Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/180

 156 Reviews.

the sense of "pregnant woman;" or afpos, we are told, may be a weak form of yetpfios, kidney. Verily the love-goddess has in these latter days fallen on more evil times than even when the bard Demodocus told scandalous tales about her.

And, even granting that Zeus = Dyaus, how are we to account for the oak of Dodona, the doves, and other fragments of obscure cults which shelter under his wing ? How elastic this method of dealing with myth may be illustrated from the analysis of Hermes. " Hermes, as the son of Sarama, belongs certainly to the dawn and the twilight, but the morning wind belongs by right to the same domain, and as the twilight of morning and evening was frequently conceived as one, the god of the morning may well finish his course as a god of the evening. In this way the various characteristics of Hermes, as messenger of the gods, as winged, as the robber of the cows, and as musician, may all be traced back to one and the same concept" (vol. ii., p. 678).

While then we disagree with the methods and conclusions of the school of which Professor Max jNIiiller is leader, we gladly recognise the learning and fertility of resource in which this book abounds. It is in a large measure due to his writings that the comparative study of myths has gained such popularity. As he says himself, " Why then should not the followers of these three schools [the genealogical or linguistic, the analogical, the ethno- logical] work in harmony ? They have the same end in view, to rationalise what seems irrational in the ancient beliefs and customs of the world. Let the members of each do their work conscien- tiously, seriously, and in a scholar-like spirit, and whatever of solid gold they can bring to light from their different shafts will be most welcome" (vol. i., p. 182). It would have been well if this spirit had prevailed throughout these volumes. They contain, it need hardly be said, much very fascinating reading; and where this veteran in the craft illustrates the " many-sidedness " of the old gods, the danger of the indiscriminate use of terms like fetishism and totemism without adequate definition, the caution against deriving the gods of Greece en masse from Semitic lands, he will carry most competent scholars with him.