Custom and Myth 4

Custom and Myth 4

That this view of Heaven and Earth is natural to early minds, Mr. Tylor

proves by the presence of the myth of the union and violent divorce of

the pair in China. {50b} Puang-ku is the Chinese Cronus, or

Tutenganahau. In India, {50c} Dyaus and Prithivi, Heaven and Earth, were

once united, and were severed by Indra, their own child.

 

This, then, is our interpretation of the exploit of Cronus. It is an old

surviving nature-myth of the severance of Heaven and Earth, a myth found

in China, India, New Zealand, as well as in Greece. Of course it is not

pretended that Chinese and Maoris borrowed from Indians and Greeks, or

came originally of the same stock. Similar phenomena, presenting

themselves to be explained by human minds in a similar stage of fancy and

of ignorance, will account for the parallel myths.

 

The second part of the myth of Cronus was, like the first, a stumbling-

block to the orthodox in Greece. Of the second part we offer no

explanation beyond the fact that the incidents in the myth are almost

universally found among savages, and that, therefore, in Greece they are

probably survivals from savagery. The sequel of the myth appears to

account for nothing, as the first part accounts for the severance of

Heaven and Earth. In the sequel a world-wide Marchen, or tale, seems to

have been attached to Cronus, or attracted into the cycle of which he is

centre, without any particular reason, beyond the law which makes

detached myths crystallise round any celebrated name. To look further

is, perhaps, chercher raison ou il n'y en a pas.

 

The conclusion of the story of Cronus runs thus:--He wedded his sister,

Rhea, and begat children--Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and, lastly,

Zeus. 'And mighty Cronus swallowed down each of them, each that came to

their mother's knees from her holy womb, with this intent, that none

other of the proud children of Uranus should hold kingly sway among the

Immortals.' Cronus showed a ruling father's usual jealousy of his heirs.

It was a case of Friedrich Wilhelm and Friedrich. But Cronus (acting in

a way natural in a story perhaps first invented by cannibals) swallowed

his children instead of merely imprisoning them. Heaven and Earth had

warned him to beware of his heirs, and he could think of no safer plan

than that which he adopted. When Rhea was about to become the mother of

Zeus, she fled to Crete. Here Zeus was born, and when Cronus (in pursuit

of his usual policy) asked for the baby, he was presented with a stone

wrapped up in swaddling bands. After swallowing the stone, Cronus was

easy in his mind; but Zeus grew up, administered a dose to his father,

and compelled him to disgorge. 'The stone came forth first, as he had

swallowed it last.' {52a} The other children also emerged, all alive

and well. Zeus fixed the stone at Delphi, where, long after the

Christian era, Pausanias saw it. {52b} It was not a large stone,

Pausanias tells us, and the Delphians used to anoint it with oil and wrap

it up in wool on feast-days. All Greek temples had their fetich-stones,

and each stone had its legend. This was the story of the Delphian stone,

and of the fetichism which survived the early years of Christianity. A

very pretty story it is. Savages more frequently smear their

fetich-stones with red paint than daub them with oil, but the latter, as

we learn from Theophrastus's account of the 'superstitious man,' was the

Greek ritual.

 

* * * * *

 

This anecdote about Cronus was the stumbling-block of the orthodox Greek,

the jest of the sceptic, and the butt of the early Christian

controversialists. Found among Bushmen or Australians the narrative

might seem rather wild, but it astonishes us still more when it occurs in

the holy legends of Greece. Our explanation of its presence there is

simple enough. Like the erratic blocks in a modern plain, like the flint-

heads in a meadow, the story is a relic of a very distant past. The

glacial age left the boulders on the plain, the savage tribes of long ago

left the arrowheads, the period of savage fancy left the story of Cronus

and the rites of the fetich-stone. Similar rites are still notoriously

practised in the South Sea Islands, in Siberia, in India and Africa and

Melanesia, by savages. And by savages similar tales are still told.

 

* * * * *

 

We cannot go much lower than the Bushmen, and among Bushman divine myths

is room for the 'swallowing trick' attributed to Cronus by Hesiod. The

chief divine character in Bushman myth is the Mantis insect. His adopted

daughter is the child of Kwai Hemm, a supernatural character, 'the all-

devourer.' The Mantis gets his adopted daughter to call the swallower to

his aid; but Kwai Hemm swallows the Mantis, the god-insect. As Zeus made

his own wife change herself into an insect, for the convenience of

swallowing her, there is not much difference between Bushman and early

Greek mythology. Kwai Hemm is killed by a stratagem, and all the animals

whom he has got outside of, in a long and voracious career, troop forth

from him alive and well, like the swallowed gods from the maw of Cronus.

