Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/493

Rh point simply to a phrase which spoke of the sun as sending or bringing the morning breeze ; and with the poet he is simply the harper and the father of songs. In Æschylos he leads everything after him by the gladness with which his strain inspires them. In Euripides he is the harper who compels the rocks to follow him, while in speaking of him as the originator of sacred mysteries the poet transfers to him the idea which represents Hermes as obtaining mysterious wisdom in the hidden caves of the Thriai. In the so-called Orphic Argonautika the harper is the son of Oiagros and Kalliope, the latter name denoting simply the beauty of sound, even if the former be not a result of the onomatopoeia which has produced such Greek words as, , and. No sooner does he call on the divine ship which the heroes had vainly tried to move, than the Argo, charmed by the tones, glides gently into the sea. The same tones wake the voyagers in Lemnos from the sensuous spell which makes Odysseus dread the land of the Lotos-eaters. At the magic sound the Kyanean rocks parted asunder to make room for the speaking ship, and the Symplegades which had been dashed together in the fury of ages remained steadfast for evermore. But it is singular that when it becomes needful to stupify the dragon which guards the golden fleece, the work is done not by the harp of Orpheus, but by the sleep- god Hypnos himself, whom Orpheus summons to lull the Vritra to slumber.

The same irresistible spell belongs to the music of the Seirens, who are represented as meeting their doom, in one legend, by means of Orpheus, in another, through Odysseus. Whether these beings represent the Seirai, or belts of calms, which are so treacherous and fatal to mariners, or whether the name itself is found again in the Syrinx or pipe of the god Pan, and in the Latin susuitus, the whisper of the breeze, is a point of no great importance, so long as we note the fact that none who listened to their song could be withheld from rushing under its influence to their own destruction. In the story of the Odyssey, Odysseus breaks the spell by filling his sailors' ears with wax, while he has himself stoutly tied to the mast of his ship. In the Orphic myth the divine harper counteracts their witchery by his own strain, and the Seirens throw themselves into the sea and are changed into rocks according to the doom which granted them life