BOOK In the Vedic hymns, the cloud myths are inextricably intermingled with those of the dawn and the light. The The cattle very enemy of Indra hiding the stolen herds in his horrid of Helios. . den is but the storm-cloud which shuts up the rain-clouds ready to refresh the parched earth. He is Cacus who drags the cattle of Geryon into his cave, and the Sphinx which plagues the Kadmeians with drought. Of the beautiful cattle of Indra thus stolen by the Panis Saramâ is the guardian; each morning she comes forth to lead them to their pastures,' each evening she reappears to drive them home. The same scenes are repeated daily in the Homeric Thrinakia, when the cattle of the sun are tended by the nymphs Phaethousa and Lampetiê, the fair-haired children whom Neaira, the early morning, bare to Helios Hyperîôn. But although the companions of Odysseus are made actually to slay some of these cows, and although strange signs follow their crime, yet the story itself points to another origin for these particular herds. The Thrinakian cattle are not the clouds, but the days of the year. The herds are seven in number, and in each herd are fifty cows, never less, and representing in all the three hundred and fifty days of the lunar year.2 Thus in the story that the comrades of Odysseus did not return home with him because they slew the cattle of the sun, we may recognize an old proverbial or mythological expression, too literally interpreted even by Homer, and therefore turned into mythology.' If, then, as Professor Müller adds, the original phrase ran that Odysseus reached his home because he persevered in his task, while his companions wasted their time, killed the days, i.e., the cattle of Helios, and were therefore punished, nothing would be more natural than that after a time their punishment should have been ascribed to their actually devouring the oxen in the island of Thrinakia.' 3 In many popular tales these blue pastures with the white flocks feeding on them are reflected in the water, and the sheep feeding far down in the depths are made the means by which Boots or Dummling (the beggar Odysseus) lures his stupid brothers to their death. See the story of 'Big Peter and Little Peter,' in Dasent's Norse Tales; the Gaelic story of the Three Widows, Campbell, ii. 224, 228, 237; and the German tale of the Little Farmer, Grimm. 2 Sir G. C. Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients, 21. 3 Chips, &c. ii. 166.' SECTION III. THE NYMPHS AND SWAN-MAIDENS. CHAP. VII. On the cloud-origin of the Vedic Gandharvas, the Hellenic Kentaurs, and the Kyklôpes whether of our Homeric or Hesiodic poems, enough has perhaps been said in the The swanshaped analysis of the myths of Urvasî, Psychê, Ixîôn, and Asklê- Phorkides. pios. These myths may each run into others which relate more exclusively to the earth or the sun; but the close connexion of earth, light and vapour, is so constantly present to the minds of all the Aryan tribes that it becomes almost impossible to set down any one myth, as a whole, as a specimen of one definite class; and thus the language used of the powers of darkness themselves is applied to the gloomy storm-vapours, whether they appear as the monstrous Polyphêmos, or as the three daughters of Phorkos, who have but one tooth each and possess a single eye in common. These beings Eschylos especially calls swanshaped, and here we have the germ of a large family of legends common to all the Aryan tribes and extending, it would seem, far beyond them. We have already seen the clouds, whether as lit up by the sun or as refreshing the earth with rain, spoken of as cows tended by nymphs, while the stormy vapours, their relentless enemies, are snakes, worms, or dragons, which throttle or strangle their prey. But the Sphinx, one of the most prominent of this repulsive tribe, is called particularly the winged hound,' and the swan-shaped Phorkides answer to the black ravens who, as messengers of Wuotan, roam across the sky. These two classes of vapours are kept tolerably distinct. The one brings only famine and sickness; the other recalls the dead earth to life, like the serpents with their snake-leaves in the stories of Glaukos, of Faithful John, and of Panch Phul Ranee. Sometimes, however, the vapours play an intermediate part, being neither wholly malignant, nor kindly. Thus in the Arabian Nights the rushing vapour is the roc, 'which broods over its great luminous egg, the sun, and which haunts the sparkling valley of diamonds, the starry 1 πтηyds kówν. Esch. Pr. 1024; Agam. 136. BOOK The Muses and the sky." Here the single eye in the forehead of Polyphêmos becomes the golden egg which reappears in the story of Jack the Giant Killer as the egg which the red hen lays every morning. This monstrous bird appears as the kindly minister of the light-born prince in the Norse story of Farmer Weathersky. In the Hymn to Apollon the clouds appear as the nymphs Valkyrien, or goddesses who bathe the new-born Phoibos, and the white robe which they wrap around him is the garment of morning mist, through which his orb may be seen ascending amidst zones of gold. Among these nymphs are the Charites, who attend on Aphroditê, the lovely clouds which dance in the morning sky, while in the hymn of Kallimachos the clouds are plainly spoken of as the singing swans who hasten from Paktôlos and fly seven times round Delos at the birth of Phoibos, who therefore in after years fixes on seven notes as the complement of the musical scale. These beautiful beings in their thousand forms all spring from the water, whether it be Athênê or Aphroditê, Melusina, or