{54a} Now, story for story, the Bushman version is much less offensive

than that of Hesiod. But the Bushman story is just the sort of story we

expect from Bushmen, whereas the Hesiodic story is not at all the kind of

tale we look for from Greeks. The explanation is, that the Greeks had

advanced out of a savage state of mind and society, but had retained

their old myths, myths evolved in the savage stage, and in harmony with

that condition of fancy. Among the Kaffirs {54b} we find the same

'swallow-myth.' The Igongqongqo swallows all and sundry; a woman cuts

the swallower with a knife, and 'people came out, and cattle, and dogs.'

In Australia, a god is swallowed. As in the myth preserved by

Aristophanes in the 'Birds,' the Australians believe that birds were the

original gods, and the eagle, especially, is a great creative power. The

Moon was a mischievous being, who walked about the world, doing what evil

he could. One day he swallowed the eagle-god. The wives of the eagle

came up, and the Moon asked them where he might find a well. They

pointed out a well, and, as he drank, they hit the Moon with a stone

tomahawk, and out flew the eagle. {54c} This is oddly like Grimm's tale

of 'The Wolf and the Kids.' The wolf swallowed the kids, their mother

cut a hole in the wolf, let out the kids, stuffed the wolf with stones,

and sewed him up again. The wolf went to the well to drink, the weight

of the stones pulled him in, and he was drowned. Similar stories are

common among the Red Indians, and Mr. Im Thurn has found them in Guiana.

How savages all over the world got the idea that men and beasts could be

swallowed and disgorged alive, and why they fashioned the idea into a

divine myth, it is hard to say. Mr. Tylor, in 'Primitive Culture,' {55a}

adds many examples of the narrative. The Basutos have it; it occurs some

five times in Callaway's 'Zulu Nursery Tales.' In Greenland the Eskimo

have a shape of the incident, and we have all heard of the escape of

Jonah.

 

It has been suggested that night, covering up the world, gave the first

idea of the swallowing myth. Now in some of the stories the night is

obviously conceived of as a big beast which swallows all things. The

notion that night is an animal is entirely in harmony with savage

metaphysics. In the opinion of the savage speculator, all things are men

and animals. 'Ils se persuadent que non seulement les hommes et les

autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres choses sont animees,'

says one of the old Jesuit missionaries in Canada. {55b} 'The wind was

formerly a person; he became a bird,' say the Bushmen.

 

G' oo ka! Kui (a very respectable Bushman, whose name seems a little hard

to pronounce), once saw the wind-person at Haarfontein. Savages, then,

are persuaded that night, sky, cloud, fire, and so forth, are only the

schein, or sensuous appearance, of things that, in essence, are men or

animals. A good example is the bringing of Night to Vanua Lava, by Qat,

the 'culture-hero' of Melanesia. At first it was always day, and people

tired of it. Qat heard that Night was at the Torres Islands, and he set

forth to get some. Qong (Night) received Qat well, blackened his

eyebrows, showed him Sleep, and sent him off with fowls to bring Dawn

after the arrival of Night should make Dawn a necessary. Next day Qat's

brothers saw the sun crawl away west, and presently Night came creeping

up from the sea. 'What is this?' cried the brothers. 'It is Night,'

said Qat; 'sit down, and when you feel something in your eyes, lie down

and keep quiet.' So they went to sleep. 'When Night had lasted long

enough, Qat took a piece of red obsidian, and cut the darkness, and the

Dawn came out.' {56}

 

Night is more or less personal in this tale, and solid enough to be cut,

so as to let the Dawn out. This savage conception of night, as the

swallower and disgorger, might start the notion of other swallowing and

disgorging beings. Again the Bushmen, and other savage peoples, account

for certain celestial phenomena by saying that 'a big star has swallowed

his daughter, and spit her out again.' While natural phenomena,

explained on savage principles, might give the data of the swallow-myth,

we must not conclude that all beings to whom the story is attached are,

therefore, the Night. On this principle Cronus would be the Night, and

so would the wolf in Grimm. For our purposes it is enough that the feat

of Cronus is a feat congenial to the savage fancy and repugnant to the

civilised Greeks who found themselves in possession of the myth. Beyond

this, and beyond the inference that the Cronus myth was first evolved by

people to whom it seemed quite natural, that is, by savages, we do not

pretend to go in our interpretation.

 

* * * * *

 

To end our examination of the Myth of Cronus, we may compare the

solutions offered by scholars. As a rule, these solutions are based on

the philological analysis of the names in the story. It will be seen

that very various and absolutely inconsistent etymologies and meanings of

Cronus are suggested by philologists of the highest authority. These

contradictions are, unfortunately, rather the rule than the exception in

the etymological interpretation of myths.

 

* * * * *

 

The opinion of Mr. Max Muller has always a right to the first hearing

from English inquirers. Mr. Muller, naturally, examines first the name

of the god whose legend he is investigating. He writes: 'There is no

such being as Kronos in Sanskrit. Kronos did not exist till long after

Zeus in Greece. Zeus was called by the Greeks the son of Time ([Greek]).

This is a very simple and very common form of mythological __EXPRESSION__. It

meant originally, not that time was the origin or source of Zeus, but

[Greek] or [Greek] was used in the sense of "connected with time,

representing time, existing through all time." Derivatives in -[Greek]

and -[Greek] took, in later times, the more exclusive meaning of

patronymics. . . . When this (the meaning of [Greek] as equivalent to

Ancient of Days) ceased to be understood, . . . people asked themselves

the question, Why is Zeus called [Greek]? And the natural and almost

inevitable answer was, Because he is the son, the offspring of a more

ancient god, Kronos. This may be a very old myth in Greece; but the

misunderstanding which gave rise to it could have happened in Greece

only. We cannot expect, therefore, a god Kronos in the Veda.' To expect

Greek in the Veda would certainly be sanguine. 'When this myth of Kronos

had once been started, it would roll on irresistibly. If Zeus had once a

father called Kronos, Kronos must have a wife.' It is added, as

confirmation, that 'the name of [Greek] belongs originally to Zeus only,

and not to his later' (in Hesiod elder) 'brothers, Poseidon and Hades.'

{58a}

 

Mr. Muller says, in his famous essay on 'Comparative Mythology' {58b}:

'How can we imagine that a few generations before that time' (the age of

Solon) 'the highest notions of the Godhead among the Greeks were

adequately expressed by the story of Uranos maimed by Kronos,--of Kronos

eating his children, swallowing a stone, and vomiting out alive his whole

progeny. Among the lowest tribes of Africa and America, we hardly find

anything more hideous and revolting.' We have found a good deal of the

sort in Africa and America, where it seems not out of place.

 

One objection to Mr. Muller's theory is, that it makes the mystery no

clearer. When Greeks were so advanced in Hellenism that their own early

language had become obsolete and obscure, they invented the god [Greek],

to account for the patronymic (as they deemed it) [Greek], son of

[Greek]. But why did they tell such savage and revolting stories about

the god they had invented? Mr. Muller only says the myth 'would roll on

irresistibly.' But why did the rolling myth gather such very strange

moss? That is the problem; and, while Mr. Muller's hypothesis accounts

for the existence of a god called [Greek], it does not even attempt to

show how full-blown Greeks came to believe such hideous stories about the

god.

 

* * * * *

 

This theory, therefore, is of no practical service. The theory of

Adalbert Kuhn, one of the most famous of Sanskrit scholars, and author of

'Die Herabkunft des Feuers,' is directly opposed to the ideas of Mr.

Muller. In Cronus, Mr. Muller recognises a god who could only have come

into being among Greeks, when the Greeks had begun to forget the original

meaning of 'derivatives in -[Greek] and -[Greek].' Kuhn, on the other

hand, derives [Greek] from the same root as the Sanskrit Krana. {59}

Krana means, it appears, der fur sich schaffende, he who creates for

himself, and Cronus is compared to the Indian Pragapati, about whom even

more abominable stories are told than the myths which circulate to the

prejudice of Cronus. According to Kuhn, the 'swallow-myth' means that

Cronus, the lord of light and dark powers, swallows the divinities of

light. But in place of Zeus (that is, according to Kuhn, of the daylight

sky) he swallows a stone, that is, the sun. When he disgorges the stone

(the sun), he also disgorges the gods of light whom he had swallowed.

 

I confess that I cannot understand these distinctions between the father

and lord of light and dark (Cronus) and the beings he swallowed. Nor do

I find it easy to believe that myth-making man took all those

distinctions, or held those views of the Creator. However, the chief

thing to note is that Mr. Muller's etymology and Kuhn's etymology of

Cronus can hardly both be true, which, as their systems both depend on

etymological analysis, is somewhat discomfiting.

 

The next etymological theory is the daring speculation of Mr. Brown. In

'The Great Dionysiak Myth' {60a} Mr. Brown writes: 'I regard Kronos as

the equivalent of Karnos, Karnaios, Karnaivis, the Horned God; Assyrian,

KaRNu; Hebrew, KeReN, horn; Hellenic, KRoNos, or KaRNos.' Mr. Brown

seems to think that Cronus is 'the ripening power of harvest,' and also

'a wily savage god,' in which opinion one quite agrees with him. Why the

name of Cronus should mean 'horned,' when he is never represented with

horns, it is hard to say. But among the various foreign gods in whom the

Greeks recognised their own Cronus, one Hea, 'regarded by Berosos as

Kronos,' seems to have been 'horn-wearing.' {60b} Horns are lacking in

Seb and Il, if not in Baal Hamon, though Mr. Brown would like to behorn

them.

 

Let us now turn to Preller. {61a} According to Preller, Kronos is

connected with [Greek], to fulfil, to bring to completion. The harvest

month, the month of ripening and fulfilment, was called [Greek] in some

parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with its memory of Saturn's

golden days, was named [Greek]. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of

harvest-time, works in well with this explanation, and we have a kind of

pun in Homer which points in the direction of Preller's derivation from

[Greek]:--

 

[Greek]

 

and in Sophocles ('Tr.' 126)--

 

[Greek].

 

Preller illustrates the mutilation of Uranus by the Maori tale of

Tutenganahau. The child-swallowing he connects with Punic and Phoenician

influence, and Semitic sacrifices of men and children. Porphyry {61b}

speaks of human sacrifices to Cronus in Rhodes, and the Greeks recognised

Cronus in the Carthaginian god to whom children were offered up.

 

Hartung {61c} takes Cronus, when he mutilates Uranus, to be the fire of

the sun, scorching the sky of spring. This, again, is somewhat out of

accord with Schwartz's idea, that Cronus is the storm-god, the

cloud-swallowing deity, his sickle the rainbow, and the blood of Uranus

the lightning. {61d} According to Prof. Sayce, again, {62a} the blood-

drops of Uranus are rain-drops. Cronus is the sun-god, piercing the dark

cloud, which is just the reverse of Schwartz's idea. Prof. Sayce sees

points in common between the legend of Moloch, or of Baal under the name

of Moloch, and the myth of Cronus. But Moloch, he thinks, is not a god

of Phoenician origin, but a deity borrowed from 'the primitive Accadian

population of Babylonia.' Mr. Isaac Taylor, again, explains Cronus as

the sky which swallows and reproduces the stars. The story of the sickle

may be derived from the crescent moon, the 'silver sickle,' or from a

crescent-shaped piece of meteoric iron--for, in this theory, the fetich-

stone of Delphi is a piece of that substance.

 

* * * * *

 

It will be observed that any one of these theories, if accepted, is much

more 'minute in detail' than our humble suggestion. He who adopts any

one of them, knows all about it. He knows that Cronus is a purely Greek

god, or that he is connected with the Sanskrit Krana, which Tiele, {62b}

unhappily, says is 'a very dubious word.' Or the mythologist may be

quite confident that Cronus is neither Greek nor, in any sense, Sanskrit,

but Phoenician. A not less adequate interpretation assigns him

ultimately to Accadia. While the inquirer who can choose a system and

stick to it knows the exact nationality of Cronus, he is also well

acquainted with his character as a nature-god. He may be Time, or

perhaps he is the Summer Heat, and a horned god; or he is the harvest-

god, or the god of storm and darkness, or the midnight sky,--the choice

is wide; or he is the lord of dark and light, and his children are the

stars, the clouds, the summer months, the light-powers, or what you will.

The mythologist has only to make his selection.

 

The system according to which we tried to interpret the myth is less

ondoyant et divers. We do not even pretend to explain everything. We do

not guess at the meaning and root of the word Cronus. We only find

parallels to the myth among savages, whose mental condition is fertile in

such legends. And we only infer that the myth of Cronus was originally

evolved by persons also in the savage intellectual condition. The

survival we explain as, in a previous essay, we explained the survival of

the bull-roarer by the conservatism of the religious instinct.

 

 

 

 

CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE 'SUN-FROG.'

 

 

'Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen,' says the old woman in

Apuleius, beginning the tale of Cupid and Psyche with that ancient

formula which has been dear to so many generations of children. In one

shape or other the tale of Cupid and Psyche, of the woman who is

forbidden to see or to name her husband, of the man with the vanished

fairy bride, is known in most lands, 'even among barbarians.' According

to the story the mystic prohibition is always broken: the hidden face is

beheld; light is brought into the darkness; the forbidden name is

uttered; the bride is touched with the tabooed metal, iron, and the union

is ended. Sometimes the pair are re-united, after long searchings and

wanderings; sometimes they are severed for ever. Such are the central

situations in tales like that of Cupid and Psyche.

 

In the attempt to discover how the ideas on which this myth is based came

into existence, we may choose one of two methods. We may confine our

investigations to the Aryan peoples, among whom the story occurs both in

the form of myth and of household tale. Again, we may look for the

shapes of the legend which hide, like Peau d'Ane in disguise, among the

rude kraals and wigwams, and in the strange and scanty garb of savages.

If among savages we find both narratives like Cupid and Psyche, and also

customs and laws out of which the myth might have arisen, we may

provisionally conclude that similar customs once existed among the

civilised races who possess the tale, and that from these sprang the

early forms of the myth.

 

In accordance with the method hitherto adopted, we shall prefer the

second plan, and pursue our quest beyond the limits of the Aryan peoples.

 

The oldest literary shape of the tale of Psyche and her lover is found in

the Rig Veda (x. 95). The characters of a singular and cynical dialogue

in that poem are named Urvasi and Pururavas. The former is an Apsaras, a

kind of fairy or sylph, the mistress (and a folle maitresse, too) of

Pururavas, a mortal man. {65} In the poem Urvasi remarks that when she

dwelt among men she 'ate once a day a small piece of butter, and

therewith well satisfied went away.' This slightly reminds one of the

common idea that the living may not eat in the land of the dead, and of

Persephone's tasting the pomegranate in Hades.

 

Of the dialogue in the Rig Veda it may be said, in the words of Mr.

Toots, that 'the language is coarse and the meaning is obscure.' We only

gather that Urvasi, though she admits her sensual content in the society

of Pururavas, is leaving him 'like the first of the dawns'; that she

'goes home again, hard to be caught, like the winds.' She gives her

lover some hope, however--that the gods promise immortality even to him,

'the kinsman of Death' as he is. 'Let thine offspring worship the gods

with an oblation; in Heaven shalt thou too have joy of the festival.'

 

In the Rig Veda, then, we dimly discern a parting between a mortal man

and an immortal bride, and a promise of reconciliation.

 

The story, of which this Vedic poem is a partial dramatisation, is given

in the Brahmana of the Yajur Veda. Mr. Max Muller has translated the

passage. {66a} According to the Brahmana, 'Urvasi, a kind of fairy, fell

in love with Pururavas, and when she met him she said: Embrace me three

times a day, but never against my will, and let me never see you without

your royal garments, _for this is the manner of women_.' {66b} The

Gandharvas, a spiritual race, kinsmen of Urvasi, thought she had lingered

too long among men. They therefore plotted some way of parting her from

Pururavas. Her covenant with her lord declared that she was never to see

him naked. If that compact were broken she would be compelled to leave

him. To make Pururavas break this compact the Gandharvas stole a lamb

from beside Urvasi's bed: Pururavas sprang up to rescue the lamb, and, in

a flash of lightning, Urvasi saw him naked, contrary to the _manner of

women_. She vanished. He sought her long, and at last came to a lake

where she and her fairy friends were playing _in the shape of birds_.

Urvasi saw Pururavas, revealed herself to him, and, according to the

Brahmana, part of the strange Vedic dialogue was now spoken. Urvasi

promised to meet him on the last night of the year: a son was to be the

result of the interview. Next day, her kinsfolk, the Gandharvas, offered

Pururavas the wish of his heart. He wished to be one of them. They then

initiated him into the mode of kindling a certain sacred fire, after which he became immortal and dwelt among the Gandharvas.