Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/637

Rh Here Typho is represented fiery like Swart in the Norse lay, and his eyes glare fire, which reminds one of Balor's evil eye in the Irish tale. Still more remarkable is the fact that Hermes, who restores to Zeus the use of his hands and feet, has a fairly exact counterpart in Dian Cecht, the skilled physician of Irish mythology, which makes him provide Nuada with a silver hand of wonderful ingenuity to replace that which he had lost in the first battle of Moytura. Thus Zeus, who is found to be represented in Irish by Nuada, and in Teutonic by Tiu, Norse Týr, is overtaken by much the same sort of misfortune as Nuada and Týr in carrying on much the same sort of struggle with the same sort of antagonists, and he gets over his misfortune with the aid of the same sort of friend as Nuada did. The conclusion seems unavoidable that the coincidence is not the result of a mere accident; nor would it be to the point for the student of Greek literature to tell us, that the story of Zeus' conflict with Typho, or at any rate the details just mentioned, are only to be found in the writings of late authors, unless he could show that those late authors were the inventors of them; for even had no scrap of Greek literature been lost to this day, which is far from being the case, there is no reason to suppose that all the ancient legends and