582 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Fire's breath assails 

 The all-nourishing tree.* 

 Towering fire plays 

 Against heaven itself. 

 Shef sees arise 

 A second time 

 Earth from ocean, 

 Beauteously green. 

 Waterfalls descending. J 



The younger Edda also in its version speaks of Heimdal's 

 fight with Loki (a variant of the other tale), and says, "There- 

 upon Surt flings fire over the earth, and burns up all the 

 world." A man named Lifthraser and a woman named Lif 

 were preserved from the effects of the conflagration by being 

 hidden in Hodmimer's hold, and "from these are the races 

 descended." In the dialogues of Plato § we find that the 

 Greek lawgiver Solon was told by the priest of Sais in Egypt, 

 six hundred years before Christ, that the deluge of Deucalion 

 and the earth being burnt up by the fall of Phaethon from the 

 chariot of the sun related to actual events. He said, " This 

 has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of 

 the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and 

 a great conflagration of things upon the earth." Let us turn 

 from these European stories — Keltic, Greek, and Norse — to 

 the narratives of simpler peoples. The Chinese have a triad of 

 gods named Yu, Yih, and Tseih. The deluge was covering 

 the whole earth, when its course was stayed by Yu opening 

 up nine channels for the water, while Yih opened up the 

 forests with fire. So in the Mahabharata, the great epic of 

 India, there is a description of Aurva the Eishi, who produced 

 from his thigh a devouring fire, which cried out with a loud 

 voice, "I am hungry : let me consume the world." The 

 various regions were soon in flames, when Brahma interfered 

 to save his creation, and gave Aurva an abode under the 

 ocean, where he dwells as the submarine fire.|| If now we 

 leave Europe and Asia, and journey to South America, again 

 the legend appears. The Tupi Indians of Brazil tell us the 

 following : " Monau, without beginning or end, author of all 

 that is, seeing the ingratitude of men, and their contempt of 

 him who had made them joyous, withdrew from them, and 

 sent upon them tata, the divine fire, which burned all that was 

 upon the surface of the earth. He swept about the fire in 

 such a way that in places he raised mountains and in others 

 dug valleys. Of all men alone, Irin Mage was saved, whom 



* Ygdrasil, the life-tree. 



t She is the Vala, who is seeing the vision. 



I " Edda Scemundar Hinns Froda," p. 10. 



§ Timaeus, xi., 517. 



j| Dowson's "Hindoo Mythology." 



