Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/339

Rh You will have noticed that I have qualified this opinion by limiting its application especially to the tropics. In more temperate latitudes, where there are great variations in its yearly course, the sun may on my principle be expected to bulk more largely in mythology, and, though it is taking me from my proper subject, I cannot refrain from a passing suggestion that the principle I am trying to establish may serve as a guide to the home of myths, highly developed myths having the sun as their subject-matter being more likely to have arisen in high latitudes.

There are certain frequent subjects of myth which are so constantly present and so familiar as to awaken doubts concerning the sufficiency of the generalisation I am trying to establish. Thus, fire is so familiar a feature of the surroundings of people at all known stages of culture that one would hardly expect it to be a frequent subject for the play of imagination. There are, however, certain features of fire and fire-making which serve to account for this apparent exception to our rule. Probably nowhere among people of low culture is the making of fire a frequent and familiar occurrence. Every one who has lived among rude people must be struck by the care taken to keep the fire alive on the hearth. Though fire is familiar, the act of making fire has just that occasional and recurrent character which affords the most suitable soil for the growth of myth. Further, fire is made by different methods, and it may well be that many of the myths dealing with fire have their basis, not in the origin of fire itself, but in the introduction of some new mode of making it.