WORSHIP OF ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA. loi 



sung by the poets of Greece, are deities conceived as under a 

 human form, but still imperfectly isolated from the phenomena 

 which they personify. If, as Max Miiller thinks, Aditi, of the 

 Vedic mythology, is likewise a name for the dawn, we see clearly 

 that the worship is addressed at first to the personified phenom- 

 enon, or to the spirit of the dawn conceived as inseparable from 

 the phenomenon itself. A passage in the Vedas calls the dawn 

 the face of Aditi. Moreover, if Pallas Athene was also the 

 dawn with the Greeks, does not the fact that she was born issu- 

 ing from the brain of Zeus — that is, of the sky — indicate that the 

 worship was originally addressed to the personification, even 

 before it was carried over to the goddess regent, of the phe- 

 nomenon ? 



Wind and thunder have also been personified, or made objects 

 in which was seen the action of a personal being having a sensi- 

 ble form appropriate to its office. To the savage the wind is pro- 

 duced by a blowing being, thunder by a thundering being. The 

 Lapps imagine a living existence, who soars in the air, carefully 

 listening to the words of men, and always ready to strike down 

 any one whom he condemns. The Bushmen believe that the 

 wind is a person. One of them met him one day in the country 

 of the Boers, and threw a stone at him, when the wind fled to the 

 ■mountain. In the " Iliad " Homer represents the winds as seated 

 at the table of Zephyr, when Iris solicits their intervention to 

 kindle the flames on the funeral pyre of Patroclus. In our own 

 times, even in Europe, according to Mr. Tylor, the Carinthian 

 peasant places on a tree in front of his house various foods to 

 appease the hunger of the wind. In the Palatinate, when a storm 

 is raging furiously, the peasant throws a handful of meal in the 

 direction opposite to the wind, and calls out : " Stop, wind, here is 

 food for your child ; go away ! " In South America, the Paya- 

 guas, when the wind shakes their huts, rush against the storm, 

 waving fire-brands ; while other tribes, under like circumstances, 

 offer it tobacco. The forms given to the personification of the 

 wind are extremely various. In Central America, it is often a 

 bird; on the Congo, a horse; the American Indians make it a 

 hare ; the Botocudos represent it by a dog with clipped ears ; the 

 Germans gave it the figure of coursing dogs ; and the Greeks rep- 

 resented it by cherubim's heads with swelled cheeks. 



The idea of a distinction between the manifestations of the 

 wind and thunder, and the being which produces or controls 

 them, seems to have been gradually developed. The Dakotas at- 

 tribute thunder to a great bird and its progeny. The male pro- 

 duces the isolated claps by the beating of its wings, and the re- 

 verberations are due to the beatings of the wings of the younger 

 ones. To the Navajos, the winds are produced by four swans. 



