Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/491

Rh CHAP. hymn-Titer salutes him accordingly as the god of the winged sandals.^ In the legend, of Medousa these sandals bear Perseus away from the pursuit of the angry Gorgons into the Hyperborean gardens and thence to the shores of Libya. Of the myth of Orpheus it may also be said that it brings before Points of us a being, in whom some attributes which belong to the light or the between sun are blended with others which point as clearly to the wind. The Orpheus charm of the harping of Hermes is fully admitted in the Homeric Hermes, hymn, but its effect is simply the effect of exquisite music on those who have ears to hear and hearts to feel it. In the story of Orpheus the action becomes almost wholly mechanical. If his lyre has power over living beings, it has power also over stones, rocks, and trees. ^^^hat then is Orpheus? Is he, like Hermes, the child of the da^ATi, or is he the sun-god himself joined for a little while with a beautiful bride whom he is to recover only to lose her again ? There can be no doubt that this solar myth has been bodily imported into the legend of Orpheus, even if it does not constitute its essence. The name of his wife, Eurydike, is one of the many names which denote the wide-spreading flush of the da^Ti ; and this fair being is bitten by the serpent of night as she wanders close by the water which is fatal alike to Melusina and Undine, to the Lady of Geierstein and to the more ancient Bheki or frog-sun. But if bis Helen is thus stolen away by the dark power, Orpheus must seek her as pertinaciously as the Achaians strive for the recovery of Helen or the Argonauts for that of the Golden Fleece. All night long he will wander through the regions of night, fearing no danger and daunted by no obstacles, if only his eyes may rest once more on her who was the delight of his life. At last he comes to the grim abode of the king of the dead, and at length obtains the boon that his wife may follow him to the land of the living, on the one condition that he is not to look back until she has fairly reached the earth. The promise is not kept ; and when Orpheus, overcome by an irresistible yearning, turns round to gaze on the beautiful face of his bride, he sees her form vanish away like mist at the rising of the sun. This, it is obvious, is but another form of the myth which is seen in the stories of Phoibos and Daphne, of Indra and Dahana, of Arethousa and Alpheios ; and as such, it would be purely solar. But the legend as thus related is shorn of other features not less essential than these solar attributes. Orpheus

• Hyfiin XXVIII.