Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/114

82 BOOK I.

friends is drawn out in the more full detail characteristic of Western legends. The Hindu hero helps eagles only; Boots succours a raven, a salmon, and a wolf, and the latter having devoured his horse bears him on its back with the speed of light to the hou?2 of the giant who has turned his brothers into stone.^ There he finds, not his mother, like Balna's son, but the beautiful princess who is to be his bride, and who promises to find out, if she can, where the giant keeps his heart, for, wherever it be, it is not in his body. The and the sun, she is clothed with the skin of a cat, a dog, or an ass, or, as in the instance of Allerleirauh, of all the beasts of the land. In each case, after escaping from desperate dangers by the help of a horse or a bull, she becomes a scullion, whose abode is a cellar into which the light of day cannot penetrate. From this noisome dungeon she is rescued by a threefold ordeal. In the English story of Catskin, the cook, in the first case, dashes a basin of water in her face ; in the second, he breaks her head with the ladle ; in the third, he smites her with the skimmer. In other versions the person who so ill-treats her under her mean disguise is the king or prince, whom she after- wards marries ; but the three smitings, followed each by a greater display of splendour, are to be found in all. ^Vhence came these features? That they could suggest themselves spon- taneously to the fancy of savages in all parts of the world is beyond all bounds of belief. In its oldest shape seemingly the myth comes before us in the Vedic story of Apala (the water-maiden), who comes down from the mountain to draw water, and in so doing draws Soma, or ambrosia, which she presents to the sun-god Indra. But the maiden is ugly and deformed, and to free her of her loathsomeness, Indra consents to pass over her three times. This threefold smiting is brought out more clearly in a legend of the Brihaddevata, in which the water-maiden beseeches Indra to make for her a beautiful and faultless skin. Indra accordingly passes over her with wheel, chariot, and rudder. By three efforts he takes off her ugly skin, and Apala appears in a beautiful one. The .Soma which Apala brings to Indra becomes in the popular stories of Europe the soup which the kitchen drudge pre- pares for the king, or prince, or lord in the story, who in each case marries her. But the three smitings of Indra constitute his marriage with the maiden, and there can be little doubt that the rudder of his chariot in the torn bosom of Apala has a fuller signification. This legend is cited in the " Zo- ological IMythology " of De Gubernatis, of which Mr. Coote, Folk Lore Record, vol. iii. part i., speaks as "one of the most remarkable combinations of erudi- tion and imagination which this age has produced."

' The constant agency of wolves and foxes in the German stories at once suggests a comparison with the Myrmi- dons whom the Homeric poet so elabo- rately likens to wolves, with Phoibos himself as the wolf-god of yEschylos, and with the jackal princes of eastern story. In Grimm's story of " The Two Brothers," the animals succoured are the hare, fox, wolf, and lion, and they each, as in the Hindu tale, offer their young as ministers to the hero who has spared their lives. In the beautiful legend of the Golden Bird, the youngest brother and the fox whom by his kind- ness he secures as his ally, alike repre- sent the disguised chieftain of Ithaka, and the rajas of the Hindu stories. The disguise in which the youngest brother returns home is put on by him- self. He has exchanged clothes with a beggar ; the fox is of course enchanted, and can be freed only by destro}-ing the body in which he is imprisoned. But this idea of enchantment would inevi- tably be suggested by the magic power of Athene in seaming the face of Odys- seus with the wrinkles of a squalid old age, while the Christianised North- man would convert Athene herself into a witch. In this story the mere presence of the disguised youth, who was supposed to be murdered, just as the suitors sup- posed Odysseus to be dead, makes the golden bird begin to sing, the golden horse begin to eat, and the beautiful maiden to cease weeping. The meaning is obvious.