Modern Mythology - free ebook by Andrew Lang

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the memory of John Fergus McLennan....

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INTRODUCTION

It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful purpose. ‘On an opponent,’ as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, ‘one never does make any impression,’ though one may hope that controversy sometimes illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers. The pages which follow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a book, Mr. Max Müller’s Contributions to the Science of Mythology , in which the attack is of a skirmishing character. Throughout more than eight

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Mythology in 1860-1880

Between 1860 and 1880, roughly speaking, English people interested in early myths and religions found the mythological theories of Professor Max Müller in possession of the field. These brilliant and attractive theories, taking them in the widest sense, were not, of course, peculiar to the Right Hon. Professor. In France, in Germany, in America, in Italy, many scholars agreed in his opinion that the science of language is the most potent spell for opening the secret chamber of mythology. But

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Autobiographical

Like other inquiring undergraduates in the sixties, I read such works on mythology as Mr. Max Müller had then given to the world; I read them with interest, but without conviction. The argument, the logic, seemed to evade one; it was purely, with me, a question of logic, for I was of course prepared to accept all of Mr. Max Müller’s dicta on questions of etymologies. Even now I never venture to impugn them, only, as I observe that other scholars very frequently differ, toto cælo , from him and

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The Ugly Scars

The ugly scars were the problem! A civilised fancy is not puzzled for a moment by a beautiful beneficent Sun-god, or even by his beholding the daughters of men that they are fair. But a civilised fancy is puzzled when the beautiful Sun-god makes love in the shape of a dog. {5} To me, and indeed to Mr. Max Müller, the ugly scars were the problem. He has written—‘What makes mythology mythological, in the true sense of the word, is what is utterly unintelligible, absurd, strange, or miraculous.

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My Criticism of Mr. Max Müller

This idea I set about applying to the repulsive myths of civilised races, and to Märchen , or popular tales, at the same time combating the theories which held the field—the theories of the philological mythologists as applied to the same matter. In journalism I criticised Mr. Max Müller, and I admit that, when comparing the mutually destructive competition of varying etymologies, I did not abstain from the weapons of irony and badinage . The opportunity was too tempting! But, in the most sob

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Success of Anthropological Method

During fifteen years the ideas which I advocated seem to have had some measure of success. This is, doubtless, due not to myself, but to the works of Mr. J. G. Frazer and of Professor Robertson Smith. Both of these scholars descend intellectually from a man less scholarly than they, but, perhaps, more original and acute than any of us, my friend the late Mr. J. F. McLennan. To Mannhardt also much is owed, and, of course, above all, to Dr. Tylor. These writers, like Mr. Farnell and Mr. Jevons

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Mr. Max Müller’s Reply

In this state of things Mr. Max Müller produces his Contributions to the Science of Mythology , {8} which I propose to criticise as far as it is, or may seem to me to be, directed against myself, or against others who hold practically much the same views as mine. I say that I attempt to criticise the book ‘as far as it is, or may seem to me to be, directed against’ us, because it is Mr. Max Müller’s occasional habit to argue (apparently) around rather than with his opponents. He says ‘we are t

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Mr. Max Müller’s Method in Controversy

As an illustration of the author’s controversial methods, take his observations on my alleged attempt to account for the metamorphosis of Daphne into a laurel tree. When I read these remarks (i. p. 4) I said, ‘Mr. Max Müller vanquishes me there ,’ for he gave no reference to my statement. I had forgotten all about the matter, I was not easily able to find the passage to which he alluded, and I supposed that I had said just what Mr. Max Müller seemed to me to make me say—no more, and no less.

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Tuna and Daphne

To do justice to Mr. Max Müller, I will here state fully his view of the story of Tuna, and then go on to the story of Daphne. For the sake of accuracy, I take the liberty of borrowing the whole of his statement (i. 4-7):— ‘I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show the real difference between the ethnological and the philological schools of comparative mythology. ‘First of all, what has to be explained is not the growing up of a tree from one or the other member of a god or

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Criticism of Tuna and Daphne

Now (1), as to Daphne, we are not invariably told that hers was a case of ‘the total change of a heroine into a tree.’ In Ovid {14} she is thus changed. In Hyginus, on the other hand, the earth swallows her, and a tree takes her place. All the authorities are late. Here I cannot but reflect on the scholarly method of Mannhardt, who would have examined and criticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it. However, Daphne was not mangled; a tree did not spring from her seve

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The Explanation

On the whole, either cocoanut kernels were called ‘brains of Tuna’ because ‘cocoanut’=‘head,’ and a head has brains—and, well, somehow I fail to see why brains of Tuna in particular! Or, there being a story to the effect that the first cocoanut grew out of the head of the metamorphosed Tuna, the kernel was called his brains. But why was the story told, and why of Tuna? Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat eels; and Ina was the moon, who, a Mangaian Selene, loved no Latmian shepherd, but an

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Disease of Language and Folk-etymology

The Tuna story is described as ‘a clear case of disease of language cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology.’ The ‘disease’ showed itself, I suppose, in the presence of the Mangaian words for ‘brain of Tuna.’ But the story of Tuna gives no folk-etymology of the name Tuna. Now, to give an etymology of a name of forgotten meaning is the sole object of folk-etymology. The plant-name, ‘snake’s head,’ given as an example by Mr. Max Müller, needs no etymological explanation. A story may b

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Mannhardt on Daphne

Since we shall presently find Mr. Max Müller claiming the celebrated Mannhardt as a sometime deserter of philological comparative mythology, who ‘returned to his old colours,’ I observe with pleasure that Mannhardt is on my side and against the Oxford Professor. Mannhardt shows that the laurel ( daphne ) was regarded as a plant which, like our rowan tree, averts evil influences. ‘Moreover, the laurel, like the Maibaum , was looked on as a being with a spirit. This is the safest result which m

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Athanasius

Mr. Max Müller protests, most justly, against the statement that he, like St. Athanasius, stands alone, contra mundum . If ever this phrase fell from my pen (in what connection I know not), it is as erroneous as the position of St. Athanasius is honourable. Mr. Max Müller’s ideas, in various modifications, are doubtless still the most prevalent of any. The anthropological method has hardly touched, I think, the learned contributors to Roscher’s excellent mythological Lexicon. Dr. Brinton, wh

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Italian Critics

Mr. Max Müller asks, {22} ‘What would Mr. Andrew Lang say if he read the words of Signer Canizzaro, in his “Genesi ed Evoluzione del Mito” (1893), “Lang has laid down his arms before his adversaries”?’ Mr. Lang ‘would smile.’ And what would Mr. Max Müller say if he read the words of Professor Enrico Morselli, ‘Lang gives no quarter to his adversaries, who, for the rest, have long been reduced to silence’? {23} The Right Hon. Professor also smiles, no doubt. We both smile. Solvuntur risu ta

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A Dutch Defender

The question of the precise attitude of Professor Tiele, the accomplished Gifford Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh (1897), is more important and more difficult. His remarks were made in 1885, in an essay on the Myth of Cronos, and were separately reprinted, in 1886, from the ‘Revue de l’Histoire des Religions,’ which I shall cite. Where they refer to myself they deal with Custom and Myth , not with Myth , Ritual , and Religion (1887). It seems best to quote, ipsissimis verbis , Mr. Max

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Reply

Professor Tiele wrote in 1885. I do not remember having claimed his alliance, though I made one or two very brief citations from his remarks on the dangers of etymology applied to old proper names. {25a} To citations made by me later in 1887 Professor Tiele cannot be referring. {25b} Thus I find no proof of any claim of alliance put forward by me, but I do claim a right to quote the Professor’s published words. These I now translate:— {25c} ‘What goes before shows adequately that I am an a

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‘Braves Gens’

Professor Tiele then bids us leave our cries of triumph to the servum imitatorum pecus , braves gens , and so forth, as in the passage which Mr. Max Müller, unless I misunderstand him, regards as referring to the ‘new school,’ and, notably, to M. Gaidoz and myself, though such language ought not to apply to M. Gaidoz, because he is a scholar. I am left to uncovenanted mercies....

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Professor Tiele on Our Merits

The merits of the new school Professor Tiele had already stated:— {26} ‘If I were reduced to choose between this method and that of comparative philology, I would prefer the former without the slightest hesitation. This method alone enables us to explain the fact, such a frequent cause of surprise, that the Greeks like the Germans . . . could attribute to their gods all manner of cruel, cowardly and dissolute actions. This method alone reveals the cause of all the strange metamorphoses of gods

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Destruction and Construction

Thus writes Professor Tiele about the constructive part of our work. As to the destructive—or would-be destructive—part, he condenses my arguments against the method of comparative philology. ‘To resume, the whole house of comparative philological mythology is builded on the sand, and her method does not deserve confidence, since it ends in such divergent results.’ That is Professor Tiele’s statement of my destructive conclusions, and he adds, ‘So far, I have not a single objection to make.

