Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/306

274 BOOK II. The Fish= sun. Phoibos and Hermes.

Phoibos tells them that they can hope to see their home, their wives, and their children again no more. But a higher lot awaits them. Their name shall be known throughout the earth as the guardians of Apollon's shrine, and the interpreters of his will. So they follow him to Pytho, while the god leads the way filling the air with heavenly melodies. But once more they are dismayed as they look on the naked crags and sterile rocks around them, and ask how they are to live in a land thus dry and barren. The answer is that they should have all their hearts' desire, if only they would avoid falsehood in words and violence in deed.

Such w^as the legend devised to account for the name and the founding of the Delphian temple. It is obviously a myth which cannot be taken by itself Phoibos here traverses the sea in the form of a fish, and imparts lessons of wisdom and goodness when he has come forth from the green depths. He can assume many forms, and appear or vanish as he pleases. All these powers or qualities are shared by Proteus in Hellenic story, as well as by the fish-god, Dagon or Onnes,' of Syria ; and the wisdom which these beings possess is that hidden wisdom of Zeus which, in the Homeric hymn, Phoibos cannot impart even to Hermes. So in the Vishnu Purana the demon Sambara casts Pradyumna, the son of Vishnu, into the sea, where he is swallowed by a fish, but he dies not and is born anew from its belly.^ The story must be taken along with those of the Frog-prince, of Bheki, and of the Fish-rajah in Hindu fairy tales.^ Doubtless it is the same dolphin which appears in the story of Arion, but the fish not less than the harp has lost something of its ancient power.*

In this myth Phoibos acts from his own proper force. Here, as in the hymn to Hermes, he is emphatically the wise and the deep or far-seeing god. The lowest abyss of the sea is not hidden from his eye, but the wind can never stir their stormless depths. His gift of music was not, however, his own from the first His weapons are

which in Akkadian would be U-duk- ana, " The lord who rises high." 575 ; ^ ylo"^* Primitive Culture, i. 305-6.
 * This is the 6clak6n of Berosos,
 * Translation of H. H. Wilson, p.

agrees closely with the Gaelic tale of the Sick Queen (Campbell, ii. 131), for whom none but the Frog can supply the water of life.
 * The story of the Frog-prince

' The power of Phoibos and Pro- teus is shared by Thetis, and again in Grimm's story of Roland, by the maiden, who changes her lover into a lake, and herself into a duck ; or who becomes a lily in a hedge, while Roland plays on his flute a tune which makes the witch, like the Jew on the thorns, dance till she drops down dead. The same trans- formations occur in the stories of Fir- Ajiple and the Two Kings' Children, in Grimm's collection, and in the Norse talcs of Dapplegrim and Farmer Weathcrsky.