Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/389

Rh to its possessor all that he could desire to have. This horn reappears CHAP, in the myths of Bran, and Ceridwen, and Huon of Bordeaux, to whom Oberon gives a horn which yields the costliest wine in the hands of a good man only.^ The talismanic power of this horn is still further showTi in the prose romance of Tristram, when the liquor is dashed over the lips of any guilty person who ventures to lift it to his mouth, and in the goblet of Tegan Euroron, the wife of Caradoc of the strong arm.^ It is seen again in the inexhaustible table of the Ethiopians, in the dish of Rhydderch the Scholar, in the basket of Gwyddno, in which food designed for one becomes an ample supply for a hundred; in the table round which Arthur and his peers hold high revelry; in the wishing-quern of Frodi;^ in the lamp of Allah-ud-deen, which does the bidding of its owner through the Jin who is its servant; in the purse of Bedreddin Hassan, which the fairy always keeps filled in spite of his wastefulness; in the wonderful well of Apollon Thyrxis in Lykia,* which reveals all secrets to those who look into it; in the magic cauldron which Thor got for Oegir, whose savoury contents went spontaneously to each guest, as he might wish for them. This mysterious mirror is the glass vessel of Agrippa, and of the cruel stepmother in the German tale of Little Snow-white, who, like Brynhild, lies in a death-like sleep, guarded under a case of ice by dwarfs until the piece of poisoned apple falls from between her lips; and we see it again in the cups of Rhea and Demeter. the milkwoman or the gardener's wife of Hindu folk-lore, and in the modios of Serapis. It becomes the receptacle of occult knowledge. Before the last desperate struggle with the Spartans, Aristomenes buried in the most secret nook of mount Ithome a treasure which, if guarded carefully, would insure the restoration of Messene. When the battle

• Price, Introd. to Warton^s Hist. proclaimed his peace, he set two women Eng. Poetry, 66. slaves to grind gold, peace, and pros-

the Scottish ballad of the Luck of ing them no sleep longer than while the Edenhall. When it was seized by one cuckoo was silent. At length they of the family of Musgrave, the fairy ground a great army against Frodi, and train vanished, crying aloud, a sea king slew him, canning off great " If this glass do break or fall, ^°°ty' ^"^ ^^4!^ it the quern and the Farewell the luck of Edenhall." ^wo slaves These were now made to grmd white salt in the ships, till they
 * lb. 59. This goblet reappears in perity from the wonderful quern, allow-

The goblet, it is said, narrowly escaped sank in Pentland Firth. There is ever being broken, when it fell from the since a whirlpool where the sea falls hands of the Duke of Wharion. Of into the quern's eye. As the quern course it was caught in its fall by his roars, so does the sea roar, and thus it butler, and the old idea of its inherent was that the sea first became salt." — fertility remained in the fancy that "the Thoi-pe, Translatioii of Samtind' s Edda, lees of wine are still apparent at the ii. 150. See also the story " Why the bottom." — Scott, Border Minstrelsy, ii. Sea is Salt," in Dasent's AWse Tales. 277. * Paus. vii. 21,6. ' " When Frodi, the Norse king,