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Allies or Not?

These are several of the passages on which, in 1887, I relied as evidence of the Professor’s approval, which, I should have added, is only partial It is he who, unsolicited, professes himself ‘much more our ally than our adversary.’ It is he who proclaims that Mr. Max Midler’s central hypothesis is erroneous, and who makes ‘no objection’ to my idea that it is ‘builded on the sand.’ It is he who assigns essential merits to our method, and I fail to find that he ‘strongly declines the honour’ of

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Our Errors

In 1887, I was not careful to quote what Professor Tiele had said against us. First, as to our want of novelty. That merit, I think, I had never claimed. I was proud to point out that we had been anticipated by Eusebius of Cæsarea, by Fontenelle, and doubtless by many others. We repose, as Professor Tiele justly says, on the researches of Dr. Tylor. At the same time it is Professor Tiele who constantly speaks of ‘the new school,’ while adding that he himself had freely opposed Mr. Max Mülle

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Uses of Philology

Our method (says Professor Tiele) ‘cannot answer all the questions which the science of mythology must solve, or, at least, must study.’ Certainly it makes no such pretence. Professor Tiele then criticises Sir George Cox and Mr. Robert Brown, junior, for their etymologies of Poseidon. Indiscreet followers are not confined to our army alone. Now, the use of philology, we learn, is to discourage such etymological vagaries as those of Sir G. Cox. {28b} We also discourage them—severely. But we

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Personal Controversy

All this matter of alliances may seem, and indeed is, of a personal character, and therefore unimportant. Professor Tiele’s position in 1885-86 is clearly defined. Whatever he may have published since, he then accepted the anthropological or ethnological method, as alone capable of doing the work in which we employ it. This method alone can discover the origin of ancient myths, and alone can account for the barbaric element, that old puzzle, in the myths of civilised races. This the philolog

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The Story of Cronos

Professor Tiele now devotes fifteen pages to the story of Cronos, and to my essay on that theme. He admits that I was right in regarding the myth as ‘extraordinarily old,’ and that in Greece it must go back to a period when Greeks had not passed the New Zealand level of civilisation. [Now, the New Zealanders were cannibals!] But ‘we are the victims of a great illusion if we think that a mere comparison of a Maori and Greek myth explains the myth.’ I only profess to explain the savagery of th

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Professor Tiele on Sunset Myths

No, says Professor Tiele, ‘the story of Cronos has precisely the opposite meaning.’ The New Zealand myth is one of dawn, the Greek myth is one of sunset. The mutilated part of poor Ouranos is le phallus du ciel , le soleil , which falls into ‘the Cosmic ocean,’ and then, of course, all is dark. Professor Tiele may be right here; I am indifferent. All that I wanted to explain was the savage complexion of the myth, and Professor Tiele says that I have explained that, and (xii. 264) he rejects

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Our Lack of Scientific Exactness

I do not here give at full length Professor Tiele’s explanation of the meaning of a myth which I do not profess to explain myself. Thus, drops of the blood of Ouranos falling on Earth begat the Mélies , usually rendered ‘Nymphs of the Ash-trees.’ But Professor Tiele says they were really bees (Hesychius, μελιαι = μελισσαι)—‘that is to say, stars.’ Everybody has observed that the stars rise up off the earth, like the bees sprung from the blood of Ouranos. In Myth , Ritual , and Religion (i. 2

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My Lack of Explanation of Cronos

Now, I have offered no explanation at all of who Cronos was, what he was god of, from what race he was borrowed, from what language his name was derived. The fact is that I do not know the truth about these important debated questions. Therefore, after speaking so kindly of our method, and rejecting the method of Mr. Max Müller, Professor Tiele now writes thus (and this Mr. Max Müller does cite, as we have seen):— ‘Mr. Lang and M. Gaidoz are not entirely wrong in claiming me as an ally. But I

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My Crime

Now, what important questions was I gliding over? In what questions did I not expect to find reason? Why in this savage fatras about Cronos swallowing his children, about blood-drops becoming bees (Mr. Max Müller says ‘Melian nymphs’), and bees being stars, and all the rest of a prehistoric Märchen worked over again and again by the later fancy of Greek poets and by Greek voyagers who recognised Cronos in Moloch. In all this I certainly saw no ‘reason,’ but I have given in tabular form the ge

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My Reply to Professor Tiele

I would reply that I am not engaged in a study of the Cult of Cronos, but of the revolting element in his Myth : his swallowing of his children, taking a stone emetic by mistake, and disgorging the swallowed children alive; the stone being on view at Delphi long after the Christian era. Now, such stories of divine feats of swallowing and disgorging are very common, I show, in savage myth and popular Märchen . The bushmen have Kwai Hemm, who swallows the sacred Mantis insect. He is killed, and

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Conclusion as to Professor Tiele

The learned Professor’s remarks on being ‘much more my ally than my opponent’ were published before my Myth , Ritual , and Religion , in which (i. 24, 25) I cited his agreement with me in the opinion that ‘the philological method’ (Mr. Max Müller’s) is ‘inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of discovering the origin of a myth.’ I also quoted his unhesitating preference of ours to Mr. Max Müller’s method (i. 43, 44). I did not cite a tithe of what he actually did say to our credit.

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Mannhardt’s Attitude

Professor Tiele, it may appear, really ‘fights for his own hand,’ and is not a thorough partisan of either side. The celebrated Mannhardt, too, doubtless the most original student of folk-lore since Grimm, might, at different periods of his career, have been reckoned an ally, now by philologists, now by ‘the new school.’ He may be said, in fact, to have combined what is best in the methods of both parties. Both are anxious to secure such support as his works can lend....

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Moral Character Impeached

Mr. Max Müller avers that his moral character seems to be ‘aimed at’ by critics who say that he has no right to quote Mannhardt or Oldenberg as his supporters (1. xvi.). Now, without making absurd imputations, I do not reckon Mannhardt a thorough partisan of Mr. Max Müller. I could not put our theory so well as Mannhardt puts it. ‘The study of the lower races is an invaluable instrument for the interpretation of the survivals from earlier stages, which we meet in the full civilisation of cult

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Mannhardt

Mannhardt, for a time, says Mr. Max Müller, ‘expressed his mistrust in some of the results of comparative mythology’ (1. xvii.). Indeed, I myself quote him to that very effect. {42b} Not only ‘ some of the results,’ but the philological method itself was distrusted by Mannhardt, as by Curtius. ‘The failure of the method in its practical working lies in a lack of the historical sense,’ says Mannhardt. {42c} Mr. Max Müller may have, probably has, referred to these sayings of Mannhardt; or, i

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Mannhardt’s Letters

‘Mannhardt’s state of mind with regard to the general principles of comparative philology has been so exactly my own,’ says Mr. Max Müller, that he cites Mannhardt’s letters to prove the fact. But as to the application to myth of the principles of comparative philology, Mannhardt speaks of ‘the lack of the historical sense’ displayed in the practical employment of the method. This, at least, is ‘not exactly’ Mr. Max Müller’s own view. Probably he refers to the later period when Mannhardt ‘ret

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How Mannhardt differs from Mr. Max Müller

I propose to show wherein the difference lies. Mannhardt says, ‘My method is just the same as that applied by me to the Tree-cult.’ What was that method? Mannhardt, in the letter quoted by Mr. Max Müller, goes on to describe it; but Mr. Max Müller omits the description, probably not realising its importance. For Mannhardt’s method is the reverse of that practised under the old colours to which he is said to have returned....

