Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/272

240 BOOK avenges the wrongs done to lason long ago at lolkos. During her sojourn there in the house of PeUas, she persuaded his daughters to cut up his body and boil his limbs in a cauldron, in the belief that he would thus be restored to youth. ^ Medeia purposely failed to pronounce the spell at the right time, and the limbs of Pelias were consumed by the fire. Then follows her escape with lason in her dragon chariot to Corinth, where his love is transferred to Glauke, after whose death Medeia, like Gudrun in the Volsung story, slays her own children — a crime closely resembling the slaughter of Pelops by Tantalos. Such are the chief features of the myth of Medeia, to which some added that she became the wife of Aigeus, the Athenian king, or of the Corinthian Sisyphos. Some, again, made her return with lason to Kolchis, while others took her to Italy, and described her as acquiring the name Anguitia from her power of fascinating serpents. Finally, she is said to have been wedded to Achilleus in Elysion. The mvth '^^^ involuntary departure of the sun from the dawn or his of Prokiis. capricious desertion of her is exhibited in the myths of a long series

of maidens wooed and forsaken, whether by Phoibos himself or by heroes on whose head rests his Hght and majesty. With the story of Koronis the mother of Asklepios the myth of Prokris is in close accordance. Her birthplace is Athens, the city of the Dawn, and her mother is Herse, the Dew, while her own name denotes also simply the sparkling drops.^ We are thus prepared for the myth which tells us that Kephalos, a Phokian chief, coming to Athens, won her love and plighted his faith to her. But Kephalos was loved also by Eos, who sought to weaken his love for Prokris with a purpose so persistent that at last she induced him to make trial of her affection. He therefore deserts Prokris, to whom after a time he returns in dis- guise. When in this shape he has won her love, he reveals himself, and Prokris in an agony of grief and shame flies to Crete, where she obtains from Artemis the gift of a spear which shall never miss its mark and of a hound which can never fail to seize its prey.^ With

' With this may be compared the languages has taken the sense of Norse story of the Master Smith, in 'frost,' and Bopp identifies prush with whom we see another form of Hephais- the O H. G. frus, frigere. In Greek tos or Wayland. The incident of the we must refer to the same root 7rpw|, cutting up of the body of Pelias occurs irpwKSs, a dewdrop, and also Prokris, also in the German story of Brother the dew. Thus the wife of Kephalos is Lustig. Medeia herself appears in only a repetition of Herse, her mother — benignant guise in the legend of the Herse, dew, being derived from Sanskrit Goose-girl at the Well (the Dawn- prish, to sprinkle." — "Comparative maiden with her snow-white clouds). Mythology," C/iif>s, &>c., ii. 87. kris to the Sanskrit prush and prish, this dog appears under the name Maira to sprinkle, used chielly of raindrops. (the glistening), who helps Erigone the The same root in the Teutonic dauirhler of Ikarios in her search for
 * Professor Max Miiller refers Pro- ' In the myth of Ikaros, or Ikarios,