Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/560

528 BOOK outward form and powers of music, is also a son of Hermes and the -' nymph Dryops or Kallisto, or of Penelope who weaves the morning clouds, we can scarcely fail to see in these Satyrs the phenomena of the life which seems to animate the woods as the branches of the trees move in wild dances with the clouds which course through the air above, or assume forms strange or grotesque or fearful, in the deep nooks and glens or in the dim and dusky tints of the gloaming.^ At such hours, or in such places, the wayfarer may be frightened with strange sounds like the pattering of feet behind him, or by ugly shapes which seem to bar the path before him, or entangle his feet and limbs as he forces his way through the brushwood If we trans- late all this into the language of mythology, we have more than the germ of all that is told us about the Satyrs. But the source thus opened w^as found to be a fruitful one, and the Satjas became the companions of Dionysos, the lord of the wine-cup and the revel, or of Herakles, the burly and heedless being who goes through life toiling for a mean and worthless master, yet taking such enjo}Tnent as the passing hours may chance to bring him.^ The burlesque form in which they exhibited Herakles as robbed of his weapons, or teased and angered by their banter until they take to their heels, suggested a method which might be applied to other gods or heroes, and called into existence the Greek sat}Tic drama. Nor could a limit be placed to their strange vagaries, or the shapes which they might assume. The wild revel of the woods might be followed by a profound stillness, of which men would speak as the sleep of SatyTs wearied out with dancing and drinking. The white clouds, which may be seen like ships anchored in a blue sea, hanging motionless over the thicket, would be nymphs Hstening to their music or charmed by their wooing.

L 134) objects that this does not ac- who seeks to lay the spell of her beauty count for the particular form under on Odysseus, is the Fairy Queen of which theSatyrsarerepresented,?.6'. with Tanhaiiser and of True Thomas; the pointed ears, two small horns and goats' Kyklopes is the misshapen Urisk ; the tails, or by later WTJters with larger horns limping Hepliaistos is Wayland the and goats' feet and legs. His conclusion Smith : and thus the whole fabric of seems to be that they are Semitic ; but modern superstition is but a travesty of it is not easy to see how such a conclu- myths ith which in otlier fonns we are sion is warranted. He does not mention already familiar. Thus in these myths the Semitic form of the word. dwarfed or maimed beings abound ; almost into tlie domain of modern fairy Idaian Daktyls, the Athenian Anakes, mythology, of which it is enough here the Etruscan Tages, and the Lakedai- to say that there is scarcely an important monian Dioskouioi. So too the Latin feature in it which has not its parallel Lemures and Larvae are the ghosts of in the so-called classical mythology of modern days, and the Manes arc literally Greece and Rome. The Latin Lares the Goodies of popular Teutonic super- are the Brownies ; the Venus who takes stition.
 * Tsh.BTOvm{Great Dionysiak3fyik, away the lover of Psyche, the Kalypso
 * With these creatures we are brought among these being the Kabeiroi, the