A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 53 



There are many arguments in support of both of these theories, the 

 chief objection being that either one alone is too exclusive to account 

 for all the facts ; for, while there can be no doubt that ancestor-worship 

 was the primitive and only religion of many, possibly all, the tribes of 

 the earth at the dawn of their civilization, yet it is also certain that 

 when tribes had formed settled communities, and a higher grade of 

 culture had been attained, ancestor-worship was supplemented or sup- 

 planted by a worship of nature. 



And since to primeval man none of the powers of nature seemed 

 so beneficent or worthy of adoration as the sun, helioiatry was one of 

 the most widely spread of all the religions of antiquity, and the daily 

 conflict between the sun-god and clouds and darkness a never-ending 

 theme for poet and priest. And as the incidents of these oft-repeated 

 battles were handed down orally, from generation to generation, decked 

 in all the glowing metaphors of exuberant fancy, the real nature of the 

 deity they described and the celestial battles he waged would gradually 

 be lost and forgotten, while the metaphoric names and metaphoric inci- 

 dents would " survive the wreck of time " and come down to historic 

 ages as actual incidents in the lives of real gods. 



And it is in this mythological contest between the sun-god and the 

 powers of darkness that we will find the origin of the demoniacal char- 

 acter of crows and ravens, these birds always representing in ancient 

 thought the dark and terrible night, or the black and howling storm- 

 cloud, the natural and necessary opponents of all that was bright and 

 divine and good, of which the sun was the source and origin, Nor 

 were these metaphors far-fetched or inappropriate, the darkness of 

 night settling silently down over the calm, still earth might not inaptly 

 be compared to the descent of some black gigantic bird ; and, to de- 

 scribe the fierce storm-cloud rushing through the sky " on the wings 

 of the wind," no metaphor could be more exact than to liken it to a 

 huge, ravening bird of prey. In most of the myths herein cited, the 

 cloud seems to be the more exact equivalent of the bird, though in the 

 earlier Hindoo mythology the cloud and the night are often converti- 

 ble. The crow, as the metaphoric name of the cloud, also explains the 

 connection of these birds with water, which we find not only in legends 

 of the deluge but in many others. 



The first Greek myth given is a degraded version of one of the nu- 

 merous Hindoo myths of the god Indra, who slays the black dragon 

 that has shut up the fertilizing waters : the lohite raven is the fleecy 

 cloud of summer that contains no moisture ; but, as autumn advances 

 and figs ripen, the cloud grows blacker and brings rain. It is worth 

 noting, also, that the monstrous dragon of India shrinks into an in- 

 significant water-snake when transported to the less rank soil of 

 Hellas. 



In the Greek myth quoted from Ovid, we have another of those 

 widely-spread myths of the sun and dawn. Koronis {Kopwviq) is the 



