476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Even popular traditions have thus been metamorphosed. In the 

 mystic recluse of the Barbarossa legend, Professor Grimm recognized 

 the All-father Wodan, whose attributes had been transferred to the 

 person of Charlemagne, and afterward to Frederick Barbarossa. When 

 the oaks of the sacred groves were felled for church-timber, the old 

 Saxon god retired to the mountains, the usual refuge of exiled deities, 

 and finally went to sleep in a mountain-cave, the Untersberg, near 

 Salzburg, and the Kyfhauser in Northern Germany, where he awaits 

 the return of better times, the resurrection of the buried nature-wor- 

 ship and the departure of the black crows, the clerical birds of ill-omen 

 that fly croaking around his rocky retreat. The prototypes of these 

 croakers did not relish the legend, and managed to substitute a secular 

 hero, and in another case even a spook. The Wild Huntsman was 

 originally a Welt-jager, a world-hunter, the old sport-loving w r ood-god, 

 with his hounds and falcons and train of merry companions. In West- 

 ern Pomerania the leader of the nocturnal chase appears under the 

 semi-incognito of a Junker Hakelberg, the "cowl-bearer" another 

 cognomen of the mist-shrouded Odin. 



Sir William Jones's researches into the sacred writings of Brahman- 

 ism revealed a still stranger metempsychosis of myths the transfer of 

 the primeval Krishna legend to the personal history of Buddha Sakya- 

 Muni, and its subsequent exportation to a far Western colony of Bud- 

 dhism. According to Maurice's translation of the Bhagavat Purana, 

 Krishna (like Buddha) was a Parthenogenitus, a virgin-son. The birth 

 of both Krishna and Buddha was foretold by a heavenly messenger. 

 Both were of royal descent. The delivery of the virgin-mothers was 

 attended by the same prodigies, the rising of a new star and the ap- 

 pearance of a company of heavenly choristers. Three Eastern monarchs 

 visited the new-born infant. Cansa, the ruler of Krishna's birth-land, 

 ordered a massacre of young children in order to prevent the fulfill- 

 ment of an ominous prophecy. Both Krishna and Buddha passed 

 several years in exile before they entered upon their mission of reform. 

 Krishna, like Buddha, had twelve favorite converts, who accompanied 

 him on his missionary travels. Ccetera, qui nescitP 



Our very hobgoblins are of Eastern origin ; nearly all international 

 fairy-stories and popular traditions have their roots in the fruitful 

 myth-garden of Hindostan. The stories of Cinderella, of Tamerlane, 

 and Jack the Giant-killer, amused the children of Sind before Nimrod 

 built his great adobe palace ; William Tell learned his trade in the 

 archer brigade of a Nepaulese tyrant ; and the fair Melusina used to 

 bathe in the Ganges before she built her swimming-hall in the castle 

 of Poitiers. 



Of the Melusina legend a modern French evolutionist (M. de Les- 

 cure) gives the following curious exegesis : " The discovery of the 

 Marquis of Poitiers, which resulted in the dissolution of his connubial 

 tie, may yet lead to other divorces if the allies of the orthodox cos- 



