Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/194

 Huitzilopochtli, in Mexico, by the floating feather. The same set of ideas recurs in Grimm's Märchen Machandelboom, if we may suppose that in an older form the juniper tree and its berries aided the miraculous birth. It is customary to see in these wild myths a reflection of the Phrygian religious tradition, which leads up to the birth of Atys, who again is identified with Adonis as a hero of the spring and the reviving year. But the story has been introduced in this place as an example of the manner in which floating myths from all sources gravitate towards one great name and personality, like that of Zeus. It would probably be erroneous to interpret these and many other myths in the vast legend of Zeus, as if they had originally and intentionally described the phenomena of the heavens. They are, more probably, mere accretions round the figure of Zeus conceived as a personal god, a "magnified non-natural man."

Another example of local accretion is the fable that Zeus, after carrying off Ganymede to be his cup-bearer, made atonement to the royal family of Troy by the present of a vine of gold fashioned by Hephæstus.