Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/404

372 BOOK II. 16 the heifer.

the beautiful eye of niglit, the daughter of Hyperion, of Pallas, or of Helios, the sister of Phoibos Apollon. Like the sun, she moves across the heaven in a chariot drawn by white horses from which her soft light streams down to the earth ; or she is the huntress, roving like Alpheios, over hill and dale. She is the bride of Zeus, and the mother of Pandia, the full orb which gleams in the nightly sky ; ^ or as loving, like him, the crags, the streams, and the hills, she is beloved by Pan, who entices her into the dark woods under the guise of a snow-white ram.^ In other words, the soft whispering wind, driving before it the shining fleecy clouds, draws the moon onwards into the sombre groves. In another version, she is Asterodia, the wanderer among the stars, the mother of the fifty daughters of Endymion, the Ursula of modern legend with her many virgins.* In short, the moon may be spoken of as the king of the realm of night, and the father, brother, or husband of the sun which springs from it. Or, if it be regarded as feminine, it may be his mother, his nurse, his sister, or his bride. It may be friendly to him, as is lao, or hostile, as is the Unicorn. It may chase him, as he sinks in the western sea, or may seek to hide herself from his bhnding splendour, as he rises in the east*

In the story of 16, the moon appears in connexion with the myths of Hermes, Prometheus, and other tales. 16 is pre-eminently the horned being,® whose existence is one of brief joy, much suffering,

tende."— Pi-eller, Gt. Myth. i. 347. ^ Virg. Georg. iii. 391. ' Preller regards the number 50 here as denoting the fifty moons of the Olym- pian Festal Cycle.— 6";-. Myth. i. 348. But the myth must be taken along with the legends of the fifty sons or daughters of Aigyptos, Danaos, or Priam. It must not be forgotten, however, that the moon is more commonly masculine than feminine. It is not easy for English- men to understand why some of the branches of the Teutonic race should have retained a fashion which to us seems strange, and which we do not find among Greeks, although we hear of Lunus among the Romans. But the masculine character of the moon is at once explained, by a reference to the idea that "as chaos preceded order, so night preceded day, and the enthrone- ment of the moon as the Night-king marks the commencement of the annals of kosmic order." Slavonic, as in the Teutonic mylholog)-, the moon is male. His wedding with the sun brings on him the wrath of Per- kunas, as the song tells us : The Moon wedded the Sun In the first spring. The Sun rose early ; The Moon departed from her. The Moon wandered alone ; Courted the Morning Star. Perkunas, greatly wroth, Cleft him with a sword.
 * "Pandia, d. h. die ganz leuch-
 * Brown, The Uuicorn, 69. In

" Wherefore dost thou depart from the Sun, Wandering by night alone, Courting the Morning Star?" length the Unicorn of Heraldry, whose history Mr. Brown has traceil in his very valuable monograj^h on " The Uni- corn," 1S81. It is scarcely necessary to say that this Unicorn is more the Rhinocerosthan the serpent, which bites women (note ', p. 345) ; is an adder or a cobra. It is endowed, as Garcias says, with " a wonderful horn, which it would sonielimcs turn to the left ami right, at others raise, and then again depress. " The changes of the moon are
 * This horned being becomes at