Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/533

Rh the story ran that they were changed into doves and placed among CHAP. the stars. Generally these Pleiades are seven in number, six being visible and one invisible. Without taking, into account any supposed astronomical explanations, it is enough to note that the same difference marks the stories already cited of Matabrune, Guzra Bai, and others, in which of a troop of children some remain visible while the rest vanish through inchantment. These sisters are either always youthful and radiant, or they are The from time to time restored to their former beauty. But we may think also of clouds as dwelling for ever far away in the doubtful gloaming, not wholly dark, but faintly visible in a weird and dismal twilight. These clouds, which are never kindled into beauty by the rays of the sun, are the Graiai, the daughter of Phorkys, whose hair was grey from their birth, like the white streamers which move in ghastly lines across the sky, as evening dies away into night The swan form of these sisters points clearly, as we have seen, to their cloud origin ; and the story of the single tooth and the common eye would follow from the notion of their everlasting old age, even if these features were not suggested by myths like those of Polyphemos and the Kyklopes.^

Some of the features which characterise these gloomy sisters were The Gor- transferred to the Gorgons, if the idea of one Gorgon, as in our Iliad and Odyssey, be older than the Hesiodic myth of the three Gorgon daughters of Phorkys and Keto, Stheino or Stheno, Eur}'ale, and Me- dousa. The Gorgo of the Odyssey is the hideous head of a monster belonging to the nether world ; in the Iliad she is a being with an awful face and a terrific glance. In the Hesiodic Theogony the two undying and barren sisters are sharply distinguished from Medousa, the woman of pitiable woes.^ It is, of course, possible that the writhing snakes which, by the doom passed on her, take the place of her beautiful locks may represent the hideous storm-vapours streaming across the heaven at night. But this explanation does not account for the myth of the mortal maiden who once

Walked in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

whom Poseidon loved in the soft green meadow among the flowers of spring, and who became the mother of the mighty Chrysaor and the winged horse Pegasos who rose from heaven to the house of Zeus, where he is the bearer of thunders and lightnings to the king of gods

' Among the many monsters which serpents who destroy Laokoon and his are either children of Poseidon or are sons, sent up by him from the sea are the two * vypa. nadovira. lies. Theo^. 276.