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Mannhardt’s Method

‘My method is here the same as in the Tree-cult. I start from a given collection of facts, of which the central idea is distinct and generally admitted, and consequently offers a firm basis for explanation. I illustrate from this and from well-founded analogies. Continuing from these, I seek to elucidate darker things. I search out the simplest radical ideas and perceptions, the germ-cells from whose combined growth mythical tales form themselves in very different ways.’ Mr. Frazer gives us

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Another Claim on Mannhardt

While maintaining that ‘all comparative mythology must rest on comparison of names as its most certain basis’ (a system which Mannhardt declares explicitly to be so far ‘a failure’), Mr. Max Müller says, ‘It is well known that in his last, nay posthumous essay, Mannhardt, no mean authority, returned to the same conviction.’ I do not know which is Mannhardt’s very last essay, but I shall prove that in the posthumous essays Mannhardt threw cold water on the whole method of philological comparativ

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What Mannhardt said

In the passages here produced as proof of Mannhardt’s conversion, he is not investigating a myth at all, or a name which occurs in mythology. He is trying to discover the meaning of the practices of the Lupercalia at Rome. In February, says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans held a popular festival, and lads ran round naked, save for skins of victims, whipping the spectators. Mannhardt, in his usual way, collects all the facts first, and then analyses the name Luperci . This does not mak

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My Relations to Mannhardt

If anything could touch and move an unawakened anthropologist it would be the conversion of Mannhardt. My own relations with his ideas have the interest of illustrating mental coincidences. His name does not occur, I think, in the essay, ‘The Method of Folklore,’ in the first edition of my Custom and Myth . In that essay I take, as an example of the method, the Scottish and Northumbrian Kernababy , the puppet made out of the last gleanings of harvest. This I compared to the Greek Demeter of

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Mannhardt’s Return to his old Colours

If, then, Mannhardt was re-converted, it would be a potent argument for my conversion. But one is reminded of the re-conversion of Prince Charles. In 1750 he ‘deserted the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of England.’ Later he returned, or affected to return, to the ancient faith. A certain Cardinal seemed contented therewith, and, as the historian remarks, ‘was clearly a man not difficult to please.’ Mr. Max Müller reminds me of the good Cardinal. I do not feel so satis

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Mannhardt’s Attitude to Philology

We have heard Mannhardt, in a letter partly cited by Mr. Max Müller, describe his own method. He begins with what is certain and intelligible, a mass of popular customs. These he explains by analogies. He passes from the known to the obscure. Philological mythologists begin with the unknown, the name of a god. This they analyse, extract a meaning, and (proceeding to the known) fit the facts of the god’s legend into the sense of his name. The methods are each other’s opposites, yet the lett

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Irritating Conduct of Mannhardt

Nothing irritates philological mythologists so much, nothing has injured them so much in the esteem of the public which ‘goes into these things a little,’ as the statement that their competing etymologies and discrepant interpretations of mythical names are mutually destructive. I have been told that this is ‘a mean argument.’ But if one chemical analyst found bismuth where another found iridium, and a third found argon, the public would begin to look on chemistry without enthusiasm; still mor

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Mannhardt on Demeter Erinnys

In a posthumous work, Mythologische Forschungen (1884), the work from which Mr. Max Müller cites the letter to Müllenhoff, Mannhardt discusses Demeter Erinnys. She is the Arcadian goddess, who, in the form of a mare, became mother of Despoina and the horse Arion, by Poseidon. {51a} Her anger at the unhandsome behaviour of Poseidon caused Demeter to be called Erinnys—‘to be angry’ being ερινυειν in Arcadian—a folk-etymology, clearly. Mannhardt first dives deep into the sources for this fable.

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Mannhardt’s ‘Mean Argument’

Mannhardt now examines the explanations of Demeter Erinnys, and her legend, given by Preller, E. Curtius, O. Müller, A. Kuhn, W. Sonne, Max Müller, E. Burnouf, de Gubernatis, Schwartz, and H. D. Müller. ‘Here,’ he cries, ‘is a variegated list of hypotheses!’ Demeter is Storm-cloud Sun Goddess Earth and Moon Goddess Dawn Night. Poseidon is Sea Storm God Cloud-hidden Sun Rain God. Despoina is Rain Thunder Moon. Arion, the horse, is Lightning Sun Thunder-horse. Erinnys is Storm-cloud Red Dawn. Ma

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Why Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted

Mannhardt’s friend, Müllenhoff, had an aversion to solar myths. He said: {54} ‘I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called comparative mythology.’ Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithuanian solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs. Müllenhoff and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste. Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Müller. Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress

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Mannhardt’s Final Confession

Mannhardt’s last work published in his life days was Antike Wald - und Feldkulte (1877). In the preface, dated November 1, 1876 ( after the famous letter of May 1876), he explains the growth of his views and criticises his predecessors. After doing justice to Kuhn and his comparisons of European with Indian myths, he says that, in his opinion, comparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not yet borne the expected fruits. ‘The assured gains shrink into very few divine names, such as Dyaus—Zeus—Tiu

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Mannhardt on Solar Myths

What the attitude of Mannhardt was, in 1877 and later, we have seen. He disbelieves in the philological system of explaining myths by etymological conjectures. He disbelieves in the habit of finding, in myths of terrestrial occurrences, reflections of celestial phenomena. But earlier, in his long essay Die lettischen Sonnenmythen (in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie , 1875), he examines the Lettish popular songs about the Sun, the Sun’s daughters, the god-sons, and so forth. Here, of course, he is

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Mannhardt on Märchen.

But Mannhardt goes farther. He not only recognises, as everyone must do, the Sun, as explicitly named, when he plays his part in myth, or popular tale ( Märchen ). He thinks that even when the Sun is not named, his presence, and reference to him, and derivation of the incidents in Märchen from solar myth, may sometimes be detected with great probability (pp. 326, 327). But he adds, ‘not that every Märchen contains a reference to Nature; that I am far from asserting’ (p. 327). Now perhaps nobo

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‘The Two Brothers’

Mannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of ‘The Two Brothers,’ Bitiou and Anepou. This fable, as old, in actual written literature, as Moses, is a complex of half the Märchen plots and incidents in the world. It opens with the formula of Potiphar’s Wife. The falsely accused brother flies, and secretes his life, or separable soul, in a flower of the mystic Vale of Acacias. This affair of the separable soul may be studied in Mr. Hartland’s Perseus , and it animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer’s

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The Golden Fleece

Mannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece. This is a peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide Märchen of the Lad, the Giant’s helpful daughter, her aid in accomplishing feats otherwise impossible, and the pursuit of the pair by the father. I have studied the story—as it occurs in Samoa, among Red Indian tribes, and elsewhere—in ‘A Far-travelled Tale.’ {61b} In our late Greek versions the Quest of the Fleece of Gold occurs, but in no other variants known t

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Mannhardt’s Approach to Mr. Max Müller

In this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mannhardt comes nearest to Mr. Max Müller. He cites passages from him with approval ( cf . pp. 314, 322). His explanations, by aid of Sun-songs, of certain features in Greek mythology are plausible, and may be correct. But we turn to Mannhardt’s explicit later statement of his own position in 1877, and to his posthumous essays, published in 1884; and, on the whole, we find, in my opinion, much more difference from than agreement with the Oxford Profes

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Mr. Max Müller on Demeter Erinnys.

Like Mannhardt, our author in his new treatise discusses the strange old Arcadian myth of the horse-Demeter Erinnys (ii. 537). He tells the unseemly tale, and asks why the Earth goddess became a mare? Then he gives the analogous myth from the Rig-Veda, {65} which, as it stands, is ‘quite unintelligible.’ But Yâska explains that Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, in the form of a mare, had twins by Vivasvat, in the shape of a stallion. Their offspring were the Asvins, who are more or less analogo

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My Theory of the Horse Demeter

Mannhardt, I think, ought to have tried at an explanation of myths so closely analogous as those two, one Indian, one Greek, in which a goddess, in the shape of a mare, becomes mother of twins by a god in the form of a stallion. As Mr. Max Müller well says, ‘If we look about for analogies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding to the well-marked features of this barbarous myth among any of the uncivilised tribes of the earth. If we did, how we should rejoice! Why, then, should we no

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Totemism

To the strange and widely diffused institution of ‘Totemism’ our author often returns. I shall deal here with his collected remarks on the theme, the more gladly as the treatment shows how very far Mr. Max Müller is from acting with a shadow of unfairness when he does not refer to special passages in his opponent’s books. He treats himself and his own earlier works in the same fashion, thereby, perhaps, weakening his argument, but also demonstrating his candour, were any such demonstration req

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Totemism Defined

I think I have defined totemism, {71} and the reader may consult Mr. Frazer’s work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan’s essays, or ‘Totemism’ in the Encyclopædia Britannica . However, I shall define totemism once more. It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in Australia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing themselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some plant, beast, or other class of objects in nature. One kin may be wolves, anoth

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What a Totem is

Though our adversary now abandons totems, he returns to them elsewhere (i. 198-202). ‘Totem is the corruption of a term used by North American Indians in the sense of clan-mark or sign-board (“ododam”).’ The totem was originally a rude emblem of an animal or other object ‘placed by North American Indians in front of their settlements.’...

