THE STORY OF GUZRA BAI. versions of the story, regards as a local myth of Brabantine origin, the name Helias being a corruption of the Keltic ala, eala, ealadh, a swan. This is but saying, in other words, that an old myth has been worked into the traditions of European towns, and attached, like the story of the early life of Cyrus, to names undoubtedly historical. The tale itself agrees in all its essential features not only with many Teutonic legends but with the Hindu story of Guzra Bai, the Beatrice of the tale of Truth's Triumph. This beautiful maiden is the Flower Girl, or the Gardener's daughter, in other words, the child of Dêmêtêr playing on the flowery plain of Nysa or Enna,-the teeming source of life as distinguished from the dead or inert matter on which it works. She thus becomes at once, like Beatrice, the mother of many children; here the number is a hundred and one, this one being as with Beatrice a daughter. These beautiful children awaken the jealousy and hatred of the twelve childless wives to whom the husband of Guzra Bai was already married, and in whom we may see an image of the months of the year or the hours of the night, in themselves producing nothing, until the spring reawakens the slumbering earth or the dawn flushes the eastern sky. In either case, it is but one hour or one day doing the work which otherwise many hours and many days would be unable to accomplish. Then follows a series of transformations which have the effect of counteracting the arts of the twelve queens as those of Matabrune are frustrated in the western story, and which end in the change of all the brothers not into swans but into crows, the only one of Guzra Bai's children who is saved being the daughter, as Helias alone is not transformed in the myth of Matabrune. The subsequent marriage of Guzra Bai's daughter under the name of Draupadi to a king who sees her feeding the crows is the return of Persephonê from the lower world in more than her former beauty. Draupadi now becomes the mother of a child who avenges her wrongs as Perseus requites the persecutors of Danaê, and punishes the demon who, with the wand of Kirkê, had changed his mother's brothers into crows. The final incident is the deliverance of Guzra Bai from the 285 CHAP. VII. II. BOOK prison to which the twelve princesses had committed her, and the discomfiture of the latter, answering to the humiliation of Matabrune. The Hyades and Pleiades. The Graiai. As the storm-cloud brooding over the earth without yielding rain became in Greek mythology the Theban Sphinx or the Pythian Dragon, so the clouds as rain-givers were the Hyades or the rainy sisters. These, it is obvious, might be described in a hundred ways, and accordingly almost every mythographer has a different account to give of them. They are the daughters of Atlas and Aithra, the heaven and the pure air, or of Okeanos, the water, or of Erechtheus (the earth); and thus the myths do but repeat the generation of the cloud, I am the daughter of earth and water, giving it names which all denote their cherishing, fructifying, and reviving powers.' They are the nymphs of Nysa or Dodona, who guard the infant Dionysos, or are the nurses of Zeus himself; and this kindness the wine-god requites by causing Medeia, the wise dawn-goddess, to restore them to youth when they had grown old, a sight witnessed every morning. These nymphs are seen again in their sisters the Pleiades, whose name, pointing only to their watery nature, became confused with that of the ring dove, Peleias, and so the story ran that they were changed into doves and placed among 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 chil dren some remain visible while the rest vanish through inchantment. These sisters are either always youthful and radiant, or they are 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 1 Eudora, Althaia, Phyto, Ambrosia, &c. THE GLOAMING. 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 Polyphêmos and the Kyklôpes.' 