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 expressions of the savage imagination. We have not thought it necessary to explain (with Sir George Cox) the mutilation of the son of Ætes as a myth of sunset (Ar. Myth, i. 153) "a vivid image of the young sun as torn to pieces among the vapours that surround him, while the light, falling in isolated patches on the sea, seems to set bounds to the encroaching darkness." Is the "encroaching darkness" Æetes? But Æetes, in myth, was the son of the Sun, while Sir George Cox recognises him as "the breath or motion of the air." Well, Jason was (apparently) the Sun, and Apsyrtus is the young Sun, and Medea is the Dawn, and Helle is the evening Air, and Phryxus is the cold Air, and the fleece is the Sunlight, and Æetes is the breath of the air, and the child of the Sun, and why they all behave as they do in the legend is a puzzle which we cannot pretend to unravel.

Did space permit, we might offer analyses of other myths. The Odyssey we have dealt with in the introduction to our prose translation (Butcher and Lang ed. 1883). The myths of Perseus and of Urvasi and Pururavas may be treated in a similar way. As to the relations between the higher myths and Märchen, civilised or savage, there is this to be said: where the Märchen is diffused among many distinct races, while the epic use of the same theme is found only among one or two cultivated peoples, it is