June 1, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



321 



should certainly prefer that which is known as the 

 "meteorological," and which, in the person of Kulin and 

 other supporters, finds a more rational and persistent 

 source of myth in phenomena which are fitful and startling, 

 such as hurricane and tempest, earthquake and volcanic 

 outburst. Sunrises and sunsets happen with a regularity 

 which failed to excite any strong emotion or stimulate 

 curiosity, and the remotest ancestor of the primitive Aryan 

 soon shook off the habit — if, indeed, he ever acquired it — of 

 going to bed in fear and trembling lest the sun should not 

 come back again. Nature, in her softer aspects and her 

 gracious bounties — in the spring-time with its promise, the 

 summer with its glory, the autumn with its gifts — has 

 moved the heart of man to song and festival and proces- 

 sion ; as, by contrast, the frost that nipped the early buds 

 and the fierce heat that withered the approaching harvest 

 gave occasion for plaintive ditty and sombre ceremony. It 

 is in the fierce play and passionate outburst of the elements, 

 in the storm, the lightning, and the thunder, that the 

 feelings are aroused and that the terror-stricken fancy sees 

 the strife of wrathful deities or depicts their dire work 

 amongst men. Hence, all the world over, the Storm-God 

 and the Wind-God have played a mighty part 



To the savage, the wind, blowing as it listeth, its whence 

 and whither unknown, itself invisible, yet the sweep and 

 force of its power manifest and felt, must have ranked 

 amongst the most striking phenomena. And, as will be 

 seen hereafter, the correspondences between wind and 

 breath and the connection between breath and life, added 

 their quota of mystery in man's effort to account for the 

 impalpable element. In the legends of the Quiches, the 

 mysterious creative power is Hurakan (whence hurricane) ; 

 among the Choctaws the original word for Deity is Hush- 

 toli, the storm wind, and in Peru to kiss the air was the 

 commonest and simplest sign of adoration to the collective 

 divinities. The Guayacuans of South America, when a 

 storm arose and there was much thunder or wind, all went 

 out in troops, as it were to battle, shaking their clubs in the 

 air, shooting flights of arrows in that direction whence the 

 storm came.* But we are some steps nearer to the 

 primitive myth when we find the wind conceived of as a 

 mighty bird — which, indeed, is in both old and new world 

 mythology a common symbol of thunder and lightning also. 

 On this matter Dr. Brinton's remarks bear quoting : — 



Like the wind, tho bird sweeps throagh the aerial spaces, sings in 

 the forests, and rnstles on its coarse ; like the clond, it floats in 

 mid-air, and casts its shadow on tho earth ; like the lightning, it 

 darts from heaven to earth to strike its nnsuspecting prey. These 

 tropes were trnths to savage nations, and led on by that law of 

 language which forced them to conceive everything as animate or 

 inanimate, itself the product of a deeper law of thought which 

 urges us to ascribe life to whatever has motion, they found no 

 animal so appropri.ite for their purpose here as the bird. Therefore 

 the Algonkins say that birds always make the winds, that they 

 create the waterspouts, and that the clouds are the spreading and 

 agitation of their wings; the Xavajos, that at each cardinal point 

 stands a white swan, who is.the spirit of the blasts; so, also, the 

 Dakotas frequently explain the thunder as the sound of the cloud- 

 bird flapping his wings ; the lightning as the fire that flashes from 

 his tracks, Uke the sparks which the buffalo scatters when he scours 

 over a stony plain. 



Turning to the literatures of higher races, we find in the 

 prose Edda, when Gangler asks whence comes the wind, 

 that Har answers him : "Thou must know that at the 

 northernmost point in the heavens sits a giant, 



" In the guise of an eagle ; 

 And the winds, it is said. 

 Rush down on the earth 

 From his outspreading pinions." 



* Dorman's " Primitive Superstitions," p. 350. 



In the Veda, the !Maruts, or Storm-gods, to whom many 

 of the hymns are addressed, " make the rocks to tremble 

 and tear asunder the kings of the forest," like Hermes in 

 his violence and like Boreas in his rage. Whether or no 

 thej- become in Scandinavian legend the grim and fearful 

 Ogres swiftly sailing in their cloud-ships, we may see in 

 them the "crushers" and "grinders,"* as their name 

 imports, the types of northern deities like Odin, long 

 degraded into the Wild Huntsman and his phantom 

 crew, whose uncouth yells the peasant hears in the mid- 

 night air. 



Of this personification of the elements, the following 

 Ojibway folk tale, cited by Dorman, gives poetic illustra- 

 tion : — "There were spirits from all parts of the country. 

 Some came with crashing steps and rearing voice, who 

 directed the whirlwinds which were in the habit of raging 

 about the neighbouring country. Then glided in gently a 

 sweet little spirit, which blew the summer gale. Then 

 came in the old sand spirit, who blew the sand-squalls in 

 the sand-buttes toward the west. Ho was a great speech- 

 maker, and shook the lodge with his deep-throated voice, 

 as he addressed the spirits of the cataracts and water- 

 falls, and those of the islands who wore beautiful green 

 blankets." 



In his valuable book on the Myths of the Red Race, 

 Dr. Brinton has brought together a mass of evidence in 

 support of a theory that the sanctity in which the number 

 Four is held amongst that people is due to the adoration of 

 the cardinal points, which are identified with the four 

 winds, who, in hero-myths, are the four ancestors of the 

 human race. Certainly the illustrations with which the 

 argument is supported are both numerous and valuable ; 

 but any elaborate system of mythology based upon a 

 definite number of winds has, like the solar theory, to 

 make the facts square with it, and while it explains much, 

 to leave much unexplained. Here this bare reference to it- 

 must suflice. 



Estimates differ much as to the size of the Thunder-Bird, 

 In one tradition, an Indian found its nest, and secured a. 

 feather which was above two hundred feet long, while in 

 another tradition the bird is said to be no bigger than one's 

 little finger ! But among the Western Indians he is an 

 immense eagle. " When this ac-rial monster flaps his wings, 

 loud peals of thunder roll over the prairie ; when he winks 

 his eye it lightens ; when he wags his tail the waters of the 

 lake which he carries on his back overflow and produce 

 rain." The old and universal belief that stones were hurled 

 by the Thunder-God is not so far-fetched as we, in our 

 pride of science, might think, for the flints which are mis- 

 taken for thunderbolts, and which become objects of adora- 

 tion as well as charm?, produce a flash when struck by the 

 lightning. MLxcoatl, the Mexican Cloud-Serpent, as well 

 as Jove, carries hisbimdle of arrows or thunderbolts, which 

 in the hand of Thor are represented by his mighty club or 

 hammer. 



As in the conflict raging in the sky during gale or 

 tempest, when the light and the darkness alternately pre- 

 vail, the barbaric mind sees war waged between the heroes 

 of the spirit-land who have carried their unsettled blood- 

 feuds thither, so in many myths the lightning is no com- 

 rade of the thunder, but its foe, the battle of bird with 

 serpent. The resemblances of the lightning flash to the 

 sharp, sudden, zigzag movements of a creature so myste- 

 rious, to barbaric man, in its unlikeness to the beasts of the 

 field, account for the myth, the interest of which lies for 

 us in the correspondences which it suggests with the group 



* From Sans, mar, " to grind." Ares and Mara come from tho 

 same root. 



