Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/27

Rh did not go so far as to suggest that he had not an earthly one. Equally, too, like other heroes, his mother was a princess, though there was a reason for this in the folk-lore of Accad which did not exist in the folk-lore of Greece, or Rome, or Persia. Among the Accadians the wife and not the husband was the head of the family; descent was counted through her; and it was only through the mother, therefore, that the hero could claim a royal ancestry. As the folk-lore of Accad thus supplies an explanation of a fact which, Mr. McLennan notwithstanding, is not supplied in the folk-lore of an Aryan people, it is difficult not to suggest that the Aryan story of the exposed but eventually triumphant hero was originally disseminated from the banks of the Euphrates.

How Sargon obtained his rights and became “the established king,” which is the meaning of his name, we are not told, though it is hinted that it was through the intervention of Istar, the Ashtoreth of the Phœnicians, the Aphroditè of the Greeks. Perhaps some other version of the legend will be found which will throw light on this point.

My next specimen of ancient Babylonian folk-lore is a mere fragment, but we possess it in its original Accadian text as well as in the Assyrian translation. Its character will best be judged from the following rendering of it:

1. “(The child) who had neither father nor mother, who knew not his father or his mother

2. “Into the fish pond (?) he came, into the street he went.

3. “From the mouth of the dogs one took him, from the mouth of the ravens one led (him) away.

4. “Before the soothsayer one took him from their mouth.

5. “The soles of his feet with the soothsayer’s seal underneath him were marked.

6. “To the nurse he was given.

7. “To the nurse for three years his grain, his food, his shirt, and his clothing were assured.