Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/495

Rh "God's son" hangs his girdle, and the sun's daughter her crown.$73$ When, in other dáinos, the solar jug is broken by "little John," this obviously refers to the waning strength of the sun's rays after Midsummer Night's Eve (St. John's Eve, June 23).$74$

When the sun is drowned in the sea,$75$ her daughter is naturally regarded as an orphan; and thus we are enabled to understand a dainà that tells how "God" makes a golden hedge (the sunset) to which his sons (strictly speaking, here only the evening star) come riding on sweating horses. Here they find an orphan girl (twilight) whom they make its guardian, charg- ing her not to break off the golden boughs (the rays of the setting sun); but she disobeys and flees to the valley of "Mary's" bath-chamber (the darkness of night). Thither "God" and his sons come, but refuse forgiveness for her transgression of their commands. "Mary" is perhaps, as we have suggested in another connexion,$76$ a Christianized substitute for the planet Venus as the evening star.

In the story of the daughters of the sun we have found frequent mention of a sea, and the sun herself sails, as we know,$77$ across a silver sea. This sea, like the brooks and springs which have also occurred,$78$ is none other than the celestial ocean, rivers, etc., which are so prominent a feature of Indo-Iranian mythology;$79$ and the "Great Water" (Daugawa), though now identified by the Letts with the river Dvina, is to be interpreted in similar fashion.$80$ This Daugawa flows black at evening because it is full of the souls of the departed, and at midnight a star descends to "the house of souls."$81$ Very appropriately, therefore, the sun's daughter has the key to the realm of the dead; and at evening "Mother Earth" (Semmes Mâte), from whom one asks whatever may be lost or hidden,$82$ is besought to give this key.$83$ In the afternoon "God's children" shut the door of heaven, so that one should be buried in the morning; and, accordingly, the sun's daughter is entreated to give a key that an only brother's grave may be unlocked.$84$

We have a few 'dáinos in honour of a deity Usching, whom