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The Evidence for Sign-boards

Our author’s evidence for sign-boards is from an Ottawa Indian, and is published from his MS. by Mr. Hoskyns Abrahall. {73} The testimony is of the greatest merit, for it appears to have first seen the light in a Canadian paper of 1858. Now in 1858 totems were only spoken of in Lafitau, Long, and such old writers, and in Cooper’s novels. They had not become subjects of scientific dispute, so the evidence is uncontaminated by theory. The Indians were, we learn, divided into [local?] tribes,

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More about Totems

The origin of totemism is unknown to me, as to Mr. McLennan and Dr. Robertson Smith, but Mr. Max Müller knows this origin. ‘A totem is a clan-mark, then a clan-name, then the name of the ancestor of a clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by a clan’ (i. 201). ‘All this applies in the first instance to Red Indians only.’ Yes, and ‘clan’ applies in the first instance to the Scottish clans only! When Mr. Max Müller speaks of ‘clans’ among the Red Indians, he uses a word whose connot

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Heraldry and Totems

The Ottawas are armigeri , are heraldic; so are the natives of Vancouver’s Island, who have wooden pillars with elaborate quarterings. Examples are in South Kensington Museum. But this savage heraldry is not nearly so common as the institution of totemism. Thus it is difficult to prove that the heraldry is the origin of totemism, which is just as likely, or more likely, to have been the origin of savage heraldic crests and quarterings. Mr. Max Müller allows that there may be other origins...

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Gods and Totems

Our author refers to unnamed writers who call Indra or Ammon a totem (i. 200). This is a foolish liberty with language. ‘Why should not all the gods of Egypt with their heads of bulls and apes and cats be survivals of totemisms?’ Why not, indeed? Professor Sayce remarks, ‘They were the sacred animals of the clans,’ survivals from an age ‘when the religion of Egypt was totemism.’ ‘In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities, i . e . personifications or individual representations of the sac

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An Objection

Lastly (ii. 403), when totems infected ‘even those who ought to have been proof against this infantile complaint’ (which is not even a ‘disease of language’ of a respectable type), then ‘the objection that a totem meant originally a clan-mark was treated as scholastic pedantry.’ Alas, I fear with justice! For if I call Mr. Arthur Balfour a Tory will Mr. Max Müller refute my opinion by urging that ‘a Tory meant originally an Irish rapparee,’ or whatever the word did originally mean? Mr. Max Mül

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A Weak Brother

Our author’s habit of omitting references to his opponents has here caused me infinite inconvenience. He speaks of some eccentric person who has averred that a ‘fetish’ is a ‘totem,’ inhabited by ‘an ancestral spirit.’ To myself it seems that you might as well say ‘Abracadabra is gas and gaiters.’ As no reference was offered, I invented ‘a wild surmise’ that Mr. Max Müller had conceivably misapprehended Mr. Frazer’s theory of the origin of totems. Had our author only treated himself fairly,

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Mr. Frazer and Myself

There is, or was, a difference of opinion between Mr. Frazer and myself as to the causes of the appearance of certain sacred animals in Greek religion. My notions were published in Myth , Ritual , and Religion (1887), Mr. Frazer’s in The Golden Bough (1890). Necessarily I was unaware in 1887 of Mr. Frazer’s still unpublished theory. Now that I have read it, he seems to me to have the better logic on his side; and if I do not as yet wholly agree with him, it is because I am not yet certain tha

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Greek Totemism

In C . and M . (p. 106) I describe the social aspects of totemism. I ask if there are traces of it in Greece. Suppose, for argument’s sake, that in prehistoric Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is among the Oraons of Bengal. {80} In that case (1) places might be named from a mouse tribe; (2) mice might be held sacred per se ; (3) the mouse name might be given locally to a god who superseded the mouse in pride of place; (4) images of the mouse might be associated with that of the god,

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The Greek Mouse-totem?

My theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived from mice with a possible prehistoric mouse-totem gave me, I confess, considerable satisfaction. But in Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough (ii. 129-132) is published a group of cases in which mice and other vermin are worshipped for prudential reasons—to get them to go away. In the Classical Review (vol. vi. 1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and Ælian on plagues of mice, like the recent invasion of voles on the Border sheep-farms.

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Philological Theory

Philological mythologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning of words produced the results; that the wolf-born Apollo (Λυκηyενης) originally meant ‘Light-born Apollo,’ {82b} and that the wolf came in from a confusion between λυκη, ‘Light,’ and λυκος, a wolf. I make no doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian Apollo, the Dog-Apollo, and all the rest in the same way, and account for all the other peculiarities of place-names, myths, works of art, local badges, and so forth. We mus

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Mr. Frazer on Animals in Greek Religion

In The Golden Bough (ii. 37) Mr. Frazer, whose superior knowledge and acuteness I am pleased to confess, has a theory different from that which I (following McLennan) propounded before The Golden Bough appeared. Greece had a bull-shaped Dionysus. {83a} ‘There is left no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival, his worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.’ {83b} Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two possi

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Aryan Totems (?)

Generally speaking (and how delightfully characteristic of us all is this!), I see totems in Greek sacred beasts, where Mr. Frazer sees the corn-spirit embodied in a beast, and where Mr. Max Müller sees (in the case of Indra, called the bull) ‘words meaning simply male, manly, strong,’ an ‘animal simile.’ {85a} Here, of course, Mr. Max Müller is wholly in the right, when a Vedic poet calls Indra ‘strong bull,’ or the like. Such poetic epithets do not afford the shadow of a presumption for Ved

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Mr. Frazer and I

It is plain that where a people claim no connection by descent and blood from a sacred animal, are neither of his name nor kin, the essential feature of totemism is absent. I do not see that eaters of the bull Dionysus or cultivators of the pig Demeter {86} made any claim to kindred with either god. Their towns were not allied in name with pig or bull. If traces of such a belief existed, they have been sloughed off. Thus Mr. Frazer’s explanation of Greek pigs and bulls and all their odd rite

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Mr. Frazer on Origin of Totemism

Mr. Frazer has introduced the term ‘sex-totems,’ in application to Australia. This is connected with his theory of the Origin of Totemism. I cannot quite approve of the term sex-totems. If in Australia each sex has a protecting animal—the men a bat, the women an owl—if the slaying of a bat by a woman menaces the death of a man, if the slaying of an owl by a woman may cause the decease of a man, all that is very unlike totemism in other countries. Therefore, I ask Mr. Frazer whether, in the in

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Mr. Frazer’s Theory

The Australian respects his ‘sex-totem’ because the life of his sex is bound up in its life. He speaks of it as his brother, and calls himself (as distinguished by his sex) by its name. As a man he is a bat, as a woman his wife is an owl. As a member of a given human kin he may be a kangaroo, perhaps his wife may be an emu. But Mr. Frazer derives totemism, all the world over, from the same origin as he assigns to ‘sex-totems.’ In these the life of each sex is bound up, therefore they are by

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Anthropological Evidence

In all that we say of totemism, as, later, of fetishism, we rely on an enormous mass of evidence from geographers, historians, travellers, settlers, missionaries, explorers, traders, Civil Servants, and European officers of native police in Australia and Burmah. Our witnesses are of all ages, from Herodotus to our day, of many nations, of many creeds, of different theoretical opinions. This evidence, so world-wide, so diversified in source, so old, and so new, Mr. Max Müller impugns. But, bef

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‘Positions one never held’

‘It is not pleasant [writes our author] to have to defend positions which one never held, nor wishes to hold, and I am therefore all the more grateful to those who have pointed out the audacious misrepresentations of my real opinion in comparative mythology, and have rebuked the flippant tone of some of my eager critics’ [i. 26, 27]. I must here confess to the belief that no gentleman or honest man ever consciously misrepresents the ideas of an opponent. If it is not too flippant an illustratio

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Positions which I never held

Thus Mr. Max Müller never dreamed of ‘audaciously misrepresenting’ me when, in four lines, he made two statements about my opinions and my materials which are at the opposite pole from the accurate (i. 12): ‘When I speak of the Vedic Rishis as primitive, I do not mean what Mr. A. Lang means when he calls his savages primitive.’ But I have stated again and again that I don’t call my savages ‘primitive.’ Thus ‘contemporary savages may be degraded, they certainly are not primitive.’ {93a} ‘One

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Anthropological Evidence

In connection with this topic (the nature of anthropological evidence), Mr. Max Müller (i. 205-207) repeats what he has often said before. Thus he cites Dr. Codrington’s remarks, most valuable remarks, on the difficulty of reporting correctly about the ideas and ways of savages. I had cited the same judicious writer to the same effect, {95} and had compiled a number of instances in which the errors of travellers were exposed, and their habitual fallacies were detected. Fifteen closely printed

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Mr. Max Müller’s Method of Controversy

Now no member of the reading public, perusing Mr. Max Müller on anthropological evidence (i. 24-26, 205-207), could guess that his cautions about evidence are not absolutely new to us. He could not guess that Dr. Tylor replied to them ‘before they were made’ by our present critic (I think), and that I did the same with great elaboration. Our defence of our evidence is not noticed by Mr. Max Müller. He merely repeats what he has often said before on the subject, exactly as if anthropologists w

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Mr. Max Müller on our Evidence

