Fune 22, 1871] 
NATURE 139 
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meneutics of a thorough-going mythologic theorist. 
Should he, for instance, demand as his property the 
nursery ‘Song of Sixpence,’ his claim would be easily 
established : obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are 
the four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is 
the underlying earth, covered with the over-arching sky ; 
how true a touch of nature it is that when the pie is 
opened—that is, when day breaks, the birds begin to sing ; 
the King is the Sun, and his counting out his money is 
pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of Danae ; 
the Queen is the Moon, and her transparent honey the 
moonlight ; the Maid is the ‘rosy-fingered’ Lawn, who 
rises before the Sun, her master, and hangs out the 
clouds, his clothes, across the sky ; the particular black- 
bird, who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her 
nose, is the hour of sunrise. The time-honoured rhyme 
really wants but one thing to prove it a Sun-myth, that 
one thing being a proof by some argument more valid 
than analogy.” This is exquisitely ingenious ; but what 
if the rhyme should turn out to be, after all, only a quite 
genuine nursery riddle, of the type which Mr. Tylor has 
so admirably illustrated elsewhere? An archetypal clock, 
presented as a haute nouveauté to some Edward III. or 
Richard II. would satisfy all the conditions of the enigma, 
The large circular face would represent the pie ;—the 
four-and-twenty hours duly figured thereon, in accordance 
with the liberal notions of archaic horology, would cor- 
respond to the four-and-twenty blackbirds ; the striking, 
possibly with chimes, to the song of the birds ; the king 
in his counting-house, counting out his money, would 
felicitously symbolise the hour-hand counting out the time, 
which is money, in majestic solitude, unaccompanied as 
yet by any fussy revolutionary minute-hand ; the queen 
in the pantry, eating bread and honey, would typify the 
stealthy activity of the fine wheel-teeth of steel and brass ; 
the maid in the garden, hanging out the clothes, would 
appropriately allegorise the wooden drum on which the 
weights were suspended by lines, at a distance from the 
works ; while the magpie, which seems a preferable head- 
ing to “black-bird” who snaps off the maid’s nose, 
would probably be none other than the ingenious 
mechanist who wound up the instrument, and, having 
done so, removed the key from the nozzle cf the drum. 
Whatever may be thought of this interpretation, it 
seems exceedingly probable that the rhyme is really | 
a riddle, and, indeed, many other unintelligible jingles 
are most likely referable to the same category. One 
of them, if a riddle, does also unquestionably enunciate 
asun-myth. In the immortal Jack and Jill who went up 
a hill to fetch a pail of water, we may clearly recognise 
the sun and moon under an enigmatic, not to say riddle- 
iculous exterior, and after satisfying ourselves as to their 
identity, we may further admire the curious felicity with 
which the difference of sex between Hélios and Seléné— 
etymologically identical with the difference between Zeds, 
a lion, and /eaina, a lioness—is indicated in the English 
ditty. To return, however, from the precincts of the 
nursery, Prof. Max Miiller, with a natural bias in the 
direction of his own brilliant researches, seems to ascribe 
the origin of myth somewhat too exclusively to the influ- 
ence of Janguage, just as in his interpretation of myth he 
appears to pay a rather too marked attention to the Dawn- 
Goddess to do full justice to the claims of other less 

seductive divinities. The Professor himself, however, 
will probably be among the first to recognise the value of 
Mr, Tylor’s distinction between material and verbal myth, 
and to acquiesce in the classification which considers the 
former as primary, the latter as secondary in the order of 
evolution. 
In his account of eclipse-myths, Mr. Tylor quotes 
sundry remarks of Mr. Samuel Davies eighty years ago 
with regard to the struggle between ecclesiastical autho- 
rity and science in India, “The learned Pundits,” says 
Mr. Davies, “reject the ridiculous belief of the common 
Brahmuns, that eclipses are occasioned by the interven- 
tion of the monster Rahoo, with many other particulars 
equally unscientific and absurd. But as this belief is 
founded on explicit and positive declarations contained 
in the ‘Vedus’ and ‘ Pooranus,’ the divine authority of 
whose writings no devout Hindoo can dispute, the 
astronomers have some of them cautiously explained such 
passages in those writings as disagree with the principles 
of their own science ; and where reconciliation was im- 
possible, have apologised as well as they could for propo- 
sitions necessarily established in the practice of it by 
observing that certain things, as stated in other Shastrus, 
might have been so formerly and may be so still, but for 
astronomical purposes astronomical rules must be fol- 
lowed.” It is, perhaps, not a mere accidental coincidence 
that in 1760, a few years before this was written, the 
following “ Declaratio” appeared at the end of the third 
volume of the Jesuit edition of Newton’s works, published 
at Geneva :—“ Newtonus in hoc tertio libro telluris motz 
hypothesem assumit. Autoris propositiones aliter expli- 
cari non poterant, nisi eddem quoque facta hypothesi. 
Hine alienam coacti sumus gerere personam. Cceterum 
latis a summis pontificibus contra telluris motum decretis, 
nos obsequi profitemur.” Fortunately for Mr. Tylor 
and his fellow-workers, the difficulties which beset the 
scientific inquirer from this source have probably almost 
reached their minimum in England. Ecclesiastic thunder 
itself has lapsed into mere survival, and roars, if it roars 
at all, only after the fashion of Snug the Joiner’s lion. 
The remainder of the work, occupying part of the first 
and the whole of the second volume, is devoted to a dis- 
cussion of “ Animism,” in other words, of the philosophy 
of religion in relation to early and barbaric civilisation. 
The subject is one of almost equal interest, importance, 
and difficulty, and Mr. Tylor’s treatment of it is eminently 
original and masterly. Tracing the origin of a belief in 
spiritual beings to the result of primzeval thought on the 
problems presented by the difference between the dead 
and the living body, by sleep and waking, trance, disease, 
and death, he follows the course of its development 
upwards into the existing religions of the most civilised 
races. Showing how the doctrine which teaches a possible 
continued existence after death of the souls of individual 
creatures really supplied a theory adequate to explain the 
phenomena to the barbaric intellect, he calls attention to 
the process by which this belief in a ghost-soul became 
expanded into a belief in other spirits, who were held to. 
control the events of the material world, and hence became 
the objects of worship and propitiation, until Animism. 
reached its full development in a system inculcating a 
belief in controlling deities and subordinate spirits, in 
souls separable from bodies and a future state of existence, 
