Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/496

330 a Jesuit mission report of 1606 declares to have been a horse-god worshipped In the vicinity of Ludzen and Rossltten, in the extreme south-east of Lithuania.$85$ These are not, however, of mythological value, and the only Baltic figure remaining for our consideration here is that of the celestial smith. This smith has his forge in the sky, on the edge either of the sea or of the Daugawa; and there he makes spurs and a girdle for "God's son," and a crown and ring for the sun's daughter$86$—in other words, from his smithy come the rays of the rising sun and the solar disk itself. Mannhardt regards this smith as the glow of dawn or of sunset, and compares him to the Finno-Ugric Il-marinen, the Teutonic Wieland, and the Greek Hephaistos.$87$ A still closer analogue, however, is the Vedic Tvaṣṭṛ, who wrought the cup which contains the nectar of the gods;$88$ and it is even possible that he is ultimately the same as the Slavic deity Svarog.$89$ His name is given as Telyaveli or Telyavelik in the Russian redaction (dating from 1261) of the Byzantine historian John Malalas, which says that he "forged for him (Perkúnas) the sun as it shines on earth, and set the sun in heaven."$90$ Such are the pitifully scanty remnants of what must once have been a great mythology. Yet, fragmentary though they are, they possess a distinctive value. They help to explain the migrations of important divisions of our own Indo-European race—a problem into which we cannot enter here; they cast light upon, and are themselves illuminated by, the mythologies of far-off India and Iran; they reveal the wealth of poetic imagery and fantasy inherent in the more primitive strata of our race; they show how baseless is the charge of gross materialism, selfishness, and fear to which so many shallow and prejudiced thinkers would fain trace the origin of religious thought. We may lament the paucity of the extant Baltic myths; yet let us not forget to be grateful and thankful that even a few have survived.