A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 51 



tion to the gift of prophecy. Faithful John, who understands the lan- 

 guage of the crows, is enabled, by overhearing their colloquy, to save 

 the lives of the prince and his bride ; his motives, however, are mis- 

 understood by his royal master, who sends him to the scaffold, where- 

 upon he tells the prophecy of the crows and explains all his conduct ; 

 telling the secret, however, seals his fate, and while his master is beg- 

 ging forgiveness the faithful servant is turned into stone.* 



This tale in varying forms is one of the most widely spread of all 

 the stories of the Aryan tribes. Cox says it comes from the same 

 source as the Deccan story of Rama and Luxman; and we find a some- 

 what erratic form of it in the touching little story of Prince Llewellyn 

 and his faithful hound Gellert. 



Philosophers at various times have attempted to account for this 

 peculiar veneration of animals, which by many of the nations of anti- 

 quity was heightened into worship, and which, among some of the rude 

 and barbarous tribes of Africa and the South-Sea Islands, still exists 

 as almost their only recognition of a religion.f But a bare recital of the 

 numberless theories would serve no good purpose, and draw out this 

 article to unnecessary length. There are, however, two theories which 

 not only seem plausible, but which seem to be supported by the facts 

 of history and the practices of the savage tribes of the present day. 



One is, that zoolatry is an outgrowth of a primitive worship of 

 ancestors (necrolatry). The other is, that zoolatry as well as heliolatry, 

 sabaeanism, sex-worship, and probably other cults, are all derived from 

 a primitive worship of the deified powers of nature (pantheism). 



Though history affords many noted examples of the apotheosis of 

 ancestors, and particularly in the patriarchal form of government, when 

 the ancestor was also the ruler, yet it is only since the scientific study 

 of ethnology has become general that the means have been afforded 

 students of becoming acquainted on any extended scale with the crude 

 and primitive beliefs of the lower races of man. 



After the examination of a great mass of facts bearing upon the 

 subject, Herbert Spencer arrives at the conclusion that the first ideas 

 of ghosts or other supernatural beings have arisen in the mind of 

 primitive man through the agency of dreams, somnambulism, trance, 

 catalepsy, and other analogous conditions ; and that the same condi- 

 tions are continually reproducing the same ideas in the minds of his 

 more civilized descendants. This alter ego, which exists in the dreams 

 and visions of the primitive man, he believes also exists during the 

 sleep of death ; and that it is then more j^owerful than during life, and 

 is able to perform not only all the vagaries and metamorphoses which 

 he believes have actually occurred during sleep, but is also able to 

 enter into and take possession of the bodies of animals, and even other 

 human beings. As the vague notions of ghosts and spirits grow into 



* Grimms' " Popular Tales." 



f Sir John Lubbock, " Origin of Civilization," chap. v. 



