Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/502

470 BOOK II. The Storms,

or reconciling the pedigrees of the several children assigned to Aiolos, and their efforts were rewarded by complications which were relieved of intolerable weariness only by the mythical interest attaching to some of the many names thus grouped in a more or less arbitrary connexion. With them this association was valuable, chiefly as accounting for the historical distribution of certain Hellenic clans j and this supposed fact has been imported into the controversy respecting the date and composition of our Homeric poems, by some critics who hold that Homer was essentially an Aiolic poet, who wished to glorify his tribesmen over all the other members of the Hellenic race. It may be enough to say that there is no trace of such a feeling in either our Iliad or our Odyssey, which simply speak of Aiolos as a son of Hippotes and the steward of the winds of heaven.

But Hermes, Orpheus, Amphion, and Pan, are not the only con- ceptions of the effects of air in motion to be found in Greek mythology. The Vedic ^Nlaruts are the winds, not as alternately soothing and furious, like the capricious action of Hermes, not as constraining everything to do their magic bidding, like the harping of Orpheus and Amphion, nor yet as discoursing their plaintive music among the reeds, like the pipe of Pan ; but simply in their force as the grinders or crushers of everything that comes in their way. These crushers are found in more than one set of mythical beings in Greek legends. They are the Moliones, or mill-men, or the Aktoridai, the pounders of grain, who have one body but two heads, four hands, and four feet, — who first undertake to aid Herakles in his struggle with Augeias, and then turning against the hero are slain by him near Kleonai. These representatives of Thor Miolnir we see also in the Aloadai,^ the sons of Iphimedousa, whose love for Poseidon led her to roam along the sea-shore, pouring the salt water over her body.

' The identity of the names Aloadai and Moliones must be determined by the answer to be given to the question, whether oKayfi, a threshing-floor, can be traced back to the root ;//(// which indu- bitably yields Molione, fj.vr}, the Latin f/io/a, our ;«/// and //lea/. There is no proof that certain words may in Greek assume an initial ia. which is merely euphonic : but there is abundant evi- dence that Greek words, hich origin- ally began with n, occasionally drop it. This, Professor Max Midler admits, is a violent change, and it would seem physically unnecessary ; but he adduces the analogies of juJtrxos and offxos, a tender shoot or branch, Xa for ^lia in Homer, the Latin mola, and the Greek ovai, meal, adding that "instead of our very word &evpov, wheaten flour, another form, fx.a.Kevpov, is mentioned by Helladius." — LecL on Lang, second series, 323. The same change is seen in ikiv as corresponding to the numeral iv. The idea of the storm as crushing and pounding is seen in molnija, a name for lightning among the Slavonic tribes, and in Munja, the sister of Grom, the thunderer, in Serl)ian songs. — Max Midler, ib. 322. With these we may compare Mcnia and Fenia, the grinders of Frodi's quern.