Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/338

316 region as Melanesia, where the seasons are remarkably constant and regular, myths about the winds scarcely occur. The importance of these winds and their accompanying seasons in the life of the people is enormous; in one form or another ideas connected with them permeate the whole lives of the people, and yet it is not about them that one finds myths, but rather about the inconstant appearance of the rainbow or the meteor.

I turn now to the heavenly bodies, which probably at all times and in all places have been the most frequent subject of myth. In recent works on mythology, especially in Germany, the prominent place formerly occupied by the sun has been largely taken by the moon. It is in the moon that many modern mythologists see the subject of the early speculations they believe to underlie so many of the myths of the world, both civilised and uncivilised. Without in any way committing myself to accept the general views of the modern German school, I believe that it is right in the importance it attaches to the moon rather than to the sun, at any rate in tropical countries, and in the ruder stages of culture. If this be so, it is exactly what is to be expected on the principle I am now trying to establish. In tropical countries the daily course of the sun is almost exactly the same from day to day, year in, year out, while the variations of the moon are such as can hardly fail to arouse attention and wonder. Not only are there the changes of its times of appearance in relation to the distribution of night and day, not only is there its total disappearance for a time in every month, but there are such changes of form as cannot but arouse the speculative tendency, if it is to be aroused by anything. While the constancy of the sun's movements make it the daily means of orientation in time, its uniformity and familiarity is such as to make it a far less appropriate subject for the mythic fancy than the changeable and inconstant moon.