderella, pp. 508 et seq.

^ The Golden Bough, vol. i., p. 403.

'Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi., 146-193 ; Aristophanes, Plutus, 287.