Page:White and Blue Vol XIII no. 16, Feb 4 1910.djvu/3

130 of the common people. When legend does deal with great national heroes or events, the ten­dency is for this same personal side to be emphasized. It in­ forms us of "unimportant anecdotes of country life, stories of springs, of watering-troughs, and such as are told in the bed-cham­ber" interesting in themselves, often enough, but by no means of historical rank. History coun­tenances only such reports as are verifiable; but legend is in no way concerned in establishing a clear chain of evidence to or through eye-witnesses, the imagination in time contributing much of its ma­terial. From the demand that these popular stories be interest­ing and full of action they be­ come inevitably much altered through such contributions of the imagination. Very frequently they come to relate things that would be regarded as wholly in­ credible according to the ordinary canons of common sense or of his­tory. The presence of these in­ credible elements is one of the surest indications of legendary character.

History among the Hebrews, as among other peoples, followed, in the manner indicated above, the earlier period in which oral tra­dition prevailed. It would be truly remarkable if this race, so highly gifted in the poetic faculty, and so intensely religious, had not developed in rich abundance the form of poetry, termed legend— for legends must be classed with poetry, their purpose being to please, to teach, and to inspire or elevate. And, as a matter of fact, anyone who reads the Old Testa­ment understandingly, and sympatheticically [sic] must recognize much poetry of this kind, form­ing, as it does, some of its most interesting and affecting portions. Some of the earlier sections of the Old Testament, such as Genesis, it is clear, had been matters of popular tradition for a great length of time before their final collection and commitment to writing.

If people would cease making the senseless "confusion between legend and lying" and recognize that legends are poetry and that they must be treated and inter­preted as such, they would no longer hesitate to acknowledge that the Bible contains them. To perceive their presence is not to take a step toward scepticism, but rather is to take a step toward per­ceiving the beauty and under­ standing the significance of the narrative. It is a matter of get­ ting correct knowledge. To one who reads with feeling and some­ thing of an aesthetic sense, to eliminate the poetry existing in the form of these legends would be to take away much that gives the loftiness and perennial inter­ est to the Old Testament.

How, then, shall we interpret these legends when they are rec­ognized? In the first place, not as history. But, on the other hand, it must be kept in mind that they come from a time when man did not—were not intellectually able to—distinguish between poetry and reality; and, hence, it would be an error scarcely less great to regard them as allegorical and symbolic and as never intended to represent reality. The legends are not the product of any one man, or of any one generation, although the artistic form of some of them suggest the final touch of the professional; but rather, in be­ing passed on from generation to generation, they come to be large­ly the product of the race as a whole, clearly reflecting the intel­lect, the ideals, and the hopes of the times from which they have been transmitted. Point and meaning the legends always have, for this is an invariable condition to their persistence; but this point and meaning can be arrived at only through a recognition of the nature of legends and of the con­ditions under which they arise. Many of the legendary stories are clearly intended to answer questions. A reflecting person I may see how stories of this type arise in any country district. But the general origin of legends will be understood with especial clear­ness by one who has had, at first hand, close acquaintance with un­tutored savages, such, for exam­ple, as. the Indians. Why does the crane have such slender legs? The Indian answers with a story. Why is the Great Salt Lake so briny? Again he has a tale. Why the red earth at the mouth of Red Butte canyon? A legend tells. Why one kind of pinenut in the Rocky mountains, and another kind in the Deep Creek mountains? A tale, which the Indian believes sincerely, supplies the informa­tion. Why the rain-bow? Why the howling of the coyote at night? Why the quills of the por­cupine? Why the parasitic habit of the mistletoe? Why this deep cave or that great isolated crag? Why this ceremony or that cus­tom? Why so many tongues and tribes? — such questions have been asked over and over again by each new generation, and the old men have answered with pointed stories which they tell to a never-tiring circle around the winter camp-fires.

So, too, beautiful stories were told in answer to ever recurring questions about the camp fires of Israel. Such older variants of these as we have recovered to us are in metrical form; hence, it is believed that they were at first sung, only later being recorded in the prose form in which they are mostly recorded in the Bible. A few of the legends are from faded myths. Such a myth is clearly indicated, in the reference to the conflict between Jehovah and Rahab, the great monster living in the waters under the earth, in which Jehovah triumphs and cleaves Rahab in twain. Some of the legends of this class are ef­forts at answering questions, such as we are, at times asked even to this day by our children and which, moreover, are often, at bottom, profound questions which science today is still seek­ing to solve. Why does man die? Whence is his body and lan­guage? Whence the love of the sexes? Why does the snake lack legs and thus have to crawl upon its belly? Why must woman suf­fer and man toil? What is the rainbow and its meaning? To ask questions is innate in man—the child comes into the world with "Why" on its lips. Ask questions man will; and answer them he will as best he may. It is inevitable that a primitive people should ask the reason for tribal relations and boundaries. The Israelites asked these questions and we have the legends in which the answers came to be given. These were their first ef­forts at a philosophy of history. In these legends the underlying relations are commonly historical; but the explanations are clearly poetic. Why was Canaan the ser­vant of his brethren? Why had Ishmael become a Bedouin peo­ple? Plow did it come about that Gilead should separate Israel and the Arniaeans? And so on. The stories in which the answers were given are well known. In con­nection with these may be men­tioned the legends that seek to an­swer certain geological questions. What was. the origin of the Dead Sea and the surrounding desert? The sin of the inhabitants brought upon the region a curse. Whence the pillar of salt near by which so much resembles a wom­an? The familiar story of Lot tells.

Among the Israelites what may be called ceremonial legends were conspicuous. Customs and cere­monial legends were conspicuous.