Urvasî. All therefore are the Apsaras or water-maidens, of whom the germs may be seen in Vedic hymns, while in later Hindu epics they appear with all the features of the Teutonic Valkyrien; and the consolation addressed to the warriors of the Mahabharata is that by which Mahomet cheers the hearts of the faithful. A hero slain is not to be lamented, for he is exalted in heaven. Thousands of beautiful nymphs (apsaras) run quickly up to the hero who has been slain in battle, saying to him, Be my husband." Here then we have the groundwork of all those tales which speak of men as wedded to fairies, nymphs, nixies, mermaids, swan-maidens, or other supernatural beings. The details may vary indefinitely; but the Aryan and Turanian myths alike point to the same phenomena. From the thought which regarded the cloud as an eagle or a swan, it was easy to pass to the idea that these birds were beautiful maidens, and hence that they could at will, or on the ending of the inchantment, assume their human form. This would, in 1 Gould, Curious Myths, second series, 146. 2 Muir, Skr. Texts, part iv. p. 235. 2 SWAN-MAIDENS, 283 VII. fact, be nothing more than the power exercised by Herakles, CHAP, who, whenever he desired it, could lay aside his robe of lion's skin. Then would follow the myth, that the only way to capture these beings was to seize their garment of swan's or eagle's feathers, without which they were powerless; and this myth has been reflected in a thousand tales which relate how men, searching for something lost, have reached some peaceful lake (the blue heaven) on which were floating the silver swans, birds only in outward seeming, and so long as they were suffered to wear their feathery robes.1 Some specimens of Turanian myths belonging to this class, cited by Mr. Gould, are noteworthy as containing not only this idea but all the chief incidents belonging to the Teutonic story of the Giant who had no Heart in his Body, and the Hindu tale of Punchkin. Among the Minussinian Tartars, Mr. Gould adds, these maidens appear, like the Hellenic Harpyiai, as beings which scourge themselves into action with a sword, and fly gorged with blood through the heavens, forty in number, yet running into one, like the many clouds absorbed into a single mass. The vapour in this, its less inviting aspect, is seen in the myth of Kyknos, the swan son of Arês, or Sthenelos, or Poseidon (for all these versions are found), who after a hard fight is slain by Herakles. Zeus, In the legend of Helen and the Dioskouroi Zeus himself The swancomes to Leda in the guise of a swan, as to Danaê he shaped appears in the form of a golden shower; and hence from the two eggs sprung severally, according to one of many versions, Kastor and Helen, Polydeukes and Klytaimnestra, while others say that the brothers were the sons of Zeus, and Helen the child of the mortal Tyndareôs. When the notion which regarded Helen as doomed to bring ruin on her kinsfolk and friends had been more fully developed, the story ran that the egg came not from Leda but from Nemesis, the power which, like the Norns, gives to each man his portion. The ideas of inchantment and transformation These robes in other tales become fairy garments, without which the Persian Peri cannot leave the human husband to whom she is wedded. Keightley, once Fairy Mythology, 21. With these legends BOOK II. maidens. awakened ran riot in a crowd of stories which resemble in some of their features the myths of which the tale of Inchanted Psychê and Eros is a type; in others, the legends in which the youngest brother or sister, Boots or Cinderella, is in the end exalted over those who had thought little of him in times past, and, in others again, the narratives of jealous wives or stepmothers, found in the mythology of all the Aryan tribes. Thus the ship and the swan are both prominent in the medieval romance of the Knight of the Swan, in which the son of queen Matabrune, having married the beautiful Beatrice, leaves her in his mother's charge. After his departure, Beatrice gives birth to six sons and a daughter, each with a silver collar round its neck. These children the stepmother seeks to destroy, but she is cheated by the usual device which substitutes some beast for the human victim. At length Matabrune is informed that seven children may be seen each with a silver collar, and again she decrees their death. They are, however, only deprived of their collars, and the loss changes them into swans, all but the youngest, Helias, whom a hermit had taken away as his companion.' Helias, of course, avenges his mother's innocence, when she is about to be put to death, and then makes a vow that he will never rest until he has delivered his brothers and sister from the evil inchantment. Having recovered five of the collars, he succeeds at length in restoring five to their human shape; but one remains spellbound, his collar having been melted to make a drinking-cup for Matabrune. This swanbrother now appears drawing a boat, in which Helias embarks, and arriving at Neumagen fights on behalf of the lady who claimed the duchy of Bouillon. His victory makes him duke of Bouillon, but he warns the duchess that if she asks his name he must leave her. In due time the question is of course asked, and instantly, the swan and boat reappearing, Helias vanishes like Eros when seen by Psychê. This romance Mr. Gould, who gives some of other 1 In Grimm's story of The White and the Black Bride,' the mother and sister push the true bride into the water, but at the same moment a snow-white swan is seen swimming down the stream. |