In an earlier work, The Gifford Lectures for 1891, {96} our author had devoted more space to a criticism of our evidence. To this, then, we turn (pp. 169-180, 413-436). Passing Mr. Max Müller’s own difficulties in understanding a Mohawk (which the Mohawk no doubt also felt in understanding Mr. Max Müller), we reach (p. 172) the fables about godless savages. These, it is admitted, are exploded among scholars in anthropology. So we do, at least, examine evidence. Mr. Max Müller now fixes on a

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The Test of Recurrences

Even for travellers’ tales we have a use, we can apply to them Dr. Tylor’s ‘Test of Recurrences.’ ‘If two independent visitors to different countries, say a mediæval Mahommedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman in Dahomey, or a Jesuit missionary in Brazil and a Wesley an in the Fiji Islands, agree in describing some analogous art, or rite, or myth among the people they have visited, it becomes difficult or impossible to set down such correspondence to accident or wilful fraud. A story by a bus

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Bias of Theory

Yes, our critic may reply, ‘but Mr. Curr thinks that there is a strong tendency in observers abroad, if they have become acquainted with a new and startling theory that has become popular at home, to see confirmations of it everywhere.’ So I had explicitly stated in commenting on Dr. Tylor’s test of recurrences. {101b} ‘Travellers and missionaries have begun to read anthropological books, and their evidence is, therefore, much more likely to be biassed now by anthropological theories than it

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Concerning Missionaries

Here is an example of a vivacité in our censor. ‘With regard to ghosts and spirits among the Melanesians, our authorities, whether missionaries, traders, or writers on ethnology, are troubled by no difficulties’ (i. 207). Yet on this very page Mr. Max Müller has been citing the ‘difficulties’ which do ‘trouble’ a ‘missionary,’ Dr. Codrington. And, for my own part, when I want information about Melanesian beliefs, it is to Dr. Codrington’s work that I go. {103} The doctor, himself a missiona

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Mr. Max Müller as Ethnologist

Our author is apt to remonstrate with his anthropological critics, and to assure them that he also has made studies in ethnology. ‘I am not such a despairer of ethnology as some ethnologists would have me.’ He refers us to the assistance which he lent in bringing out Dr. Hahn’s Tsuni - Goam (1881), Mr. Gill’s Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), and probably other examples could be added. But my objection is, not that we should be ungrateful to Mr. Max Müller for these and other val

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Names of Savage Gods

This is the method, and if we can also get a scholar to analyse the names of Hottentot gods, we are all the luckier, that is, if his processes and inferences are logical . May we not decide on the logic of scholars? But, just as Mr. Max Müller points out to us the dangers attending our evidence, we point out to him the dangers attending his method. In Dr. Hahn’s book, the doctor analyses the meaning of the name Tsuni-Goam and other names, discovers their original sense, and from that sense ex

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A Hottentot God

In Custom and Myth (p. 207), I examine the logic by which Dr. Hahn proves Tsuni-Goam to be ‘The Red Dawn.’ One of his steps is to say that few means ‘sore,’ or ‘wounded,’ and that a wound is red , so he gets his ‘red’ in Red Dawn. But of tsu in the sense of ‘red’ he gives not one example, while he does give another word for ‘red,’ or ‘bloody.’ This may be scholarly but it is not evidence, and this is only one of many perilous steps on ground extremely scabreux , got over by a series of logica

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Cause of our Scepticism

Our scepticism is confirmed by the extraordinary diversity of opinion among scholars as to what the right analysis of old divine names is. Mr. Max Müller writes (i. 18): ‘I have never been able to extract from my critics the title of a single book in which my etymologies and my mythological equations had been seriously criticised by real scholars.’ We might answer, ‘Why tell you what you know very well?’ For (i. 50) you say that while Signer Canizzaro calls some of your ‘equations’ ‘irrefutab

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Phonetic Bickerings

The evidence turns on theories of phonetic laws as they worked in pre-Homeric Greece. But these laws, as they apply to common ordinary words, need not , we are told, be applied so strictly to proper names, as of gods and heroes. These are a kind of comets, and their changes cannot be calculated like the changes of vulgar words, which answer to stars (i. 298). Mr. Max Müller ‘formerly agreed with Curtius that phonetic rules should be used against proper names with the same severity as against

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Phonetic Rules

Mr. Max Müller argues at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in favour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old proper names. Do they apply to these as strictly as to ordinary words? ‘This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been boldly answered’ (i. 297). Mr. Max Müller cannot have forgotten that Curtius answered boldly—in the negative. ‘Without such rigour all attempts at etymology are impossible. For this very reason ethnologists a

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Basis of a Science

A science in its early stages, while the validity of its working laws in application to essential cases is still undetermined, must, of course, expect ‘bickerings.’ But philological mythologists are actually trying to base one science, Mythology, on the still shifting and sandy foundations of another science, Phonetics. The philologists are quarrelling about their ‘equations,’ and about the application of their phonetic laws to mythical proper names. On the basis of this shaking soil, they pr

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Philology in Action—Indra

As an example of the philological method with a Vedic god, take Indra. I do not think that science is ever likely to find out the whole origins of any god. Even if his name mean ‘sky,’ Dyaus, Zeus, we must ask what mode of conceiving ‘sky’ is original. Was ‘sky’ thought of as a person, and, if so, as a savage or as a civilised person; as a god, sans phrase ; as the inanimate visible vault of heaven; as a totem, or how? Indra, like other gods, is apt to evade our observation, in his origins.

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Obscuring the Veda

If Indra is called ‘bull,’ that at first only meant ‘strong’ (ii. 209). Yet ‘some very thoughtful scholars’ see traces of totemism in Indra! {111a} Mr. Max Müller thinks that this theory is ‘obscuring the Veda by this kind of light from the Dark Continent’ (America, it seems). Indra is said to have been born from a cow, like the African Heitsi Eibib. {111b} There are unholy stories about Indra and rams. But I for one, as I have said already, would never deny that these may be part of the

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Mischief of Comparisons in Comparative Mythology

Not always are comparisons illuminating, it seems. Our author writes, ‘It may be said—in fact, it has been said—that there can at all events be no harm in simply placing the myths and customs of savages side by side with the myths and customs of Hindus and Greeks.’ (This, in fact, is the method of the science of institutions.) ‘But experience shows that this is not so’ (i. 195). So we must not, should not, simply place the myths and customs of savages side by side with those of Hindus and Gre

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Dr. Oldenberg

Now Dr. Oldenberg, it seems, uses such comparisons of savage and Aryan faiths. Dr. Oldenberg is (i. 209) one of several ‘ very thoughtful scholars ’ who do so, who break Mr. Max Müller’s prohibition. Yet (ii. 220) ‘ no true scholar would accept any comparison’ between savage fables and the folklore of Homer and the Vedas ‘as really authoritative until fully demonstrated on both sides .’ Well, it is ‘fully demonstrated,’ or ‘a very thoughtful scholar’ (like Dr. Oldenberg) would not accept it.

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Comparisons, when odious

Once more, Mr. Max Müller deprecates the making of comparisons between savage and Vedic myths (i. 210), and then (i. 220) he deprecates the acceptance of these very comparisons ‘as really authoritative until fully demonstrated.’ Now, how is the validity of the comparisons to be ‘fully demonstrated’ if we are forbidden to make them at all, because to do so is to ‘obscure’ the Veda ‘by light from the Dark Continent’?...

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A Question of Logic

I am not writing ‘quips and cranks;’ I am dealing quite gravely with the author’s processes of reasoning. ‘No true scholar’ does what ‘very thoughtful scholars’ do. No comparisons of savage and Vedic myths should be made, but yet, ‘when fully demonstrated,’ ‘true scholars would accept them’ (i 209, 220). How can comparisons be demonstrated before they are made? And made they must not be!...

