Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/182

 either one of the old stock of similar myths, such as we find among savages, or has been moulded by some poet on the old model. In the same way we might interpret Myrrha, who becomes an incense-bearing tree in her grief and shame, and the hyacinth, sprung from the blood of a favourite of Apollo, and so with the rest. These myths are nature-myths, so far as they attempt to account for a fact in Nature, namely, for the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual. But nothing can be more futile than to seek in every Greek story of the origin of a plant for some allegory or some old mythical statement about the vast phenomena of the heavens at dawn, as in Mr. Max Müller's system, or during tempest, as in that of Kuhn and Schwartz. True nature-myths are, as a rule, sufficiently transparent. They manifestly offer an answer, however absurd, scientifically considered, to some question about Nature. How are the movements of sun and moon to be accounted for? What are the stars? Why are beasts and birds marked in this way or that, and whence came their peculiar habits? What is the origin of trees and flowers? Wherefore have geological formations and isolated boulders their more remarkable shapes? Nature-myths were once replies to such questionings, or to the curiosity which asks about the cause of thunder, and is put off with Thor and his hammer, or with the Zulu "lord" amusing himself, or with Indra darting the bolt fashioned by Tvashtri at the serpent Ahi or Vrittra, or with the Zulu and Dacotah faith in the thunder-bird, a bird that has