May 11, 1883.] 



• KNOWLEDGE * 



273 



AN ItLU&lRATED 



MAGAZINE OF SGIENCE 



Plain Cr^y^ORDED-EXACTqDESCRIBED 



LONDON: FRIDAY, MAY 11, 1883. 

 Contents op No. 80. 



Pagk 

 Thf nirth nnd Groirth of Myth. 



VII. By Edward Clodd 273 



Tlie Cheraistrvl of Cookory. IX. 



Bf W. Mattieu Willianm 271 



A Naluralisfs Year XII. IVo 



Little firoenish Flowers. By 



Grant Allen 270 



CeoIo(^ of the Isle of Man. (Illug- 



Irated. By W. Jerome Hi ' 



F.G.S 



Flyinf; Foxes in Australia 279 



The Archer Fish. (Illuilruled) ... 2S0 

 The Fleotric Light in Surgical 



Diagnosis. (IllutlraM) 281 



The Face of the Sky. By F.K.A.3. 2S2 



Reviews: Snake Poison.i 283 



Correspondence : Spelling Refnmi 



— M 



Paradoxes — Letters Re. 



ited and Brief Answers 284 



Chess Column 285 



THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH. 



VIT. 



By Edward Clodd. 



■" T) EVENONS ;i nos luoutons," as the impatient client 

 XAj who had lost some sheep reminded his rambling 

 ■advocate. 



In the great body of nature-myth, the stars are promi- 

 nent members. In their multitude ; their sublime repose 

 in upper calms above the turmoil of the elements ; 

 their varying brilliancj', " one star differing from another 

 star in glory " ; their tremulous light ; their scattered 

 positions, which lend themselves to every vagary of the 

 •constellation-maker ; their slow procession, varied only by 

 •sweeping comet and meteor, or falling showers of shooting 

 &tars ; they lead the imagination into gentler ways than do 

 the vaster bodies of the most ancient heavens. Nor, 

 although we may compute their number, weigh their 

 volume, in a few instances reckon their distance, and, 

 capturing the light that has come beating through space 

 for unnumbered years, make it reveal the secret of their 

 structure, is the imagination less moved by the clear 

 heavens at night, or the feeling of awe and reverence 

 felunted before that "mighty sum of things for ever 

 ■speaking." 



In barbaric myth the stars are spoken of as the children 

 of the sun and moon, but more often as men who have lived 

 ■on the earth, translated without seeing death. The single 

 stars are individual chiefs or heroes ; the constellations are 

 groups of men or animals. To the natives of Australia 

 the brilliant Jupiter is a chief among the others, and the 

 stars in Orion's belt and scabbard are young mtn dancing 

 a corroboree, the Pleiades being girls playing to them. The 

 Kasirs of Bengal say that the stars are men who climbed 

 to the top of a tree, and were left in the branches by the 

 trunk being cut away. To the Eskimos the stars in Orion 

 are seal-hunters who have missed their way home ; and in 

 German folk-lore they are spoken of as the mowers, because, 

 as Grimm says, " they stand in a row, like mowers in 

 a meadow.' In North American myth two of the bright 

 stars are twins who have left a home where they were 

 iiarshly treated, and leapt into the sky, whither their 

 parents followed them, and ceaselessly chase them. 



In Greek myth the faintest star of the seven Pleiades 

 is Merope, whose light was dimmed because she 

 alcaie among her sisters married a mortal. In German 

 star-lore, the small star just above the middle one in the 

 shaft of Charles's Wain, is a waggoner who, having given 

 our Saviour a lift, was oll'ered the kingdom of heaven for 

 his reward, but who said lie would sooner be driving from 

 east to west to all eternity, and whose desire was granted — 

 a curious contrast to the legend of the Wandering Jew, 

 cursed to move unresting over the earth till the day of 

 judgment, because he refused to let Jesus, weary with the 

 weight of the cross, rest for a moment on his doorstep. 

 The Housatonic Indians say that the stars in Charles's 

 Wain are men hunting a bear, and that the chase lasts 

 from spring to autumn, when the bear is wounded, and its 

 dripping blood turns the leaves of the trees red. With 

 this may be cited the myth that the red clouds at morn 

 and eve are the blood of the slain in battle. In the 

 Northern Lights, the Grcenlanders see the spirits of the 

 departed dancing, the brighter the flashes of the Aurora 

 the greater the merriment ; whilst the Dacotahs say of the 

 meteors that they are spirits flying through the air. 



Of the Milky Way — so called because Here, indignant 

 at the bantling Herakles being put to her breast, spilt her 

 milk along the sky (the solar mythologers say that the 

 " red cow of evening passes during the night across the sky, 

 scattering her milk ") ; the Ottawas say that it was caused 

 by a turtle swimming along the bottom of the sky, and 

 stirring up the mud. According to the Patagoniaus, it is 

 the track along which the departed tribesmen hunt 

 ostriches ; in African myth it is some wood-ashes long ago 

 thrown up into the sky by a girl, that her people might be 

 able to see their way home at night ; in Eastern myth, it 

 is chafl' dropped by a thief in his hurried flight. 



But the idea of a land beyond tlie sky — be it the happy 

 hunting ground of the Indian, or the Paradise of Islam, or 

 the new Jerusalem of the Apocalypse — would not fail to be 

 imagined, and in both the Milky Way and the Eainbow 

 liarbaric fancy sees the ladders and bridges whereby the 

 departed pass from earth to heaven. So we find in the 

 lower and higher culture alike the beautiful conceptions of 

 the clii-min des ames, the lied man's road of the dead to their 

 home in the sun ; the ancient Roman path of, or to, the gods ; 

 the road of the birds, in Lithuanian myth, because the 

 winged spirits flit thither to the free and happy land. In 

 prosaic contrast to all this, it is curious to find among our- 

 selves the Milky Way described as Watling Street ! That 

 famous road, wliich ran fror.i Richborough through Canter- 

 bury and London to Chester, now gives its name to a 

 narrow, bustling street of Manchester warehousemen in the 

 City. But who the W;etlingas were, and why their name 

 was transferred from Britain to the sky,* we do not know, 

 although the fact is plainly enough set down in old writers, 

 foremost among whom is Chaucer. In his " House of 

 Fame "t he says : — 



" Lo, there, quod he, cast up thine eye, 

 66 yonder, to, the galaxie, 

 the whiclie men dope the Milky Way, 

 for it is white, and some parfay 

 ycallin it lian Wathiifrestrete." 



To the savage, the rainbow is a living monster, a serpent 

 seeking whom it may devour, coming to earth to slake its 

 unquenchable thirst, and preying on the unwary. But in 

 more poetic myth, its mighty mani-coloured arch touching, 



* Perhaps the converse is true ; if the name was a totem whicli 

 the family adopted, and which was given, as tribute to an impor- 

 tant clan, to one of the main roads of this island. 



t 11., 427. 