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‘Scholars’

It would be useful if Mr. Max Müller were to define ‘scholar,’ ‘real scholar,’ ‘true scholar,’ ‘very thoughtful scholar.’ The latter may err, and have erred—like General Councils, and like Dr. Oldenberg, who finds in the Veda ‘remnants of the wildest and rawest essence of religion,’ totemism, and the rest (i. 210). I was wont to think that ‘scholar,’ as used by our learned author, meant ‘philological mythologist,’ as distinguished from ‘not-scholar,’ that is, ‘anthropological mythologist.’ Bu

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Anthropology and the Mysteries

It is not my affair to defend Dr. Oldenberg, whose comparisons of Vedic with savage rites I have never read, I am sorry to say. One is only arguing that the method of making such comparisons is legitimate. Thus (i. 232) controversy, it seems, still rages among scholars as to ‘the object of the Eleusinian Mysteries.’ ‘Does not the scholar’s conscience warn us against accepting whatever in the myths and customs of the Zulus seems to suit our purpose’—of explaining features in the Eleusinia? If

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Abstract Ideas of Savages

Mr. Max Müller defends, with perfect justice, the existence of abstract ideas among contemporary savages. It appears that somebody or other has said—‘we have been told’ (i. 291)—‘that all this’ (the Mangaian theory of the universe) ‘must have come from missionaries.’ The ideas are as likely to have come from Hegel as from a missionary! Therefore, ‘instead of looking for idols, or for totems and fetishes, we must learn and accept what the savages themselves are able to tell us. . . . ’ Yes, w

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Perception of the Infinite

From these extraordinary examples of abstract thought in savages, our author goes on to say that his theory of ‘the perception of the Infinite’ as the origin of religion was received ‘with a storm of unfounded obloquy’ (i. 292). I myself criticised the Hibbert Lectures , in Mind ; {116} on reading the essay over, I find no obloquy and no storm. I find, however, that I deny, what our author says that I assert, the primitiveness of contemporary savages. In that essay, which, of course, our autho

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Fetishism and Anthropological Method

Throughout much of his work our author’s object is to invalidate the anthropological method. That method sets side by side the customs, ideas, fables, myths, proverbs, riddles, rites, of different races. Of their languages it does not necessarily take account in this process. Nobody (as we shall see) knows the languages of all, or of most, of the races whose ideas he compares. Now the learned professor establishes the ‘harm done’ by our method in a given instance. He seems to think that, if

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Origin of Fetishes

If so, tant pis pour monsieur le President . But how does the unscientific conduct attributed to De Brosses implicate the modern anthropologist? Do we not try to find out, and really succeed sometimes in finding out, why a savage cherishes this or that scrap as a ‘fetish’? I give a string of explanations in Custom and Myth (pp. 229-230). Sometimes the so-called fetish had an accidental, which was taken to be a causal, connection with a stroke of good luck. Sometimes the thing—an odd-shaped

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‘Telekinetic’ Origin of Fetishism

As I write comes in Mélusine , viii. 7, with an essay by M. Lefébure on Les Origines du Fétichisme . He derives some fetishistic practices from what the Melanesians call Mana , which, says Mr. Max Müller, ‘may often be rendered by supernatural or magic power, present in an individual, a stone, or in formulas or charms’ (i. 294). How, asks Mr. Lefébure, did men come to attribute this vis vivida to persons and things? Because, in fact, he says, such an unexplored force does really exist and dis

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Civilised ‘Fetishism’

De Brosses did not look among civilised fetishists for the motives which he neglected among savages (i. 196). Tant pis pour monsieur le Président . But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses and his, than Mr. Max Müller’s etymologies stand or fall with those in the Cratylus of Plato. If, in a civilised people, ancient or modern, we find a practice vaguely styled ‘fetishistic,’ we examine it in its details. While we have talismans, amulets, gamblers’ fétiches , I do not think

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More Mischiefs of Comparison

The ‘Nemesis’ (i. 196) of De Brosses’ errors did not stay in her ravaging progress. Fetishism was represented as ‘the very beginning of religion,’ first among the negroes, then among all races. As I, for one, persistently proclaim that the beginning of religion is an inscrutable mystery, the Nemesis has somehow left me scatheless, propitiated by my piety. I said, long ago, ‘the train of ideas which leads man to believe in and to treasure fetishes is one among the earliest springs of religious

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Still more Nemesis

The new Nemesis is really that which I have just put far from me—namely, that ‘modern savages represent everywhere the Eocene stratum of religion.’ They probably represent an early stage in religion, just as, teste . Mr. Max Müller, they represent an early stage in language ‘In savage languages we see what we can no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew. We watch the childhood of language, with all its childish pranks.’ {120c} Now, if the tongues spoken by modern sa

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For Us or Against Us?

We now hear that the worst and last penalty paid for De Brosses’ audacious comparison of savage with civilised superstitions is the postulate that Aryan and Semitic peoples have passed through a stage of savagery. ‘However different the languages, customs and myths, the colour and the skulls of these modern savages might be from those of Aryan and Semitic people, the latter must once have passed through the same stage, must once have been what the negroes of the West Coast of Africa are to-day.

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The Fallacy of ‘Admits’

As the purpose of this essay is mainly logical, I may point out the existence of a fallacy not marked, I think, in handbooks of Logic. This is the fallacy of saying that an opponent ‘admits’ what, on the contrary, he has been the first to point out and proclaim. He is thus suggested into an attitude which is the reverse of his own. Some one—I am sorry to say that I forget who he was—showed me that Fontenelle, in De l’Origine des Fables , {125a} briefly stated the anthropological theory of the

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Conclusion as to our Method

All this discussion of fetishes arose out of our author’s selection of the subject as an example of the viciousness of our method. He would not permit us ‘simply to place side by side’ savage and Greek myths and customs, because it did harm (i. 195); and the harm done was proved by the Nemesis of De Brosses. Now, first, a method may be a good method, yet may be badly applied. Secondly, I have shown that the Nemesis does not attach to all of us modern anthropologists. Thirdly, I have proved (

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What the Philological Theory Needs

The great desideratum of the philological method is a proof that the ‘Disease of Language,’ ex hypothesi the most fertile source of myths, is a vera causa . Do simple poetical phrases, descriptive of heavenly phenomena, remain current in the popular mouth after the meanings of appellatives (Bright One, Dark One, &amp;c.) have been forgotten, so that these appellatives become proper names—Apollo, Daphne, &amp;c.? Mr. Max Müller seems to think some proof of this process as a vera causa m

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The Riddle Theory

We now come, therefore, to the author’s treatment of popular riddles ( devinettes ), so common among savages and peasants. Their construction is simple: anything in Nature you please is described by a poetical periphrasis, and you are asked what it is. Thus Geistiblindr asks, What is the Dark One That goes over the earth, Swallows water and wood, But is afraid of the wind? &amp;c. Or we find, What is the gold spun from one window to another? The answers, the obvious answers, are (1) ‘mist’

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Mordvinian Mythology

Still in the very natural and laudable pursuit of facts which will support the hypothesis of a disease of language, Mr. Max Müller turns to Mordvinian mythology. ‘We have the accounts of real scholars’ about Mordvinian prayers, charms, and proverbs (i. 235). The Mordvinians, Ugrian tribes, have the usual departmental Nature-gods—as Chkaï, god of the sun ( chi =sun). He ‘lives in the sun, or is the sun’ (i. 236). His wife is the Earth or earth goddess, Védiava. They have a large family, give

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Lettish Mythology

These remarks apply equally well to our author’s dissertation on Lettish mythology (ii. 430 et seq .). The meaning of statements about the sun and sky ‘is not to be mistaken in the mythology of the Letts.’ So here is no disease of language. The meaning is not to be mistaken. Sun and moon and so on are spoken of by their natural unmistakable names, or in equally unmistakable poetical periphrases, as in riddles. The daughter of the sun hung a red cloak on a great oak-tree. This ‘can hardly h

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The Chances of Fancy

One remark has to be added. Mannhardt regarded many or most of the philological solutions of gods into dawn or sun, or thunder or cloud, as empty jeux d’esprit . And justly, for there is no name named among men which a philologist cannot easily prove to be a synonym or metaphorical term for wind or weather, dawn or sun. Whatever attribute any word connotes, it can be shown to connote some attribute of dawn or sun. Here parody comes in, and gives a not overstrained copy of the method, applyin

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Artemis

‘The last of the great Greek goddesses whom we have to consider is Artemis. Her name, we shall see, has received many interpretations, but none that can be considered as well established—none that, even if it were so, would help us much in disentangling the many myths told about her. Easy to understand as her character seems when we confine our attention to Homer, it becomes extremely complicated when we take into account the numerous local forms of worship of which she was the object. ‘We hav

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Otfried Müller

Mr. Max Müller goes on—citing, as I also do, Otfried Müller:—‘Otfried Müller in 1825 treated the same myth without availing himself of the light now to be derived from the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois. He quoted Pausanias as stating that the tumulus of Kallisto was near the sanctuary of Artemis Kallistê, and he simply took Kallisto for an epithet of Artemis, which, as in many other cases, had been taken for a separate personality.’ Otfried also pointed out, as we both say, that at Brauron, in At

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Beast Dances

For the use of beast-skins in such dances among totemists I cite Bancroft (iii. 168) and ( M . R . R . ii. 107) Robinson {142b} (same authority). I may now also refer to Robertson Smith: {142c} ‘the meaning of such a disguise [a fish-skin, among the Assyrians] is well known from many savage rituals ; it means that the worshipper presents himself as a fish,’ as a bear, or what not. {142d} Doubtless I might have referred more copiously to savage rituals, but really I thought that savage dances

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The View of Classical Scholars

They (ii. 735) begin by pointing out Artemis’s connection with Apollo and the moon. So do I! ‘If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun . . . Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon.’ {143e} ‘If Apollo was of solar origin,’ asks the author (ii. 735), ‘what could his sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some goddess connected with the moon?’ Very likely; quis negavit ? Then our author, like myself ( loc . cit .), dilates on Artemis as ‘sister

