Bosporus, parts of which are occasionally submerged in stormy weather, or which seem to meet and separate again as a ship passes between them. On the other hand, the sun is supposed by many races to pass through two rocks always opening and shutting, and by this route the spirit has to pass to gain its rest. Among the Egyptians this fancy of the road of the soul was very fully developed, and they had a myth which closely resembles that of Homer. Every year, they said, all the herons assemble at the mountain now called Gebel-et-ter. One after another they plunge their beaks into the cleft of the hill until it closes on one of them; and then forthwith all the others fly away. But the bird that has been caught struggles until it dies, and there its body lies till it has fallen into dust, an obvious reminiscence of the mountain cleft at Abydus, whereby the souls must pass in the form of human-headed birds in order to reach the other world. In a Russian tale the hero is sent to find the Water of Life from between two mountains which fly apart for three minutes every day. His horse's hind legs are caught by the rocks, but the water revives him; in another tale of the same kind the hare passing through rocks like these loses her tail, and since then hares have no tails to speak of.4 Of rocks that close and open at a word, as in the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the instances in folklore are legion.5

Of much the same class is the myth of the Floating Island in which Aeolus dwelt. The idea was familiar

1 See Crantz, History of Greenland, i. 24 f.

2 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 347 ff.; cf. Gill, Myths and Songs of the S. Pacific, quoted by Monro, Odyssey, ii. 293.

3 Maspero, Life in Ancient Egypt, 141; Dawn of Civilisation, 10 n. McCulloch, Childhood of Fiction, 59; Miss Cox, Introduction, 268.

Miss Cox, Cinderella, 499 f.; Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ii. 971 f.; id. Household Tales, ii. 439; Rhys, Celtic Folk-lore i. 254.

to the Greeks in the case of Delos, but even the credulity of Herodotus hesitated at the account of the floating island of Chemmis.1 Some have supposed that the floating island of Aeolus was an iceberg; but in view of the wide provenance of the legend this seems inadequate. We have the story in the case of Disco Island, which two Eskimos towed with the hair of a little child, chanting a magical lay, and anchored it where it now stands.2 The Japanese tell the same tale of Onogoro; and in the Celtic story Balor directs his men to fix a cable round the isle of Erinn and sail with it home out of the reach of the De Danaan, as Brian draws the sunken isle of Fiucarn out of the depths of the sea.3

Aeolus is the wizard who has the winds in his keeping. Laamao-mao is the Hawaian Aeolus, from whose calabash winds come at his bidding. Oddi, the Danish admiral, could raise a storm against his enemies, and Hraesvelg was the storm-giant of Scandinavia, who could shake the winds out of his bag. In Irish tradition the Druids of the De Danaan can raise a wind which blows a fleet to sea; the wind prophets of Samoa and the Solomon Islands can bring wind and rain, and to this day women in Lerwick earn their living by selling winds to sailors.

6

The tale of the Phaeacians is of peculiar interest. Some have seen in it a prototype of " a long series of imaginings, which with various degrees of bitterness or of gentle irony have reflected some features or some tendencies of contemporary life, or have embodied a contemporary 2 Rink, Tales and Traditions, 464.

1 Od. ii. 156.

Joyce, Old Celtic Romances, 41, 87; Rhys, Celtic Folk-lore, i. 90.

4 Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race, ii. 53.

5 Thorpe, Northern Mythology, i. 215, 218, ii. 193, iii. 23; Saxo, ed. Elton-Powell, 156; Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ii. 640, iii. 1057.

O'Curry, Manners and Customs, ii. 189; Guppy, Solomon Islands, 55; Turner, Samoa, 320, 462; Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii. 220; cf.

ideal, such as More's Utopia, Swift's Laputa, or Johnson's Rasselas. All grosser elements are purged away; humanity appears in the most engaging aspect; and yet in the complacency of this island folk, in their imagined security, their pride of ships, their boast of nearness to the gods, it seems allowable to trace some good-humoured persiflage of the poet's own neighbours, whom, to avoid offending them, he has purposely located on a distant and imaginary shore." 1 In short, he is supposed to have placed at Corcyra, which can in no wise be compared with it, the cultured, luxurious people of the Ionian coast. If the tale has a basis of fact, it may be a reminiscence of the Minoan civilisation. At the same time, it is clear that the Phaeacians are in the land of faery. Gerland long ago compared the Phaeacian episode with the tale of Saktideva in Somadeva's collection.2 He, like Odysseus, is saved from a whirlpool by clinging to the tree which overhangs it; he is carried to the Golden City, and entertained by the Vidhyādharī or fairy queen, who is destined to wed a mortal. But as in the beautiful account of Nausikaa, her lover deserts her and returns to marry his old love.3

