Page:Segnius Irritant or Eight Primitive Folk-lore Stories.pdf/60

 ance of the sun during some weeks of winter within the Arctic circle, and its re-appearance and subsequent marriage, in spring, with the re-awaking and glittering forces of life and movement that have conjured it back once more. In what is probably the greatest modern novel, however, Flaubert’s Salambô, the solar myth form has been scrupulously preserved, only that, being transplanted to the semitropic soil of North Africa, the annual solar myth has melted into its microcosm of a diurnal one, as, in fact, happens more or less wherever the original Arctic epic fairy story drifts south. We have had instances, but not very marked ones, in the case of the Venetian fairy stories. The similar case of the Vedic and Brahmin mythology is still more to the point. When the winter setting is removed, the allegory in its original form ceases to appeal to the senses of the popular audience, and little by little modifies itself to reflect more closely the new climatic conditions. Cervantes’ Don Quixote also partakes more or less of the pature of a solar myth, and most likely, upon analysis, it would be found that many of our most famous novels were modelled upon the same block, not perhaps always consciously, bub owing to the instinctive conservatism of art and literature and its loyal adherence to and reliance upon the traditions of the craft.

In conclusion, it may be noted that, as I have already pointed out, two of the most famous modern lyrics, Heine’s Lorely and Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott are merely versified forms of the seven days’ epilogue or anti-climax of the primitive story of The Three Citrons.

If the reader looks at the graphic plan of the story, and reflects a little, he will perceive that, whatever the state of the moon, when the sun disappeared on the 1st of December, the relative position of the castle of lead and the castle of silver can always be imagined as in the story and diagram. In certain cases, however, the distance between the castle of silver and that of gold would be increased. The mysterious disappearance of the sun into the underworld for a considerable period of time is sufficient to account for all the various Indian and Egyptian solar myths as well as those of Central and Northern Europe and Asia; but no other natural phenomenon is in the least degree sufficient—eclipses are too rare and intermittent, the diurnal disappearance too brief, frequent, and commonplace. When the primitive northern folk perceived that the ebb or drain underground of the life-forces in operation upon the surface of the ground, as it intensified, had gradually affected the sky also, and finally pulled the golden apple of the sun underground as well—for with their rude scientific knowledge they naturally inverted cause and effect according to our scientific way of looking at things—they must have turned to the pale image of the sun, the waxing and waning moon, as a pledge that the disappearance of the vital forces of nature was not permanent. No wonder if they associated it with those ebbing forces, and if the juices of lifg, the Soma, the water of immortality, became indissolubly connected with the waxing and waning, but yet, relatively speaking, constant moon, so that at last they came to be looked upon as almost one and the same thing.