Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/249

217 CHAP. II. another must excite her jealousy and anger was one which must sooner or later be imported into the myth. With its introduction the framework of the story was completed ; and so the tale ran that Venus charged her son to fill Psyche with the madness which made Titania fall in love with the enchanted Bottom. But Psyche, the dawn with its soft breath, is so beautiful that Eros (Amor, Cupido) falls in love with her himself, and taking her to a secret cave (the cave of Dikte or of Lyktos), visits her as Pururavas comes to Urvasi. Stirred up by Venus, her sisters tell Psyche that she is wedded to a hideous monster, and at length her curiosity is so roused that, taking a lamp, she gazes upon her lover and beholds before her the per- fection of beauty. But a drop of oil falls from her lamp on the sleeping god, and the brief happiness of Psyche is ended. She is left desolate like Pururavas, and like him she must go in search of her lost love. Eos has looked on Helios, and he has plunged beneath the sea. If she seek him, it must be through the weary hours of the night, amidst many perils and at the cost of vast labour. In every temple Psyche looks for her lover until at last she reaches the dwelling of Venus, under whose spell he lies like Odysseus in the home of Kirke or Kalypso. At her bidding she accomplishes some hard and degrading tasks, under which she must have died but for the love of F-ros, who, though invisible, still consoled and cheered her. By his aid she at last made her peace with Venus, and becom- ing immortal, was united with her lover for ever. Of all these incidents not one has been invented by Appuleius ; and all that can be said is that he has weakened rather than strengthened the beauty of the myth by adapting it to the taste of a thoroughly artificial age. Having taken up a story which had not yet been brought within the charmed circle of epic or lyric poetry, he has received credit for an originality to which the familiar tale of Beauty and the Beast, with which It is substantially identical, may lay an equal claim.^

' In Hindu folk-lore this is ihc story of Gandharba-sena. Of this being Cap- tain Burton [Tales of hidian Devilry, preface xiii.) says that he "is a quasi- historical personage who lived a century preceding the Christian era." Even granting the fact, we have here only a name belonging to the same class with Roland, Arthur, Dietriih of Bern, or others for whom an historical existence has been clanned The name clearly suggests a comjiarison with Gandharva Pururavas. The story of Gandharba- sena Captain Burton regards as the ori- ginal of the Golden Ass of Appuleius. The liyjiothesis is scarcely necessary, unless it is to be maintained that the whole folk-lore of Greece, Germany, Scandinavia, and other countries has been bochly imported from India. The story of Gandharba-sena is, however, the story of Midas, of the Irish Lavra Loingsech, and of the Little Ass in Grimm's collection ; and it may be noted that the being transformed into an ass in the romance of Appuleius is Lucius of Corinth (Phoibos Lykeios). The story of Psyche is also told in the Gaelic Tale of the Daughter of the Skie.s.