Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/424

392 BOOK and as it rises for her, he knows that he has found the fated sister of the Dioskouroi, and with her he sails straightway to his home across the wine-foced sea. But the seducer has sworn to leave her free for a year and a day, if Conall has so much courage as to come in pursuit of her. Like Helen, she is shut up in the robber's stronghold, " sorrowful that so much blood was being spilt for her ; " but Conall conquers in the struggle and rescues her " out of the dark place in which she was," the gloomy cave of the Panis. Then follow more wanderings answering to the Nostoi, and, like Odysseus, Conall appears in worn-out clothes in order to make his way into the king's fortress, and again a scene of blood ensues, as in the hall of slaughter in the courts of the Ithakan and Burgundian chieftains. The story now repeats itself. The king of the Green Isle has a daughter who, like Danae, is shut up in a tower, and the other warriors tr)' in vain to set her free, till Conall " struck a kick on one of the posts that was keeping the turret aloft, and the post broke and the turret fell, but Conall caught it between his hands before it reached the ground. A door opened and Sunbeam came out, the daughter of the king of the Green Isle, and she clasped her two arms about the neck of Conall, and Conall put his two arms about Sunbeam, and he bore her into the great house, and he said to the king of the Green Isle, Thy daughter is won." The myth is transparent. Sunbeam would marry Conall, but he tells her that he is already wedded to Breast of Light, and she becomes the wife of Mac-a-Moir, the Great Hero, the son of the king of Light.

The voy- The Stealing away of Helen and all her treasures is the cause of aI h^l!!s^ another expedition which, like the mission of the Argonautai, brings to liioo. together all the Achaian chieftains ; and the mythical history of these princes, interwoven with the old tale of the death or the taking away of the day, has gro'W'n up into the magnificent poems which make up the storehouse of Greek epical literature. But the main thread of the story remains clear and simple enough. If the search and the struggle which end it represent the course of the night, they must last for something like ten hours, and thus we get the ten years of the war. The journey is accomplished during the dark hours : but it cannot begin until the evening is ended, or in other words, until the twilight has completely faded away. Hence the calm which stays the Achaian fleet in Aulis cannot end until Iphigeneia has been offered as a victim to the offended Artemis, the goddess of the moon or the night It is vain to resist The sin of Agamemnon is brought back to his mind, as he remembers how he promised before the birth of his child that he would ofTer up the most beautiful thing