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Mr. Max Müller’s Explanation

Greek races traced to Zeus—usually disguised, for amorous purposes, as a brute. The Arcadians had an eponymous heroic ancestor, ‘Areas;’ they also worshipped Artemis. Artemis, as a virgin, could not become a mother of Areas by Zeus, or by anybody. Callisto was also Artemis. Callisto was the mother of Areas. But, to save the character of Artemis, Callisto was now represented as one of her nymphs. Then, Areas reminding the Arcadians of αρκτος (a bear), while they knew the Bear constellation,

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Wider Application of the Theory

Let us apply the explanation more widely. Say that a hundred animal names are represented in the known totem-kindreds of the world. Then had each such kin originally an eponymous hero whose name, like that of Areas in Arcady, accidentally ‘reminded’ his successors of a beast, so that a hundred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors? Perhaps this was what occurred; the explanation, at all events, fits the wolf of the Delawares and the other ninety-nine as well as it fits the Arcades. By a cur

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The Bear Dance

‘The dances of the maidens called αρκτοι, would receive an easy interpretation. They were Arkades, and why not αρκτοι (bears)?’ And if αρκτοι, why not clad in bear-skins, and all the rest? (ii. 738). This is our author’s explanation; it is also my own conjecture. The Arcadians were bears, knew it, and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or Nootkas dance a buffalo dance or a wolf dance. But all such dances are not totemistic. They have often other aims. One only names such dances tote

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The Method of Psychical Research

As a rule, mythology asks for no aid from Psychical Research. But there are problems in religious rite and custom where the services of the Cendrillon of the sciences, the despised youngest sister, may be of use. As an example I take the famous mysterious old Fire-rite of the Hirpi, or wolf-kin, of Mount Soracte. I shall first, following Mannhardt, and making use of my own trifling researches in ancient literature, describe the rite itself....

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Mount Soracte

Everyone has heard of Mount Soracte, white with shining snow, the peak whose distant cold gave zest to the blazing logs on the hearth of Horace. Within sight of his windows was practised, by men calling themselves ‘wolves’ ( Hirpi ), a rite of extreme antiquity and enigmatic character. On a peak of Soracte, now Monte di Silvestre, stood the ancient temple of Soranus, a Sabine sun-god. {148a} Virgil {148b} identifies Soranus with Apollo. At the foot of the cliff was the precinct of Feronia ,

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Hirpi Sorani

Once a year a fête of Soranus and Feronia was held, in the precinct of the goddess at Soracte. The ministrants were members of certain local families called Hirpi (wolves). Pliny says, {149c} ‘A few families, styled Hirpi, at a yearly sacrifice, walk over a burnt pile of wood, yet are not scorched. On this account they have a perpetual exemption, by decree of the Senate, from military and all other services.’ Virgil makes Aruns say, {149d} ‘Highest of gods, Apollo, guardian of Soracte, thou

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Mannhardt’s Deficiency

In all this ingenious reasoning, Mannhardt misses a point. What the Hirpi did was not merely to leap through light embers, as in the Roman Palilia , and the parallel doings in Scotland, England, France, and elsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John’s Eve). The Hirpi would not be freed from military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. Nor would Varro have found it necessary to explain so easy and common a feat by the use of a drug with w

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The Fire-walk

A modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets, geographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the Fire-walk. The only hint of explanation is the statement that the drug or juice of herbs preserved the Hirpi from harm. That theory may be kept in mind, and applied if it is found useful. Virgil’s theory that the ministrants walk, pietate freti , corresponds to Mrs. Wesley’s belief, when, after praying, she ‘waded the flames’ to rescue her children from th

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Fijian Fire-walk

The case which originally drew my attention to this topic is that given by Mr. Basil Thomson in his South Sea Yarns (p. 195). Mr. Thomson informs me that he wrote his description on the day after he witnessed the ceremony, a precaution which left no room for illusions of memory. Of course, in describing a conjuring trick, one who is not an expert records, not what actually occurred, but what he was able to see, and the chances are that he did not see, and therefore omits, an essential circumst

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Kling Fire-walk

‘Dear Sir,—Observing from your note in Longman’s Magazine that you have mislaid my notes re fire-walking, I herewith repeat them. I have more than once seen it done by the “Klings,” as the low-caste Tamil-speaking Hindus from Malabar are called, in the Straits Settlements. On one occasion I was present at a “fire-walking” held in a large tapioca plantation in Province Wellesley, before many hundreds of spectators, all the Hindu coolies from the surrounding estates being mustered. A trench had

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Tupua’s Incantation used in Walking Over the Uum-Ti.—Translation

‘Hold the leaves of the ti -plant before picking them, and say: “O hosts of gods! awake, arise! You and I are going to the ti -oven to-morrow.” ‘If they float in the air, they are gods, but if their feet touch the ground they are human beings. Then break the ti -leaves off and look towards the direction of the oven, and say: “O hosts of gods! go to-night, and to-morrow you and I shall go.” Then wrap the ti -leaves up in han ( Hibiscus ) leaves, and put them to sleep in the marae , where they

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Corroborative Evidence

The following corroborative account is given in the Journal , from a source vaguely described as ‘a pamphlet published in San Francisco, by Mr. Hastwell:’ ‘The natives of Raiatea have some performances so entirely out of the ordinary course of events as to institute ( sic ) inquiry relative to a proper solution. ‘On September 20, 1885, I witnessed the wonderful, and to me inexplicable, performance of passing through the “fiery furnace.” ‘The furnace that I saw was an excavation of three or four

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The Fire-walk in Trinidad.

Mr. Henry E. St. Clair, writing on September 14. 1896, says: ‘In Trinidad, British West Indies, the rite is performed annually about this time of the year among the Indian coolie immigrants resident in the small village of Peru, a mile or so from Port of Spain. I have personally witnessed the passing, and the description given by Mr. Ponder tallies with what I saw, except that, so far as I can remember, the number of those who took part in the rite was greater than six. In addition, there is t

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Bulgarian Fire-walk

As to the Bulgarian rite, Dr. Schischmanof writes to me: ‘I am sure the observance will surprise you; I am even afraid that you will think it rather fantastic, but you may rely on my information. The danse de feu was described long ago in a Bulgarian periodical by one of our best known writers. What you are about to read only confirms his account. What I send you is from the Recueil de Folk Lore , de Littérature et de Science (vol. vi. p. 224), edited, with my aid and that of my colleague, Ma

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Indian Fire-walk

Since these lines were written the kindness of Mr. Tawney, librarian at the India Office, has added to my stock of examples. Thus, Mr. Stokes printed in the Indian Antiquary (ii. p. 190) notes of evidence taken at an inquest on a boy of fourteen, who fell during the fire-walk, was burned, and died on that day. The rite had been forbidden, but was secretly practised in the village of Periyângridi. The fire-pit was 27 feet long by 7½ feet broad and a span in depth. Thirteen persons walked thro

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Psychical Parallels

I now very briefly, and ‘under all reserves,’ allude to the only modern parallel in our country with which I am acquainted. We have seen that Iamblichus includes insensibility to fire among the privileges of Græco-Egyptian ‘mediums.’ {172} The same gift was claimed by Daniel Dunglas Home, the notorious American spiritualist. I am well aware that as Eusapia Paladino was detected in giving a false impression that her hands were held by her neighbours in the dark, therefore, when Mr. Crookes as

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Conclusion as to Fire-walk

In all these cases, and others as to which I have first-hand evidence, there are decided parallels to the Rite of the Hirpi, and to Biblical and ecclesiastical miracles. The savage examples are rites , and appear intended to secure good results in food supplies (Fiji), or general well-being, perhaps by expiation for sins, as in the Attic Thargelia. The Bulgarian rite also aims at propitiating general good luck....

