Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/251

219 CHAP. II. been torn away from him, or whom after a long toil he is to win as his bride. It could not be otherwise, when the stories turn in the one case on the search of the dawn for the sun, in the other on the search of the sun for the dawn. As we might expect in popular tales, the images drawn from myths of the day and night are mingled with notions supplied by myths of summer and winter. The search is always in comparative gloom or in darkness.^ Either it is Odysseus journeying homeward among grievous perils, clad in beggar's raiment, or it is Orpheus seeking Eurydike in the awful " regions of Hades. The toil or the battle which precedes the victory is common to all the traditions, whether epical or popular ; but in the wildest forms of Aryan folk-lore the machinery of the most complicated tales can be broken up into its original parts. In northern countries especially, the powers of frost, snow, and cold, must be conquered before Phoibos can really win Daphne, or Psyche recover Eros. Hence there are mountains of glass (glaciers) to be scaled, huge castles of ice to be thrown down, or myriads of icebergs or boulders to be removed. In these tasks the youth or the maiden is aided by bears, wolves, or foxes, by ducks, swans, eagles, or by ants, the Myrmidons of Achilleus ; but all these are names under which the old mythical language spoke of the clouds or the winds, or of the light which conquers the darkness. The bear appears in the myth of the seven shiners as well as in that of Arkas and Kallisto, the wolf in the stories of Phoibos Eykeios, of Lykaon, and the Myrmidons. The clouds assume the forms of eagles and swans alike in Eastern or U'estern traditions. The eagles bear Surya Bai on their wings through the heaven, and the swans, or white cirri clouds, are seen in all the stories which tell of Swan maidens and the knights who woo and win them. These creatures, who are as devoted to the youth or the maiden as the Myrmidons are to Achilleus, speedily remove the mighty heaps of grain, stones, or ice, and leave the battle-ground clear for their joyous meeting. In the German story of the White Snake, the flesh of which, like the serpents of lamos and the heart of Hogni in the Volsung tale, imparts to him who eats it a knowledge of the language of birds, the labour falls on the lover, while the

' This search is well described in the Gaelic story of Nighean Righ Fo Thuinn, where the hero Diarmaid loses his wife, as Raymund of Toulouse is separat£d from Melusina, because he breaks the compact made with her. The search goes as in the other stories, but an odd turn is given to it at the end by making Diarmaid take a dislike to the maiden whom he rescues in the Realm Underwaves (where Herakles regains Alkestis), and thus he leaves her to go to his own home. After all it is but Orpheus, who here abandons Eurydike, instead of Eurydike fading from the eyes of Orpheus. The one myth is as forcible and true as the other. — Campbell, iii. 419.