Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/322

304 assagai bears the peaceful name of U-simbela-banta-bami, He-digs-up-for-my-children. A similar custom prevailed among the New Zealanders. The traditions of their ancestral migrations tell how Ngahue made from his jasper stone those two sharp axes whose names were Tutauru and Hauhau-te-rangi; how with these axes were shaped the canoes Arawa and Tainui; how the two stone anchors of Te Arawa were called Toka-parore or Wrystone, and Tu-te-rangi-haruru or Like-to-the-roaring-sky. These legends do not break off in a remote past, but carry on a chronicle which reaches into modern times. It is only lately, the Maoris say, that the famous axe Tutauru was lost, and as for the ear-ornament named Kaukau-matua, which was made from a chip of the same stone, they declare that it was not lost till 1846, when its owner, Te Heuheu, perished in a landslip. Up from this savage level the same childlike habit of giving personal names to lifeless objects may be traced, as we read of Thor's hammer, Miölnir, whom the giants know as he comes flying through the air, or of Arthur's brand, Excalibur, caught by the arm clothed in white samite when Sir Bedivere flung him back into the lake, or of the Cid's mighty sword Tizona, the Firebrand, whom he vowed to bury in his own breast were she overcome through cowardice of his.

The teachings of a childlike primæval philosophy ascribing personal life to nature at large, and the early tyranny of speech over the human mind, have thus been two great and, perhaps, greatest agents in mythologic development. Other causes, too, have been at work, which will be noticed in connexion with special legendary groups, and a full list, could it be drawn up, might include as contributories many other intellectual actions. It must be thoroughly understood, however, that such investigation of the processes of myth-formation demands a lively sense of the state of men's