287 CHAP. VII. Some of the features which characterise these gloomy The Gorsisters were transferred to the Gorgons, if the idea of one gons. Gorgon, as in our Iliad and Odyssey, be older than the Hesiodic myth of the three Gorgon daughters of Phorkys and Kêtô, Stheino or Stheno, Euryalê, and Medousa. The Gorgo of the Odyssey is the hideous head of a monster belonging to the nether world; in the Odyssey 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 or even likely, 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, and still more likely that the wings and claws given to her fearful sisters attest their cloud nature. But this explanation does not account for the myth of the mortal maiden who once Walked in beauty like the night whom Poseidon loved in the soft green meadow among the flowers of spring, and who became the mother of the mighty Chrysâôr 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 and men. Here plainly Medousa is none other than Lêtô, the mother of 1 Among the many monsters which are either children of Poseidon or are sent up by him from the sea are the two serpents who destroy Laokoôn and his sons. The storm-cloud here assumes 2 Chrysâôr, the lord of the golden sword: in other words, the night in its benignant aspect as the parent of the sun, and therefore as mortal, for must not the birth of the sun be fatal to the darkness from which it springs? Hence Perseus, the child of the golden shower, must bring her weary woe to an end. The remaining feature of the story is the early loveliness of Medousa, which tempts her into rivalry with the dawn goddess Athênê herself, a rivalry which they who know the moonlit nights of the Mediterranean can well understand. But let the storm-clouds pass across the sky, and the maiden's beauty is at once marred. She is no longer the darling of Poseidon, sporting on the grassy shore. The unseemly vapours stream like serpents across her once beautiful face, hissing with the breath of the night-breeze, and a look of agony unutterable comes over her countenance, chilling and freezing the hearts' blood of those who gaze on the brow of the storm-tormented night. This agony can pass away only with her life; in other words, when the sword of Phoibos smites and scatters the murky mists. But although Medousa may die, the source from which the storm-clouds come cannot be choked, and thus the Gorgons who seek to avenge on Perseus their sister's death are themselves immortal. In the Theban myth of Aktaiôn, the son of the Kadmeian Autonoê, the cloud appears as a huntsman who has been taught by the Kentaur Cheiron, but who is torn to pieces by his own dogs, just as the large masses of vapour are rent and scattered by the wind, which bear them across the sky. As this rending is most easily seen in a heaven tolerably free from clouds, so the story ran that Aktaion was thus punished because he had rashly looked on Artemis while she was bathing in the fountain of Gargaphia. Not less significant is the myth of Pegasos, the offspring of Medousa with Chrysâôr, the magnificent piles of sunlit cloud, which seem to rise as if on eagle's wings to the highest heaven, and in whose bosom may lurk the lightnings and thunders of Zeus. Like Athênê and Aphroditê, like Daphne and Arethousa, this horse of the morning (Eôs) must be born from the waters; hence he is Pegasos, sprung ATHENÊ CHALINITIS. from the fountains of Poseidôn, the sea. On this horse Bellerophôn is mounted in his contest with the Chimaira: but he becomes possessed of this steed only by the aid of Athênê Chalinîtis, who, giving him a bridle, enables him to catch the horse as he drinks from the well Peirênê, or, as others said, brings him Pegasos already tamed and bridled. When the Chimaira was slain, Bellerophôn, the story ran, sought to rise to heaven on the back of his steed, but was either thrown off or fell off from giddiness, while the horse continued to soar upwards, like the cumuli clouds which far outstrip the sun as they rise with him into the sky. 2 289 CHAP. VII. Pegasos, however, is not only the thundering horse of Pegasos Zeus; he is also connected with the Muses, who in their swan forms are the beautiful clouds sailing along the sky to the soft music of the morning breezes. The same blending of the myths of vapour and wind is seen in the rivalry between the Pierides and the Helikonian Muses. When the former sang, everything, it is said, became dark and gloomy, as when the wind sighs through the pinewoods at night, while with the song of the Muses the light of gladness returned, and Helikon itself leaped up in its joy and rose heavenwards, until a blow from the hoof of Pegasos smote it down, as a sudden thunderstorm may check the soaring cirri in their heavenward way. But Pegasos is still in this myth the moisture-laden cloud. From the spot dinted by his hoof sprang the fountain Hippokrênê, whether in Boiotia or in Argos. SECTION IV. THE HUNTERS AND DANCERS OF THE HEAVENS. The vapour in more than one of its aspects receives Orion. another embodiment in the myth of Orîon, which in almost all its many versions remains transparent. Like other 'at the same moment a fearful noise 2 Kallim. Hymn to Delos, 255. |