Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/461

 Colour Symbolism. 153

The Greek poets referred to the " yellow " or " golden " Demeter as such because she had " yellow " or " golden " hair. It is obvious that an attribute of Demeter is revealed by her hair colour. She personifies gold in one of her aspects. The goddesses Hera, Athene and Aphrodite had likewise golden hair. ^ They acquired the gold of their hair, we are informed, by bathing in the river Xanthus and not because they were supposed to personify ripe corn. Gold was washed from river sand, and, like amber, was regarded as a life-giving product of water. Gold was, as has been indicated, also a solar metal ; the golden sun rose at the beginning from water, and was therefore, like life- giving gold, a product of water. Hathor, as I have re- minded you, personified gold. As a solar deity she was Nuht, the female form of nub (gold) and the giver of life like the yellow Isis.^

That the " Yellow Osiris " cannot be regarded merely as a personification of yellow corn is evident when we find that the Egyptians had also a " Yellow Ptah," a " Yellow Set," a " Yellow Heka " (god of magic) and a " Yellow Thoth, ' ' while they painted women and certain foreigners and children yellow, and used the same colour for incense fire.*

The evidence regarding the Black Osiris and the Black Demeter is, like that regarding the Yellow Osiris and the Yellow Demeter, unfavourable to the narrow vegetation theory. Demeter assumes her blackness when she retires to her cave as an angry deity. She was not merely an earth goddess, or more properly an underworld goddess, but also a goddess of Death ; the dead were " Demeter's folk." She protected tombs, as is shown in the invocation quoted by Farnell, " I commit this tomb to the guardian-

^ Greek, Slavic and Celtic fairies, nyrhphs and mermaids had yellow or golden hair.

- Jupiter as " a shower of gold " is a life-giver and the father of the son of Danae.

3 Borchardt, Sa'hu-re, Plates XX, XLVIII, etc.