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Psychical Research

But how is the Fire-walk done? That remains a mystery, and perhaps no philologist, folk-lorist, anthropologist, or physiologist, has seriously asked the question. The medicamentum of Varro, the green frog fat of India, the diluted sulphuric acid of Mr. Clodd, are guesses in the air, and Mr. Clodd has made no experiment. The possibility of plunging the hand, unhurt, in molten metal, is easily accounted for, and is not to the point. In this difficulty Psychical Research registers, and no more,

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Yama

This excursus on ‘The Fire-walk’ has been introduced, as an occasion arose, less because of controversy about a neglected theme than for the purpose of giving something positive in a controversial treatise. For the same reason I take advantage of Mr. Max Müller’s remarks on Yama, ‘the first who died,’ to offer a set of notes on myths of the Origin of Death. Yama, in our author’s opinion, is ‘the setting sun’ (i. 45; ii. 563). Agni (Fire) is ‘the first who was born;’ as the other twin, Yama, h

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The Origin of Death

Civilised man in a scientific age would never invent a myth to account for ‘God’s great ordinance of death.’ He regards it as a fact, obvious and necessarily universal; but his own children have not attained to his belief in death. The certainty and universality of death do not enter into the thoughts of our little ones. For in the thought of immortality Do children play about the flowery meads. Now, there are still many childlike tribes of men who practically disbelieve in death. To them dea

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Death, regarded as Unnatural

But before studying these widely different myths, let us first establish the fact that death really is regarded as something non-natural and intrusive. The modern savage readily believes in and accounts in a scientific way for violent deaths. The spear or club breaks or crushes a hole in a man, and his soul flies out. But the deaths he disbelieves in are natural deaths. These he is obliged to explain as produced by some supernatural cause, generally the action of malevolent spirits impelled

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Why Men are Mortal

The myths of the Origin of Death fall into a few categories. In many legends of the lower races men are said to have become subject to mortality because they infringed some mystic prohibition or taboo of the sort which is common among untutored peoples. The apparently untrammelled Polynesian, or Australian, or African, is really the slave of countless traditions, which forbid him to eat this object or to touch that, or to speak to such and such a person, or to utter this or that word. Races i

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Savage Death-Myths

Let us now examine in detail a few of the savage stories of the Origin of Death. That told by the Australians may be regarded with suspicion, as a refraction from a careless hearing of the narrative in Genesis. The legend printed by Mr. Brough Smyth {183a} was told to Mr. Bulwer by ‘a black fellow far from sharp,’ and this black fellow may conceivably have distorted what his tribe had heard from a missionary. This sort of refraction is not uncommon, and we must always guard ourselves against

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The Greek Myth

The Greek myth of the Origin of Death is the most important of those which turn on the breaking of a prohibition. The story has unfortunately become greatly confused in the various poetical forms which have reached us. As far as can be ascertained, death was regarded in one early Greek myth as the punishment of indulgence in forbidden curiosity. Men appear to have been free from death before the quarrel between Zeus and Prometheus. In consequence of this quarrel Hephæstus fashioned a woman o

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The Serpent

In this last variant we have death as the result of a failure or transgression. Among the more backward natives of South India (Lewin’s Wild Races of South India ) the serpent is concerned, in a suspicious way, with the Origin of Death. The following legend might so easily arise from a confused understanding of the Mohammedan or Biblical narrative that it is of little value for our purpose. At the same time, even if it is only an adaptation, it shows the characteristics of the adapting mind:—

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Dualistic Myths

A not unnatural theory of the Origin of Death is illustrated by a myth from Pentecost Island and a Red Indian myth. In the legends of very many races we find the attempt to account for the Origin of Death and Evil by a simple dualistic myth. There were two brothers who made things; one made things well, the other made them ill. In Pentecost Island it was Tagar who made things well, and he appointed that men should die for five days only, and live again. But the malevolent Suque caused men ‘t

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Economic Myth

There is another and a very quaint myth of the Origin of Death in Banks Island. At first, in Banks Island, as elsewhere, men were immortal. The economical results were just what might have been expected. Property became concentrated in the hands of the few—that is, of the first generations—while all the younger people were practically paupers. To heal the disastrous social malady, Qat (the maker of things, who was more or less a spider) sent for Mate—that is, Death. Death lived near a volca

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Maui and Yama

The New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, as Dr. Tylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given it a ‘solar’ explanation. It is an audacious thing to differ from so cautious and learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, but I venture to give my reasons for dissenting in this case from the view of the author of Primitive Culture (i. 335). Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology. He was not precisely a god, still less was he one of the early elemental g

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Maui Myths

Some say Maui noticed that the sun and moon rose again from their daily death, by virtue of a fountain in Hades (Hine-nui-te-po) where they bathed. Others say he wished to kill Hine-nui-te-po (conceived of as a woman) and to carry off her heart. Whatever the reason, Maui was to be swallowed up in the giant frame of Hades, or Night, and, if he escaped alive, Death would never have power over men. He made the desperate adventure, and would have succeeded but for the folly of one of the birds wh

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Yama

Among the Aryans of India, as we have already seen, Death has a protomartyr, Tama, ‘the first of men who reached the river, spying out a path for many.’ In spying the path Yama corresponds to Tangaro the Fool, in the myth of the Solomon Islands. But Yama is not regarded as a maleficent being, like Tangaro. The Rig Veda (x. 14) speaks of him as ‘King Yama, who departed to the mighty streams and sought out a road for many;’ and again, the Atharva Veda names him ‘the first of men who died, and t

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Inferences

That Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the Rig Veda , seems certain enough. Most phenomena, most gods, shade into each other in the Vedic hymns. But it is plain that the conception of a ‘first man who died’ is as common to many races as it is natural. Death was regarded as unnatural, yet here it is among us. How did it come? By somebody dying first, and establishing a bad precedent. But need that somebody have been originally the sun, as Mr. Max Müller and Dr. Tylor think in the cases of Y

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The Stealing of Fire

The world-wide myth explaining how man first became possessed of fire—namely, by stealing it—might well serve as a touchstone of the philological and anthropological methods. To Mr. Max Müller the interest of the story will certainly consist in discovering connections between Greek and Sanskrit names of fire-gods and of fire bringing heroes. He will not compare the fire-myths of other races all over the world, nor will he even try to explain why—in almost all of these myths we find a thief of

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‘Fire Totems’

Mr. Max Müller, after a treatise on Agni and other fire-gods, consecrates two pages to ‘Fire Totems.’ ‘If we are assured that there are some dark points left, and that these might be illustrated and rendered more intelligible by what are called fire totems among the Red Indians of North America, let us have as much light as we can get’ (ii. 804). Alas! I never heard of fire totems before. Probably some one has been writing about them, somewhere, unless we owe them to Mr. Max Müller’s own res

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Prometheus

Mr. Max Müller ‘follows Kuhn’ in his explanation of Prometheus, the Fire-stealer, but he does not follow him all the way. Kuhn tried to account for the myth that Prometheus stole fire, and Mr. Max Müller does not try. {194} Kuhn connects Prometheus with the Sanskrit pramantha , the stick used in producing fire by drilling a pointed into a flat piece of wood. The Greeks, of course, made Prometheus mean ‘foresighted,’ providens ; but let it be granted that the Germans know better. Pramantha n

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Savage Myths of Fire-stealing

In La Mythologie (pp. 185-195) I have put together a small collection of savage myths of the theft of fire. {195b} Our text is the line of Hesiod ( Theogony , 566), ‘Prometheus stole the far-seen ray of unwearied fire in a hollow stalk of fennel.’ The same stalk is still used in the Greek isles for carrying fire, as it was of old—whence no doubt this feature of the myth. {195c} How did Prometheus steal fire? Some say from the altar of Zeus, others that he lit his rod at the sun. {196a} T

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Origin of the Myth of Fire-stealing

The myth arose from the nature of savage ideas, not from unconscious puns. Even in a race so civilised as the Homeric Greeks, to make fire was no easy task. Homer speaks of a man, in a lonely upland hut, who carefully keeps the embers alive, that he may not have to go far afield in search of the seed of fire. {197} Obviously he had no ready means of striking a light. Suppose, then, that an early savage loses his seed of fire. His nearest neighbours, far enough off, may be hostile. If he w

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CONCLUSION

Here ends this ‘Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms.’ I showed, first, why anthropological students of mythology, finding the philological school occupying the ground, were obliged in England to challenge Mr. Max Müller. I then discoursed of some inconveniences attending his method in controversy. Next, I gave a practical example, the affair of Tuna and Daphne. This led to a comparison of the philological and the anthropological ways of treating the Daphne myth. The question of our allies the

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APPENDIX A: The Fire-walk in Spain

One study occasionally illustrates another. In examining the history of the Earl Marischal, who was exiled after the rising of 1715, I found, in a letter of a correspondent of d’Alembert, that the Earl met a form of the fire-walk in Spain. There then existed in the Peninsula a hereditary class of men who, by dint of ‘charms’ permitted by the Inquisition, could enter fire unharmed. The Earl Marischal said that he would believe in their powers if he were allowed first to light the fire, and the

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APPENDIX B: Mr. Macdonell on Vedic Mythology

Too late for use here came Vedic Mythology , from Grundriss der indo - arischen Philologie , {201} by Mr. A. Macdonell, the representative of the historic house of Lochgarry. This even a non-scholar can perceive to be a most careful and learned work. As to philological ‘equations’ between names of Greek and Vedic gods, Mr. Macdonell writes: ‘Dyaus=Ζευς is the only one which can be said to be beyond the range of doubt.’ As to the connection of Prometheus with Sanskrit Pramantha, he says: ‘Προμ

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