Page:Mythology Among the Hebrews.djvu/139

Rh in the myths on which the Phenician cosmogony was based. Philo Herennius' authority, who calls the opener Chrysôr, says of him: 'He was the first man who fared in ships.' This trait, which is far from fitting into the frame of the portrait of Hephaestus presents a very attractive and simple conception held by the men of the myth-forming age. We generally find in myths of the rising and setting of the sun, that the view which lives longest and conforms most naturally to the nature of the phenomenon is that the rising sun ascends out of the river or the sea, and that the setting sun sinks into the water.

as Shakespeare says, or as a German poet, feeling an echo of the meaning of the old myth, speaks still more expressively:

In a Swedish popular song, a King of England has two daughters, the elder black as night (Night itself); the other, younger, beautiful and brilliant like the day (Day itself). The latter goes forward followed by the other, who comes and throws her into the sea. In this popular story, also,