the 'Theogony' (993-998) Hesiod mentions the essential facts of the legend: how Jason carried off from Æetes his daughter, 'after achieving the adventures, many and grievous,' which were laid upon him. At what period the home of Eetes was placed in Colchis, it is not easy to determine. Mimnermus, a contemporary of Solon, makes the home of Æetes lie on the brink of ocean,' a very vague description.' Pindar, on the other hand, in the splendid Fourth Pythian Ode, already knows Colchis as the scene of the loves and flight of Jason and Medea.

'Long were it for me to go by the beaten track,' says Pindar, ‘and I know a certain short path.' Like Pindar, we may abridge the tale of Jason. He seeks the golden fleece in Colchis: Eetes offers it to him as a prize for success in certain labours. By the aid of Medea, the daughter of Æetes, the wizard-king, Jason tames the fire-breathing oxen, yokes them to the plough, and drives a furrow. By Medea's help he conquers the children of the teeth of the dragon, subdues the snake that guards the fleece of gold, and escapes, but is pursued by Eetes. To detain Æetes, Medea throws behind the mangled remains of her own brother, Apsyrtos, and the Colchians pursue no further than the scene of this bloody deed. The savagery of this act survives even in the work of a poet so late as Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 477), where we read how Jason performed a rite of savage magic, mutilating the body of Apsyrtos in a manner which was believed to appease the avenging ghost of the

1 Poeta Minores Gr. ii.

slain. Thrice he tasted the blood, thrice spat it out between his teeth,' a passage which the Scholiast says contains the description of an archaic custom popular among murderers.

Beyond Tomi, where a popular etymology fixed the 'cutting up' of Apsyrtos, we need not follow the fortunes of Jason and Medea. We have already seen the wooer come to the hostile being, win his daughter's love, achieve the adventures by her aid, and flee in her company, delaying, by a horrible device, the advance of the pursuers. To these incidents in the tale we confine our attention.

Many explanations of the Jason myth have been given by Scholars who thought they recognised elemental phenomena in the characters. As usual these explanations differ widely. Whenever a myth has to be interpreted, it is certain that one set of Scholars will discover the sun and the dawn, where another set will see the thunder-cloud and lightning. The moon is thrown in at pleasure. Sir G. W. Cox determines 1 'that the name Jason (Iasôn) must be classed with the many others, Iasion, Iamus, Iolaus, Iaso, belonging to the same root.' Well, what is the root? Apparently the root is 'the root i, as denoting a crying colour, that is, a loud colour' (ii. 81). Seemingly (i. 229) violet is a loud colour, and, wherever you have the root i, you have 'the violet-tinted morning from which the sun is born.' Medea is 'the daughter of the sun,' and most likely, in her 'beneficent aspect,' is the dawn. But (ii. 81, note) ios has another meaning, 'which, as a spear, represents the far-darting ray 1 Mythol. Ar., ii. 150.

of the sun'; so that, in one way or another, Jason is connected with the violet-tinted morning or with the sun's rays. This is the gist of the theory of Sir George Cox.

Preller is another Scholar, with another set of etymologies. Jason is derived, he thinks, from idoμai, to heal, because Jason studied medicine under the Centaur Chiron. This is the view of the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (i. 554). Jason, to Preller's mind, is a form of Asclepius, ‘a spirit of the spring with its soft suns and fertile rains.' Medea is the moon. Medea, on the other hand, is a lightning goddess, in the opinion of Schwartz.2 No philological reason is offered. Meanwhile, in Sir George Cox's system, the equivalent of Medea, ‘in her beneficent aspect,' is the dawn.

We must suppose, it seems, that either the soft spring rains and the moon, or the dawn and the sun, or the lightning and the thunder-cloud, in one arrangement or another, irresistibly suggested, to early Aryan minds, the picture of a wooer, arriving in a hostile home, winning a maiden's love, achieving adventures by her aid, fleeing with her from her angry father and delaying his pursuit by various devices. Why the spring, the moon, the lightning, the dawn-any of them or all of them-should have suggested such a tale, let Scholars determine when they have reconciled their own differences. It is more to our purpose to follow the myth among Samoans, Algonquins, and Finns. None of these races speak an Aryan language, and none can have

1 Gr. My., ii. 318. 2 Sonne, Mond und Sterne, pp. 213, 229.

been beguiled into telling the same sort of tale by a disease of Aryan speech.

Samoa, where we find our story, is the name of a group of volcanic islands in Central Polynesia. They are about 3,000 miles from Sidney, were first observed by Europeans in 1722, and are as far removed as most spots from direct Aryan influences. Our position is, however, that in the shiftings and migrations of peoples, the Jason tale has somehow been swept, like a piece of drift-wood, on to the coasts of Samoa. In the islands, the tale has an epical form, and is chanted in a poem of twenty-six stanzas. There is something Greek in the free and happy life of the Samoans- something Greek, too, in this myth of theirs. There was once a youth, Siati, famous for his singing, a young Thamyris of Samoa. But as, according to Homer, 'the Muses met Thamyris the Thracian, and made an end of his singing, for he boasted and said that he would vanquish even the Muses if he sang against them,' so did the Samoan god of song envy Siati. The god and the mortal sang a match: the daughter of the god was to be the mortal's prize if he proved victorious. Siati won, and he set off, riding on a shark, as Arion rode the dolphin, to seek the home of the defeated deity. At length he reached the shores divine, and thither strayed Puapae, daughter of the god, looking for her comb which she had lost. Siati,' said she, 'how camest thou hither?' 'I am come to seek the song-god, and to wed his daughter.' 'My father,' said the maiden, 'is more a god than a man; eat nothing he hands you, never sit on a high seat, lest death follow.' So they were

united in marriage. But the god, like Æetes, was wroth, and began to set Siati upon perilous tasks: 'Build me a house, and let it be finished this very day, else death and the oven await thee.'1

Siati wept, but the god's daughter had the house built by the evening. The other adventures were to fight a fierce dog, and to find a ring lost at sea. Just as the Scotch giant's daughter cut off her fingers to help her lover, so the Samoan god's daughter bade Siati cut her body into pieces and cast her into the sea. There she became a fish, and recovered the ring. They set off to the god's house, but met him pursuing them, with the help of his other daughter. 'Puapae and Siati threw down the comb, and it became a bush of thorns in the way to intercept the god and Puanli,' the other daughter. Next they threw down a bottle of earth which became a mountain; ' and then followed their bottle of water, and that became a sea, and drowned the god and Puanli.' 2

This old Samoan song contains nearly the closest savage parallel to the various household tales which find their heroic and artistic shape in the Jason saga. Still more surprising in its resemblances is the Malagasy version of the narrative. In the Malagasy story, the conclusion is almost identical with the winding up of the Scotch fairy tale. The girl hides in a tree; her face, seen reflected in a well, is mistaken by women for their own faces, and the recognition follows in due course.3

This proves that the tale belongs to the pre-Christian cannibal age. 2 Turner's Samoa, p. 102. In this tale only the names of the daughters are translated; they meanwhite fish' and 'dark fish.' Folk-Lore Journal, August 1883.