Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/125

Rh CHAP. V.

the language of the Deccan tale-teller (and in the absence of any admission to this effect we cannot suppose this), we may fairly quote the words as almost a paraphrase from the Odyssey : —

TCiiv S' 09 Tis XwTOio (pdyoi jiieXiriSia. Kapirov, oxiK er' d7ro77€rAat iraKiv ¥iOeev ouSe veecrBai, aW' avTOv ^ovKovto fxer^ avSpdcri A<aTO<pa.yoi<Tiv Xcorhv ipeTrrSiieyoi fxevifjuv v6<ttov T€ a6ea0ai.^

The nautch-woman here has also the character of Kirke, and the charm represents the KaKo. cjidpixaKa which turn the companions of Eurylochos into swine, while Kirke's wand is wielded by the sor- cerers who are compelled to restore to life the victims whom they had turned into stone, and by the Rakshas from whom Ramchundra, in the story of Truth's Triumph, seeks to learn its uses. "The rod," she replies, "has many supernatural powers; for instance, by simply uttering your wish, and waving it in the air, you can conjure up a mountain, a river, or a forest, in a moment of time." At length the wanderer is found ; but Ranch Phul Ranee and Seventee Bai have the insight of Eurykleia, and discern his true majesty beneath the fakeer's garb.^ " The raja came towards them so changed that

ture is to kiss him, and the mischief is done by his gre) hound, who recognises him as Argos knows Odysseus. Camp- bell, i. 34. > Ocl ix. 97, ^ This garment of humiliation ap- pears in almost innumerable legends. In the German story of the Golden Bird the prince puts it on when, on approaching his father's house, he is told that his brothers are plotting his death. In the tale of the Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn, the wanderer who comes in with a coat torn to rags has a knapsack from which he can pro- duce any number of men, and a horn (the horn of the Maruts) at whose blast the strongest walls fall down. He thus takes on his enemies a vengeance pre- cisely like that of Odj'sseus, and for the same reason. In the story of the Golden Goose, Dummling, the hero who never fails in any exploit, is de- spised for his wretched appearance. In that of the Gold Child the brilliant hero comes before the king in the guise of a humble bear-hunter. The tale of the King of the Golden Mountain repeats the story of King Putraka, and shows the Gold Child in a shepherd's ragged frock. Elsewhere he is seen as the poor miller's son (the Miller's Son and the Cat), and he becomes a discharged soldier in the story of " The Boots made of Buffalo Leather." The beg- gar reappears in the Norse tale of Hacon Grizzlebeard, the Thrushbeard of Grimm's collection, while Boots, who grovels in the ashes, is the royal youth who rides up the mountain of ice in the story of the Princess on the Glass Hill. In another, Shortshanks, who by himself destroys all the Trolls opposed to him, is a reflexion of Odysseus, not only in his vengeance, but in his bodily form. Odysseus is Shortshanks when compared with Mcne- I3.0S {//tad in. 210-11). In the tale of the Best Wish (Dasent), Boots carries with him in the magic tap the horn of Amaltheia, and is seen again as a tattered beggar in the story of the Widow's Son. In the legend of Big Bird Dan he is the wandering sailor, who, like Odysseus, is tossed, worn and naked, on the Phaiakian shore ; in that of Soria Moria Castle (a tale in which the Sun seeks for the Dawn, the re- verse of the Psyche story) he is Halvor who grubs among the ashes — the con- nexion with fire and light being never forgotten in these stories, for these ashes are always living embers. The adventure of Halvor is for the recovery of a Helen, who has been stolen away by a Troll ; but no sooner is the Ilion