An attempt, again, has been made to compare this ideal Phaeacian world with the Northern legend of the Ferrymen of Death, who, as Procopius tells us, convey the souls of the departed to the Isle of Brittia. But this gloomy tale is ill suited to the Phaeacians, who live an easy, joyous life, devoid of care, in no sense akin to the gloomy denizens of the lower world. Their ships are the magic vessels of which there are many examples in legend-the enchanted ship of the Highland tale, which can sail on sea or land; Gonachry, the "heart-wounder," which bears the hero in search of the

1 Campbell, Religion in Greek Literature, 88. 2 Monro, Odyssey, ii. 293.

3

Tawney, Katha, i. 194 ff.

White Swan of the Smooth Neck, whom he loves; the magic bone on which Oller, the mighty Norse wizard, sails across the deep; Odinn's bark, Skidvladner, which can be folded up as a napkin, and when her sails are set a favouring breeze arising wafts her to whatever shore the helmsman wills. So the Edda tells of the ship, Naglfar, which is to be built of the parings of dead men's nails, and hence they held it a sacred duty to cut the nails of the corpse, because both men and gods dread the coming of this awful bark.2 In short, these magical conveyances, like the carpet of Solomon, the wooden horse of the Arabian Nights, the flying image of the bird Garuda in Hindu tradition, are common to the folk-lore of the whole world, and the origin of many of them may be traced to the magic ships which early fancy saw in the racing clouds or the hailstorm drifting across the sky.

The Saga of the Wooden Horse, in which the warriors are concealed, appears only in the Odyssey, and forms. part of a wide cycle of tradition. Perhaps the earliest form of the tale is to be found in the Egyptian story of the Taking of Joppa, and the Arab plan for the capture of Edessa, which was framed on similar lines, is said to have failed owing to the suspicions of the Governor of the city. The best modern instance is that of Ali Baba, where the robber captain and his comrades conceal themselves in oil jars, and are detected by the wit of the slave girl, Morgiana. In a variant from Cyprus the black men are concealed by the ogre

1 Campbell, Popular Tales, i. 257: Macdougall-Nutt, Folk and Hero Tales, 289; MacInnes-Nutt, Waifs and Strays, 449; Saxo, ed. Elton-Powell, 99; Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology, 24; Mallet, Northern Antiquities, 435. 2Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ii. 814; Rydberg, op. cit. 379; Mallet, op. cit. 452.

3 Od. iv. 271 f.; viii. 502 ff.; xi. 523 ff.

in bales, and in Sicily Ohime, the ogre, hides in a hollow statue of silver which he causes to be introduced into the room of the heroine.1 Besides this class of story, which may be called the "Robber Chief" type, there are two others, one of which Shakespeare uses in Cymbeline, derived from Boccaccio, where the traitor lover conceals himself in the lady's chamber, and notes a mark on her breast whereby he deludes her husband into suspecting her honour.2 The other type of the story is even more widely spread, and may be called the "Princess of Balkh," which belongs to the "Bride Wager" group, in which the youngest of the brothers finds the princess by entering her palace concealed in a lion of gold and silver, which appears in the Sicilian version in the shape of the "Musical Eagle." Of these types there are numerous variants, as in the Magyar tale of the hero who enters the palace concealed in a silver horse, or in the Hindu story of the "King of Vatsa," who is attacked by warriors hidden in an artificial elephant. In the Celtic tale, Brandruff conceals his warriors covered over with provisions in great hampers laden on oxen, and these he drives into the camp of the King of Ireland, whom he overcomes. Even at the present day the capture of many famous Hindu forts is said to have been effected by introducing warriors in female guise concealed in litters. In countries where women are secluded this device may often have

1 Folk-lore Record, iii. pt. ii. 185 f.; Folk-lore Journal, iii. 206 ff.

2 Decameron, Day ii. Tale 9; Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, i. pt. ii. 179.

3 Punjab Notes and Queries, iv. 48: Pitrè, Biblioteca, v. 307.

4 Jones-Kropf, Magyar Folk Tales, 139 f.; Geldart, Folk-lore of Modern Greece, 98; Tawney, Katha, i. 72.

"Joyce, Social History, i. 141.

Tod, Annals of Rajasthan, i. 252, 665; Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal,